Federico Viticci on Vesper

An astute review of the app, and an interview with yours truly at the end:

Federico Viticci: In a talk you gave at Macworld in January 2009, you mentioned how you didn’t work well with other people in a team. Fast forward to 2013, you have teamed up with Brent and Dave for Vesper. What’s changed?

John Gruber: Great question. I’m not sure what my exact words were then, but the way I’d put it now is that I don’t work well with people I don’t like, or with people who don’t seem to get what I want. […] The three of us make a good team, that’s the difference. The big thing is that all three of us are willing to try anything, and to take however long it takes to get it right. Iterate, iterate, iterate; over, and over, and over. Dave designed certain elements of Vesper dozens of times. Brent implemented many of the features and animated transitions numerous times, just so we could try different designs and see what they really felt like each way. And not only did neither of them mind this, they loved it. Brent even devised a custom framework for the app to provide us with CSS-like tweaking for things like layout, color, and animation timings.

★ Friday, 7 June 2013