Neven Mrgan on the iOS 7 Icon Template Grid 

Neven Mrgan:

But whether we accept the idea of a grid or not, here’s the bigger point: no icon designer I’ve asked thinks Ive’s grid is helpful. In that sense, it’s wrong. The large circle is too big. Many apps in iOS 7 use it: all the Store apps, Safari, Messages, Photos… In all these icons, the big shape in the center is simply too big. Every icon designer I’ve asked would instead draw something like the icon on the right. To our eyes — and we get paid to have good ones, we’re told — this is more correct.

Michael Heilemann on iOS 7 

Some of the best criticism of iOS 7’s design that I’ve seen.

Matt Gemmell on iOS 7 

Matt Gemmell:

Press coverage is disproportionally focusing on the Home screen (about which more in a moment), but the reality of day to day usage is that you’ll spend time in apps. Where there were previously gloomy cubbyholes and low ceilings, there are now floor-to-ceiling windows, skylights, and clean surfaces.

I think it’s an enormous improvement, and a typically opinionated move.

Second Least-Surprising Tidbit From the Apple-DOJ E-Book Price-Fixing Trial 

Peter Kafka:

The “page curls” in the iBook app, which show up when you flip an iBook’s page? That’s Steve Jobs’s idea.

You can see that he liked the page curl from his demeanor during the demo, starting around the 3:15 mark.

New 13-Inch MacBook Air Runs for 15 Hours in PCMag Battery Test 

Joel Santo Domingo, reviewing the new 13-inch Air:

Road warriors and jet travellers rejoice, we’ve found a laptop that will last all day and well into the night. The newest Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Mid-2013) lasted an astonishing 15-and-a-half hours on a battery test that makes most current mainstream ultrabooks and ultraportables cough and die after four to six hours. The fact that the system gives up very little if any day-to-day performance is astounding.

Not bad.

Persuading David Simon  

Maciej Ceglowski:

The security state operates as a ratchet. Once you click in a new level of surveillance or intrusiveness, it becomes the new baseline. What was unthinkable yesterday becomes permissible in exceptional cases today, and routine tomorrow. The people who run the American security apparatus are in the overwhelming majority diligent people with a deep concern for civil liberties. But their job is to find creative ways to collect information. And they work within an institution that, because of its secrecy, is fundamentally inimical to democracy and to a free society.

Remarkably thoughtful essay; if you read only one thing this week, make it this.

Designers on iOS 7 

Week-old roundup of day one designer commentary on iOS 7. I was right about one thing: it’s polarizing. Two remarks I very much agree with:

Craig Mod:

What was outlined today looks like a very rational base on which to extend the OS — somewhat timeless, far more timeless than what we had before.

Justin Rhoades:

I think the design had to be reset so that newer interaction models could surface. More gestures, more animations. They added a physics engine to the SDK. It’s like a pendulum swinging from obvious visual affordances to engaging kinetic ones. The parallax effect, the physics of the messages bubbles and I’m sure many other ‘kinetic’ behaviors are new to devs in iOS7. Apple wants apps to use more motion and less visual design.

Fargo 0.80 

Dave Winer:

A few minutes ago we flipped the switch on smallpict.com and now all the sites there are being managed by a new content management system Kyle and I have been working on for most of this year.

What this means is this: you can publish from Fargo to a blogging system that understands outlines at its core.

Dave Winer, outlining, blog publishing systems — that’s a story as old as the web itself, but the technology here is all new. (Includes Markdown support, too.)

Update: Brent Simmons on Fargo and Dave Winer:

I’ll put it another way. I can take a good idea and make a nice app, but Dave can make a good idea.

iTunes Radio 

Tyler Hayes on iTunes Radio:

The design and goal is clearly focused on listeners purchasing music — but even so, iTunes Radio feels like the first truly modern take on what terrestrial radio wishes it could be. Radio was always meant to be a promotion tool, a way to sell more music, but without being built directly on top of the world’s biggest music retailer, it was always too distant from the marketplace to be more effectual. Now a “buy” button lives next to every song, or a wish list one for those hesitant, and it feels like this is how modern radio should function.

