Rene Ritchie has dropped some serious Apple hardware eye candy with these photos.
Category: Design
A history of Apple.com’s navigation ⇢
James Dempsey:
The content of the tabs shows an interesting progression as well. The Apple logo, Store, and Support tabs are a common thread throughout with Search appearing surprisingly late in the game in 2007. These unchanging outer items are like bookends around the changing world of Apple over time.
For the first seven years, the inner tabs mainly focused on software (QuickTime, Mac OS X, iTunes) and different incarnations of online services (iReview, iCard, iTools which became .Mac). The first hardware to appear on a tab was iPod, but it had to share a tab with iTunes for almost seven years before getting a tab of its own.
Microsoft.com turns 20 ⇢
NASA Graphics Standards Manual ⇢
While NASA doesn’t use the old “worm” logo anymore, this style guide is a fascinating study in detail and production oriented design.
On Motter Tektura
Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan at Gizmodo:
Apple, Trapper Keeper, and Reebok: Three of the most well-known brands of the 1980s, and three companies that used the same futuristic-looking typeface to do it. So why isn’t the typeface a classic like other period pieces cough Helvetica cough? Fate is a funny thing.
Today Fonts In Use and BrandNew point out the odd case of Motter Tektura, a typeface created in 1975 by the Austrian designer Othmar Motter, who died in 2010. If you were alive in the late 1970s or 80s, you’ll recognize it as the former font used in Apple’s early logos, as well as those of Trapper Keeper and Reebok—which kept it in use well into contemporary times.
35 years of Walkman ⇢
I have a huge place in my heart for old Sony hardware.
What is software made of? ⇢
Dieter Bohn:
“It is a sufficiently advanced form of paper as to be indistinguishable from magic.”
Matias Duarte, vice president of design at Google, is telling me about the central principle of Material Design. It’s the unifying metaphor behind Google’s new design direction, providing a unified set of physics and rules for how software should look and act. It’s also a little weird.
As interesting as this interview is, I find the whole “we have this amazing philosophy driving our entire design language” thing that software companies are doing more than a little tiring at this point.
Google’s Material Design ⇢
Like Gruber, this design language reminds me a lot of webOS. The animations are playful, and the colors are relaxing. Matías Duarte is working to make Google more approachable and friendly. It’s a lot less Tron and a lot more Monument Valley. Where Apple’s using transparency to show depth, Google is using motion and subtle shadows. In many ways, this feels closer to OS X Yosemite than iOS 8 does. While I haven’t played with it yet, from what I’ve seen, I’m a fan.
Jason Snell, on Yosemite ⇢
Jason Snell, in his hands-on of OS X Yosemite:
The design changes in Yosemite are noticeable, but the system is still very recognizably OS X. Longtime Mac users’ fears that the Mac was about to collide with iOS in some kind of crazy peanut butter-chocolate disaster have not been borne out. It’s a forward-thinking design that looks better on Retina displays, pointing the way toward a high-resolution future for Mac users.
⌘ ⇢
Tom Chatfield:
Graphical use interfaces had existed before, but they had never commanded a general affection to match the eagerness of early adopters. Much like a good map, Kare’s designs helped transform this by providing something beyond information: a human elegance echoing the Mac’s intuitive philosophy of design.
The Willys-Overland Jeep ⇢
Be still, my heart.
On the Past, Present and Future of Apple’s Aqua User Interface
Building a new operating system is a monumental challenge, and in January 2000 when Aqua was introduced, Apple was in the thick of the transition to OS X.
Beyond the staggering amount of development work taking place to smash Mac OS and NeXTSTEP together, Apple was hard at work on the user interface of OS X. But to understand what OS X would become (and how it would look), it’s important to remember where the company had been before.