Linked List: October 18, 2011

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

I wouldn’t call it a Helvetica rip-off (like Arial), but Android 4’s new system font Roboto is definitely a lot more Helvetica-esque than Droid Sans (the old Android font) was. I’d say it’s like a cross between Helvetica and DIN, but inherited more of Helvetica’s genes. Here’s a comparison I just whipped up between the two — each word set once in each font. (Helvetica on the top, Roboto on the bottom, in case you can’t tell the difference.) I doubt most people could tell them apart, and the uppercase R is almost shameless.

Definitely a better-looking typeface than Droid Sans, though, that’s for sure.

Joshua Topolsky Interviews Matias Duarte on the Design of Android 4.0 ★

Josh Topolsky:

“Across the board Google and Android is taking design a lot more seriously,” Matias says, and points out that Roboto is used throughout the system. “There’s this thing that’s happening right now in user interface design that I find kind of shackling. The faux wood paneling trend, and the airport lavatory signage trend.” He laughs when he says this and pulls up a slide on his computer, a split screen of an Atari 2600 and… airport lavatory signage. It’s an obvious dig at both Apple and Microsoft.

“The biggest problem behind these trends is not anything about the aesthetic quality about them, but rather the framework that they impose on everything else,” he opines. “Right now if you look at all of these applications that are designed in this real-objecty, faux wood paneling, faux brushed metal, faux jelly button kind of thing… if you step back and you really look at them, they look kind of juvenile. They’re not photorealistic, they’re illustrations.”

After a weekend using the rich Corinthian leather of Find My Friends, I’m open to this line of thinking.

EFF Gets Privacy Answers From Amazon Regarding Silk ★

EFF:

We are generally satisfied with the privacy design of Silk, and happy that the end user has control over whether to use cloud acceleration.

Playboy’s Correspondence With Hunter S. Thompson ★

Date unknown:

P.S. — Inre: Qui’s request for “my hangover cure” — it’s 12 Amyl Nitrites (one box), in conjunction with as many beers as necessary.

(Via Metafilter.)

Apple’s Quarter in Charts ★

Nice overview from Dan Frommer.

Apple Predicts Record iPhone, iPad Sales and Hints at a $40 Billion Quarter ★

MG Siegler:

Apple is so confident that next quarter is going to be a blow-out quarter that twice on their earnings call today, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer went out of their way to predict that Apple would see record iPhone and iPad sales next quarter. That’s something Apple never does. Their guidance is always very general (and again, low) and they stick to talking about things at a high level. Not today. This is two Apple executives going out on a limb to predict records for their two key products next quarter.

Dan Lyons Interviews Woz ★

Woz:

So we made Breakout and it was a half-man-year job but we did it in four days and nights. It was a very clever design.

Instapaper 4.0 ★

Great update to a great app and service.

‘This Remarkably Sucky, Shoddy, Sloppy, Slapped Together Disaster of a Phone’ ★

That’s Louis Bedigian, writing for Forbes, describing the iPhone 4S.

‘Bigger Than the PC Market’ ★

From The Verge’s liveblog coverage of Apple’s quarterly analyst call:

Q: How big do you think the tablet market could be?

A: (Tim Cook) We thought from the beginning that it would be a huge market, and it’s even bigger than we thought. We think it’ll be even bigger than the PC market — that’s just what I think it can be. It’s a huge opportunity for Apple across time.

Think about that.

Dropbox Profile at Forbes ★

Victoria Barret at Forbes, on the inside story of Dropbox:

In December 2009 Jobs beckoned Houston (pronounced like the New York City street, not the Texas city) and his partner, Arash Ferdowsi, for a meeting at his Cupertino office. “I mean, Steve friggin’ Jobs,” remembers Houston, now 28. “How do you even prepare for that?” When Houston whipped out his laptop for a demo, Jobs, in his signature jeans and black turtleneck, coolly waved him away: “I know what you do.”

So for everyone who’s ever asked why Apple didn’t just buy Dropbox, the answer — according to the Dropbox founders at least — is that they tried.

Total Android 3 Tablets Sold to Date: 3.4 Million ★

That’s less than the number of iPhone 4S’s Apple sold last weekend.

Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results ★

Apple PR:

The Company sold 17.07 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 21 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.12 million iPads during the quarter, a 166 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 6.62 million iPods, a 27 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

Net profit is $6.62 billion, up from $4.31 billion a year ago.

Good numbers, but for once they fell short of analyst expectations. Note though, that Apple didn’t miss its own guidance — just the pulled-out-of-thin-air consensus guidance of Wall Street analysts.

Update: The stock price is down almost 7 percent in after-hours trading; probably a good time to buy.

‘Four Months With Android: Reflections, Grievances and Some Tenuous Metaphors Bundled Up Into a Weighty Tome’ ★

Ryan Heise, summarizing his four months using Android:

Another short winded point, as I’ve gone over this before. Android’s stock browser, Browser, is trash compared to Mobile Safari. It is slow (often to the point of being unusable), renders sites poorly all too often, and is generally a bad experience. And I’m letting the atrociousness of the Droid family of fonts slide.

He’s got a nice comparison video, illustrating his point. His whole write-up matches my own experience with the Nexus S, really.

Motorola Motoactv ★

I’m not sure if they’re ripping off Apple’s iPod Nano, or Samsung’s business model of ripping off Apple designs.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo at Web 2.0 ★

Amir Efrati, reporting for the WSJ from the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco:

Twitter is all about “simplicity in a world of complexity,” Costolo said. “Apple thinks about things the same way.”

This is true, I think. As is this, from later in the interview:

Google and Facebook “will be different from the experiences we want to offer to our users,” he said.

Sprint Ad on Back Cover of the New Issue of Rolling Stone ★

Perfect.

Dr. Drang on iMessage ★

Obviously, if you (or someone on your plan, like Dr. Drang’s daughter) send and receive many messages to non-iOS device users, then sure, obviously, you still need a big or unlimited SMS plan. But almost everyone I text to or from has an iPhone. I hardly need SMS any more. And this weekend in Canada at the Çingleton Symposium, none of us Americans in attendance needed to worry about international texting costs (at least while on Wi-Fi).

It’s at least as big a deal as BBM, right? And BBM is a big deal for RIM.

Mail Improvements in iOS 5 ★

Nice overview of what’s new in Mail in iOS 5 by Jeff Richardson.

Update: My pal Koz says Richardson missed the number-one new feature in Mail — the ability to turn off the unread message count icon badge. (Settings: Notifications: Mail: Badge App Icon.)