Agreed; iTunes Radio is well-done and well-designed. I’m a little surprised Apple is making everyone wait for iOS 7 to get it.

Huawei ‘Considering’ Nokia Acquisition 

ZDNet:

According to the Financial Times of London (paywall), Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, said at the launch of its latest smartphone offering, the Ascend P6, in London: “We are considering these sorts of acquisitions; maybe the combination has some synergies but depends on the willingness of Nokia.”

“We are open minded,” Yu told reporters.

Update: Huawei issues statement saying it “has no plans to acquire Nokia”.

‘Of Course, They’re Trying to Kill Me.’ 

Speaking of interviews with Simmonses, Dave Hamilton at The Mac Observer talked to my Q Branch colleague Brent Simmons last week during WWDC regarding the development of Vesper.

Nexus 7, One Year In 

Dustin Earley:

I can’t find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn’t seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps.

I tried the basics at first, like a factory reset. I then moved onto drastic measures, like rooting and installing CyanogenMod 10.1 (which I thought would surely fix everything, since I’ve used faster devices with lesser hardware, and performance problems were merely a lack of software optimization). And nothing seems to work.

My first-generation iPad from 2010 works just as well as the day I bought it. Actually, even better, because iOS has gotten better.

Update: A lot of pushback from readers on my claim above, arguing that their first-gen iPads have been rendered slow and unstable by iOS 5 (the last OS to support the hardware). My son uses mine for iBooks, watching movies, and playing games. Mileage clearly varies with other apps. (And yes, the App Store app in particular is a bit crashy.)

Chatology 1.0 

New from Flexibits (makers of Fantastical): Chatology, a $20 Mac utility for searching your iChat/iMessage archives.

Update: Brief interview with Flexibits’s Michael Simmons from Lex Friedman at Macworld.

Least Surprising Tidbit From Apple-DOJ E-Book Trial 

Brian X. Chen, reporting for the NYT from the e-book price-fixing trial:

Both parties showed their evidence on a projector screen. Apple’s legal team used a MacBook to shuffle between evidence documents, stacking them side by side in split screens and zooming in on specific paragraphs.

In contrast, the Justice Department’s lawyers could show only one piece of evidence at a time. One video that Mr. Buterman played as evidence failed to produce the audio commentary needed to make his point.

Get Rid of the App Store’s ‘Top’ Lists 

Marco Arment:

The race to the bottom. Deceptive low-now, high-later pricing. Scam and clone apps. Shallow apps with little craftsmanship that succeed, but many high-quality apps unable to command a sustainable price. The “top” list encourages all of these — we’d still have them without the list, but to a substantially lesser degree.

Monday, 17 June 2013

Vintage 2007 Nokia Claim Chowder 

Alistair Croll, writing for GigaOm in November 2007:

But in the end, we know how this story plays out: iPhone is Compuserve; Nokia is the Internet.

Apple Statement on Customer Privacy 

Unsigned statement from Apple:

Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.

That last sentence separates Apple from many other companies.

Apple’s Signature 

Darby Lines, on Apple’s new “This Is Our Signature” campaign:

In my opinion this has been, from the return of Steve Jobs at least, the singular goal of Apple. Not to make all the moneys, not to dominate markets, not to impress bloggers but simply to make products that enhance our lives.

Apple spent nine months in complete silence — from the release of the iPad Mini through last week. The only thing they announced in that interim was the ouster of Scott Forstall and corresponding reshuffling of executive responsibility. No new products, no new designs. And the business and tech media lost their shit over this, declaring an end to Apple’s ability to innovate. Apple’s “This Is Our Signature” mantra is in defiance of this superficial demand for an endless stream of new new new. Apple is saying they’re above the churn of the news cycle, and if you don’t understand that yet, they don’t care. You’ll either get it through your head eventually, or you will never understand Apple.

Don’t Worry About iOS 7 

Jim Dalrymple:

Judging from my inbox, Twitter and Messages, people are losing their minds over iOS 7 and some of the changes Apple introduced at WWDC last week. Here is my advice to you — sit back, take a deep breath and relax.

