Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!
Now that iTunes is the world’s biggest record store, it’s probably important for Apple to spotlight worthy artists who don’t have a giant promotion engine behind them. Fortunately, the company recently launched the (iTunes link) Indie Spotlight channel to bring attention to relatively obscure bands.
On the other hand, they also recently created the (iTunes link) “Original Music From the Original Artists As Heard on (American) Idol” channel, so who knows?
To my eternal shame, my job requires that I use Windows at work. Lately, that’s been extremely interesting, because I just got a new machine at the office, and it’s spec’d similarly to my beloved 2.4 Ghz Unibody MacBook. That means that I actually get a pretty clear sense of the relative performance of Windows XP v. Mac OS X (what, you expected Vista). Honestly, for most tasks it’s a wash. I don’t do a lot of heavy graphics work on either platform, and web browsing is kind of web browsing. I typically use Chrome (fastest Windows browser) at work and Camino (fastest Mac browser at home).
Today was really interesting, however, because I tried out Safari 4 for Windows before I got to it for Mac. And I was extremely disappointed. It ran no faster than Chrome (maybe a bit slower), and it misrendered at least 50 percent of the sites that I visited — it couldn’t find thumbnail pictures, and it was flat-out ignoring CSS sheets on several sites. Within about an hour of starting use, I uninstalled it and moved back to Chrome. The beta is just about as beta as anything bearing the name I have ever seen. Running the Acid 3 test crashed the browser.
Installing Safari 4 to Mac, however, was as far removed from it as I can imagine. Animations were smooth out of the thumbnail Top Sites page. The browser aced the Acid 3 test on the first try — and each successive one. Twitter loaded like it was an app on my hard drive. A heavily Javascript driven message board I visit popped up faster than anything I’ve seen it since I was on text-based USENET in the mid-90s. It lived up to the hype, and it actually provided a worthy contender to Camino as the best browser on the platform (although I ain’t switching anytime soon; ).
I’m left at a bit of a loss from all of this. On the one hand, I’m delighted to have a blazing-fast new web browser for my Mac. On the other hand, I can’t believe Apple would ship such terrible software for Windows. How are you going to convert anyone when your product is inferior to the status quo?
In a not-terribly-surprising report, the Wall Street Journal notes that Mac sales were down 6 percent year-over-year in January, the first time that’s happened in three years.
This shouldn’t be terribly surprising — Apple only introduced the 17″ MacBook Pro in January, which is a niche product that is only now shipping. Beyond which, Apple makes expensive computers, and all computer-makers are seeing sales drop, including those who make the cheap-o ones.
From what I can tell, the only category enjoyed sales increases at the moment are Netbook makers. Maybe it is time Apple looked into that, eh?
Wow. I just… he’s majestic. In the words of Mr. Show, “He’s like a swan. Like a pregnant swan.”
I almost want to watch this. Almost.
Livejournal via The Daily What via Gizmodo
Jakob Nielsen is the one of the world’s leading Web usability experts. What that actually means is that people spend a lot of time criticizing him, as he spends a lot of time criticizing them. That’s especially true because his website, Useit.com, is stripped of flashiness to the point of looking a lot like a HyperCard slide deck circa 1992 — but without any visuals.
Nielsen has finally delivered a new verdict on the mobile web (it’s been about nine years), and, to the surprise of no one, he hates it. Regular phones are “horrible,” smart phones are “bad,” and the iPhone is “impoverished.” He also says some fairly common sense things that are none-the-less often ignored, like, design a website that fits the strengths of the device that will view it.
The only really interesting line comes near the end, when he makes reference to Silicon Valley legend Alan Kay’s proclamation that the Mac was “the first computer worth criticizing.”
“Similarly, the iPhone is the first mobile Internet device worth criticizing. It’s a starting point for mobile online-services access, not an endpoint.
Although devices will get better, the big advances must come from websites. Sites (including intranets) must develop specialized designs that optimize the mobile user experience. Today, few sites have mobile versions, and those that do are usually very poorly designed, without knowledge of the special guidelines for mobile usability.”
Well said. And absolutely true.
Via Cennydd
Apple made a huge detail about the non-removable battery it created for the 17″ Unibody MacBook Pro. By going with a sealed design, the company argued, it would be possible to make a much-higher capacity battery. Well, the guys over at iFixit have had their way with one of the new models, and it’s pretty clear the battery isn’t THAT hard to remove. It actually surprises me how much it looks like the interior of my existing MacBook, giant fans excepted.
Definitely check out the full slideshow — it’s good stuff. Anyone picked up a 17-incher yet? What do you think?Check out a couple more shots from iFixit’s meticulous disassembly operation after the jump.
Anyone who went to elementary school in the 1980s can tell you that the world’s best edutainment game of all time is Oregon Trail for Mac or Apple ][, which plotted the westward journey of pioneer families in search of Pacific prosperity and their inevitable deaths of dysentery in snake bite somewhere in Wyoming.
