Yes, please. I really like how Material design looks on Android, but it’s always been out of place on iOS.
Category: Design
The Safari 15 Fight Isn’t Over Yet
Apple’s constant reworking of Safari 15 this summer has been one of the most interesting software stories to come out of the company in a long time. It’s not very often that we see Apple rework something so thoroughly in public.
I’m a fan of the changes Apple has made to Safari 15 so far. The iPhone version was a big mess, and the “compact” tab designed that debuted on the Mac and the iPad made little sense on devices with larger screens. As the time of this writing, we’re still in the beta cycle, but I suspect the options to move the iPhone’s browser UI to the top or bottom of the screen will ship, as will the ability to go back to the compact view on the iPad and Mac. Combined with the option to show color in the tab bar, it’s hard to believe these are all the same browser:
On the History of Tabs and the Rise of Electron ⇢
Francisco Tolmasky has written a fascinating Twitter thread 1 about Apple’s UI frameworks and the rise of Electron all through the lens of tabbed interfaces.
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That’s what the young people call “blog posts.” ↩︎
macOS Monterey Hints at new iWork Icons ⇢
This could be the best change in Monterey; the current iWork icons are a travesty:
The BMW CE 04
I love how this new electric scooter looks, even if its press release is really weird.
Corporate Memphis ⇢
Josh Gabert-Doyon, writing at Wired:
Why does every advert look the same?
The illustration style is flat, geometric, figurative, and usually made up of solid colours. Nondescript figures are plastered across train stations and bus stops, from fintech company MoneyFarm, to Trainline, to the Viagra delivery service GetEddie. Even Transport for London’s own branding, with a special place in the history of Modernist graphic design, has started to replicate the style.
Colorful iMacs May Return ⇢
As the Tuesday event approaches, there are increasing rumors of the release of colorful iMacs. 9to5 Mac collects all of the rumors nicely.
I, for one, would love to see Apple add some more whimsey to their products, and colorful iMacs would be an excellent start. (If I were in charge, I’d also bring back the rainbow logo on at least some products.)
Bruce Blackburn, Designer of NASA’s Worm Logo and the American Revolution Bicentennial Star, Has Died ⇢
Alex Vadukul, writing at The New York Times:
In 1974, his small New York-based design firm, Danne & Blackburn, was barely a year old and eager for a big project when he and his partner, Richard Danne, were approached by the Federal Graphics Improvement Program to rebrand NASA’s classic logo, which depicted a patriotic red chevron soaring across the stars. Known as “the meatball,” it wasn’t exactly cutting edge, instead evoking a vintage sensibility of space travel seen in science-fiction comics like Buck Rogers. With the eyes of the world suddenly upon the agency in 1969 after the moon landing, NASA wanted to embrace a modern image.
Macs, But Not ⇢
I love this, but it makes me feel weird inside, too.
On iPhone Notch Sizes
No spoilers, but on yesterday’s episode of Connected, we had to contend with how big the iPhone’s notch is, and how it may have changed sizes over the years since the introduction of Face ID in 2017.
Just looking at a pile of iPhones isn’t that helpful when trying to investigate such minutiae. What you need is detailed documentation.
Thankfully, Apple provides just that, in the form of a document named “Accessory Design Guidelines for Apple Devices,” which is freely available on Apple’s developer website.
Mac OS 9 Wallpapers in 5K Resolution
To go with my 5K renders of default Mac OS X macOS wallpapers, I’ve reworked Mac OS 9’s wallpapers. Some of them are wild:
I pulled the originals out of an OS 9 installer then used Pixelmator Pro’s ML Super Resolution tool, running on a new M1 MacBook Air … which gave my 2019 Mac Pro a run for its money rendering these.
A Visual Tour of macOS Big Sur ⇢
macOS Big Sur is here. As always, you should give it a little while before upgrading to it in a production environment, but in the mean time, check out its entry in my macOS Screenshot Library.