512 Pixels

Memes to the rescue!

While most people think of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther or some drunken loser when they hear the term “brushed metal” in the context of UI design, the interface is far older than either of those two things.

Think back to the summer of 1999. People were canning fruits and vegetables in preparation of Y2K, Cher was on the radio everywhere, and people could walk around in denim vests without living in fear of being punched in the face.

1999 was a very interesting time to be an Apple fan. The Five Flavors were the machines of choice for many, and the Newton had been dead for little over a year. Mac OS 8.6 has just shipped, with OS 9 still several months away.

In these days, Apple released Brushed Metal in to the world. While eventually the UI would take over just about everything, its beginnings were quite humble: QuickTime 4.0.

From the technical perspective, QuickTime 4 seems basic now, but at the time, it was a nice little update. Here are the features added in the update:

• Graphics exporter components, which could write some of the same formats that the previously introduced importers could read. (GIF support was omitted, possibly because of the LZW patent.)
• Support for the QDesign Music 2 and MPEG–1 Layer 3 audio (MP3)
• QuickTime 4 was the first version to support streaming. It was accompanied by the release of the free QuickTime Streaming Server version 1.0.
• QuickTime 4 Player introduced brushed metal to the Macintosh user interface.
• Support for files larger than 2.0 GB in Mac OS 9.
• Variable bit rate (VBR) support for MPEG–1 Layer 3 (MP3) audio
• Support for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL)
• Introduction of AppleScript support in Mac OS

Additionally, QuickTime 4.1 dropped support for Motorola 68k Macintosh systems. Many users complained that the new application was slow, but with some fancy footwork, QuickTime 2.5 users could use all of the above features.

The feature that’s most remembered, of course, is its UI. Gone was the Platinum look that graced almost every single window in MacOS, replaced with a slick UI with embedded buttons, dials and more:

Image via Daily Apple Quiz

In hindsight, QuickTime 4 might be one of the best trojan horses Apple ever released. Everyone was so distracted by the new look, no one noticed when it crept in and killed everyone.

To be fair, mass murder was never Apple’s plan when it came to Brushed Metal. In its Human Interface Guidelines, Apple laid out its expectations when it came to Brushed Metal:

Windows have two distinct looks in Mac OS X. There is the standard default look of windows, as shown in the examples so far. There is also a brushed metal look available, shown in Figure 8–11. You can use a brushed metal window if your application:

• Provides an interface for a digital peripheral, such as a camera, or an interface for managing data shared with digital peripherals — iPhoto or iSync, for example
• Strives to re-create a familiar physical device — Calculator or DVD Player, for example
• Provides a source list to navigate information — for example, iTunes or the Finder

Don’t use the brushed metal look indiscriminately. Although it works well for some types of applications, some applications appear too heavy when using this look. For example, it works well for the iSync application window, but it does not work very well for the TextEdit document window.

Of course, over time, developers — and Apple itself — ignored the HIG and went crazy with the stuff. I mean, just look at this screenshot of Panther:

Over the coming months (years), I’ll be looking at the growth of Brushed Metal, as well as its eventual demise. It should be fun. Hopefully, we won’t re-popularize the look.

The best iPhone calendar app just got a lot better.

Jim Dalrymple:

The simple fact is, as parents, it’s up to us to monitor what our kids do with technology or any toy. If you choose not to use the included controls because they are a hassle, then that’s your choice. You made that decision.

This.

This week, Myke and I talk about his new secret night job, the new Iron Man 3 trailer, the loss of one family’s LEGO collection and Andy Ihnatko’s new phone.

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As someone with zero public bookmarks on the service, but almost 11,000 private ones, I’m excited.

Edgar Alvarez at Engadget:

Apple’s pricing its newly redesigned iMac starting at $1,099 instead of $999 – and that includes Intel’s 3.3GHz, dual-core i3 CPU alongside HD Graphics 4000, a 500GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM.

The educational machine is not as beefy as the i5-powered public-facing model, but I’m sure schools will appreciate the price break.

Unless they’re all buying iPads now.

My thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring the 512 Pixels RSS feed this week.

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Lee Hutchinson has a really cool, in-depth look at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, the 6.2 million gallon pool the agency uses to train astronauts for spacewalk missions.

