iTunes 10: worst Apple icon since iTunes 1 through 9?

Just downloaded the Antetype private beta. Looks like the ultimate prototyping tool.

With Beirut saying he’s not a creative and this guy saying he doesn’t sketch, I’m starting to feel less freakish. http://bit.ly/bOGQ6n

Steve Jobs talking about branding in 1997 and wearing shorts: http://zee.me/blog/steve-jobs-on-branding-video/

Why is the menu for changing the z-index of objects still called Arrange in every application known to man? Shouldn’t it be called Stack?

If this guy can get a job at Apple, then I guess I can too http://bit.ly/a32sWs

New Vimeo Universal Player works like a freakin’ charm.

Net neutrality advocates shocked to discover Google is a business. Story at 11.

Hey, let’s check out what the buzz over Windows 7 is about http://twitpic.com/2d8706

Goodbye, Google Wave. We hardly used ye.

RIM is officially the most annoying tech company. Congrats. HP, hit the showers. Microsoft, you’re not even trying anymore.

The original iPad http://www.flickr.com/photos/splorp/sets/72157623287193080/with/4305595025/

Curse my awesome tricked-out Mac Pro making me not need to upgrade for another ten to twenty years!!!

The mystery of phony “Free Public Wi-Fi” revealed http://www.wlanbook.com/free-public-wifi-ssid/

Apple’s antenna testing lab: early look at Portal 2? http://apple.com/antenna/testing-lab.html

A whole site dedicated to Apple anecdotes. Bliss. http://www.folklore.org/index.py

Here is what I saw when I visited Adobe’s education store today.

I see that little play icon whenever I encounter Flash content on the web, because I use a Flash blocker. I click the icon if I want to load the SWF. Usually I see these play icons scattered around sites, where they replace ads and home page slideshows. But here, all I see is the Flash load icon. That’s because Adobe’s online store is entirely Flash. So they must be doing some kind of immersive 3D shopping experience right? Something that web standards just can’t handle? Wrong.

That’s right, Adobe’s online store is a completely standard, HTML-friendly design, rendered inexplicably entirely in Flash. Note the “component” scroll bars replacing native scroll bars. As an added bonus, my scroll wheel doesn’t work here. Adobe seems to think that if it can make something in Flash, then it must. We’ve also seen them replacing perfectly fine native UI widgets in their software with ugly and buggy Flash-based widgets. Adobe’s obsession with Flash is a little disturbing, especially given that it’s not even a homegrown Adobe technology. I can only assume these dictates are coming from high up, in some sort of perverted dog food mantra. Except inappropriately using Flash isn’t eating one’s own dog food. It’s making users eat dog shit.

Vimeo HTML5 embed: http://www.stacyconaway.com/blog/2010/04/vimeo-html5-embed/

Is it sacrilege to say that Jony Ive isn’t a particularly interesting interview?

For the love of Mike, why are the Dock preferences still in the Apple menu?

Cross-browser kerning-pairs & ligatures at http://www.aestheticallyloyal.com/public/optimize-legibility/

Remember when HP sold iPods? Strange times.

I can’t tell which classic paperback book covers are real and which are fake anymore.

Examples of Token Ring Networks

I just Delicious’d someone’s Delicious page. Hmm…

This baby taught me all I know! http://carminegallo.com/stevejobsbook/

iPad Classic: http://hirac.info/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/03_home.jpg

And isn’t two gigabytes?

So how long till Adobe notices Lightroom has a curious lack of Flex widgets and non-standard scrolling behaviors?

I don’t know what this is but I like it.

Once iPad comes out with the Retina display, print will be officially dead.

No, I did not. http://twitpic.com/1uuraa

This is what happens when you leave an iPad in the car. http://yfrog.com/izytmmj

If only Adobe spent as much time designing its software as it did on its web site and packaging.

The world’s greatest thing is this.

Jobs made a HyperCard reference at D8. I feel all tingly.

Adobe’s new digital publishing tools are a joke http://tinyurl.com/264l3kw

One of the greatest advances in interaction I’ve seen in recent years is what I call ‘natural language annotation.’ Increasingly in web sites and software, information is conveyed with sentences written with unambiguous clarity. This is in contrast to using tables and checkboxes and forcing the user to divine what is happening or what will happen when using an interactive application. Witness this screen shot from the Mac application SuperDuper.