There are a few things you need to remember about iOS 7. First, it’s nowhere near finished in terms of design or functionality. Apple engineers stopped adding or changing the operating system before WWDC so they had a stable build to show during the keynote. It’s not done.

iOS 7 is so far from done that maybe there is a story here, in that Apple has a mountain of work ahead to get iOS 7 ready for actual release this fall (presumably, coincident with the release of new iPhone and iPad devices). But to judge iOS 7 beta 1 as you would a release version is silly.

Sunday, 16 June 2013

Squarespace 

My thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Squarespace puts world-class design in your hands and provides everything you need to create your own website in minutes. Squarespace websites are different. They’re designed to be simple, modern, and to look great on every device. With Squarespace, your personality, products, or content are always the focus.

The best part: you can try Squarespace for free.

Friday, 14 June 2013

Requiem for a Back Button 

Khoi Vinh:

If you ask me, that back button, the one that has been with us since the iPhone debuted, was the best back button design of all time.

Fertile Ground 

Marco Arment:

Apple has set fire to iOS. Everything’s in flux. Those with the least to lose have the most to gain, because this fall, hundreds of millions of people will start demanding apps for a platform with thousands of old, stale players and not many new, nimble alternatives. If you want to enter a category that’s crowded on iOS 6, and you’re one of the few that exclusively targets iOS 7, your app can look better, work better, and be faster and cheaper to develop than most competing apps.

The Talk Show: ‘Code 47: Live From WWDC 2013’ 

Recorded earlier this week in front of a live audience in San Francisco, I was joined on stage by Guy English, Scott Simpson, and a cavalcade of very special surprise guests. I’m pretty happy with how this show turned out.

Brought to you by three excellent sponsors:

  • Windows Azure Mobile Services: makes it fast and easy to build connected mobile apps that scale. Try for free.

  • Briefs: Demo your ideas on the iPhone and iPad, without code.

  • Tumblewords: A beautiful and addictive word game for your iOS device.

Thursday, 13 June 2013

‘Start Updating Your Apps for iOS 7. Now.’ 

Entropy:

The key takeaway we’ve reached (after two less than 24 hours playing with the iOS 7 Beta release) is this — every App must consider even basic updates to its UI to survive in a post-iOS 6 world.

‘Making a Difference, One App at a Time’ 

Have to think Apple made this to show during the WWDC keynote, but that it got dropped for time. It’s so great.

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Been There, Done That 

Craig Hockenberry:

I think it’s useful to look at the history of Aqua while thinking about the future of iOS 7.

Some designers are saying that the new look is “over the top.” The same thing was said about Aqua over a decade ago. And in succeeding years, that original UI has continuously been refined to what we see today.

I wish I wrote this. So spot on.

Photos From The Talk Show Live at WWDC 2013 

Great photos from last night’s show by Randy Stewart. My thanks to everyone who attended; it was a blast.

Update: Great shots from Patrick Gibson, too.

‘Semi-Roboto’ 

Droid Life, “That Moment When iOS 7 Became Android”:

We’ll have so many more thoughts on the way related to iOS 7, but we thought we’d start with the eerily similar lock screens. Floating bubble live wallpaper, minimal clock, fading on the actionable icons, semi-Roboto font, etc.

Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, “semi-Roboto”. OK, then.

Tuesday, 11 June 2013

Ben Thompson on Tim Cook 

Ben Thompson:

The truth about the greatest commercial of all time — Think Different — is that the intended audience was Apple itself. Jobs took over a demoralized company on the precipice of bankruptcy, and reminded them that they were special, and, that Jobs was special. It was the beginning of a new chapter.

“Designed in California” should absolutely be seen in the same light. This is a commercial for Apple on the occasion of a new chapter; we just get to see it.

‘Designed by Apple’ 

“There are a thousand ‘no’s’ for every ‘yes’.”

