Below is all of my content that has been tagged with the term apple. Browsing it should be very exciting for you. Enjoy.
I'm M. Jackson Wilkinson, a technologist, designer, speaker, educator, and writer in San Francisco. I'm the CEO and Founder of WeSprout, which is coming soon. I'm from Philadelphia, went to Bowdoin College in Maine, root for the Phillies, and love to sing.
37 Signals:
I have to think (and experiment) every single time I want to decipher one of these keyboard “shortcuts”. Why is it that only the command key (⌘) actually has the symbol printed on the key itself? And what’s up with the symbol for the option key (⌥)?
Apple and usability usually go hand-in-hand, but the keyboard shortcuts are a huge exception. Why not just put them on the keyboard? Too ugly?
Khoi Vinh:
While the letterforms on that virtual page may look gorgeous, it’s apparent to any designer that the text is far from perfectly typeset. It’s hideous, scarred as it is by unsightly “rivers” of bad spacing within the text. No self-respecting typographer would dare call that perfect.
It really is a JV move of Apple. Jeff Croft suspects it could be related to the use of Webkit throughout the platform, but even that wouldn’t be an excuse for these kinds of mistakes.
The highlights:
From where I see it, Apple keeps pushing the bar further than the other manufacturers can reach. They’re working on making every feature feel like it’s always been there, spending a year or more on pieces like the retina display, and then the competition feels forced to slap together an answer in a couple months.
AT&T notwithstanding, the average consumer shouldn’t have much of a problem choosing this device over the myriad android phones.
Eric’s article covers the basics of why people might like a curated/closed app store setup:
But inherent in the [store] experience is that what you find on the shelves has been selected and vetted by the person or people running the store. That doesn’t just mean favoring one brand of soap over another, but also deciding what to carry at all. Your hardware store doesn’t sell flat-panel HDTVs. Macy’s doesn’t stock six-inch PVC pipe. Target doesn’t offer porn.
And the opportunity that the web stack provides for alternatives:
For starters, imagine this: you have bought a number of apps at your favorite [web app] store and installed them on your iPhone… Then, two years later, you decide you’ve had enough of Apple and want to move to another smartphone. Once again, your apps and data go with you.
I love native apps, but I’m looking forward to this future.
This may end up being claim chowder and all, but it makes perfect sense.
I love my Apple TV, but it’s getting a bit dated. A small box that spits out 1080p video and runs iPhone OS & app store apps is going to be really compelling, especially at the rumored $99 price tag.
My biggest question is whether or not the iPhone OS can work sufficiently without a touch interface: the Apple stance on remote controls has always been a four-way pad, a play button, and a menu button. Apple TV-specific apps probably wouldn’t pose much of a challenge, but running a more traditional iPad app on your TV would translate a bit more crudely.
The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that as of June 1st, AT&T will nearly double the early termination fee for customers on smartphone contracts such as for the iPhone, going from $175 to $325. The change, which would apply only to new contracts, appears set to come just prior to the launch of a new iPhone.
I wonder if this means that Apple is getting a larger subsidy for the new phone than before. Maybe the costs of these gen-next devices are such that AT&T is taking a smaller share of the rev, but protecting themselves against cancellations, while keeping the subsidized price of phones relatively stable. Or, they could just be huge d-bags.
Worth it for the punch-line.
John Siracusa looks at his reviews of the OS X preview releases and the first 10.0 release.
What’s most amazing is how gracefully things seem to have improved in those ten years. The old screenshots now look dated and sometimes downright ridiculous, and Siracusa’s evaluations were nothing short of dire in the beginning, but it’s slowly and steadily become the clear market leader.
One of the best things about Apple is their willingness to put something out that might be a bit of a reach, and then to go back and iterate and fill in the gaps. They pay a boatload of attention to making it a great experience in the first place, but they are always willing to acknowledge that improvements can be both subtle and major.
Marco Arment discusses the two sides of the iPhone app store — the popular side and the craftsman side — and how apps targeting the wrong one can find themselves on the wrong side of success. He takes, as an example, the Iconfactory skee-ball game Ramp Champ, which has been revealed to be a commercial failure thus far.
I was just explaining the whole Snow Leopard gamma shift this morning to Ali when she asked why some of her recent work was looking so dark. Conveniently, Adobe’s John Nack published an article that includes an interesting history of the issue:
Macintosh, in 1984, introduced us to desktop publishing and to displays with shades of grays. Publishing at that time meant printing presses, and the dot gain of a typical press (then and now) corresponds to a gamma of 1.8. As color management was non-existent at the time (the first color management solutions did not appear until early 1990s, when color displays became more available), Apple’s pick of a 1.8 display gamma enabled the Macintosh displays to match the press.
But now both Macs and Windows are at 2.2, while the HDTVs are all moving to 2.6. Something tells me we’ll have to deal with this again in a couple years.
Leander Kahney finds a redesign of an on-screen keyboard in Snow Leopard, and helps put two and two together.
As you use Snow Leopard, you find even more examples where the mouse is acting more and more like a finger could act on, say, a tablet running OS X.
As always, John Siracusa’s is as authoritative as they get. At twenty-three pages, the pagination almost needs its own pagination. I just finished reading, and it’s fantastic.
Even if you’re not an Apple user, you should read this review. It has boatloads of interesting information about how to think about operating systems, and you’re almost guaranteed to learn more than just a few useful nuggets.
It’s probably the most interesting tech article I’ve read in months.
