Are customers really missing out on good things by relying on the Mac App Store?

Who is the customer of the Mac App Store? Most likely, not you. Not entirely, anyway.

Mac App Store restrictions help to create a robust and safe market for curated platform software. They’re features, just as they are on the iOS App Store.

If you instead find these restrictions limiting, you’re a power user and can find software elsewhere. You know how to install this software and you’re capable of dealing with issues that might arise from doing so.

Few people handle technical complexity well. The lucky ones who can are a small minority sharing the platform with many more who cannot. You’d naturally like your utility software to also be available in the Mac App Store, but most people wouldn’t know what to do when things went awry. Utility developers naturally want to offer their software in the Mac App Store, but if that software would lead most people into the weeds it should be rightly stopped at the gate.

Imagine people who don’t change default settings, who rely on the Mac App Store for software. When you propose weakening the restrictions imposed by the Mac App Store, are you thinking of them, or yourself? If removing or weakening a restriction would cause these people grief, what are they supposed to do when they encounter a problem?

Apple introduced the Mac App Store for these people. If it turns out that power users can use the Mac App Store for some of their needs, then great. But those power users shouldn’t expect to use it for all of their needs.

Scoot’s Boeing Co. 777-200s have 400 seats, so the old system averaged more than 10 pounds per seat. The new iPads weigh a little less than 1.5 pounds, saving more than 8.5 pounds per seat.

Carrying one iPad per seat would save a combined total of more than 3400 pounds, but the savings is probably even higher because they’ll probably carry fewer iPads. Oh, I’m sorry, we’re all out.

A pretty good deal for the airline. They save fuel costs and charge passengers to use the iPads.

A few thoughts:

1. The old system must have been a clunker. More than 10 pounds per seat.

2. By striving to build the best tablet possible Apple ended up saving airline fuel costs. How beautiful is that?

3. Can you imagine ultrabooks being used for this?

No, it wouldn’t wreck the industry, but those of us willing to pay for apps would be happy to chip in for the wake, too.

Those beautiful shadows at bottom and top
To highlight the start and to show where to stop
That stylish entrance, that elegant bow
Those motions so deft, indispensible now

Those tools deferential, how they fade from your view
Then return in a blink when beckoned anew
So tranquil, overlooked, underseen
Lend a rhythm and flair to your dignified mien

Those words, shown with serifs at legible size
So delightful and calming to rushed, tired eyes
So too are the banished, the clutter and noise
Pushed aside and away, leaving focus and joys

O Reader Safari, modest blade in the grass
Our thanks for your grace in this sprawling morass

The Germans use gemütlichkeit to describe that relaxed and cozy feeling you get in a wonderful room like a warm and convivial pub. Is there a word like that, but for recognizing quiet generosity?

There should be. It would be applied to Apple a lot.

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

In a Mobile World Live interview with Sprint’s Chief Executive Officer Dan Hess [emphasis mine]:

Now, a 4G Android is likely to use more data on average because of the higher throughput, but perhaps part of the difference is that iOS users do buy more of their apps?

1. The colors are too similar. To me, On current major version and 3+ major versions behind are indistinguishable from each other, and both are confusingly similar to 2 major features behind.
2. The colors aren’t arranged logically. The range from newest to oldest isn’t supported by a corresponding range of brightness.

Better: use colors with different values (brightness) and, where appropriate, order the colors from lightest value to darkest as an additional aid to color-blind users. The latter will actually improve the chart for all users, not just the color-blind ones.

• make the color swatches large
• position the swatches close together and close to the referenced image
• eliminate any other non-swatch colors from the legend.

In this image taken from an cellular network 4G availability checker, my color-blind eyes see a map filled with a nearly uniform orange. The legend on the right doesn’t help much; the yellow box makes things worse.

Simply increasing the size and proximity of the color swatches helps a lot. In this revised version the difference between all three colors is much clearer:

Although it’s better to use more strongly contrasting colors as well as other visual cues to help color-blind users, just following this simple tip really helps.

As a nice bonus, minor changes like these made to help color-blind users often improve the design for everyone.

The original article at AppleInsider?

