I have become a big fan of John Voorhees’ game reviews for MacStories. If John points out an iOS game, I’ll inevitably end up loving it.
This one, Yuri, looks like another winner. Thanks, John.
Design
Sticker for your AirPods case
Clever. Though to me, floss is for teeth. No matter, the design is spot on. Note the company name on the sticker itself.
How the inventor of Mario, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, designs a game
[VIDEO] If you are at all a fan of Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc., this is time well spent. I love the fact that you get to see Shigeru at his desk, pen in hand, drawing out genius. Video in main Loop post.
The Mac and the mouse cursor
See the main Loop post for a look at two thought experiments, one from Rob Rhyne (via John Gruber) and the other from Mark Hibber. Both quite interesting.
George Lucas can’t give his $1.5 billion museum away
Bloomberg:
He wants to construct a Lucas museum to house and display his art collection—much of it proudly lowbrow, such as works by the sentimentalist Norman Rockwell; original Flash Gordon comic book art; Mad magazine covers; and memorabilia from his own Star Wars films. According to an early plan for the museum, his trove of Star Wars material includes 500,000 artifacts from the prequels alone. Lucas refers to such works as “narrative art,” the kind that “tells a story.” He believes they’ve been unfairly ignored by snooty critics and curators, and he wants his museum to rectify that.
Lucas has offered to build his museum in a major American city for free. Including construction costs, an endowment, and the value of the artwork, his organization says the total value of his gift is $1.5 billion. “It’s an epic act of generosity and altruism,” says Don Bacigalupi, the museum effort’s president. “George Lucas, as with any person of great resources and great success, could choose to do whatever he wants to do with his resources, and he has chosen to give an extraordinary gift to the people of a city and the world.”
But so far, Lucas hasn’t found a permanent home for his museum. The monumental project has brought him almost as much grief as Jar Jar Binks.
I suspect he’d find a taker if he’d be willing to bend a bit more, take some design guidance and help with curation.
The Mac is in the back seat, especially the Mac Pro
Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:
Interviews with people familiar with Apple’s inner workings reveal that the Mac is getting far less attention than it once did. They say the Mac team has lost clout with the famed industrial design group led by Jony Ive and the company’s software team. They also describe a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key people working on Mac hardware and technical challenges that have delayed the roll-out of new computers.
Combine this with Tim Cook’s response to employees in an internal memo:
“Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops,” Cook wrote. “If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.”
It’s not that I am worried. It’s more that I recognize that Macs are in the back seat now. Especially the Mac Pro.
Letting the Mac Pro languish is shortsighted thinking. As I’ve said many times, Apple developers are foundational to Apple’s success. Inside Apple, developers are building the secret future. Outside Apple, developers are building the apps, macOS and iOS, that bring life and revenue to the ecosystem. Make sure those developers have the best tools possible so they can do their work efficiently and effectively.
And don’t let elegant design be a bottleneck for the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro need not be retail store pretty. Just make it powerful as can be, let me add memory and drives, swap out video cards, VRAM, GPUs, SSDs and the like for third party options, and get it to me ASAP. It can be ugly or plain, just not loud. As long as it runs the latest macOS and is compatible with all the major power tools, like Final Cut Pro, Logic, ProTools, Xcode, Photoshop, etc.
AirPods, Siri, and the voice-first interface
Ben Bajarin, Tech.pinions:
Apple’s AirPods are just wireless headphones about as much as the Apple Watch is “just” a watch and iPhone is “just” a phone. Nothing makes this more apparent than the Siri experience.
And:
It is remarkable how much better Apple’s Siri experience is with AirPods. In part because the microphones are much closer to your mouth and, therefore, Siri can more clearly hear and understand you. I’m not sure how many people realize how many Siri failures have to do the distance you are from your iPhone or iPad, as well as ambient background noise and the device’s ability to clearly hear you.
And:
Thanks to the beam forming mics and some bone conduction technology, Siri with the AirPods is about as accurate a Siri experience I’ve had. In fact, in the five days I’ve been using the AirPods extensively, I have yet to have Siri not understand my request.
And:
You very quickly realize, the more you use Siri with the AirPods, how much the experience today assumes you have a screen in front of you. For example, if I use the AirPods to activate Siri and say, “What’s the latest news?” Siri will fetch the news then say, “Here is some news — take a look.” The experience assumes I want to use my screen (or it at least assumes I have a screen near me to look at) to read the news. Whereas, the Amazon Echo and Google Home just start reading the latest news headlines and tidbits.
These are just a few nuggets from a much longer piece. One core question that emerges is, should we design for the screen? Instead, perhaps we should design for the screen as an option, or somehow let the user choose, perhaps with a gesture that says, “I’ve got no screen, pipe all the info into my ears”.
