Linked List: June 27, 2013

Thursday, 27 June 2013

Armin Vit on Sterling Cooper and Partners’s New Logo ★

“The firm does not accept any tobacco-related work.”

Dave Hamilton on iOS 7’s Coalesced Updates ★

Dave Hamilton, writing for The Mac Observer:

“Alright, time for everyone to use the bathroom,” my father used to say on road trips. “But I don’t have to,” was the inevitable whine from (at least) one of us kids. Dad’s reply was always the same: “It wasn’t a question.”

My dad was focused on being as efficient as possible, of course. Instead of stopping for just one person to pee and then getting back on the road, it makes way more sense to have everyone pee at each stop. That at least prevents the inevitable inefficiency introduced ten minutes later when the next person feels nature urging them along.

The State of Google Reader Replacements ★

Josh Centers, writing for TidBITS:

The good news is that the developer community has come through, and there are now several compelling alternatives to Google Reader, though all are far from complete. And our previous favorite, Feedly, even has some new flair to share. I’ve sorted through the competition to find the best choices that work for multiple platforms, have third-party support, and, if possible, follow sustainable business models.

The most important thing, if you’re still using Google Reader, is to download your subscription list before Monday.

iOS 7 as Defense ★

Marco Arment:

The theme is clear: iOS 7’s UI requires some of Apple’s biggest strengths, and efforts to copy it will be hindered by some of Android’s biggest weaknesses.

iOS 7 is also going to be a problem for cross-platform frameworks. Fewer assumptions can be made about the UI widgets and behaviors common to all major platforms. And any UI targeting the least common denominator will now look even more cheap and dated on iOS 7, since the new standard on the OS is so far from the old one.

Similar line of thinking to Allen Pike’s piece yesterday.

Money Well Spent ★

Businessweek’s Peter Burrows writes a story that says Apple’s new TV commercial is a dud. His source: “Ace Metrix Inc., a consulting firm that analyzes the effectiveness of TV ads through surveys of at least 500 TV viewers”.

Take a guess who is one of Ace Metrix’s clients.

Compare the Front Pages of Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times ★

Remember a few weeks ago when The Chicago Sun-Times fired its entire photography staff and claimed they could replace them with reporters armed with iPhones? Here’s the result.

Calculator Construction Set ★

Whenever we tell people about DB5, someone always mentions this classic story from Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore site.

DB5 ★

When talking about the design and development of Vesper, we’ve mentioned that Brent Simmons built a custom system that allowed me and Dave Wiskus to tweak the design — colors, spacing, sizing, fonts, corner radiuses, etc. — by editing values in a simple plist file. A simple CSS-like system for iOS design.

The system’s name is DB5, and as of today, it’s open source. Here’s Brent’s announcement.