Snipes. Overpay. philosophical difference. took a shot. The WSJ article adds nothing to the original source, which it misreports as Apple Insider rather than AppleInsider, and omits the name of AppleInsider reporter Neil Hughes while printing the name of WSJ Senior Editor (!) Michael Hickins in large type.

More importantly, notice that where AppleInsider reported that Oppenheimer said that companies must invent their own technology “rather than take the ideas of others”, WSJ distorts this as “rather than buy it from the outside”, changing a statement about defending intellectual property into one about Not-Invented-Here.

Read both articles and consider which presents the news more professionally. The Journal’s decline has been clear for a while, but breathless sensationalism like this can still surprise.

Apple’s keynote video reveals an exquisite animation introduced to resolve a delicate design problem as you enter the Tracks editor in GarageBand for iPad.

The scene: while recording an instrument and deep in the creative flow, the user taps the Tracks icon to edit the recording.
The problem: how do you get the user from the instrument to the mixer without disturbing that creative flow?
The solution: transition gracefully from instrument to mixer by animating the instrument into the mixer track for that instrument.

Let’s walk though the video to deconstruct the animation in greater detail:

The animation begins in the Smart Instrument view when you choose Tracks (57:09 in the Apple video). You can see the recorded track in green just above the guitar’s wood surface, and chord names (Em, Am…Bb, Bdim) running across the guitar’s sound hole.
Hide the chord names
The first animation phase hides the chord names, which you can see are no longer visible. Why did the designers choose to hide the chord names? Perhaps because rendered text can sometimes look strange during perspective transforms.
Pivot the guitar away
The second animation phase begins pivoting the guitar face up and away. The perspective you see is important, because the guitar face is being pivoted in tandem with the final mixer track representing the guitar, the animation guiding the eye from one to the other seamlessly.
Still in the second animation phase, you see the first hint of the mixer track appearing. That hint of white in the lower-left corner is the guitar icon appearing on the mixer track. You can also see the time marker already horizontally aligned with the time marker in the recorded track above.
Pivot the mixer track into view
Now late in the second animation phase, the guitar face is nearly gone and the mixer track is clearly positioned in 3D at a right angle to the guitar face, as though parallel to the guitar’s side. Hard to describe, but imagine the mixer track taped to the side of the guitar, then turning the guitar onto its back to reveal the mixer track.
When the second animation phase ends, the mixer track has completed replaced the guitar, but the recorded track in green at the top still hasn’t moved. Moving the recorded track onto the mixer track represents the third phase of the animation, which will also unite the two time markers.
Move the recorded track onto the mixer track
The third phase of the animation begins, sliding the recorded track downwards towards the mixer track.
As the recorded track descends it changes color and reveals the individual notes within the recording.
Final animations
The fourth phase animates a number of other elements to their final appearance: the toolbar icon appears, the backgrounds fade into view, and the mixer frame at the far right appears.

It’s still surprising how much value iPad has shaken loose, and how quicky.

When they argue that websites are usable immediately whereas apps must be downloaded, they exaggerate the burden of downloading and the immediacy of websites, and ignore the speed and convenience of apps once downloaded.

When they argue that websites can be updated more frequently, they disregard the problems that can cause.

But what they overlook most crucially is that apps are yours. Websites are remote, and controlled remotely. Apps are with you, controlled by you. The difference is emotional, and powerful.

On your iOS device, open Maps and you’re in the map. The data for that map is retrieved remotely, but it’s brought to you. In contrast, when you visit a maps site on the web, that’s exactly what you’re doing—you’re visiting somewhere else. Similar functionality, profoundly different feeling.

Websites are somewhere else, and they’re someone else’s. Apps are here, and they’re yours.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Steve.

Affectionately known as the Gherkin, 30 St. Mary Axe in London looks beautiful.

(via AppleInsider)

Not just a blank slate, but a clean one too. How cool is that?

But I think the Guidelines overlook how educational long popup menus can be. Today I discovered Wallis and Futuna, which Wikipedia says is a Polynesian French island territory in the South Pacific with land area of 264 square kilometers and a population of about 15,000.

This only works because the iPad is itself both beautiful and intuitive. A photographer would need to be confident in both these qualities before presenting an iPad as an option.