Good stuff from Ben Bajarin.
AirPods teardown reveals a true engineering marvel
The AirPods are a true engineering marvel, an astonishing array of technology jam packed into the smallest of containers. Take a minute to scroll through the pictures. Remarkable.
Jony Ive gives us a peek inside Apple’s design studio
[VIDEO] Though the video embedded in the main Loop post is intended to promote the book Designed by Apple in California, it also gives a tantalizing glimpse inside Sir Jony’s design studio. Take a look.
The Apple Mirror
A mirror, with built in display elements, all based on iOS 10.
From the site:
Design includes the time and date in the upper right hand corner and weather in the top left. All apps can be moved around and placed anywhere on the mirror. After 45 seconds of inactivity the mirror goes to sleep (appears as any ordinary mirror), simply tap anywhere to wake back up and resume use. Some useful things you can do with this mirror: Request an Uber, watch Netflix, read the news, control smart thermostat / light bulbs, control Sonos speaker system and more.
Seems to me, there was an Android project a while back that did something similar. Search, search, search. Ah, here it is.
Remarkable design: Three tier, stackable, portable soccer pitch
This remarkable design brings a three level soccer pitch to an area the size of a parking lot. That’s three soccer fields, each big enough for 5-on-a-side competition, stacked one on top of the other. All of this is built into a portable solution, a temporary stack of fields that can be set up and then moved.
Follow the link, check out the picture.
Designed specifically to bring soccer to the tight confines of London, I suspect we’ll see this approach take root in other cities around the world.
Marcus Conge, digital artist
I’ve long been a fan of Marcus Conge’s work. Now he’s embedded some of his best stuff in a web site. Check it out.
And if you’ve got the need, he’s currently taking on work (see the Hire Me section at the bottom left).
Apple Music’s best new feature is better accessibility
Steven Aquino, who writes a lot about accessibility, writing for The App Factor:
As I reported last February, the initial version of Apple Music was mired by a confusing design and, more importantly, less than stellar accessibility. These issues weren’t severe enough to drive me away from the product, but they certainly put a damper on an otherwise solid experience.
Then came good news. With the advent of iOS 10 came an all-new, totally redesigned Apple Music that addressed both of my biggest gripes about 1.0. Streaming and downloaded music are now clearly marked, but the big win for me is the app is much more visually accessible.
And:
From an accessibility perspective, it’s the bigness and boldness that make Apple Music shine in iOS 10. First and foremost, the Dynamic Type is pervasive throughout the app. Headers are ginormous. Whereas previously I had trouble reading Editors’ Notes and track listings, I now can read them fine. The larger text is boosted by the higher contrast, as areas such as the Now Playing screen eschew form for function. It may not look pretty, but the plain background of the Now Playing screen coupled with the large type makes text jump off the screen. This lessens eye strain and fatigue, which happens fast, because I don’t struggle to find things.
There’s lots more to this, both in terms of size (bigger icons are kinder to people with limited vision), and in terms of basic interface improvements (adding demarcations to make it easier to find your way around).
As always, solid insights from Steven Aquino.
Jony Ive on design
Coinciding with Apple’s new photo book, “Designed by Apple in California”, Jony Ive did an interview with Japanese design firm Casa Brutus.
Here’s a link to the interview (in Japanese). If anyone knows of an English translation, please tweet me a link and I’ll update this post.
Embedded in the main post is a video Casa Brutus posted this morning, Jony Ive talking about the design process.
Apple considers wearables expansion with digital glasses
Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. is weighing an expansion into digital glasses, a risky but potentially lucrative area of wearable computing, according to people familiar with the matter.
While still in an exploration phase, the device would connect wirelessly to iPhones, show images and other information in the wearer’s field of vision, and may use augmented reality, the people said. They asked not to be identified speaking about a secret project.
Apple has talked about its glasses project with potential suppliers, according to people familiar with those discussions. The company has ordered small quantities of near-eye displays from one supplier for testing, the people said. Apple hasn’t ordered enough components so far to indicate imminent mass-production, one of the people added.
If true, it’ll be interesting to see what Apple does differently than Google did with Glass. This is an area where subtlety of design will make all the difference.
New photo book, “Designed by Apple in California”, chronicles 20 years of Apple design
From Apple’s news release:
Apple today announced the release of a new hardbound book chronicling 20 years of Apple’s design, expressed through 450 photographs of past and current Apple products. “Designed by Apple in California,” which covers products from 1998’s iMac to 2015’s Apple Pencil, also documents the materials and techniques used by Apple’s design team over two decades of innovation.
The book is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs.
And:
“The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve’s motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. “This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines.”