Generosity of Perspective 

Thoughtful critique of iOS 7 from Frank Chimero:

This morning, I watched the videos of the iOS 7 interface again, and I saw a bunch of rushed designers unable to stabilize an uneven interface. It’s worth remembering that Ive took over Human Interface only 7 months ago, and they redesigned the whole phone in that time. Straight up: seven months is a ridiculous deadline.

iOS 7: Instead of Flatness, We Got Depth 

Astute take on iOS 7’s design by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, writing for Gizmodo:

The predicted rebirth Susan Kare’s original black-and-white OS design, it ain’t. Actually, let’s just ban using the term “flat” altogether for this post. The iOS 7 we met today was full of what Jony Ive called “new types of depth.” Alongside a poppy, neon-and-pastel color scheme, the icons, apps, and homescreen of iOS 7 are full of layering and dimensionality. There are also entirely new types of animation: from a screen that uses the accelerometer to adjust in parallax, to beautiful new animated weather icons.

All the Apple News (In Brief) 

Great overview of yesterday’s news, useful both if you were busy yesterday, or if you just need a reminder of everything that was announced.

‘This Is Our Signature’: iOS 7

Monday, 10 June 2013

No one has questioned whether Jony Ive can lead a hardware design team. Whether he could lead a software design team, however, has been the biggest question facing Apple over the last eight months. In fact, it might be the biggest question facing Apple, ever, because it’s another way of asking whether the company could produce innovative software without you-know-who at the helm of the ship.

Today, we have our answer, and it is a resounding yes. Jony Ive can lead a software team.

The key, I think, is that his approach, and Apple’s as a whole under its post-Forstall organizational structure, is not to view this as two different things, hardware and software, but rather as a single thing: design.

There is a deep intellectual rigor to the design of iOS 7, and it’s hard not to see it as being profoundly informed by Ive’s background in hardware. In hardware, design is limited by physics: weight, density, size, connections, seams. Software doesn’t face those design limits. The old design of iOS 6 took advantage of that lack of limits, to its detriment. In iOS 6, you open a folder on the home screen, and linen is something you see underneath. You pull down Notification Center, and linen is something you see over. It’s both over and under. Hardware doesn’t work like that, but software can, because software can show you anything, conceptual logic be damned.

The design of iOS 7 is based on rules. There’s an intricate system at work, a Z-axis of layers organized in a logical way. There is a profound reduction in the use of faux-3D visual effects and textures, but iOS 7 is anything but flat. It is three dimensional not just visually but logically. It uses translucency not to show off, but to provide you with a sense of place. When you pull the new Control Center panel up from the bottom of the screen, its translucency lets you know that you haven’t gone somewhere new, you’re just looking at something over where you were.

There’s a sense of place, depth, and spatiality in iOS 7 that makes it feel like hardware. A real thing, not pixels rendered on glass. It’s as though Ive has brought the same design goals that have always informed Apple’s hardware to software. And here, his team isn’t limited by physics. Planes can have zero thickness. But it’s a system, in the truest sense of the word.

iOS 7 is not perfect; this new design framework will evolve and improve over time, just like iOS’s original aesthetic did. But it’s a conceptual foundation that corrects all of the excesses of the original iOS aesthetic. It’s radically different but not disorienting. Less flashy, less bling, more subtle, more refined.

This is the first product of the post-Jobs Apple. The result shows that in some ways Apple’s software design has gotten better, because it was Jobs (and Forstall) who had a penchant for exuberant textures and gimmickry. Jobs’s taste in hardware was nearly perfect, but his taste in software had a weakness for the saccharine. Wood grain, linen, Rich Corinthian leather, etc. It was all just sugar for the eyes. This is a weakness Jony Ive’s software taste clearly does not suffer.

The software is now of a piece with the hardware. Two sides of the same coin. Not hardware design and software design. Just design. 

Monday, 10 June 2013

City Notes: San Francisco 

Perfect timing for WWDC.

WWDC 2013 Expectations

Sunday, 9 June 2013

Tim Cook, one year ago, to Walt Mossberg: “We’re going to double down on secrecy on products.”

12 months later, here we are, on the cusp of WWDC 2013, and nobody outside Apple seems to have any idea what Apple is set to show tomorrow. Cook’s words to Mossberg were anything but empty. The most secretive company in the industry got more secretive. We know Jony Ive has been leading the software design of iOS and OS X. We can be pretty sure they’re going to show us what they’ve been up to. But no one seems to know just what that is.

