You Will Be Missed.

I lost a friend today.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Farewell. ★

Like Father, Like Son

Steve Jobs’ biological father wants to finally meet son →

This is an incredible story.

Details

Safari restores the buffered state of videos when you undo a closed tab →

Finer Things in Mac:

When you accidentally close a tab in Safari and then hit Command-Z to restore it, not only does it restore the browsing history of the tab but it also retains the buffered state of any videos you may have hit Play on before you closed the tab.

Could you imagine any other company doing this?

An Obligatory Farewell to Steven P. Jobs

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the word “auteur” is defined as “a filmmaker whose personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the author of the movie.” If you replace the word “filmmaker” with “CEO” and “movie” with “company”, you end up with a perfect description of the relationship between Steven P. Jobs and Apple Inc.

Apple’s products are his products, Apple’s philosophy is his philosophy, and Apple’s legacy is his legacy. When anyone who knows anything thinks of Apple, that train of thought always leads them to Steve. His name is synonymous with the company he built, the company he saved and the company he showered in success.

I still remember the time I first became infatuated with Apple. About seven years ago, when I was nine or ten, I was visiting my uncle in Syracuse. This uncle of mine happened to own the an iMac G4, also known as the “iLamp”. During the visit, he showed me and my family a few slideshows of travel photos he and his wife had taken. I remember how the music seemed to fit perfectly with the photos, without much input from him at all. I was young, I was amazed, and I wanted a Mac.

Since then, my interest in the company and its influence on me has only grown. But I speak about this not for the sake of nostalgia, but because a curious thing happened: gradually, I developed a kind of obsessive perfectionism akin to that of Steve Jobs, akin to the piece of Steve installed in every product Apple makes. This quality of Steve’s embodies itself in my taste and in the way I do things. This quality of Steve’s is one that I myself seem to have, and boy has it helped me in school.

An example of this quality at work would be the three reasons I don’t use Google Chrome. They are:

1. The font size Google uses in the address bar is too large. Lucida Grande shines when it’s small; compare it to the type in Safari’s address bar, and you’ll see what I mean.

2. In a popup window, the padding on the left and right sides of the address bar is too small.

3. The shade of blue used for the window chrome in Incognito Mode is ugly.

All three are design-related, and have no effect on the speed and usability of Google Chrome. Even though I love Chromes speed and tab management, the above three things prevent me from fully embracing the Google’s browser. Safari’s simplicity, its more native feel, and its attention to detail are enough to keep me happy.

Steve Jobs influences more than entire industries—he influences people. More specifically, people like me, and maybe you too. I thank him for it.

That influence carries on in other aspects of my life. When cutting a film project, I will never make an individual title card in the opening credits last less than 3.5 seconds—anything less fails to establish the tone I want. When reading my sister’s writing, I always cringe at the sight of her en-dashes, which she uses instead of em-dashes—something about the shorter length infuriates me. And save for a few necessary exceptions, the margins and padding in this blog’s CSS all have values that are multiples of 5px—values that aren’t divisible by 5 feel rough and unfinished to me.

I believe that this obsession with minute details developed as a direct result of using consumer electronics that convey a similar obsession, a similarly painstaking approach to design and function. Steve’s approach. ★

A Generation Of Idiots

We’ve won the war on boredom and that’s a bad, bad thing →

Dave Caolo:

Turn off, be quiet and think. It’s OK, I promise.

FaceDumb

“Why this is still a separate app really puzzles me” →

Paul Miller, in his review of OS X Lion for This is my next (I have no idea why they don’t capitalize their name properly), rants about FaceTime:

Why this is still a separate app really puzzles me. Not only does it duplicate iChat’s basic video chatting function, but it does it so terribly. It’s impossible to know if people from your contact list a.) Have FaceTime; b.) Are online; c.) Even want to be friends with you anymore. The whole vagueness of whether a call will go through on your iPhone or you iPad or your Mac has yet to be rectified, and it all ends up feeling more like some Kinect hacker project than Apple’s ploy to destroy the phone number and make video chat a natural part of phone calls.

What I really want is for iChat to add in the relevant parts of FaceTime (ability to call phones), chuck the rest, and integrate iMessage as well. That’s the future, so why isn’t it here now?

He hit the jackpot as far as I’m concerned. I’ve opened FaceTime twice; the first time was when I installed the beta, and the second time was to see if it had gotten any better after installing Lion.