SuperDuper tells you exactly what is going to happen in human language. This is extremely important for an application that erases one’s hard drives. It takes a lot of the fear out of such an operation. Natural language annotation can also be helpful when dealing with cold, hard, unfriendly data. Here is a screenshot from the top of Vimeo’s My Statistics page.

A lot is made of data visualization these days, but friendly sentences like this allow you to take in a lot of information without the need to interpret a diagram or read a table. Language is largely universal, and it usually means the same thing every time, so there’s no need to familiarize yourself with a new vocabulary as is necessary in data viz. Vimeo and SuperDuper come from humanistic backgrounds, serving creative types and Mac users respectively, so their use of natural language annotation is appropriate. In contrast, witness the statistics page from Youtube, which Google owns, where engineering is king.

See what I mean?

The phrase “this operation cannot be undone” should be stricken from future software development. Everything should be undoable at all times

The Photoshop CS5 MiniBridge is quite possibly the worst piece of interface design I’ve seen in a well-funded commercial software product.

The world needs a .wtf file extension.

Oh look. A new Google product and/or service. Swell.

Going to try to use Pixelmator for a while instead of Photoshop.

Idea for Photoshop CS6: Text-aware horizontal flip.

The first ever Daring Fireball post: http://bit.ly/bakDgb
Priorities certainly have shifted in the past eight years.

I can’t wait for blending modes in CSS4.

I’m doing my mockups in markup.

Unexplored aspect of the App Store model: the end of software piracy.

Create a new file in the Finder http://www.macworld.com/article/151236/2010/05/createnewfileservice.html?lsrc=rss_main

If anything’s going to supersede still photography, it’s this kind of thing.

RT @teehanlax: Video stabilization in post is usually crap. This 3D system has it nailed. http://is.gd/c7UAM Just wish you could buy it.

InDesign CS5 has sublayers. Adobe, I take back every mean thing I ever said about you. http://twitpic.com/1na6df

Always good to hear from Tog http://www.asktog.com/columns/082iPad&Mac.html

Good to see even the pros get caught up on Firefox’s border:none rule. http://twitpic.com/1n79wk

I have made two significant technology acquisitions this year. I received a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and I purchased an Apple iPad this past April. I had not planned on getting a Wii, believing myself to be “done” with console games. I saw no reason to buy another console when computer games offered greater and more control options and superior graphics. Of course, being a lifelong Nintendo fan, having owned most of their consoles, including the freaking Virtual Boy, this decision to give up consoles did trouble me a bit. Nintendo makes games that are better than anyone else’s and they have a feel and craft that is uniquely Nintendo. And while I can always play the latest Xbox gunfest on Windows 7, Nintendo doesn’t work that way. Nintendo makes games for Nintendo consoles and no one else To play a Nintendo game you have to buy a Nintendo console. So I was a little relieved when I received the Wii rather unexpectedly for Christmas. I’d be joining Mario, Link, and Samus on their new adventures after all.

Getting the Wii rekindled my interest in and appreciation for what Nintendo is and does as a company. They have long been market leaders, and yet are relentlessly innovative. They essentially birthed console gaming as we know it today with the Famicom/NES. They introduced shoulder buttons and 3D with the SNES. Analog control and rumble came with the N64. These innovations were not mere gimmicks. Sony and Sega introduced their 32-bit 3D consoles using the same digital pad as the 16-bit 2D consoles. They were simply shipping products that used faster processors and more RAM. Nintendo looked at what 3D gaming meant, and developed a control scheme that would make sense in a 3D environment. The Gamecube’s innovations were not as spectacular as previous consoles, bringing only the ill-fated (but appreciated by me) analog shoulder buttons.

The GCN’s lesser achievements I believe were a wakeup call to Nintendo. They saw that they (and their competitors) had essentially done what could be done with the console template that Nintendo had created. They also found themselves losing the sales war to Sony and Microsoft. So they did what they always do. They innovated. They came up with a new control scheme radically different than the gamepads everyone had accepted as scripture. They saw that this control scheme had the power to demystify and broaden the audience for video games. And they’ve reaped the rewards. And has been the case with all their previous innovations, Nintendo’s competitors are now rolling out their own takes on motion control.

