The Daring Fireball Linked List

Thursday, 20 Jun 2013

L.A. School District Awards Apple $30 Million Contract for iPads ★

Howard Blume and Teresa Watanabe, reporting for The Los Angeles Times:

A Microsoft representative urged the board to try more than one product and not to rely on one platform. Doing so could cut off the district from future price reductions and innovations, said Robyn Hines, senior director of state government affairs for Microsoft.

Read that again. A Microsoft representative urging people not to rely on one platform.

Times really have changed.

Wednesday, 19 Jun 2013

Remembering James Gandolfini and Tony Soprano ★

Alan Sepinwall:

And his work on the show made possible Vic Mackey, Al Swearengen, Walter White, Don Draper and every complicated, riveting anti-hero (or worse) who followed him. “The Sopranos” was an enormous hit, and told the business that the old rules need no longer apply.

WSJ: Microsoft Was Close to Acquiring Nokia’s Mobile Phone Business ★

Sharon Terlep, Dennis Berman, and Shira Ovide, reporting for the WSJ:

Microsoft Corp. was recently in advanced discussions with Nokia Corp. about a purchase of the Finnish company’s device business, according to people familiar with the matter, in a marriage that could have reshaped the mobile-phone industry.

The talks have faltered, they said. One person said talks took place as recently as this month but aren’t likely to be revived.

(More coverage from Techmeme.)

On Arguing ‘Wrongness’ Based on Intuition ★

R.E. Warner:

I do not mean to imply to that Neven Mrgan is either foolish or possessing of a little mind. This is not a straw man argument. I mean to say that it is foolish for a designer to rely on intuition to inform design because it yields repetition and blinds them from new opportunities. A small mind is a limited mind and using intuition as a guide will yield nothing new, only that which “feels right.” Or to put it another way, what “feels right” is what your mind is used to.

Gus Mueller on WWDC 2013 ★

Gus Mueller:

Apple is going to let OS X be itself, and let iOS do the same. Multiple times during the keynote we heard an exec say “ten years” — in reference to needing a new case design for the Mac Pro or in coming up with names for OS X. This is awesome news for Mac developers and what we’ve been wanting to hear for a long time now. Apple still cares about the Mac and you really felt like they meant it this year. From the session content to talking with employees about OS X issues to parity between new frameworks introduced on iOS and OS X- the Mac is still getting a lot of love down in Cupertino.

One of my key takeaways from last week is that it’s not just user interface design where Apple has increased collaboration under its post-Jobs/Forstall management structure, but they’ve increased engineering collaboration too. There was far less “iOS this”, “OS X that”, and much more “here’s how you do this on Apple platforms”.

Multiplane ★

Interesting iOS 7 association from Manton Reece.

HBO Go and WatchESPN Come to Apple TV ★

Apple:

Apple today announced that HBO GO and WatchESPN are now available directly on Apple TV joining the great lineup of programming offered to customers. iTunes users have downloaded more than one billion TV episodes and 380 million movies from iTunes to date, and they are purchasing over 800,000 TV episodes and over 350,000 movies per day.

Not bad for a hobby.

Detect a Tap on a Link in a UITextView ★

A small bit of code from Vesper. More open source coming soon.

Great Basin: The Stars and Their Courses ★

Field Notes:

The idea was fairly simple, though complex in the making: for those of us in big metropolitan, light-polluted areas like Chicago who can’t see the night sky very clearly, we wanted to travel to this beautiful, dark section of rural Nevada and then bring the stars back with us, capturing a full night sky to be played back, in real time.

4K resolution — twice that of most movie theaters.

I need a bigger display.

Tuesday, 18 Jun 2013

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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Jun 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.

Monday, 10 Jun 2013

City Notes: San Francisco ★: Perfect timing for WWDC.

Sunday, 9 Jun 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 Jun 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.

‘Don’t Believe His Lies’ ★

Lander Brandt, on making good use of Vesper. It’s the tag that sells it.