The book is available in two sizes:
- Small (10.20” x 12.75”) US$199
- Large (13” x 16.25”) US$299
Twenty years takes us back to 1996, the year CEO Gil Amelio made one of the most important decisions of his tenure, starting the process of bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple. The NeXT deal was finalized on February 9, 1997.
Marco Arment on the new MacBook Pro’s four USB-C ports
Marco Arment:
Having four USB-C ports is awesome.
Having only four USB-C ports is going to hurt the versatility requirement of pro gear, because there’s a very real chance that you won’t have the right dongle when you need it.
This is going to happen a lot, because even though USB-C is the future, it’s definitely not the present. We’ve had the standard USB plug (USB-A) in widespread use for 18 years, and it’s going to take a few more years for USB-C to become so ubiquitous that we can get away without USB-A ports most of the time.
A pro laptop released today should definitely have USB-C ports — mostly USB-C ports, even — but it should also have at least one USB-A port.
I currently have dongles to plug in my existing Time Machine drive (USB-C to USB-B, picture here) and another to plug my Cinema Display into my new MacBook Pro (USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 to Mini Display Port/Thunderbolt 2, picture here). Tap both pics to embiggen.
Will I need more dongles? Undoubtedly. Marco is arguing that the MacBook Pro is too forward thinking and should have been designed for the present. My machine will arrive in a few weeks. I’ll stew in the soup, have a better sense of things once I live in the brave new dongular world for a while.
Jony Ive talks about the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar
From the beautifully laid out CNET interview:
“Doing something that’s different is actually relatively easy and relatively fast, and that’s tempting,” says the man who’s had a hand in every major Apple product design — from the colorful iMac and iBook to the iPod, iPad, iPhone and Apple Watch.
“We don’t limit ourselves in how we will push — if it’s to a better place. What we won’t do is just do something different that’s no better,” Ive said in an interview earlier this week to explain the design of the MacBook Pro, a major reboot of Apple’s most powerful laptop line.
And:
Our starting point, from the design team’s point of view, was recognizing the value with both input methodologies. But also there are so many inputs from a traditional keyboard that are buried a couple of layers in. We have that ability to accommodate complex inputs, mainly out of habit and familiarity.
So our point of departure was to see if there was a way of designing a new input that really could be the best of both of those different worlds. To be able to have something that was contextually specific and adaptable, and also something that was mechanical and fixed, because there’s truly value in also having a predictable and complete set of fixed input mechanisms.
Read the interview. Some great insights into the birth of Touch Bar and Jony’s way of thinking. Kudos to the CNET team that pulled this together.
Amazing transformable table
The Boulon Blanc table quickly transforms from a coffee table to a full-height kitchen or dining room table in just a few seconds. The table is expensive, no doubt (about US$700), but spend a minute watching the video at the top of the kickstarter page.
Terrific design.
The zen-like design challenge
Adrian Hanft, writing for Medium:
A design education begins with a zen-like challenge: place two black squares on a white background.
The professor explains that some arrangements will be dull and lifeless. Those assignments will fail. Other submissions will be dynamic and interesting. Those assignments will pass.
As you set yourself to the seemingly simple task you realize the complexity of the challenge. There are an infinite amount of ways to arrange the squares and you have no crutches because all the other elements of design have been forbidden.
No gradients.
No variation of line weight.
You can’t use the manipulative properties of color.
No shades of gray.
No room for your unique style and personality.
Having never gone to design school, not sure if this challenge is typical, but I definitely found it interesting. Take a look at some of the examples. Some of them clearly “click” more than others. Why?
Design remains an enigmatic mystery to me.
Wear and tear on the jet black iPhone 7
Some thoughts, and real-world images of the jet black iPhone 7 finish.
The origin of the “comic book font”
[VIDEO]
Phil Edwards, writing for Vox:
Comic book culture is mass culture — even lacrosse moms and field hockey dads who’ve never been in a comic book store can recognize the “comic book font.”
But calling it a font is a misnomer — as the above video shows, this distinctive style of handwriting is an aesthetic shaped by culture, technology, and really cheap paper.
Watch the video, embedded in the original post.
iPhone scratches and aging gracefully
Thomas Ricker, writing for The Verge:
The wood on the stairs in my newly renovated house is starting to divot and wear under heavy use. At first — for the briefest of moments — I was annoyed as I imagined my daughter’s “princess heels” and my son’s football cleats plodding up the steps in violation of our strict no-shoes-in-the-house policy. Then I remembered Starck’s lesson. The subtle scarring I see is created by the process that transforms a house into a home; imperfections forged by my children, themselves transforming into adults. Those stairs, disfigured as they are, fulfill their purpose of supporting my family on their daily journey through this world. Now when I look at the stairs I see a beautiful story.
He also quotes from this 2011 essay on design by Remy Labesque, a defense of well-worn gadgets:
Aging with dignity is a criteria designers should recognize in their efforts. I’m thinking of a future when products are designed not for the brief moment when they are new, but for when they have been aged to perfection.