I have also been a lifelong Apple fan, and I don’t think that this is mere happenstance. Apple invented modern personal computers with the Macintosh, and has been relentlessly innovative since. Apple is a leader, like Nintendo, that its competitors follow. Apple makes its own software for its own hardware, like Nintendo. Apple drags its industry forward whether it wants to go or not. Apple makes a GUI standard on its computers. A GUI becomes the standard for everybody. Apple makes a mouse standard, the mouse becomes standard. Apple gets rid of floppies, so does everyone else. Apple makes a usable phone, and the phone industry scrambles to deliver an experience half as good as Apple’s.

Now with the iPad, Apple is reinventing computing yet again. This reinvention bears a striking resemblance, not surprisingly, to the Wii’s revolution. The desktop metaphor of Mac/Windows works OK. Most people can get by on it. But it still largely mystifies and often terrifies most users. Apple sees the limitations. It knows that the “windows” mine has been tapped out, just as Nintendo saw that the gamepad was treading water. So Apple, like Nintendo, is doing something about it. And, just like before, everyone is scrambling to catch up. And by the time they do, these unique companies will be on to something else.

I am not surprised at all to see Nintendo and Apple now being pitched as competitors. The Wii is a game console that can browse the web. The iPad is an app console that can play games. With Satoru Iwata saying Apple is now the enemy, and Matt Cassamassina leaving IGN to work for Apple, the fates of my two favorite companies are now entwined. This is extremely appropriate. It will be exciting to see two companies with a culture of innovation competing simultaneously in the same industries. How often does that happen?

Most entities known by their initials have disowned those initials (AT&T, AIGA) or those initials have become anachronistic (UPS, NAACP).

VirtualBox now virtualizes Snow Leopard client http://bit.ly/9BNzMI

The default font in InDesign CS5 is Minion Pro instead of Times New Roman. Progress!

Stock symbols do not need to exist anymore. Let’s abolish them immediately (IMDTLY).

http://bit.ly/corxvb

If you are concerned about Facebook’s privacy policies, I have a great solution for you: STOP PUTTING PRIVATE STUFF ON THE INTERNET.

Safari interface built in HTML and CSS3 without images: http://xrl.us/bhkgng (via @ebukva)

Prototype Apple TV predecessor from 1995 sells for $46 on eBay http://tinyurl.com/3798tbd

WolframAlpha sucks.

Play Super Mario Bros. as Link, Samus, and others. This is why we love the internet. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/534416

Just tried Content Aware Fill (for an actual job!). I’m tearing up, it’s so beautiful.

Urrgh, hate Adobe…yet. can’t. resist. CS5. trials!!!

GoDaddy.com is disturbingly trashy. Domain registration for middle America.

Someone from the Panic/MacRabbit/Rogue Amoeba school of beautiful Cocoa apps needs to create an HTML5 IDE. Adobe won’t know what hit them.

Regardless of what you think about Flash, us Mac users owe it a debt of gratitude for killing Windows Media.

Twitteriffic should get their money back for this view http://tweetphoto.com/19906244

The Internet Archive really needs to commission me to redesign archive.org

Google is apparently using some extremely subtle tricks to get people to switch to Chrome. The Google home page is almost imperceptibly more attractive in their own browser than it is in competitors’. Observe the home page an uncouth plebeian would see on Firefox or Safari.

Now train your eyes on the Chrome version.

It’s like one of those “spot the differences” games. The crude Photoshop bevel of the original becomes a smooth matte finish. The awkward shadow of the non-Chrome version is noticeably more tasteful and scaled back in Chrome. The search buttons get a nice soft gradient. The advanced search and language tools links take on a pastel blue and lose their underlines.

What’s Google’s game here?

Embracing the digital book — Craig Mod http://bit.ly/dyE8XL

The last decade has seen a vast increase in the prevalence of Jobs.

Android on the iPhone http://bit.ly/cle06F

CMYK monitors! Who said print is dead (me)? http://arst.ch/j08

But only in Chrome. Other browsers display the cheesy old logo. To what end, Google?! To what end?!

Hey, Google updated their logo. When did that happen?

RT @teehanlax: Most annoying part of the iPad… the continual interruptions of people wanting to play with it

RT @espiekermann: A complete Google Earth alphabet by @thomasdebruin: http://bit.ly/dzf9Kj

RT @golan: If you have enough sub-bass, nobody complains about formalism. Active bowel manipulation trumps “it’s just pretty colors”.

