Linked List: July 22, 2014

Tuesday, 22 July 2014

Microsoft Misses on Earnings Due to Nokia 

I don’t think anyone should be surprised by this — if the Nokia acquisition is going to work out well, it’s going to take a while. Still looking like a very big “if”, though.

Mi Too 

Vlad Savov, The Verge:

Barra is only a year into his job as leader of Mi’s internationalization efforts, but he’s already “sick and tired” of hearing his company derided as an Apple copycat. He sees Mi as “an incredibly innovative company” that never stops trying to improve and refine its designs, and the allegations of it copying Apple are “sweeping sensationalist statements because they have nothing better to talk about.”

This was apparently said with a straight face by an executive from the company that put up this slide at the end of a product introduction event today.

Speaking of Beautiful Dented and Scratched Machines 

Everyone is calling this “the new X-Wing”, but I’m not sure the wings open into an X. Looks cool though, and it’s great to see them going back to practical special effects.

Update: It’s definitely an X-Wing. Here’s a tweet illustrating how the S-foils open. Even better, this new X-Wing hews closely to Ralph McQuarrie’s original design. Awesome.

Matthew Panzarino on the ‘Stickers’ Ad 

Matthew Panzarino:

Bangs and dents mean these things get used. It emphasizes the reliability of the MacBook Air by showing that some of them have scuffs and scrapes. It’s rare in that it shows Apple products in a non-retail-box condition. The only recent personalization example I can find is iPhones in cases, which are shown in its ‘Powerful’ ads — but those don’t show any actual ‘damage’. The way Apple products look after customization and ‘real world’ use isn’t often represented in Apple ads. As Jeff Carlson points out, these are likely someone’s real machines.

Scrollbar History 

Speaking of the old six-color Apple logo, some interesting UI design history from Jack Wellborn at Worms and Viruses:

While watching the video, I couldn’t help but notice two snippets at the 7:36 mark from 1982 about scroll bars. First, an Apple engineer shows how scrolling works in the Lisa, followed immediately by a similar demo from Xerox. This juxtaposition immediately struck me as interesting because Apple detractors are quick to reference Xerox Parc when dismissing the graphical interface innovations of the Lisa and Macintosh. While there is no denying Xerox’s influence, these two snippets perfectly illustrate massive amounts of design and refinement championed by Apple during that era. Read for yourself.

People who think UI design is easy might think the differences here are trivial; those who know that UI design is difficult know otherwise.

New MacBook Air Commercial: ‘Stickers’ 

Fun commercial, but the thing that really grabbed my attention is that this is the first time in recent memory — a decade? maybe longer? — that Apple has used their classic six-color logo, even if only briefly. Nice to see it.

People have been decorating their laptops with stickers and decals ever since they became consumer products. (You didn’t see many stickers on them when they cost $5,000.) And I don’t think we need to commission a demographic survey to state that younger people are more likely to do this than older people. It’s no coincidence this spot is debuting in back-to-school season.

In the old days Apple didn’t have to worry about conformance. Just owning a Mac made you stand out from the crowd. But what happens now, when everyone you know has a MacBook, and every MacBook looks the same? Something like this commercial is what happens. It’s all of a piece, along with Apple’s Beats acquisition and the market for iPhone cases: self-expression.