Alan Kay is a bit of a legend at Apple. A computing pioneer, Alan Kay’s lab at Xerox PARC led Steve Jobs to commercialize the concept of a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, and Alan Kay’s philosophy that “people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware” is one of Apple’s core principles.
But Kay doesn’t think much of Apple these days, and in fact, seems to think the company has always been broken.
According to a new report at the Wall Street Journal, Apple’s new management team dynamic, which includes design maven Jonathan Ive at the helm of both the hardware and software teams behind iOS, is seeing a new era of collaboration. ONe source familiar with the matter went so far as to call the exchange of ideas between Ive and human interface lead Greg Christie, known for his bluntness, as “pleasant and cordial.”
Sounds like things are changing over there at Apple, which is a good thing for proponents of Ive’s preference for a less skeumorphic design ethos. Having Ive watching the software along with the hardware may bring a flatter, more modern look to iOS 7, sure to be coming soon.
During his tenure as CEO of Apple, John Sculley saw the company suffer through a serious lack of innovation that nearly sunk the company, before Jobs came back and rescued it.
In an interview earlier this month, Sculley said he thinks Apple is experiencing a “lull in innovation.” To clarify his stance, Sculley just gave another interview and said that even though Apple’s experiencing a lull, it’s not really its own fault.
Speaking with Huffington Post, the former Apple CEO had the following to say about Apple’s perceived innovation problem:
Whenever rumors about a new product from Apple begin to pop up, so do the concept drawings, 3D renders, and mockups. The latest rumored Apple device to get the mockup treatment has been the iWatch, Apple’s supposed foray into wearable computing.
Already, I’ve seen no less than half a dozen concepts illustrating what people think the iWatch might look like. Some play heavily off of the design of iOS, others take design influences from the iPhone and iPad, and others yet attempt to emulate the 6th generation iPod nano, the closest thing that Apple has made to a watch so far. While all of these designs take influence from what Apple has already created, none of them take into consideration the external influences that shape the way Apple designs their own products.
Included in Bloomberg’s big story this morning on Apple’s iWatch was a small paragraph that said Jony Ive and his team ordered a bunch of watches made by Nike in the mid-2000s.
Maybe Ive and his design team just liked the Nike watches, but according to Scott Wilson, who was Nike’s Creative Director at the time, Ive might have ordered the watches so his team could study them for inspiration on the iWatch.
Following Bloomberg’s report that the iWatch is a project Apple wants to deliver this year, the Verge has an interesting report saying that the iWatch project is being lead by Jony Ive himself, and that it will run a full version of iOS.
Bloomberg recently revealed that Apple has a team of 100 people working on its new iWatch, and according to its latest report, the Cupertino company is hoping to launch the device this year. The smart wristwatch, which could make calls, provide maps, and offer a pedometer, is expected to become more profitable than Apple’s much-anticipated television set.
For his girlfriend’s birthday, Alex and some of her friends all chipped in to get her a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
The finishing touch, though? The piece de resistance, as it were? A brilliant custom birthday card that apes the style of an official Apple product announcement.
That’s a hell of a gift, with a hell of a personal touch. Alex’s girlfriend better marry that guy.
Via: Reddit
With 60 episodes, over 1,000,000 downloads, and more appearances as an iTunes top tech podcast than we can count, we celebrate our first year anniversary on our newest episode of The CultCast! Join us as we remember our favorite episodes and guests, and tell the story of how CultCast almost never made it on the air.
But first, true to form, we discuss this week’s best Apple news and stories, including the new iOS features Sony is introducing into their just-announced Playstation 4; the honor Jony Ive just received that’s even better than a knighthood; and Woz says Apple is close to losing its cool—we disagree!
Get a fun weekly dose of all things Apple, subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Last Friday, the BBC published part of its interview with Jony Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, which was shown during a special episode of children’s television show Blue Peter on Saturday morning. The full interview has now been posted to YouTube, and it shows Ive talking about product naming techniques.
Tim Cook just had the best week ever, ya’ll! On our newest CultCast, we’ll tell you what President Obama did during the State of The Union address that had Mr. Cook blushin’ like a school girl.
Then, the iWatch rumors are back, but this time, they may have some credence. We’ll tell you what we know. Plus, Cult of Mac Editor-in-Chief Leander Kahney tells us about his new Jony Ive book and we answer your Facebook queries in an all-new CultCastQNA.
Eager to listen but not sure how? Easy! Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Show notes coming up next.
Jony Ive has received a whole host of awards for his design efforts at Apple, but as a life-long fan of children’s TV show Blue Peter, none of them may be as special as his latest from the BBC: a gold Blue Peter badge. Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design now joins a list of just 1,000 people awarded with a gold badge, which also includes David Beckham, JK Rowling, and the Queen.
Apple is on the hunt for two senior software engineers that will join its iLife development team to “re-imagine how user interfaces should be built and work.” Both positions, which were posted to the vacancies page of Apple’s website, are based at the company’s Cupertino headquarters, and indicate Apple is working to overhaul the iLife software suite, which consists of GarageBand, iMovie, and iPhoto.