We’ve got a table in our house that my wife and I bought when we got married, our first major purchase together. It’s a fine piece of furniture and has served us as our kitchen table for many years.
The surface of the table is well worn, scarred by sharp edges. An imprint of a phillips screw from a carelessly placed box, a patina of paint and sparkly glitter, and countless gouges from children and cats, mar the table’s surface. But I would argue that those imperfections make the table, give it a distinct well-worn beauty, and in no way take away from the iconic look of the table design.
Take a look at the images at the top of Labesque’s Frog Design post, the one showing both a well-worn iPhone and a similarly worn Canon point-and-click camera. Which wears its patina of wear better? To me, no question, that iPhone, with all its scratches and imperfections, is still a thing of beauty.
John Gruber on the iPhone and iconic design
Just after the September 7th iPhone event, Farhad Manjoo wrote a piece for the New York Times titled, provocatively, “What’s Really Missing From the New iPhone: Cutting-Edge Design”.
An aside: I complained about the Times coverage of that event here.
In his direct response, Gruber walks a very reasoned line, focused on the meaning of design. A fascinating read.
At its core:
Here’s the genius of the black and (especially) jet black iPhones 7. In a very seductive way, they look like something new and desirable. And at the same time, they are instantly recognizable as iPhones. That is what Manjoo and similar-minded I’m-bored-with-Apple’s-designs don’t get. With a highly successful product and brand, new versions need to strike a balance between familiarity, the foundations of the brand, and hot newness. The bored-with-Apple crowd just wants the hot newness.
Absolutely right. Iconic design requires recognizability. A Porsche, an Eames lounge chair, and an iPhone are all iconic designs, all instantly recognizable.
That jet black finish is hot newness, but wrapped around an iconic design.
Read Gruber’s post. It resonates.
What’s coming in the next generation of emoji
Emojipedia:
Unicode this month released a draft update to TR-51, or in human terms, the document that describes what’s-what’s what in emoji standards.
This draft is for Unicode Emoji Version 4.0: an update to Unicode’s emoji documentation which can be released outside of the annual Unicode Standard release schedule.
Five notable additions:
- Gendered Emojis
- New Professional Emojis
- New Flags
- Emoji Upgrades to Non-Emoji Characters
- Additional Skin Tone Support
Read the original post for full details.
Hmmm, this logo sure looks familiar
Wired:
Google is in the midst of rolling out its newest mobile operating system, Android N, and with it comes a new logo. And it looks maybe a little … familiar? The N that folds over itself like a piece of ribbon? Graphic design trends—like all trends, really—come and go. And right now designers can’t get enough of these 3-D visual identities. Look around and you’ll begin to notice colorful, angular graphics that wrap around and fold over themselves like materials from a craft store.
Follow the link, scroll through the sequence of logos. There’s definitely a trend emerging here.
Apple patents Digital Crown mechanism for iPad
Patently Apple:
Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals that Jony Ive and his team have considered expanding the Apple Watch’s digital crown to other iOS devices such as the iPad. Apple notes that the digital crown could be used as a volume controller or locking the touch screen, turning on the touch screen, taking a picture, resizing text and other actions.
This is an interesting choice. The digital crown is effective for sliding back and forth through a list or set of settings. The trick is to connect the digital crown to a specific element in the user interface.
[…]
The Apple goes mushy
Nicholas Windsor Howard shares his thoughts on what he perceives as a decline of the OS X interface. There’s a lot to process here, a reasoned, well thought out essay.
Just a taste:
In Apple’s view, an icon depicting a camera and a photo was too literal for an application that handles photos. Therefore, when iPhoto gave way to its replacement in 2015—Photos—the previous carefully-rendered icon gave way to this bland, meaningless rainbow abstraction.
Is the move from the obvious to the minimalistically abstract a step up? A step down? Read this, decide for yourself.
Handheld tool is like Shazam for fonts
Wired:
O’Leary developed a handy, handheld tool she calls Spector that captures typefaces and colors in the real world, and then transfers them directly to InDesign.
Cool idea, not yet productized. More in the main post.
Understanding Tesla Autopilot
Marco Arment:
A few Tesla vehicles have had accidents with Autopilot enabled recently, and I’ve gotten countless questions about these incidents and the nature of Autopilot from people who aren’t Tesla owners. Tesla and the media haven’t clearly communicated what these features do (and don’t do) to the public, so I’ll try to help in whatever small way I can as a Model S owner for a few months so far.
This is a terrific walkthrough on Tesla’s autopilot, a glimpse into what’s coming for cars in general, as well as a reality check on where autonomous driving stands. Things are changing fast as we move towards autonomous vehicles all around us.