January 2010
64 posts
Some trivial notes on the iPad
(I’ll be honest: you can expect a lot of iPad-related posts from me in the near future, given that it’s the next big thing and all. Caveat tumblor.)
True to the iPad’s promise of “no preferred orientation”, the home screen can be used horizontally (unlike the iPhone’s). As far as I can tell, though, this is not the case with the Keynote app.
Apple’s case...
Skirting the glut of lifestyle stories →
NYTimes on the number of available iPhone apps… This is one of those articles that want to have it all three ways: it says iPhone users aren’t installing many apps, except some are, and somehow this is all an issue (except when it’s no different than any other medium). And check out this amazing stat: of the 140,000 apps on the App Store, most users never see more than 1%. The average...
Some ClickToFlash-like plug-ins Sebastiaan de With...
ClickToEnderle
ClickToComments
ClickToTechCrunch
ClickToFlashEvangelist
ClickToNotClick
ClickToBurnoutRant
ClicktoGruberWhenBaseball’sOn
ClickToRichMediaAdvertising
ClickToCrash (a Photoshop plug-in)
ClickToFAIL
Names
Product names currently topping Engadget’s feed: (these are all real and not particularly cherry-picked)
Kula TV PMP
Optio I-10
Gateway EC14D
Alienware M11x
Projectiondesign Remote Light Source
DMC-ZS7 (Or is it 7SZ? Or SZ7? Or Z7S?)
MvixUSA Ultio Pro
Moto CLIQ
OLPC XO
Mustek MER-6T
I like “iPad”.
The worlds are colliding
Epic knowledge dropped by stevenf tonight:
In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they rarely...
Bad Astronomy on NASA's budget →
The general public public perception of NASA is that it’s an inefficient, unnecessary drain on the US budget. How bad a drain? Bad Astronomy quotes The Space Review:
In a just-completed study, we asked respondents what percentage of the national budget is allocated to NASA … NASA’s allocation, on average, was estimated to be approximately 24% of the national budget (the NASA allocation in...
“iCan’t believe it!
It’s now at the online Apple Store! $400 for an Mp3 Player!...”
– From the MacRumors thread when the original iPod came out. It’s not that all criticism of Apple is wrong, it’s that this sort of criticism of Apple is always destined to be embarrassing. Also note that there were people in the thread who said the iPod was a game-changing device and Apple...
J.D.
On the day of his passing, remember J.D. Salinger by reading him. While Catcher in The Rye is really all that, may I suggest you pick up Nine Stories, one of the finest story collections ever? Read, shudder, laugh, think.
Free
A detail from the iPad keynote: Steve demoes the Mail application and he puts it in horizontal mode. Oh, look, an Inbox list pops in. Neat.
And I think, hmmm I wonder if you can resize that splitter, making the source list wider. Its a tiny target, so it would be hard to grab…
And then I realize: you can’t resize it.
And a bright light did shine upon my liberated face and a voice did...
One more before I go on radio silence
One last tablet observation:
The likes of Gizmodo and TechCrunch obsess over hardware specs as if those somehow capture how a device will actually work and feel. Here’s my advice: ignore the technical limitations of the device. Pay no attention to the storage space, connectivity, ports, etc. Those can change; the UI can’t.
I realize that what I’m saying sounds crazy -...
Lust, Caution
I am really, really excited to see what Apple introduces tomorrow. It’s not helping that Apple’s execs are bragging about it in a way I haven’t seen them do for upcoming products before, not helping at all. Since I don’t believe they’re crazy or desperate, I can only expect they’re genuinely confident they’ve got a winner.
There will be disappointments,...
Things I did not know about Joanna Newsom until...
Her lyrics are really, really, really long.
Her lyrics are also sort of amazing, like such: Down in the green hay, Where monkey and bear usually lay, They woke from a stable-boy’s cry. He said: “someone come quick The horses got loose, got grass-sick They’ll founder! Fain, they’ll die.” What is now known by the sorrel and the roan? By the chestnut, and the bay, and the gelding grey? It is: stay...
Scratching
A spot on your arm is sending signals to your brain. There is an upset area of your epidermis wanting attention. You reach for it without thinking, and you scratch, nails digging into skin repeatedly. Why? It feels better, sometimes; sometimes it doesn’t. It’s addictive, somehow. Why?
This Newsweek interview with a dermatologist is far too folksy to give any specifics, but it does...
Open-source cookies
buzzandersen shares a story from Malcolm Gladwell:
For years now, whenever the subject of open source product design has come up in conversation, I’ve mentioned this 2005 Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker piece about Steve Gundrum, a tech-minded Silicon Valley baker who decided to pit three software development methodologies (open source, XP, and traditional hierarchical R&D) against each...
Salt & Fat →
Hey folks, there’s a new blog about cooking and enjoyment of food, written by Jim Ray and yours truly. We call it Salt & Fat. Join us as we learn!
Crafting Subtle & Realistic User Interfaces →
Mike Rundle has some great advice on UI design:
The underlying secret to beautiful user interface design is realism: making 2D objects on your screen appear to sit in 3D space with volume, surface properties and undulations that might appear in real life. These faux 3D objects have highlights and shadows just like objects on your desk might have, and they have textures that emulate real objects...