The iTunes Identity Crisis

Last month, I upgraded to OS X Lion. A few days later, I received the receipt for my purchase via email. The sender’s name was “iTunes Store”.

So I found myself asking, “Why is the iTunes brand still applied to App Store purchases?” If you buy software for your Mac on the Mac App Store, you get emailed a receipt from the iTunes Store. If you buy software for your iOS device on the iOS App Store, you get emailed a receipt from the iTunes Store. Again, why? When a user buys software for their Mac or iOS device, the word “iTunes” should not be so closely associated with the transaction.

This is perhaps the most trivial issue in the world, but for a company that so ably maintains its branding and overall image, the situation with iTunes is an anomaly. Here’s a list of everything that iTunes is associated with:

• Music playback and organization
• Movie, TV show and personal video playback and organization
• Podcast playback and organization
• Audiobook playback and organization
• Music downloads through the iTunes Store
• Movie and TV show downloads through the iTunes Store
• Podcast downloads and subscriptions through the iTunes Store
• iOS app downloads through the iTunes Store
• Music purchase receipts
• Movie and TV show purchase receipts
• iOS app purchase receipts
• Mac app purchase receipts
• iOS app organization and update management
• Magazine subscriptions
• Internet Radio
• Genius
• Ping

This might explain why iTunes takes ages to open and feels like it weighs a hundred pounds. It’s a convoluted, confused entity, not only as an application but as a brand.

Apple, however, is not unaware of this. In iOS, there are separate apps for audio playback, video playback, the iTunes Store and the App Store. If OS X continues in its new direction of iOS-like functionality and design, this separation could make its way onto our desktops. The iTunes moniker should be associated with audiovisual material, and nothing else.

With the impending release of iOS 5 and iCloud, there is absolutely no need for iTunes on the desktop to associate with iOS applications in any way. The only reason anyone plugs an iOS device into their Mac should be to sync media faster than an internet connection would allow. I’d wager that only a small sliver of iOS users downloads iOS apps on PCs, and that a small sliver of those users employs the homescreen organization utility. If Apple takes these features away from Mac and PC users, features that most people use on their iOS devices (where they are in fact easier to use), both the iTunes desktop app and the iTunes identity would be significantly more focused.

In addition to a multitude of lightweight apps with specific functions, the idea of the “iTunes Account” should be phased out. An iTunes Account is the same thing as an Apple ID, but you’d be surprised how many people are confused by this. All Apple’s services—like iTunes downloads, App Store downloads, iCloud or iChat—should be united under the “Apple ID” or “Apple Account” moniker. Technically, they can already be united by one Apple ID; Apple just needs to make this clear to users by referring to the account in the same way across the board. In addition, email receipts should be broken up into separate purchase categories: music/movies/TV shows/podcasts/audiobooks, Mac Apps, iOS apps (including magazine subscription info) and iBookstore books. And the sender name could be something like “Recent purchases by [Apple ID]”.

Logically, the name “iTunes” would only apply to music, or “tunes”. Having it apply to all audio and video content is about as far as I can see the name being stretched. But Apple chooses to wrap the brand of iTunes around everything you see in the list above, and although it does no harm to the world, it’s mildly unsettling to the neat-freak in me. And with Apple being the company that it is, it should bother them too. ★

Making it Look Low-Quality Makes it Look Cool

Why we love Instagram, Hipstamatic, and the lo-fi photo trend →

Being phone-less and iOS-less, I’ve never used Instagram or Hipstamatic. But I’m fully aware of them, because every third Tweet is a link to one of the cool, grunged up photos they produce. Although I find this grade of photographic art appealing, I’ve never really understood why. What makes retro filters, torn edges and washed-out colors so interesting?

Macworld senior contributor Ben Long answers this question:

You can’t just point a camera at a scene and expect to get a good picture simply because you have an excellent lens and a sensor with tens of millions of pixels. Because you can’t perfectly capture reality, good photography is a process of representing your scene using your photographic vocabulary—light, shadow, form, color, line—and trusting that the viewer will interpret that scene the way you want. The viewer is your silent creative partner. When they look at your picture, they “finish” the scene inside their head. They take that abstract thing that is a photograph, and turn it in to a reality inside their mind.

And very often, the more abstract an image is, the more power it has for the viewer, because their visual sense must do more work to interpret it. And as the viewer interprets the image, they do so according to their own memories, experiences, and feelings. Therefore, if they have to do more interpretation, they very often come away with a stronger reaction to the image.

