Link Posts
Great article by Jason Santa Maria on skeuomorphism, innovation, and iOS 7:
I want iOS to grow up. I want it to act like it’s been around for 6 years and that it knows the score. Iteration like this can reduce the need for skeuomorphism; when people become more familiar with an interface, it can be pared down aesthetically over time. Not necessarily flat, just less.
“You’re not drinking coffee if you’re not drinking it black, you think?”
“No, I don’t think.”
“Oh, you like to monkey with it?”
The new Kingdom Rush iPad game is here.
Scott Berkun transcribed some of the answers Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, gave during interview at the 2010 Innovation Summit. There is a lot of excellent advice and insight on leading a creative team, honoring teamwork, empowering managers, and keeping morale high for creatives working within a corporation.
Here’s Catmull’s reply regarding dealing with tough, competing constraints:
If I look at the range, you’ve got one [constraint] that is art school, I’m doing this for arts sake, Ratatouille and WALL-E clearly fall more on that side, the other is the purely commercial side, where you’ve got a lot of films that are made purely for following a trend, if you go entirely for the art side then eventually you fail economically. if you go purely commercially then I think you fail from a soul point of view… we’ve got these elements pulling on both sides, the art side and the commercial side… and the the trick is not to let one side win. That fundamentally successful companies are unstable. And where we have to operate is in that unstable place. And the forces of conservatism which are very strong and they want to go to a safe place. I want to go to the same place for money, I want to go and be wild and creative, or I want to have enough time for this, and each one of those guys are pulling, and if any one of them wins, we lose. And i just want to stay right there in the middle.
“Whenever I feel like I’m in a jam, I try to bury that bad feeling by doing art that I love.”
Tatsuo Horiuchi bought a computer to start creating digital artwork. He decided to use Excel because: “Graphics software is expensive but Excel comes pre-installed in most computer. And it has more functions and is easier to use than [Microsoft] Paint.”
Horiuhi’s work is absolutely stunning. You will never find a more perfect example that tools do not an artist make.
A lot of nostalgia in those banners.
For something not quite so nostalgic, see WWDC’s history of sell-out times. And for more shots of this year’s banners, check out MacStories.
Kyle Baxter:
Removing your Glass device will feel very much like losing a limb or sense—something that you’ve grown used to depending on and using is gone. Through this much deeper integration, these devices could fundamentally alter the human experience and what it means to be human.
That might sound alarmist, like science fiction, or—if you own a smartphone—just remind you of that small moment of dread, like something’s wrong, when you leave the house without your phone.
Dustin Curtis’ impressions of Google Glass after spending some time using the device:
While some of the human <=> computer interface design challenges facing ambient computers are obvious in theory, many of them are very hard to identify until you actually experience using the device as part of your life. These computers are different. They don’t help you accomplish tasks with programs and apps, but rather they very literally augment the experience of living your life. The technical problems facing these devices are tough ones– ambient computers need to be intelligent enough in software and advanced enough technologically to get out of the way. Glass isn’t there yet. Not even close.
Speaking of Feed Wrangler, last week David Smith shared some behind-the-scenes stats and info for how the first month went.
This is great news. Feed Wrangler is my favorite new RSS syncing service because of its clever and forward-thinking features. But Reeder is the best-looking feed reading client. Now it looks like we’ll have the best of both worlds.
Eric Maierson (via David Friedman):
You are alone in a dark room. Across the floor are the scattered pieces of three or four or five floor lamps. You don’t know how many. There are screws and bulbs and fixtures mixed together. You try not to panic as you feel your way across the floor in search of these pieces.
Writing and editing (and most all other creative endeavors) are those things which you never feel like you’re getting any better at.
When I read some of my old work and cringe then it’s proof (to me, at least) that I’m pretty sure I’m a better writer today than I was 5 years ago. But the day-to-day act and work of doing the writing itself? Well, that doesn’t feel any easier at all. It’s still a difficult and lonely endeavor. All we can do is keep on trying our darndest to do our best creative work.
Something I wrote a few years ago:
Suppose one day I do arrive at some level of skill where the ink flows like honey and the prose like fine wine. I wonder if I’d even realize it. It may very well feel just like it does right now — like today — when it seems as if I can’t even put two words together using copy and paste.
A huge congrats to Pete Licata, the QA manager at the downtown location of Parisi coffee, for winning the 2013 World Barista Championship.
Over the last 10 years, Kansas City has exploded with some absolutely fantastic coffee shops: Broadway (of course) and the Roasterie have been around for a while. We now also have Oddly Correct, Quay, and Parisi, among some others.
A few months ago Parisi opened up a second cafe that’s closer to where I live, and it’s become my new favorite spot to work from on Tuesdays (the day I leave my home office to get out and work from somewhere else).
Rick Stawarz’s story of switching from Things to OmniFocus back in 2010 and then switching back again a few weeks ago:
During my three-year affair with OmniFocus, Things had grown up quite a bit. It finally gained cloud sync and a couple other powerful features.
It’s hard not to pit these two apps against one another because in they’re the two kings of the to-do list hill when it comes to powerful, feature rich, well-designed task apps for the Mac.
And, Rick does a good job at comparing them without claiming one is better than the other, or vice versa. Because one isn’t better than the other — they are both good, they’re just different.
Personally, I love the look of Things as well as Things’ OTA sync, which, though late to the game, is incredibly well done. Also, the scrolling date picker within Things on the iPhone is one of the best and easiest-to-use date picker designs period — Apple themselves should adapt its design.
But I’m an OmniFocus user not so much because I’m a “power user to-do guru”, but because I’ve become too hooked on the Forecast and Review modes of OmniFocus, and the new-ish Mail Drop feature. Also, I use OmniFocus on my iPad a lot, and arguably the iPad version is the best of the 3-app suite. Whereas with Things, the iPad version is arguably the worst of their 3-app suite.
While OmniFocus certainly serves well the “extreme power user” it also has some great features which still suite the more casual user as well. You don’t have to be hardcore to use OmniFocus (though it helps).