Thankfully, the chance to relive those days on the go will soon be available to iPhone and iPod touch users in the form of a beautiful remake of the original from Gameloft. No announcement of the release date, but IGN has some screenshots, and it’s clear that the new graphics are quite lovely. And who wouldn’t want to play a fair river-fording minigame? There’s a demo at Gameloft’s site, but it looks like the iPhone graphics will be even nicer. Seriously, if you haven’t picked up an iPhone yet, this alone is the reason to do it.
Via Offworld
Image courtesy Bearotic (probably NSFW)
In case you were wondering, Steve Wozniak (pictured is now confirmed to be a competitor on the next season of “Dancing with the Stars,” alongside Steve-O, Jewel, and many other formerly famous people. Because he couldn’t just start working for a new company, which was announced last week. He needed to make a series of embarrassing appearances on TV.
Edit: No offense intended in link; was more looking out for people on the internet who haven’t figured out what the suffix “rotic” means at this point. Have revised to reflect.
Via Zap2It
The Reuters news organization brings news of 9-year-old Lim Deng Wen of Singapore, quite possibly the world’s youngest iPhone developer. His signature program is Doodle Kids (app store link), a rather abstract drawing game that he developed for his little sisters. It’s been downloaded 4,000 times so far, and it’s free.
What the article fails to mention is that Lim’s programs were initially written for an Apple IIGS emulator before porting to iPhone, which might just be the most interesting transition between Apple platforms this millennium. Does anyone have an Apple /// program that runs on the AppleTV?
Via Digg
Image copyright Spacesick.
THE HORROR, etc.
Hat tip: Gruber.
When the technology historians look back on the development of the iPhone, they will surely remember this as a golden age. Not only have the last few months seen the arrival of dozens of flatulence generators and “flashlights,” but today, we have an application devoted solely to the exploits of MC Hammer.
Just in time. HammerTime, if you will. The new app (iTunes link) has lots of incredibly useful features, including streaming versions of Hammer music videos, his Twitter feed, upcoming events and his official blog. It’s like becoming best friends with Hammer — except he doesn’t put all his friends on the payroll anymore (bankruptcy will teach you some hard lessons). All that, and it was developed by the creators of iFart. Visionary.
When you look on its gorgeous UI and well-thought-out logo, can you possibly deny that this was the very reason the iPhone was created? Of course not. Welcome home, Hammer.
Via Gizmodo
Image: Wired.com
Our friend and colleague at Wired’s Gadget Lab, Brian Chen, has an interesting post up about the potential for the next iPhone to really make a credible challenge to the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. He cites a lot of potential factors, including that the iPhone already has 1,500 games, which is five times as many gaze as the DS, and more than double that of the PSP. All that, and it should have measurably better 3-D graphics once it implements hardware from newly acquired PA Semiconductor.
The post’s sources — and Apple — do not, however, address the elephant in the room with iPhone gaming: the controls just aren’t that good. For certain types of gameplay, such as those that don’t require pinpoint touch, or those that can work well with tilt to manage directionality, the iPhone is great. For anything that is best managed with directional controls, however, it’s kind of a disaster. The clearest example of this is the hugely disappointing Katamari for iPhone, which has dreadful tilt-based gameplay that just doesn’t work.
I’d love for iPhone to mature as a gaming platform — and today’s rumors of $20 premium games is actually a signal in the right direction — but some more basic things need to be fixed before we get too concerned about how sophisticated the texture capabilities of its graphics chips are. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be seeing people attempting to bolt a directional pad and action buttons onto existing iPhones.
Apple’s Next iPhone Will Rule at Gaming [Wired’s Gadget Lab]
Apple’s advertising for the iPhone is changing in interesting ways. When the product was brand new, all of the attention was on the interface, just introducing people to the idea of multitouch. Now, the focus has shifted to what you can do with an iPhone that you either can’t do or is too much harder to do on any other phone. The one above, “Fix,” is all about the little everyday problems the iPhone can solve, like finding a taxi, calculating your tip, or checking how level a shelf is. All of the featured applications (Rocket Taxi, Tipulator and Multilevel) are third-party, and each has a nice UI and a cool hook into signature iPhone 3G features, like GPS or the accelerometer.
Another new ad fits the same pattern, this one entitled “Read,” which goes into the many things you could read on the iPhone, including restaurant reviews (Yelp), an MRI (!) (OsiriX), or, well, a book (Classics). I’ve embedded it after the jump.
It’s a really smart way for Apple to make the App Store its own…killer app. How long until Apple makes the “Fart” commercial?