Now we know.

iTunes 11

iTunes 11 to Get Complete Facelift with iCloud Integration →

iDownloadBlog:

From what we’re hearing, the UI would be much more cleaner and “slick.” iCloud is also going to be more closely integrated with iTunes. Rather than the iTunes Store being essentially a web browser, the Store will actually be integrated into the entire app—much like Spotify is currently.

A rumor you just know has to be true. Why? Open iTunes.

(Via Mac Rumors)

Reeder for Mac: Ushering in a New Era in Mac Application Design

They say RSS is dead. Who, exactly, are “they”? Let me tell you: “they” are a bunch of overexcited bloggers eager to post severely sensationalist headlines in an effort to bring attention to themselves, as well as generate page views (à la Wired). Whether or not you still have a use for RSS depends entirely on you, and not the words of some pretentious writer at Mashable.

The truth is, RSS never died. It simply aged. With the explosion that was the original iPad, RSS found a new groove in apps like Pulse and Flipboard, apps that abandoned the traditional folder-based structure of RSS readers. At the same time, many well-known Mac RSS apps like NetNewsWire got their own iPad versions, but—with no disrespect to Brent Simmons, whom I admire—they were essentially iPad ports of their desktop counterparts, failing to take advantage of new design opportunities. Only when Silvio Rizzi’s Reeder for iPad hit the Store did an iPad RSS app successfully combine the traditional structure and flow of NetNewsWire with a user interface that does justice to what the iPad has to offer.

Keeping with Apple’s theme of bringing everything they’ve learned from the iPad “Back to the Mac,” Rizzi began work on a Mac version of Reeder, which I’ve been beta testing for several months. Before profiling Reeder, however, I wanted to wait until it hit the Mac App Store. Now that it’s mainstream, the time is ripe for discussion.

I’ll say this now: Loren Brichter’s Tweetie for Mac had a profound effect on Mac user interface design. And that’s really the first example of a developer taking an iOS hit and turning it into a Mac hit. Many new apps that feature text as the primary form of content have clearly taken a page from Brichter’s book; Sparrow is unofficially known as the “Tweetie of email.”

Reeder is no exception. In its “Minimized” layout (as opposed to “Classic”, which we’ll look at later), Reeder is the Tweetie of RSS. But that’s an oversimplified statement, due to its powerful feature set. I think that’s one of the main trends in this new generation of Mac apps: they’re much more powerful and capable than they appear. Reeder is incredibly lightweight—rarely does the dock icon bounce more than once before the app launches—yet it packs style and substance in equal measure.

The Minimized layout will make RSS reading on small screens like that of the 11-inch MacBook Air a dream. What it lacks in screen real estate it makes up for in sheer efficiency. Using either keyboard shortcuts or fully customizable gestures (a feature that alone will pique the interest of Mac nerds), you can open article text and move directly from entry to entry without ever again seeing a column of preview cells. For larger screens, especially those on iMacs and Cinema Displays, the Classic layout will be just as good. It follows the established conventions of RSS reader layout, but does so with such visual finesse that going back to NetNewsWire or Google Reader’s web client is mundane. That’s a strong statement, and one that insults the work of legendary developers, but if you have an appreciation for pixel-perfect design work you’ll know exactly where I’m coming from.

For truncated feeds, a rather brilliant implementation of Arc90’s Readability lets you fetch the article’s full text from its permalink and read it within Reeder itself. You can access this feature either by pressing the Readability button at the bottom of the window, or by using keyboard shortcuts and gestures. The default pinch-open/pinch-close gesture to activate Readability is delightful and addictive. Along with Readability comes integration with close to a dozen other web services, including the likes of Twitter, Instapaper, ReadItLater, and Pinboard. You can assign each service an icon in Reeder’s toolbar, a unique keyboard shortcut, or a unique gesture. If you’re really nuts, you can do all three.

Subscription management is in its infancy (it was added late in the beta). The Manage Subscriptions window is half-baked, but it works, and I imagine that it will soon be up to speed with the rest of the app from a design standpoint. Every change you make to your subscriptions in Reeder is reflected in your Google Reader account, and vice versa. I recommend setting Reeder as your default RSS Reeder in Preferences, so whenever you visit a feed in your browser you are redirected to Reeder with the option to subscribe. Considering that these features were added literally last-minute in order to prep Reeder for the App Store, they do what they are supposed to.