Yours truly included — and I couldn’t be happier. I haven’t been this in the dark about what Apple was set to announce in a keynote since the original iPhone introduction in January 2007. I’ve seen some speculation over the past few days that Vesper’s UI was informed by advanced knowledge of iOS 7. It was not. In fact, if anything, I expect Apple to zig where we (Q Branch) have zagged, in some ways. (And if iOS 7’s reveal does make Vesper seem at least somewhat presciently designed, chalk it up simply to our being able to tell which way the design wind is blowing.)

The thing to focus on — now, during the anticipatory lull, and tomorrow, once we have the actual design before us — is not merely what it looks like. The quote I keep coming back to is this classic from Steve Jobs, 10 years ago: “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Whatever has changed in iOS 7 has changed for reasons other than fashion, or difference for the sake of difference.

The original iPhone was designed for a world where smartphones were horrid little button- and scroll-wheel-driven devices, and where proper humane computer interfaces were driven by mouse and trackpad cursors. The iPhone blended the two — the size and cellular networking of the smartphone, the humaneness of Mac-style UI design — and did so by introducing something new. The touchscreen.1

The design of the iPhone software was entirely informed by the fact that this was a new experience, it was nothing like using an existing smartphone, nor anything like using a Mac or Windows PC. It needed training wheels to get people up to speed. Thus, to name one small example, why iOS buttons have tended to look so very button-y. To inform the user, as clearly as possible, that this is a button that can be tapped.

Look around you. Any street corner. Any office. Any shopping mall. Any restaurant. You will see people tapping on touchscreens. We all get it now. iOS-style computing is no longer novel; it is now the standard interaction model for personal computing.

The primary problem Apple faced with the iPhone in 2007 was building familiarity with a new way of using computers. That problem has now been solved. It is time to solve new problems.

The training wheels can now come off. That’s what I think Apple’s going to do tomorrow.2 

  1. No, Apple did not invent the touchscreen. But the iPhone was first product to bring a touchscreen to the mass market. It was the first touchscreen device that mattered. ↩

  2. I’ve been thinking mostly about iOS 7. But a new version of OS X is due as well. Last year they showed 10.8 months in advance; this year, nothing. So I think big changes are coming to the Mac as well. But what? I have no idea. None.

    Exciting. ↩

Sunday, 9 June 2013

Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations 

The Guardian:

The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows.

Robots and Pencils 

My thanks to Robots and Pencils for sponsoring last week’s DF RSS feed. Robots and Pencils make iOS apps, including Spy vs. Spy and Primeval DFX (Hollywood style CGI dinosaurs, inserted into your own videos) last year.

Their company name reflects their philosophy, with programmers and designers working in tandem. If you’re looking for someone to build an app for you, get in touch with Robots and Pencils.

Mos Espa 

Duncan Davidson:

After spending two nights at an outpost near the Algerian border on our madcap trip across Tunisia, we paid a visit to one of the Star Wars sets that still stands out in the desert.

Google Executive Takes the Stand in Apple E-Book Price-Fixing Trial, Doesn’t Do So Well 

Greg Sandoval, reporting for The Verge:

Things went downhill from there. Under Snyder’s questioning, Turvey acknowledged that he couldn’t remember a single name of any of the publishing executives who had told him Apple was the reason the publishers were switching their business model. He conceded that the publisher’s move to the agency system was important to Google’s own fledgling book business, yet Turvey couldn’t remember any details about the conversations with publishers. By the end of the interview Turvey had gone from saying the publishers had told him directly, to saying they had merely told people on his team, to finally saying the publishers had “likely” told someone on his team.

It was a topsy Turvey moment for the increasingly unsure Google exec. For Snyder and Apple it was one of those rare times when a trial opponent is practically defenseless. Mercifully, Cote adjourned saying “Let’s allow Mr. Turvey to escape so he can enjoy his Thursday.”

Analyzing Yahoo’s PRISM Non-Denial 

Christopher Soghoian:

Below, I have carefully parsed Yahoo’s statement, line by line, in order to highlight the fact that Yahoo has not in fact denied receiving court orders under 50 USC 1881a (AKA FISA Section 702) for massive amounts of communications data.

