Linked List: August 5, 2016

Friday, 5 August 2016

My thanks to MacUpdate for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote their Summer Mac App Bundle. It includes brand new releases of Toast 15 Titanium, Folx 5 Pro, Myriad 4, and free upgrades for the soon-to-be-released WALTR 2 and Disk Drill Pro 3.

For visual artists, the bundle includes Corel Aftershot and Next Flipbook Maker. Nerdy utilities include iStat Menus and DaisyDisk. (Daisy Disk is my personal favorite for analyzing disk usage on the Mac. It’s a beautiful app.)

As always with MacUpdate’s bundles, it’s a great value. The retail value for all these apps is over $500 — with this bundle, you get them all for just $49.99. Act now: there are only four days left in the promotion.

Title Case vs. Sentence Case in UI Labeling ★

John Saito:

If you’re an Apple user, you’ll notice a lot of title case throughout their products. That’s because Apple’s design guidelines recommend title case for many UI elements, including alert titles, menu items, and buttons.

If you’re a Google user, you’ll see a lot more sentence case throughout their products. And that’s because Google’s design guidelines recommend sentence case for almost everything.

A subtle but telling difference between Apple and Google. Culturally, Apple is fussier; Google is more casual.

Hampton Creek Ran Undercover Project to Buy Up Its Own Vegan Mayo ★

Outstanding reporting by Olivia Zaleski for Bloomberg:

In late 2014, fledgling entrepreneur Josh Tetrick persuaded investors to plow $90 million into his vegan food startup Hampton Creek Inc. Tetrick had impressed leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms by getting his eggless Just Mayo product into Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, and other top U.S. supermarkets within about three years of starting his company.

What Tetrick and his team neglected to mention is that the startup undertook a large-scale operation to buy back its own mayo, which made the product appear more popular than it really was. At least eight months before the funding round closed, Hampton Creek executives quietly launched a campaign to purchase mass quantities of Just Mayo from stores, according to five former workers and more than 250 receipts, expense reports, cash advances and e-mails reviewed by Bloomberg. In addition to buying up hundreds of jars of the product across the U.S., contractors were told to call store managers pretending they were customers and ask about Just Mayo. Strong demand for a product typically prompts retailers to order more and stock it in additional stores.

That is fraud. (And it should have been unnecessary: Just Mayo apparently tastes great.)

Also, don’t miss the wonderful animated illustration by Steph Davidson accompanying the article.

Glenn Fleishman Examines What’s New in Apple’s Emoji ★

Emoji week continues on Daring Fireball. Glenn Fleishman, writing for Macworld:

As part of this update, Apple has also redrawn most faces and figures, among other changes. For the quasi-figurative smiley-style emoji, the changes are very slight. In most cases, you need to zoom way in to see them, although the subtle effects remain noticeable on a Retina or 4K display. Smileys now have a slightly different light source, with a more intense “hottest” point at the top, some lines are thinner, and the 3D effect is slightly more pronounced.

The way I’d describe it is that the old Pac-Man-style faces had an Aqua-like high-gloss texture. The new ones are no longer glossy.

Here’s my beef: Why isn’t Apple yet supporting the tumbler glass?

Top 10 Least-Loved Emoji ★

Jason Snell:

I love emoji. But some emojis are more equal than others. I’d wager that there are 100 really popular emojis, and maybe 300 moderately popular ones. Every now and then, while flipping through my iPad emoji keyboard, I would find a symbol that would make me do a double-take and ask myself, “Why is this an emoji?”

There are now around a thousand base emojis and tens of thousands of variations. One day, in a dark mood, I wondered: What are the least-loved emojis? I checked out the live stats on emojitracker.com and asked Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia for his site’s least-favorite emojis. The result is this list: The world’s least-loved emojis.

Speculating on Apple Watch 2 ★

Abdel Ibrahim:

By the time Apple unveils the Apple Watch 2, it will probably be nearly 24 months since the original made its debut. Think about that for a second. What can Apple do in 24 months when it controls the whole stack? Answer: A LOT.

Look past how an iPhone looks and think about what happens in 24 months. Virtually everything changes. RAM, processor, screen technology, cameras, sensors, even materials. Compare an iPhone 5s to an iPhone 6s and it’s a night and day difference in terms of performance and technology. This is the type of leap I’m expecting this fall with the Watch.

I don’t think the industrial design is going to change drastically, but I do think it will change. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Watch get a tad thinner. I also think Apple may do some interesting new finishes with the Sport model, which has clearly become the go-to Watch for most of us. Everything will be improved, I think, from the Taptic Engine to the display cover.

I get why there’s so much speculation about the new iPhones — it’s the most successful consumer product in the world. But I find it curious that there’s so little speculation about the second generation Apple Watch lineup. And no supply chain leaks either.

Joanna Stern and I talked about this at length on the latest episode of my podcast, and she predicts an increased focus on health and fitness features — if only because Apple has learned that those are a major reason people are buying Apple Watches today.