An interesting comparison of the details between the iPhone’s keyboard, and the Android keyboard, as implemented on the HTC Magic:
A virtual keyboard lives and dies by the details. It’s not that there’s a single feature which makes the iPhone’s virtual keyboard better than Android’s; it’s death by a thousand cuts. A number of small differences end up making a huge difference.5 Apple obviously spent a lot of time getting every little detail just right (well, except for the ducking dictionary), while Google decided to go ahead with what they had – which is usable, but no match for what the iPhone offers.
The 10% difference in physical screen size (while still being equal in terms of pixels) probably reduces performance by well more than 10%
Mike Rundle has a pretty great post outlining the common types of iPhone application interfaces, major apps that use each type, and the advantages/disadvantages of each.
John Gruber with some strong commentary on AT&T’s apparent inability to support the needs of iPhone users:
Apple slagged AT&T twice during the WWDC keynote, for their inability to offer iPhone users either MMS or tethering. These are not advanced cutting edge mobile phone features. That was seven weeks ago, and AT&T still hasn’t said a peep about making either feature available. Of course Apple is furious. They are dependent on an incompetent partner in their biggest market.
The AT&T relationship, now a curse, started as a blessing for Apple. At the beginning, Apple was able to negotiate pretty liberal terms with AT&T which allowed for features like the App Store and Visual Voicemail, which may never have happened with Verizon. It also provided a large-enough audience for the platform to be such a success, which may not have happened with a network like T-Mobile or Sprint.
Apple’s iPhone app approval process has been a disaster for many, and this is just the latest example.
A simple sales tracking app, MyAppSales, was rejected because it technically spiders the iTunesConnect site. So instead, the author is selling the source code for use by folks who are willing to provision and deploy the app on their own phones themselves.
Fortunately, the audience for this app is reasonably likely to be willing to do such a thing (they’re often iPhone developers themselves), so while it might be a passable solution for this particular app, it probably wouldn’t fly for the vast majority.
Apparently Apple and RIM are doing something right:
The two accounted for only 3% of all cellphones sold in the world last year but 35% of operating profits, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff. The disparity will become even starker this year when, he estimates, the two will take 5% of the market in unit terms but 58% of total operating profits.
You don’t always need enormous market share to have a very healthy business.
John Gruber, in his overall write-up on the new C&P functionality on the iPhone, summarizes Apple’s philosophy when it comes to releasing these types of features:
That we had to wait two years for the iPhone’s text selection and pasteboard is a good example of one aspect of the Apple way: better nothing at all than something less than great. That’s not to say Apple never releases anything less than great, but they try not to. This is contrary to the philosophy of most other tech companies — and diametrically opposed to the philosophy of Microsoft. And it is very much what drives some people crazy about Apple — it’s simply incomprehensible to some people that it might be better to have no text selection/pasteboard implementation while waiting for a great one than to have a poor implementation in the interim.
I tend to agree with the Apple stance. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the great, but do let greatness be the enemy of the good/fair/poor.
Jim Dalrymple:
The answer seems quite simple: AT&T is afraid of what will happen to its network once millions of iPhone users start sending MMS and connecting their computer to the network.
I remember back in like 2002 hearing a Verizon Wireless employee warn a potential customer that they’re likely to use more minutes than usual with Verizon, since the network was much better than CellularOne’s.
This is much the same thing. Once you’ve made a phone that makes features easy to use, people are likely to start using them.
Incremental improvement is the shoreline of safety: if you can see it, you’re sure to be okay, but you won’t be discovering any new oceans. Google and Apple are willing to move away from that shore and explore the risks and reward potential of innovation. Microsoft? Not so much.
Gruber makes some pretty sane predictions, and they’re probably well-sourced:
More RAM will significantly help performance, too, and I believe the new iPhones will sport 256 MB of memory, up from the 128 MB in all current models. Prices will stay the same — $199 and $299 — but storage will increase to 16 and 32 GB. The improved performance will be one of the major new features that Apple will tout, but the only tech specs Apple will publish will be the storage capacities — just as with previous iPhones and iPod Touches Apple won’t publish any specific technical information regarding RAM or the CPU. (The CPU in particular, I believe, is something Apple regards as secret sauce.)
Looking forward to this one. More RAM and CPU would make for a much better iPhone, and I still love my first-gen.
John Siracusa:
Like greed, criticism gets a bad rap, especially when it’s presented in large doses. It’s impolite. It’s unnecessarily obsessive. It’s just a bummer. But the truth is, precious little in life gets fixed in the absence of a good understanding of what’s wrong with it to begin with. This character flaw, this curse, this seemingly most useless of skills is actually the yin to the more widely recognized yang of creative talent.
It’s like the professor who tore apart your papers. Hated at the time, but now you look back and think about how much better a writer you are.
I don’t think any creative business can succeed without serious (and sometimes harsh) criticism coming either externally or internally. It has less to do with measurement than it has to do with this editing eye.
Cringely on iTunes vs. Hulu:
Fox owns a big chunk of Hulu, yet American Idol performances are exclusively available on iTunes, not Hulu. Why is that? Because American Idol performances on iTunes make a lot of MONEY, that’s why. Adam Lambert downloads alone make more money every week — a LOT more money — than do ALL the shows on Hulu put together.
Bob suggests that Apple might spend their mammoth amount of cash on hand to commission programming only available on iTunes, a la HBO. That would be a very cool development.
This is an awesome look back at an epic skunkworks project at Apple, and reminds us what makes software really great: a good idea that “doesn’t suck,” motivation, late nights, talent, smart friends, a little bit of internal marketing, a good user feedback loop, and a bit of luck.