For the people out there who love to customize the look and feel of their apps, Reeder has you covered. In the Appearance tab in Preferences, you can choose from one of two standard color schemes: “Standard” and “Reeder/iOS.” Standard gives Reeder the blue and gray hues that dominate native Mac Apps, while Reeder/iOS is warm and textured like the iOS versions. In addition, control freaks can use an assortment of sliders to adjust the tint, texture, contrast, list font size, and list row hight. Personally, I’m content with the unmodified Reeder/iOS setting. The beta was like this by default, and I fell in love with Reeder while using the beta. Nostalgia, you see?

The Mac is changing. Reeder is not directly responsible for this, but in combination with this emerging breed of iOS-like Mac apps, the HIG and the conventions of Mac application design are being brushed aside in favor of lightweight, sandboxed apps that do a lot while looking pretty. Unique and compelling design work, deep integration with web services, and great customization options set Reeder apart from established authority in the desktop RSS reader market. It’s one of my favorite apps to use, and it makes the sometimes boring task of plowing through RSS feeds simple, elegant, and above all, enjoyable. ★

Information Architects on iA Writer

iA Writer: On Prices and Features →

Oliver Reichenstein:

If you want to innovate, you have no other choice but to go in a new direction. Judging from the sales and ecstatic feedback, we did the right thing with iA Writer. We will very probably reach our sales objective within a month, and more importantly iA Writer will make lots of writers happy.

I’ve been an active user and proponent of iA Writer since it launched on the Mac a few weeks ago. The first update brought considerable improvement to an already solid first release, so I’m excited to see it improve further. Writer’s underlying philosophy is in very good taste, and its implementation of that philosophy is near-perfect. If you write for the web, you have to give this app a spin.

On a side note, the first sentence in the above quotation is also relevant to a recent, controversial release from Apple.

I Wish I Was This Organized

nvALT as my database for everything →

Dave Caolo sheds light on his wonderfully simple method of digital organization: a combination of nvALT (a version of Notational Velocity custom-built by Brett Terpstra) and Simplenote where he puts anything and everything.

Both nvALT and Simplenote search the entire contents of a note. This means I can search “New York” to see every note relating to our pending family trip to the Big Apple. Likewise, searching “reservation New York” will pull up hotel and restaurant information both planned for this trip and stored as reference (restaurants visited in the past). Perhaps I’ll take the family to a place I previously enjoyed on my own.

This is working out so incredibly well. Any bit of reference material I receive is added to nvALT, properly named and synchronized with Simplenote. Changes made in one app show up in the other. Try it out for simple, fast access to all of your stuff.

I would love to try this out. I went from Evernote to Things to Evernote again and finally to Yojimbo, which I currently use, and could not be happier with. But I’m always striving for the simplest solution to a given situation, and Caolo’s setup is intriguing.

Simplicity is Weakness

Buried Under an Avalanche of Options →

Dave Pell:

Want to read a book? Just decide if you want it in hardcover, paperback, or digital format, and if digital, which device, which app, which font size and which background. It’s that simple. Within a few hours, you’ll be happily reading.

Pell does a great job capturing the feel of using modern technology. The straightforwardness of yesteryear is obsolete.

MobileTunes

Apple Pushing Labels for April Music Locker Launch →

Wayne Rosso for The Music Void:

Apple is reportedly pushing hard to re-launch their new and improved MobileMe service this April, but what hasn’t been mentioned is that they’re pressuring major record labels to have all of the music licenses in place for the long rumored locker service planned for launch at the same time.

Informed sources say that Apple has sealed its deal with Warner and has been using that agreement to leverage the other labels to get the deals done in time for the April launch. The locker service will reportedly have somewhere around a $20 annual price tag.

(Via 9to5 Mac.)

Smooth Flow

Flow →

I have always held the opinion that native desktop apps are simply better than web apps. The best web applications, while impressive, have never quite matched native code in the areas of performance and design.

For example, the recently redesigned twitter.com is a fine piece of web development, but in my mind it will never eclipse the snappiness and simplicity of Twitter for Mac. Evernote has a great web app, but it doesn't run with the efficiency of its native counterpart. This motif has held true for a long time now, but it may be over thanks to Flow.

Drawing heavy inspiration from Cultured Code's Things, Flow is a tool that lets you organize your to-dos and projects. Its user interface is eerily familiar, and the influence of Apple's MobileMe suite of web apps is also evident. Flow is designed as if it were a native Mac app; Apple's Human Interface Guidelines are in full effect here. Using Flow in Chrome or Firefox's fullscreen mode makes me ask myself, "Is this really a web app?"