John Siracusa, in 2005, for Ars Technica:

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the xMac. My xMac. The Mac that I want to buy. Reduced to one sentence, it’s a completely configurable, headless Mac that trades expandability for reduced size and cost.

The idea of the xMac is older than this article, as John explains, but it’s pretty simple: a Mac that trades some of the flexibility of the Mac Pro for a big reduction in price. A Mac mini-priced system with a few PCI Express 2.0 slots, a nice RAM ceiling would tickle the fancy of many Mac nerds who dislike the iMac’s severe lack of upgradability.

Turns out the dream didn’t just live in John’s heart. Here’s Dan Frakes at Macworld in 2006:

What I‘d like to see is a minitower design with—and this is just one possible configuration that would fulfill my wish—a reasonably powerful processor (perhaps a higher-end Core 2 Duo or a single Xeon); a good graphics card in an upgradeable slot; a decent amount of RAM and hard-drive space; a single free PCI Express slot; and room for one additional hard drive. The ability to swap out the optical drive would be a nice touch…And in my ongoing daydream, the MMMM would sell for a relatively reasonable $1499 to $1599.

While Dan’s name for this machine stinks compared to John’s, the idea is basically the same.

And the idea is still alive. Here’s Dan, writing just this week:

What if that Mac minitower isn’t just a new Mac Pro, but the new Mac Pro? It sounds crazy, but thanks to both technological advances and shifts in the pro market, Apple could conceivably offer a “pro” minitower and drop the full-size Mac Pro completely. I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on such a move, but for the first time, the technology is there—and Apple has a penchant for making bold, “We know better than you—trust us” moves.

Won’t high-end pro users abandon the Mac platform without a “true” Mac Pro? Some will, there’s no doubt. But many already have, arguing that it’s Apple that has been slowly abandoning the high-end market over the past half decade.

As a weird side effect of knowing a lot of nerds both in real life and on the Internet, I can tell you that most people don’t ever fill their Mac Pros with additional cards. Many, however, add tons of RAM and additional hard drives.

So, what if the xMac were just the Mac Pro that kept a high RAM ceiling, but cut back some of the other options. Does anyone need two optical drives? Besides rigs set up for audio recording, I’m not sure who has a machine full of PCI cards.

All of this, of course, is conjecture. While Tim Cook has made statements about the Mac Pro and 2013 in the past, nothing’s been announced yet. Will Apple ditch the Mac Pro in favor of a smaller, slightly less configurable machine? My gut says yes, that the next Mac Pro will be less configurable, but make up for it with Thunderbolt, all while retaining the ability to add several hard drives and lots of RAM.

I could get behind that.

The subhead to a story written by Austin Carr:

Six years and five iPhones later, Fast Company tracks down the recipient of Steve Jobs’s groundbreaking prank call, the first ever made from Apple’s original iPhone to the outside world.

James Dowd at The Commercial Appeal:

Beginning Monday, the price of Monday through Saturday single copy editions of The Commercial Appeal — found in racks and at retailers — increases to $1, but the change will not affect Sunday editions or subscription rates.

As part of the increase, a portion of every non-subscription copy sold will be deposited in The Commercial Appeal Children’s Fund, a newly established program to benefit nonprofit organizations dealing with children’s and women’s issues.

Memphis is a hurting city, and I’m all for just about any group working on the front lines on “children’s and women’s issues.”

So, let’s go check out The Commercial Appeal Children’s Fund. Here’s George H. Cogswell, president and publisher of The CA:

With the launch of the program in March of 2013, The Commercial Appeal donates five percent of every weekday newspaper sold at stores, racks and street hawker locations to a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve children.

Initially, organizations will receive funds based on two months’ of newspaper sales. In March and April, sales benefit LeBonheur Children’s Hospital. Other organizations will be named to receive funds for a two-month period.

Now, I’m sure over the course of two months, five percent of all daily, non-subscription sales is a reasonable amount of money, but as someone who loves Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital (and I’m sure all the other, not-yet-named groups), if I want to support them, I’d rather just write them a check or volunteer, and not launder my money through our local newspaper first, just to see one nickel of my dollar help someone in need. This could have been a great move for The CA, but it just feels like a way to move the conversation away from the paper’s price increase.