Linked List: August 1, 2015

Saturday, 1 August 2015

Web Designer News: Curated Stories for Designers 

My thanks to Web Designer News for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. It’s a great news site, sourced by designers for designers. Topics include tools and apps, case studies, code demos, inspiration, videos, and more. Sign up for their newsletter for daily updates, or create an account and archive your favorite posts.

Web Designer News has a clean, simple design and great content. Perusing their home page today, I see a bunch of posts that are right down the alley for DF readers, like this piece from Brand New on the merged Kraft Heinz Company’s “fugly” new logo. Check it out.

Switching for Security 

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, who covers the security beat for Motherboard:

I’ve been antagonistic with Apple products ever since I was a teenager, when Apple used to try to shove its apps down my throat (cough iTunes cough) whenever I just wanted to watch a movie trailer on Quicktime. I never liked Apple’s walled garden and “we-control-everything” approach, and I particularly disliked Apple fanboys’ dumb “oh my god there’s a new iThing coming out” reverence and hysteria.

So when the original iPhone came out a few years ago, I swore in multiple heated discussions with friends and strangers that I’d never buy an iPhone. Since then, I’ve only owned Android phones. First a few HTC ones, now a Sony phone.

Well, I’m sick of it. And I’m ready to go to the dark side.

Reminds me of my old definition of “Apple fanboy”: “anyone who’s been an enthusiastic Apple user since before I switched”.

Reuters: ‘Apple, BMW in Courtship’ 

Edward Taylor and Julia Love, reporting for Reuters:

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook went to BMW’s headquarters last year and senior Apple executives toured the carmaker’s Leipzig factory to learn how it manufactures the i3 electric car, two sources familiar with the talks told Reuters.

The dialogue ended without conclusion because Apple appears to want to explore developing a passenger car on its own, one of the sources said. […]

During the visit, Apple executives asked BMW board members detailed questions about tooling and production and BMW executives signaled readiness to license parts, one of the sources said. News of the Leipzig visit first emerged in Germany’s Manager-Magazin last week.

“Apple executives were impressed with the fact that we abandoned traditional approaches to car making and started afresh. It chimed with the way they do things too,” a senior BMW source said.

I’ll bet Apple executives were not so impressed with BMW executives’ inability to keep their mouths shut.