Month: July 2013

Gestures  →

Patrick Rhone:

I believe Apple should set a standard for what specific gestures should do and what results a customer can expect from them. While I don’t think these should be enforced through the approval process, I do think it should provide developers with a baseline as to what users should expect a gesture to do and that not doing so means you will be working against said expectations and intentions.

Two thoughts:

  • In a way, Apple already created a baseline for how to implement gestures in 3rd-party apps: iOS 7. In the same way that the stock apps in iOS 7 give a baseline for 3rd-party devs as they design their apps, the stock gestures in iOS 7 give a baseline for how 3rd-party devs should consider adding gesture support to their apps.

Right now the main new system-wide gestures are slide left-to-right to go back and slide up from the bottom to bring up Control Center. Which is just 2 more gestures than there used to be (sliding down for Notification Center). So, in short, gestures are being added sparingly. But I bet we’ll see more gesture support in future iOS versions because…

  • As I’ve been using and testing iOS 7 on my iPhone, I find myself wanting to do even more gestures that don’t even exist. Such as a 2-finger pinch to close an app and return to the Home screen.

In short, as you get used to gestures which are implemented right, they feel incredibly natural. Just as swiping a list view gives a quick and jitter-free scroll of that list makes you feel as if you’re actually manipulating the pixels underneath your finger, so too does being able to control the interface with gestures.

Gestures

Facing the Talent Ceiling

I’m working on something, and it’s for people who make things. As part of this project I would love to hear your story about overcoming the ceiling of talent.

If you’re someone who makes things — a designer, developer, writer, photographer, singer, musician, painter, sculptor, entrepreneur, podcaster, et al. — then you know what I mean about hitting the limit of your skills and being in that place where your vision and desire to do amazing work is bigger than your ability to actually create that work.

What do you do when your desire to do good work is bigger than your ability to actually create that work?

I’d love to hear about your own talent ceilings and what you have done / are doing to overcome them. And then, I’d love to share some of your stories here and as a part of this thing I’m working on. (If you’re not okay with your story being shared, or if you want it to remain anonymous, just let me know.)

Send me an email: [email protected]

Thanks!

— Shawn

P.S. You may have noticed that I put this same question to Twitter and ADN yesterday. The emails I got were so inspiring and encouraging that I wanted to cast the net larger.

Facing the Talent Ceiling

Why Doesn’t Apple Enable Sustainable Businesses on the App Store?  →

This is Ben Thompson’s third article in his series on enabling sustainable business in the App Store. (The whole series is quite fantastic, I suggest you start at the beginning: I, II, and IIb.)

In this third piece, Ben talks about the business model and mindset that Apple has towards the iOS App Store, and how it may be the foundation for why it can be difficult to build a sustainable business around productivity apps. In short, he makes the case for why it is that the apps which truly set iOS apart (the killer apps) are not the ones which make money hand over fist. The hand-over-fist money-making apps are casual games. And casual games are not the must-have apps of iOS, nor are they platform differentiators (you can find most popular iOS games on Android as well).

Why Doesn’t Apple Enable Sustainable Businesses on the App Store?

Webfonts by H&FJ  →

Hoefler & Frere-Jones rolled out Cloud.typography today and wowzers. These guys are home to some of the finest typefaces on the planet (I’m a huge fan of Tungsten, Idlewild, Gotham, to name a few).

If you’re a type nerd, at least do yourself the favor of taking a few minutes to peruse the webfont site, and for goodness sake, be sure you read all about the H&FJ Screensmart Fonts and how they designed and engineered them.

Webfonts by H&FJ