Linked List: October 17, 2011

Monday, 17 October 2011

A Duet With Siri 

“I’m OK if you’re OK.”

Siri and Trust 

Ed Wrenbeck, former lead developer of the Siri iPhone app (before it was purchased by Apple):

For Siri to be really effective, it has to learn a great deal about the user. If it knows where you work and where you live and what kind of places you like to go, it can really start to tailor itself as it becomes an expert on you. This requires a great deal of trust in the institution collecting this data. Siri didn’t have this, but Apple has earned a very high level of trust from its customers.

The Cycle Wherein Apple Creates a Product and People Copy It and Then ‘Improve’ Upon the Design and Then People Ask Apple to Do the Same ‘Improvements’ and Apple Doesn’t and Then People Get Mad at Apple and Apple Keeps Making More Money Than Everyone Else 

And the Headline of the Week award goes to Trevor Gilbert.

William Gibson on The Setup 

This man has his priorities in order:

Neither hardware nor software excite me very much, after whatever brief (and usually painful) novelty has worn off.

Good interface design is as transparent as possible, because I don’t want to have to think about it. I just want to write, or do whatever else I’m doing, and not have to think about whatever I’m doing it on.

Now It’s Just Getting Ridiculous 

Scroll down a bit on Samsung’s website for the Galaxy Player 50 and you’ll see this image, which shows a maps interface that’s just an ever-so-slightly-modified rip-off of the iPhone Maps app. Screenshot, for posterity.

(Via Jeremy Phillippe.)

Update: Looks like Samsung lifted the screenshot from this 2008 screenshot by Laura Scott, as seen in this post at BlogHer.

Update 2, one day later: Samsung took the page down.

A Video Shot on the iPhone 4S 

Not bad for a phone camera.

The Amazing Type-Writer 

My favorite new iPhone app in months. It’s a cross between a painstakingly skeuomorphic old-timey typewriter and an-Instagram-ish public gallery for sharing your output. Great fun with a price that blows the competition out of the water.

iPhone 4S First Weekend Sales Top Four Million 

Apple PR:

“iPhone 4S is off to a great start with more than four million sold in its first weekend—the most ever for a phone and more than double the iPhone 4 launch during its first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.

It just keeps growing.