Saturday, 8 June 2013

Google’s Chief Architect on PRISM 

Yonatan Zunger:

If it had, even if I couldn’t talk about it, in all likelihood I would no longer be working at Google: the fact that we do stand up for individual users’ privacy and protection, for their right to have a personal life which is not ever shared with other people without their consent, even when governments come knocking at our door with guns, is one of the two most important reasons that I am at this company: the other being a chance to build systems which fundamentally change and improve the lives of billions of people by turning the abstract power of computing into something which amplifies and expands their individual, mental life.

Strong statement. And here’s Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond:

We cannot say this more clearly — the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box. Nor have we received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media.

All the Mashed Potatoes

Thursday, 16 May 2013

Ian Betteridge spoofed my “Google Versus” piece from yesterday, using this oft-cited quote from Steve Jobs speaking at Macworld Expo back in 1997:

“We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose,” Jobs said. “We have to embrace the notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. If others are going to help us, that’s great. Because we need all the help we can get. […] The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over.”

Betteridge is off the mark on this one. That quote from Jobs was very specific. It came at a time when Apple was not making great products, and when Apple’s fans and perhaps even employees were locked into a mindset that the wrong platform — Windows — had won. That Windows’s almost unimaginable success, its spectacular rise to worldwide ubiquity, was an injustice — one that only Apple could right. He wasn’t claiming that for Apple to succeed no one had to lose, only Microsoft (and, really, Windows in particular — as opposed to then-future initiatives like MP3 players and mobile phones, where for Apple to succeed it certainly helped that Microsoft lost).

Note too that Jobs’s message was bitter medicine. He was surrendering a war that the audience wanted Apple to continue fighting. As Jason Breitkopf noted in a comment on Betteridge’s piece, Jobs was booed, resoundingly,1 by the Macworld audience several times during his announcement. Page’s message at I/O was greeted with applause. Page was telling the I/O audience what they wanted to hear, that Google is something other than a ruthless, greedy competitor.

I’m not arguing that Apple is not also a ruthless and greedy competitor. In fact, my piece yesterday had nothing to do with Apple — only Google. (I should have left Android and the iPhone out of it, as that was the only oblique reference to Apple.) The difference is that Apple hasn’t claimed otherwise. Again, Jobs wasn’t claiming in 1997 that no one had to lose for Apple to win. The drum I’m trying to bang here is not that Google is a greedy competitor, but rather that Google is a greedy competitor that presents itself as anything but — as a sort of peaceful, whimsical, happy-go-lucky techno-futurist corporate utopian — and that rather than see this pose as absurd, many people, Googlers and Google users alike, buy it.

All organizations have aspirations. You’re welcome to roll your eyes at Steve Jobs’s spiel about Apple existing at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, or this from Jony Ive:

“We are really pleased with our revenues but our goal isn’t to make money. It sounds a little flippant, but it’s the truth. Our goal and what makes us excited is to make great products. If we are successful people will like them and if we are operationally competent, we will make money,” he said.

Mere spin? Perhaps. But those statements from Jobs and Ive are not absurd. If they’re not the absolute truth, they’re at least truthy. Whereas Larry Page’s pablum regarding Google not being pitted against other companies is farcical. Tim O’Reilly had a good line about Microsoft a decade ago:

Microsoft gets a lot of heat for not leaving enough on the table for others. My mother, who’s English, and quite a character, once said of Bill Gates, “He sounds like someone who would come to your house for dinner and say, ‘Thank you. I think I’ll have all the mashed potatoes.’”

That’s Google today. What major tech giant has Google not pitted itself against? Whose mashed potatoes do they not seek to take? Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon — Google has made enemies of all of them. The difference between Google’s predatory rapaciousness today and Microsoft’s of yore is that Microsoft wore it on their sleeve, they owned it, celebrated it.

What rankles about Google is their hypocrisy. 

  1. Seriously, watch the video. E.g., around the 2:30 mark, when Jobs announces that Internet Explorer will be the new default browser for Mac OS. The audience is outraged. (And Jobs, clearly, was prepared for the reaction.) ↩

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