Oh No They Didn't

AT&T acquires T-Mobile →

ZDNet:

It is reported that AT&T is buying T-Mobile USA for $39 billion and the deal has been approved by both company boards. T-Mobile has a unique 1700 MHz AWS band for 3G, but maybe they will give that up and go with AT&T’s frequencies. The thing is, T-Mobile has a much faster HSPA+ network at the moment so we will have to keep an eye on what shakes out from a technical basis. I think LTE may become a focus for the AT&T/T-Mobile company now as they compete with Verizon for the top spot in the U.S.

Que les jeux commencent.

Google, the Startup

Larry Page Wants to Return Google to Its Startup Roots →

Fascinating piece by Steven Levy for this month’s issue of Wired. Eric Schmidt was a good CEO, but he often came off as too conservative and hesitant. I’ve read about Page before, but this article goes deeper into his psyche and philosophy; my impression is that he’s the type of radical leader that could bring significant change to a company that has lost its voice.

My appreciation for Google has deteriorated ever since I started using Android. While the state of Android isn’t necessarily Schmidt’s fault, I do hold him responsible for allowing the project to be handled so poorly in key areas (consistency, for instance). If Larry Page feels that Android needs improvement, he’s more likely to speak up and see it through.

My favorite part:

“You can’t understand Google,” vice president Marissa Mayer says, “unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids.” She’s referring to schools based on the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori, an Italian physician born in 1870 who believed that children should be allowed the freedom to pursue their interests. “In a Montessori school, you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so,” she says. “This is baked into how Larry and Sergey approach problems. They’re always asking, why should it be like that? It’s the way their brains were programmed early on.”

I went to a Montessori kindergarten.

iWant

iPhoto for iOS →

A few hours before I discovered this post by Panic’s Neven Mrgan, I was sitting at home after an afternoon of protesting in downtown Madison, editing the day’s photos in iPhoto. While I was doing this I realized the quite obvious fact that iPhoto is Apple’s only iLife app (sorry, iWeb and iDVD, you just don’t count) for which no iOS counterpart exists.

Following the success of iMovie and now GarageBand, iPhoto for iOS makes perfect sense, and it’s only a matter time. Mrgan outlines the possibilities:

iPhoto for iOS may not focus on organizing your photos that much; creation of events, albums, etc. may be skipped. Instead, it could be project-based. What do you want to make: a calendar, a book, a slideshow? And where do you want to put it when you’re done –– Flickr, Facebook, on your coffee table, iBooks? My ideas are limited by my looking at iPhoto as it is today; Apple could also choose to do a GarageBand-like rethinking of the whole thing.

Personally, I wouldn’t rule out the creation and organization of events, albums, and even Places and Faces. I can see them working well in an iOS app, especially on the iPad.

That's a Bingo

Apple iPad 2 is here and tablet rivals need to hit the drawing board →

How and why does Apple remain in this position of absolute dominance in today’s tablet market? Andy Ihnatko has the answer:

…Apple seems to be successfully pursuing the same strategy that works in any streetfight: keep knocking your opponent’s feet out from under him just when he’s about to get up. It doesn’t hurt that they also seem to be the only tablet manufacturer that diligently thinks their designs through from start to finish.

There isn’t a more accurate answer to that question anywhere on Earth. I mean, you heard what that guy from Samsung said about his company’s own product, right? You’ve seen the Smart Cover in action, have you not? Let me ask you this: can you see any other company in the world, whether it be today or ten years in the future, doing what Apple is doing right now with the iPad?

Personally, I don’t imagine that an average-Joe-six-pack electrician will ever notify me of the new [insert generic Android tablet name here] coming out soon.

Slowdog Millionare

Verizon iPhone Clears 1 Million-Sold Mark →

People are throwing around phrases like “slow sales,” and “slower than expected,” without understanding what’s going on. Scott Moritz of The Street explains:

Dan Mead, Verizon Wireless chief, told media outlets this weekend that 60% of the company’s iPhone sales were preorders. This would explain why the turnout on a cold February launch day was much lighter than some may have expected.

Recent analyst estimates say Verizon’s iPhone preorders totaled 600,000, and if that was 60% of total sales, then 1 million iPhones were sold on the debut weekend. It also means many more have sold since then. For comparison, AT&T sold 1.7 million iPhones 4s on its debut last year.

The imminent iPhone 5 is also a likely factor behind the relatively (I’m choosing my words carefully here) slow sales.