Via iPhone Savior
Very cool new iPhone app just out called Air Photo that allows printing directly from an iPhone to a printer connected to a computer. Basically, you download a Mac or Windows software program called Air Photo Server, then head to the iTunes store to pick up the Air Photo client, which is $2. Then you can just use WiFi to connect your computer and your iPhone, and away you can go.
For owners of HP InkJets, this technology already exists in a free app called HP iPrint Photo, but this is the chance for people with other kinds of printers to get in on the action. I think the scenario of use for this technology that I like best is treating the iPhone kind of like a Polaroid camera at a party. Walk around taking pictures, then have them start printing from across the room. Just get more of a keepsake feel to the whole process. More organic.
Lifehacker via Gizmodo
Over the last 25 years, Apple has put out legions of Macs. In honor of the anniversary of the world’s greatest computer, I’ve taken the liberty of classifying all of Apple’s industrial design into six eras, starting with putty, and continuing to the current black and aluminum hey-day. Click through and come take a trip with us back to 1984!
SOURCES
I have a confession to make: despite my worldly exterior, I am a gigantic comics geek. I have a pull list, I can name everyone who has ever been a member of the Justice League, and I had a letter published in Green Arrow #101.
At this point in my life, I finally have the budget to buy a decent number of comics, but this has actually made things much more complex. After all, now I don’t have time to memorize which new books I want to read. Unless a preview makes a real impression on me, I forget I ever wanted to read it.
Thankfully, as it does for most of life’s problems, the iPhone has an answer. It’s called Comixology, and it’s a beautiful thing. Basically an app version (and companion) of Comixology.com, the program allows you to view lists of all the comics being released in a given week, preview artwork and story pages for many of them, and then “pull” interesting books so your local retailer will have everything cool waiting for you the next time you stop by.
It can also bring in podcasts, news, columns, and reviews. It’s pretty much one-stop nerd shopping.
I haven’t had time to get this synced to my actual comics pull list yet, but I’m planning to soon (my local comics impresario is an adviser to the project), and it’s awesome just as a memory-enhancing tool in the first place.
Plus, it doesn’t make farting noises. That alone sets it apart from the App Store pack.
Having read a few of the tutorials on how to install the new Windows 7 beta on a Mac with Boot Camp, I decided to take the plunge myself today on my still sparkling-new unibody MacBook 2.4 Ghz. (This post is actually being written in Firefox on Windows 7 — eww)
And what I learned is that you had really better be prepared to spend several hours to get it working properly. The link I’ve provided above is pretty handy, but it has some tricks to it that will not be immediately apparent without some trial and error. Read on to make the essential tweaks to the tutorial needed to make it work on MacBooks, not just MacBook Pros, read on!
Metafilter user Mr. Zarquon has taken the hilarious Microsoft Research application Songsmith (previously profiled in this Cult post from Giles) and used it to transform the vocal tracks of David Lee Roth from Van Halen’s “Running With The Devil” into a song all its own.
This… this might be the future of music.
Microsoft often gets a hard time from true Mac people — usually with good reason. For decades, MS apps for the Mac have been less full-featured than their Windows equivalents, and it’s only been in the last eight years that the Mac Business Unit has had the support to even try to make a decent version of MS Office.
The Redmond juggernaut is now trying harder, and they’ve really been speeding up their efforts in the last month or so. First, Microsoft’s beta program Songsmith was promoted in an unintentionally hilarious ad running on a MacBook Pro running VIsta, then MS released its first iPhone app, Seadragon. And today, MS has released a second iPhone app, Tag, which uses the iPhone’s camera to read special barcodes in order to access exclusive content off of posters, magazine ads, and more.
All that, and the beta version of the Hail Mary of operating system known as Windows 7 has been successfully installed on a Mac using Boot Camp, a positive sign for dial-booting Mac users for years to come. Granted, that one is more about MS not explicitly making Windows incompatible with Apple’s Intel-based platforms, but it’s still mighty handy.
What do you think? Has Microsoft finally made peace with the fact that it can’t win over true Mac lovers and started, you know, realizing that they can still make software we might want to use? Or is it all a trap?
Image via TechFlash.
Tag via My iPhone Place
Windows 7 Dual Boot from Our Coffee Stops via Engadget.
My other blog has gone Apple this week as we close in on the launch of our book Wired to Care. I’ve just gone live on the Empath-o-Meter with a poll to rate how widespread empathy is at Apple. By empathy, I mean the ability of people inside the company to understand the needs of the folks out in the world that they’re trying to serve. As a Macophile, I obviously feel very well-served by Apple, but I have trouble knowing whether it’s because the folks inside the company really get where I’m coming from — or just that Steve Jobs has an amazing intuition for what’s going to connect with people like me.
Check it out — I’m anxious to see your votes and your comments!
