April 2012
24 posts
1 tag
Texting Isn't Writing; It's Speech
John McWhorter, from the Draft article series on nyt.com:
Yet the brevity, improvisation and in-the-moment quality of e-mails and texts are those grand old defining qualities of spoken language. Keyboard technology, allowing us to produce and receive written communication with unprecedented speed, allows something hitherto unknown to humanity: written conversation. In this sense, they are not...
3 tags
Games and that Other Apple Platform
Rob Fahey for GamesIndustry.biz:
Dismissing some of the world’s most popular personal computers - whose popularity has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years - as “not gaming machines” misses the whole advantage of PC gaming, to my mind. Build games for the systems that people actually have, not the systems you’d like them to have.
Technical hurdles aside—and these are nontrivial, mind...
3 tags
Do Better Microsoft!
Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times on the places where Microsoft could let down the very people who are still rooting for the company:
So please, please, I’m begging you: Don’t screw this up.
I couldn’t agree more. When I first saw Window Phone 7 in use, I thought, “Oh, Apple. You’d better watch your back.” Then came Windows 8, which I’m currently running on...
1 tag
20 Years of Epic Games
Over at The Verge, Polygon’s Chris Plante has a 20 year retrospective on Epic Games that sheds some light on the company’s development over the years. Promising words from Cliff Bleszinski on his newest game design theory:
My favorite games lately are the ones when you come into a hallway and you are like, ‘Oh, how did that dungeon instance turn out for you?’ ‘Oh, well I went in as...
24 Years
Tim Cook on this quarter’s 11.9 million iPad sales:
Just two years after we shipped the initial iPad, we’ve sold 67 million. To put that in some context, it took us 24 years to sell that many Macs, and five years for that many iPods, and over three years for that many iPhones, and we were extremely happy with the trajectory on all of those products.
Whoa. The Mac number is staggering.
3 tags
WWDC 2012 Sold Out (Despite Horrible Logo) →
Last year it took twelve hours; this year, two.
Clicky Keyboards? How 'bout Ugly Keyboards?
Ben Brooks on what he aptly calls the “ugly keyboards”:
Where is the Kickstarter project for a sexy looking, bluetooth, mechanical keyboard?
Now we’re talking.
bagels & other circular themes: Clickety-Clack:... →
maxmellman:
Since I was typing on a silent machine with no movable parts, I became particularly aware of the sound of his keyboard. So aware, in fact, that it became unbearable, and I became completely unable to focus.
Via: The Loop
3 tags
Clicky Keyboard Resurgence
Shawn Blanc has a great review of three mechanical keyboards for people who enjoy the sound of clicking key switches. I don’t. Though many proponents of keyboards like the Das for Mac speak highly of the sound the key switches make, comparing them to the sound of productivity, I find that the more sound a keyboard generates, the less productive I feel and the more distracted.
However, this...
2 tags
Who is the Apple Store For?
So let’s say you’re an Apple fan. You’ve followed the company for years, watching keynote presentations the moment the link becomes available, obsessing over the most recent product rumors, even writing about the company on a regular basis. Now, let’s also say you find yourself with some extra time on your hands and one of the incredibly popular Apple Retail Stores nearby....
1 tag
The Words of a Madman
On Rock, Paper, Shotgun, John Walker examines the press response to Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Breivik’s testimony and his comments on Modern Warfare 2 and WoW.
Walker:
It’s pretty relevant to note much of what the killer said in his opening statements, in which he described secret societies, battles for purity, global conspiracy, and refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the...
3 tags
What the Game Makers Play →
Here’s another from Penny-Arcade; this one from the “Report” side of the site. Ben Kuchera with several interviews asking game designers which games they play. Interesting choices from almost all of the participants. But surprisingly (or perhaps not so), half of the respondents mention—with varying levels of trepidation—games that they’re playing on iOS devices.
Making the World
I’ve never felt the need to link to the main Penny-Arcade post, though I’ve read every one for years. This was too good to pass up.
Tycho:
Every creative act is open war against The Way It Is. What you are saying when you make something is that the universe is not sufficient, and what it really needs is more you. And it does, actually; it does. Go look outside. You can’t tell...
Beautiful Designs are not Neccessarily the Best...
Tobias Ahlin on Microsoft’s Metro design language for Windows 8:
What bugs me with the Metro approach, however, is very apparent here: it’s not about creating an app that is easy to use, it’s about creating an app that looks great.
And:
Make everything clean but hard to use. Be sure to hide all buttons and make nothing discoverable.
This is the same feeling that I have when...
6 tags
Time and Taste (from Marco Arment) →
marco:
All of the money, web traffic, and cheap cardboard boxes in the world can’t buy time or taste.
Too true. Money can only buy almost everything.
1 tag
Sentences and Forests and Trees
From Jhumpa Lahiri’s article, “My Life’s Sentences”, as part of the Draft series for nyt.com:
It is by fussing with sentences that a character becomes clear to me, that a plot unfolds. To work on them so compulsively, perhaps prematurely, is to see the trees before the forest. And yet I am incapable of conceiving the forest any other way.
Wow.
3 tags
The Sedimentary Layer
In an article for Fast Company, Brent Schlender looks back on several interviews from the period in which Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple, founding NeXT, and working with Pixar.
From Jobs himself:
The technology we’ve been laboring on over the past 20 years becomes part of the sedimentary layer…I don’t think anybody’s going to be beating on a Macintosh 60 years from now.
The...
5 tags
AAA Gaming on iOS
Mac OS X has never been a haven for people who enjoy video games. In years past, various Apple marketing campaigns have weakly touted some technology or other present in Mac OS X that gives it some gaming advantage. However, the serious gaming audience still seems to hold the opinion that Macs are not for games. Enter iOS.
From the beginning, even when no AppStore existed, iOS and the devices...
Welcome
Thanks for stopping in to listen, read, and discuss. Whether you’re here for Apple commentary, games, tech, or writing, please enjoy the show.
6 tags
Augmented Paper as Design Principle
Matt Gemmell on Augmented Paper interface design:
Design an experience. Make it as beautiful - and as emotionally resonant - as it can possibly be. Then adorn the core experience and content with only as much functionality as is absolutely necessary. Functionality - and software-based thinking in general - is like seasoning. A little is an enhancement; any more destroys the flavour, subsumes...
2 tags
Assassin's Creed: Revelations (or Loose Ends Tied)
Ezio Auditore Da Firenze, who knew that you would come to exemplify Assassin’s Creed more so than even the preeminently impressive Altair? I certainly didn’t when you sauntered onscreen with your Lothario swagger and too-familiar facial scar. You were a stand in, a poor man’s Altair. In fact, I can recall thinking that to even put you in the same class as the true star of...
3 tags
Drafts
Drafts is an interesting little iPhone app that might merit the attention of anyone who is trying to make iOS work for productivity. One thing that writers of all kinds, and people in general, need is a place to jot down ideas. Drafts is that place, or at least it intends to be. Quickly tap out that idea for a blog post you want to write, a lyric that just popped into your head, a great twist on a...
4 tags
Mac Malware
It finally happened. For years, I’ve trumpeted the relative security of Mac OS X. Never did I claim that the Mac couldn’t get viruses, rather that it didn’t. It’s clear that many web writers and PC enthusiasts believe that Mac users have always claimed invulnerability when what I always claimed was obscurity. Now, the Mac has what I would call its first legitimate security...