Everybody wants to be Jony Ive’s friend, so he probably gets invited to a lot of the dinners where Silicon Valley’s elite just hangout, scarf down pizza, and get blitzed on wine. We rarely see pictures of such events, but last night a picture was posted of Sir Jony himself hanging out with 11 of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.
The dinner was hosted by Nirav Tolia – a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur – and featured the CEOs of Twitter, Yelp, Path, Dropbox, Yahoo, and other companies. What’d they do besides eat pizza? Did a wild night of karaoke follow over at Marrisa Mayer’s manor? Who knows? Who cares? But we’re glad Jony gets to hangout with people outside the mothership from time to time.
Here’s a list of everyone that was present at the dinner:
Over the last few years we’ve seen all manner of Apple and iPhone shaped deserts, but this one takes the cake (zing!). It’s the most detailed iPhone cake we’ve ever seen, and it probably owes a lot of its beauty to the magic of fondant. It’s a cake even Jony Ive would be proud of. And the Happy Birthday reminder on the screen adds a perfect flourish.
Source: Facebook
Thanks: Grahame
A lot of companies have tried to imitate Apple’s trackpads because they kind of just melt into the rest of computer. They’re one of the most underrated features of the MacBook, but it’s going to be harder for companies to completely ripoff the feature now that Apple has a patent on it.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The odds of Apple coming out with an iPhone with a 3D display is fairly negligible. Jony Ive’s not going to let it happen. But just because Cupertino doesn’t want to embrace 3D doesn’t mean you can’t watch 3D videos on your iPhone.
Thanks to a clever iPhone screen protector from Nanoveu, you can give your iPhone a 3D display for cheap. Plus, you don’t have to download any special apps or anything like that. Nanoveu’s lens will do all the work for you.
Would you pay $53 for these Apple logo speakers? They’re beautiful right? Granny apple green cut in the precise shape of a famous Cupertino computer company’s logo. They’re mighty, just like Apple’s old mouse, except they probably got bass for days too, and I need me some bass cause I’m bossy.
We’re not exactly sure where you can purchase these stunning speakers, but we want them. According to Reddit you can find them at retail locations in Europe, and a Google search led us to this Direct Promotions website that let’s you purchase them in bulk. If you find out where to get them please let me know. My Jony Ive shrine needs some sitar music flowing from these holy speakers.
from Vimeo.
So you wanna be the next Jony Ive and make beautiful and intuitive products that are just like Apple’s? Good for you. But figuring out how to replicate Apple’s design philosophies isn’t all that easy – look at RIM.
To help you out, Online MBA created this two minute video that boils down all of Jony and Steve’s design insights into five bite-sized nuggets. Maybe you won’t invent the next iPhone but if you follow their advice it should at least prevent you from becoming the next Scott Forstall.
Notification Center in iOS and OS X is great in concept but kind of crappy in practice. First off there’s the linen background that doesn’t really make sense when you’re pulling down a curtain for notifications in iOS. There’s also those tiny little X buttons that you have to tap twice to close notifications, and a couple other annoyances that fill up the Notification Center page.
Alex Saretzky decided that Notification Center needs to be spruced up by simply applying Apple UI concepts that have been used in other apps. His new concept for the Notification Center isn’t a complete revision, but more like fine tuning, and it’s something that Apple should implement with iOS 7.
So here it is: iTunes 11. A lot has changed, but not so much that you’ll feel lost. Here’s what we’ve found after our first poke around inside.
Right now, iOS’s notifications system is curiously bifurcated in design between the alert bubble system of iOS 4 and the banner notifications that appeared in iOS 5. A new concept floating around, though, has some great ideas on how these systems could be merged in iOS 7 by a new iOS UI design team lead by Jony Ive.
Happy Thanksgiving! This year to observe the holiday we asked each of our writers to tell us a bit about the things they are most thankful for in 2012: specifically, the Apple product, app, service, third-party accessory and person they most relied upon and were grateful for this year. All through the rest of the day, we’ll be posting these thanksgiving observances. Here’s Cult of Mac News Writer Alex Heath’s list of the things he’s most thankful for this year. You can find the rest of our Thanksgiving Smorgasbord entries here.
With the absence of Steve Jobs looming in the background, Tim Cook and his team faced a mountain of questions as they marched into 2012. Who would be the visionary now? Would the iPhone continue to be successful? What’s going to happen to the Mac now that the iPad has become a beast of its own?
The most important question Apple faced going into 2012 was whether they could maintain their supremacy. With competitors closing the gap, Apple doesn’t have Steve Jobs’s vision, charisma, or negotiating prowess anymore, and 2012 has been the year to prove that Apple can endure. The challenges and adversaries Apple is facing in 2012 has made this single year the most important one ever for Apple, and yet they’ve been able to come through in the clutch and blow us away with an army of incredible products and strategic moves.
Along with this week’s surprising news that Scott Forstall is leaving Apple, Tim Cook also announced that Bob Mansfield is planning to stay with Apple for two more years. Just last June, Mansfield had decided that he was going to retire, but now he’s quickly decided he’s not ready to leave just yet, and will stay on to run a new Technologies unit.
Why the sudden change of heart? According to a new report, Mansfield and Scott Forstall haven’t gotten along too well, and when news surfaced that Forstall was on the way out, Mansfield decided Apple would be a lovely place to work at again.