I have a guilty secret to confess: I’ve been secretly hoping that one of the zillions of so-called “iPhone killers” might prove to be. After all, if the rest of the mobile industry continues to crank it crummy wannabes like the BlackBerry Storm or the Samsung Instinct, Apple will have far less incentive to actually take their own product to all-new heights of greatness. Apple makes awesome stuff, but they make even more awesome stuff when threatened.
And so it was that I was very heartened by the announcement of the Palm Pre at the Consumer Electronic Show. If you haven’t had a chance to read up on the phone, I highly recommend that you do. It’s small, relatively sleek, has a nice keyboard, and it’s got the best UI for a mobile phone that I’ve seen outside the iPhone. And for some tasks (app-switching, most notably), it’s already better.
Now, have no fear, I have absolutely no intention of buying a Pre. The music syncing looks suspect, there’s no video support of any kind for the version set to launch this year, and I don’t need a full keyboard to be happy. All that, and it’s going to be Sprint-exclusive, and I travel enough that a GSM phone is pretty much a necessity for me.
I am excited that the Pre is good enough to actually make Apple work hard, particularly on the software front. The Palm Web OS has a clear point of view, an attractive look, and some genuinely innovative features, such as the gesture bar and the very cool “wave” application launcher shown above. The Pre cribs a lot from the iPhone — not to mention OS X’s Expose feature — but it brings these ideas together in a way that even Apple hasn’t yet.
And the good news is that now Apple has a reason to go beyond the interface created for OS X iPhone 1.0. I wouldn’t be even slightly shocked if we see an Expose for iPhone update in firmware 3.0, or even before. And Apple needs to get more serious about rolling out the multitasking Push API it promised last July.
Kudos to Jon Rubinstein and Palm for pulling off a far better phone than I thought them capable of. It’s the first serious mobile platform that’s even coming close to besting the iPhone (sorry, Android), and it’s clearly going to have a life beyond its initial release. And hey — it’s got cut, copy, and paste!
Today’s was the first MacWorld keynote I’ve missed in three years, and I have to say, I really didn’t miss anything. But then again, it was quite clear Apple was making a half-hearted showing as it was, revealing none of the products people are most excited about <cough>Mac mini</cough> and announcing several products that are either predictable, uninspiring, or just plain obnoxious toward consumers. Is anyone excited about variable iTunes song pricing who doesn’t work for a record label? Anyone? Or how about the “Indiana Jones” effect for iMovie 09 so you can have a fake plane fly over a fake globe to represent travel? This was worth gathering the world’s technology media?
It’s probably for the best that Steve Jobs didn’t show.
But all of the above was apparent to anyone watching. What was left implicit, though it was communicated loud and clear, is the fact that Apple now has to put its money where its mouth is, having dismissed MacWorld’s trade show atmosphere, and put together some truly special product launch events very quickly. The biggest advantage to not making the first Tuesday of January the holy grail of Apple announcements is that Apple can announce products when they’re ready and as it suits them, instead of forcing stuff to be ready ahead of time for MacWorld (and to beat out the CES news cycle). In other words, Apple should let the rest of the month pass, and then make a major hardware introduction on every Tuesday in February, culminating in a press event on the last Tuesday of the month to unveil the much-anticipated new Mac mini (and with the 32-gig iPhone coming somewhere beforehand).
At the end of the day, Apple is probably logically right that MacWorld doesn’t make sense for them anymore. I think it’s ungrateful, given how much the enthusiast community saved Apple during the mid-’90s, but it probably is the right thing from a business standpoint. But it also feels like they deliberately left a lot out of today’s announcements, as if to emphasize their rejection of the trade show model. It just felt cheap, you know?
I still prefer the Mactini, myself. Although the next gen version without the screen sounds unbelievable.
Onion News Network: Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
Competition in the cell phone industry is legendarily cut-throat. The major carriers will do whatever they can to retain and induce people to sign long-term contracts ad buy new phones. This often includes ludicrous stunts and special offers that ultimately deliver little value.
That’s especially true with a wonderful little deal AT&T is offering right now with the purchase of an iPhone 3G. With your two-year contract and at-least-$200 investment, you’ll receive this handsome (?) car charger for Steve’s Amazing New Device worth almost $10!
Except you won’t. It’s only compatible with the original iPhone. (a Consumerist informant claims this is an inventory-clearing tactic) This is especially funny, because I can’t imagine someone deciding to take the iPhone plunge because of a crummy car adapter. The iPhone has broken most of the rules of the cell phone upgrade cycle, mainly by making OS upgrades and the addition of new applications a mandatory part of owning a cell phone.
What’s not a part of owning a phone anymore? Crappy plastic add-ons used as inducements to the purchase of an over-priced and under-delivering phone from Motorola.
Consumerist via Gizmodo
There’s really nothing like Christmas for a Mac cultist (except for Halloween, that is). This delectable Old School Mac is the awesome work from Flickr user MinorBug. Click through to see the full collection of pictures.
Via Engadget