Why the 13″ MacBook Pro didn’t get a Core i5 upgrade http://tinyurl.com/y7aqzlc

Ladies and gentleman, the world’s smallest code snippet box. http://twitpic.com/1gb5we

RT @espiekermann: Ralf Herrmann on why SVG, Mobile Safari’s only format for #webfonts is not really a webfont format: http://font.me/cZqXmU

Interesting that people will deride the lack of Flash support in iPhone OS in the same breath that they chastise Apple’s closed platform.

For some reason, I am sixth on the Google results for “resume bfa in visual communications”

This is officially the most horrifying article ever. http://tinyurl.com/yyb6czu

RT @iA: How to print from an iPad: http://bit.ly/b3sxVB /via @espiekermann

CS5: An evolution of the designer’s toolbox http://tinyurl.com/y63mmeb

In a week it’s completely transformed my computing habits. Content consumption now occurs almost entirely on the iPad. Reading my RSS feeds, watching videos, and viewing photo streams are all as natural as picking up a book and lounging on the couch. Content creation still occurs on my workstation, which is rather liberating, because it means work and play are now distinctly different activities. That said, the one-app-at-time model of the iPad is great for staying focused on the item at hand, and makes me think a few generations down the road once the platform has matured that it might make me more productive at work as well.

Flash CS5 exports animations to Canvas. This is a step in the right direction. Divorce Flash from .swf and make it about dynamic content.

AND MAKE THE IDE NOT SUCK FOR GODS’ SAKE.

Catman http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/cd37a198ecf0140975e30fa8ec0666d141098c6c_m.jpg

Haters listen up: typing on the iPad is off the ringer ya heard?

Oh, the humanity! University mandates Century Gothic http://tinyurl.com/y4243w9

There’s been much hand-wringing and soul-searching over Apple’s continued refusal to allow deployment of Flash on its iPhone OS. While defenders of Apple’s position cite Flash’s security problems, bugginess, and performance issues, these arguments feel more like excuses. Apple approves plenty of crappy apps for download in the App Store. More compelling arguments can be found in the drive to a web built primarily around standards, and not proprietary technologies with nonexistent accessibility. Indeed, with the release of the iPad, we saw an enormous movement towards standards-based alternatives to Flash in a number of major web sites. Just as it did with USB on the iMac, Apple is dragging the lazy tech industry into the future whether it wants to or not.

All that is great, but doesn’t really get to why I want Flash to die as quickly as possible, and why I get a little anxious when an industry giant like Google announces it plans to bake in Flash support in future versions of its browser. I want Flash to die because the application one uses to make Flash content is atrociously bad. Flash came from Macromedia, and Macromedia couldn’t make a UI to save its life. Adobe acquired Macromedia when it decided it was tired of all this “competition” and just wanted to make money forever without doing anything. So we have a poor program getting acquired by a company with no competition. The results have been, as you might imagine, not good. Flash CS3 was the nadir. This piece of shit was barely usable, so primitive was its UI and so inconsistent were its behaviors. CS4 improved things a little, but really only showed how far they had to go to make it approach being decent. I don’t hold out much hope for CS5, as Adobe has clearly shown it is more interested in marketing gimmicky new features like iPhone app compilation than genuine progressive improvements.

As a once and future instructor, I know that I will be asked to teach a course in Flash some day. The thought of this makes my mouth get dry and my stomach tighten. If Flash content was pleasant to develop, I wouldn’t care how many security holes it had. It would still be a great tool for dynamic web content creation. But as it is now, I have two options: lie through my teeth about Flash to my students, or ask them to join me on a journey of pain.

A terrifying vision of our pixellated future.

I just registered as an Apple Developer and am downloading the iPad simulator. I’m this close to making millions off my whoopie cushion app.

http://twitpic.com/1dpvho – Drawn by @JasonBacher on my iPad

Can people stop insisting that Microsoft invented the tablet computer a decade ago? First off, who cares? Why does that matter? Second, making something that sucks first is nothing to get excited about. Third, none of my previous two points matter, because Apple predated Microsoft’s efforts by a decade with the Newton. The iPad is really Newton rev. 2: an attempt to create a new computing paradigm distinct from the desktop/windows/hierarchical file structure metaphor. Where the Newton was ahead of its time and the Tablet PC sucked, the iPad looks primed to deliver that new paradigm.