Are phones distracting? →
A few weeks ago, I found myself arguing (from intuition) that cellphone conversations are somewhat unfairly considered more distracting than conversations with a physically present person. My feeling was that those outside the conversation experience a feeling of alienation which makes them overreact disproportionally.
That last part may be true or not, but here’s some data on the original...
AppleInsider's history of tablet computing →
Seems like a good story of how this whole tablet business got where it is today. AppleInsider has a spotty record for technical accuracy, though, so caveat lector.
kmikeym:
If you have to explain it this much maybe it means it’s not such a good idea?
They should’ve made it a pref.
Some unused templates for titles of instructional...
(Where the blank is filled with ”make websites”, “lose weight”, ”play piano”, etc.)
Jesus, You still Can’t ______?
______, Sort Of
Mr. Brown Can ______, Can You?
Read About How To ______ Then Do Nothing About It
Just ______ Already
______? ______?? I’D LOVE TO!!!
______, starving hysterical naked
So… You ______ Much?
______, Monkey, ______!
...
Apple and Red Cross accepting Haiti donations via... →
Apple and the Red Cross worked together to create a frictionless way to donate to the Haiti relief effort through iTunes. Click the link (or hit the iTunes Store on your own) and pick your amount - that’s it.
Everyone donates more when it can be done in fewer steps, using an existing, trusted payment system. Any company sitting on such a system has a responsibility to make things like this...
Just the type
Today’s fanning of the Apple tablet bonfire: text entry. How do you do type on a 10” tablet? Every such device seen so far, including the dreck demoed at CES 2010, struggles with this, and badly. The definitive analysis has already been written by Macworld’s Dan Moren, and I’d just like to add one thought.
Let’s assume the rumor about Steve Jobs’ being...
I care
Let me assure you: I do not hate Photoshop.
I bitch, I moan, I rant, I kvetch; I tweet obscenities and backhanded compliments; I upset the hardworking code-writers in the office with my screams of “Photoshooooop!”; I post snarky screenshots and trade lols over iChat.
But I kind of like Photoshop, really. Because it’s what I do; most of it, anyway. I put things together in...
Chax →
Chax is a free utility which makes iChat, well, usable. OK, so iChat isn’t really that bad, but boy does it have its boners. Chax improves many things; the biggies are a unified contact list (across AIM, Jabber, and Bonjour), automatic resizing of the Contact list to the actual number of online users, and auto-accepting of chat/file requests.
It all works without bugging you; once you...
Commands I wish Voice Control on iPhone would...
“What time is it?”
“Rate song three stars.”
“What’s the weather?”
“Notifications!” (“You have one unread message and two unread emails.”)
“Redial.”
“New voice memo…”
Tetra Pak
You know the Tetra Pak brand, and you probably associate it with milk cartons - square boxes topped with funky, fold-out roofs (increasingly replaced by the safer and not-as-fun twist caps. Boo.) Now, what I think of when I hear “tetra pak” - and we all hear it so much, right - is these things that milk came in when I was a wee lad in Croatia:
See, the tetra in Tetra Pak is for...
Pizza Turnaround →
Domino’s new ad campaign is sort of mindblowing - they’re admitting that their pizza is terrible (cue focus-group quote: “the crust tastes like cardboard.”) Just look at the campaign video - it’s sort of uncomfortable.
The cheap part is where they say, oh but we’ve changed things! Hurrah! It’s a new day at Domino’s! They’re pretty much daring...
DIY: The Amazon Way
After I expressed my desire for Apple to enter the world of self-publishing, several people pointed out that Amazon already does this via Digital Text Platform (DTP, har-har), a beta program connected to the Kindle store. I had heard of this and taken a cursory glance, but I hadn’t tried using it. So, in the interest of research, I started the process of publishing my first work on it three...
Retirement pot
Lunchtime discussion the other day: will marijuana be legalized in our lifetime?
Someone points out that their parents’ friends are finally getting into growing and enjoying pot now that they’re retired and finding themselves with spare time, little to lose, and new aches and pains.
To which I ask, if marijuana is legalized soon, will savvy employers start offering...
DIY, Pt. II
Today, Andy Ihnatko, a man infinitely smarter than me, published his guesses about the Apple tablet. It’s truly great stuff, head and shoulders and torso and a bit of thigh above what you get from the nauseatingly regurgitating tech websites of 2010.
Here’s a bit where he may be right, but I hope he’s not: he argues that Apple will not get into publishing; not of books, not of...
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski →
Adam Bertocci imagines my generation’s defining movie, The Big Lebowski, as written by Shakespeare:
WALTER Indeed, a rug of value; an estimable rug, an honour’d rug; O unhappy rug, that should live to cover such days! DONALD Of what dost thou speak, that tied the room together, Knave? Take pains, for I would well hear of that which tied the room together. WALTER Didst thou attend the...
Apple Products of The Future
Mac Pro Air
Nike + Xserve
DigitalColor Meter Studio
Spaces for Real
Apple Remote Home Screen
AirPort Extreme touch
Mini-DVI to Video Adapter (PRODUCT) RED…?
Magic Keyboard
iTunes 16
Magic TextEdit
iDVD For Some Reason
iPhone Classic
Mac OS X Classic
Mac Classic