Linked List: June 8, 2007

Friday, 8 June 2007

From the Archive: iLife ’06 From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal Interface ★

January 2006:

Brushed Metal: I’ll be honest with you. I’m counting on you, Safari.

Safari: It’s out of my hands. You’ve got to talk to my reps about this stuff.

Brushed Metal: I can count on you, right?

Safari: How did you get my address?

From the Archive: The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme ★

October 2005:

Brushed Metal: Who did they go with for iTunes? Not that Unified Title and Toolbar cocksucker…

Mike: No, they got someone new.

Brushed Metal: New?

BusinessWeek: 3 Million iPhones on June 29 ★

Peter Burrows in BusinessWeek:

In units built and shipped, the iPhone launch will dwarf anything Apple has attempted. It plans to have 3 million iPhones ready for sale on June 29, two sources say.

If true, maybe we won’t have to camp out overnight June 28. And — again, if true — maybe such are the advantages of pre-announcing six months in advance.

How to Hire the Best People You’ve Ever Worked With ★

Good hiring advice from Marc Andreessen:

Pick a topic you know intimately and ask the candidate increasingly esoteric questions until they don’t know the answer.

They’ll either say they don’t know, or they’ll try to bullshit you.

Guess what. If they bullshit you during the hiring process, they’ll bullshit you once they’re onboard.

(Via Kottke.)

Five Questions With Brent Simmons, Creator of NetNewsWire ★

Brent Simmons, in an interview with Scott McNulty for TUAW:

It goes against my best interest to say this, but I’ll say it anyway: unsubscribe! Not from the good feeds, but from the feeds that aren’t updating anymore or that you don’t really like that much.

I’m down to 87 feeds, myself. It’s the first time in more than five years that I’ve had less than 100 feeds. I’m trying to unsubscribe from one a day.

James Duncan Davidson: WWDC Tidbits ★

James Duncan Davidson:

But, having been part of big software projects in the past and having watched how Mac OS X APIs have been rolled out over the last 6 years, I think it’s safe to say that I’d just about pass out if an SDK is available on Monday. Instead of being gleeful, I’d actually be a bit wary. There’s just no way you put that much software together using a new user interface paradigm and finish an API that you’re willing to support.

Qualcomm Loses Patent Ruling, Many Phones Now Banned in U.S. ★

Yikes. Qualcomm lost a patent infringement ruling, and as a result, “tens of millions” of cell phones are now banned from being imported to the U.S. As Glenn Fleishman reports for TidBITS, Apple’s iPhone doesn’t use any chips from Qualcomm and thus isn’t affected.

Fake Steve: iSupply Gets It Wrong Again ★

Bingo.

Email Is Not a Platform for Design ★

Jeffrey Zeldman on HTML email:

“Designed” e-mail is just a slightly more polished version of those messages your uncle sends you. Your uncle thinks 18pt bright red Comic Sans looks great, so he sends e-mail messages formatted that way. You cluck your tongue, or sigh, or run de-formatting scripts on every message you receive from him. When your uncle is the “designer,” you “get” why styled mail sucks. It sucks just as much when you design it, even if it looks better than your uncle’s work in the two e-mail programs that support it correctly.

Couldn’t agree more.

C4[1] — Second Annual C4 Mac Developers Conference ★

A few spots are still open for Wolf Rentzsch’s C4[1] conference, in Chicago August 10-12. Last year’s was outstanding, and this year’s speaker lineup includes Cabel Sasser, Daniel “Red Sweater” Jalkut, Adam Engst, and the never-boring Wil Shipley.