512 Pixels

While I’m very happy with Typekit, this collection isn’t too shabby.

Former Shake product designer Ron Brinkmann:

And back then the same questions were being asked as now – “Doesn’t Apple care about the professional market?”

In a word, no. Not really. Not enough to focus on it as a primary business.

[…]

So if you’re really a professional you shouldn’t want to be reliant on software from a company like Apple. Because your heart will be broken. Because they’re not reliant on you. Use Apple’s tools to take you as far as they can – they’re an incredible bargain in terms of price-performance. But once you’re ready to move up to the next level, find yourself a software provider whose life-blood flows only as long as they keep their professional customers happy. It only makes sense.

I think Brinkman is exactly right. When Apple depended on the pro video editing and print design markets, it catered to them. The same thing was true for the educational sector. But now, with millions of consumers gobbling up its products, Apple’s allegiances have shifted. Look no further than products like Final Cut Pro X and OS X Lion if you don’t think this is true.

As someone who has been a fan of the company for a long time, this makes me more than a little sad. Hell, it makes me a little angry. But on paper, it make sense.

But my heart is still hurting.

[via Mac Rumors]

Josh Ong, on the designer of the original Mac and his work at Google:

Hertzfeld admitted to having taken a risk with the design.“It wasn’t a given that anyone would like what I was doing, but they did,” he said.

“I’ve heard in the past that Larry Page he didn’t like animations but that didn’t stop me from putting in a lot of animations in, and Larry told me he loves it,” he continued. “Maybe Apple’s resurgence had a little bit to do with it."

Steven Levy:

Google still wants to organize the world’s information. But this time, it’s personal.

Yet another social media network I won’t be joining. Except that maybe I can’t ignore it as much as I want to:

Another twist is that people in your circles don’t have to be members of Google’s social net. If Aunt Mary refuses to opt in, you can include her anyway, and she can still get the pictures you post to the circle via e-mail.

For months, I believed that Apple’s next iPhone was going to be a 3GS-type update. That is, an update to the internals of the phone, but with the same external case.

This sort of update just made sense to me for a long time. The iPhone 4 was a huge step forward from the previous models, and I couldn’t see Apple moving away from it after a single generation. The iPhone 4 is simply beautiful.

But the iPhone 4 is aging. By the rumored September update, it will be 15 months old. In the mobile industry, that’s a lifetime.

If Apple releases a 3GS-type update, I think many consumers will look at it and wonder why they should update to something that looks like the phone they already have.

I think this wasn’t as big of an issue with the iPhone 3GS as it could be with a new iPhone this year. For one, the 3GS packed not only better speed, but a much better camera that included tap-to-focus and video recording capabilities. There’s not much that I can imagine Apple could stuff into the next iPhone that would get people super excited without changing the exterior.

Then, of course, there’s the Antennagate thing. While the iPhone 4’s issues seem to have been mostly forgotten (or overblown to start with), shipping another phone with the same external antenna could bring all of that bad press back into the light. Which is something Apple more than likely wants to avoid.

Even if Apple doesn’t redesign the next iPhone, it will still sell like hotcakes. But I think the market is ready for some shiny new hardware from Apple.

CNN:

Google fielded 8,888 requests from the United States government last year asking for information on people using its services, the company wrote in a report on Monday. The total number is likely higher because the Google statistics only cover criminal investigations.

Paul Boutin at NYT:

Mobile phones that run Google’s Android operating system come in various shapes, sizes and features, unlike Apple’s iPhones. And while iPhone buyers are limited to AT&T and Verizon service, Android phones are also available from Sprint, T-Mobile and Boost Mobile, where a data plan can cost as little as $35 a month.

But despite the variety of Android phones, and of carriers, there are a lot of useful features common to all.

Wow, Android sounds great, with lots of carrier options and lots of cool features no one could ever find.

I’m gonna ahead and call this one as bull.

Prasad Naik:

But like I said, there can be only one right way to do it and more often than not, Apple is the one to get there first. They did it with the MacBook Pro, the iMac and even the iPhone. The iPhone 4 is perhaps the best looking phone ever manufactured. It’s not quite perfect, but there’s nothing better out there right now.

[…]

In the case of notifications in iOS 5, the reverse happened. Android had pretty much perfected the notification system. So if Apple had to create a perfect notifications system it was going to be difficult for them to not make it look like the one on Android. For their part, they actually went a step ahead and improved upon what was already an excellent notification system on Android. It’s not quite perfect yet, but if anyone does manage to do that, I believe it won’t look far too different from what Apple has done here.

My Apple Newton:

Here is a quick checklist of features that were available in NOS Version 1.0 followed by the date that they were subsequently released on iOS for iPhone as well as the approximate length of time between the initial release of iOS and the release date of the feature.

Genius.

Mike Shea:

For some unknown reason, I’m jonsing to try Omnifocus, the online GTD system of choice for Mac users. That said, my own Moleskine-based GTD system works just fine already. There are certainly advantages to the digital system including easy refactoring of projects and actions and delaying actions until you actually want them to show up in your path. It was these advantages that got me to drop the $80 for it.

Mike’s cases for OmniFocus and for a Moleskine-based system are great.

On the Omni Group Forums:

So, just as I chose twenty years ago to focus my attention on the tiny NeXT platform (which sold fewer systems in its entire history than Apple’s iPad sold in its first weekend), we’ve now chosen to focus our collective attention on what that platform has become — Apple’s Mac OS X, iPhone, and iPad platforms — platforms where we feel we can make our software the best it can be.

[via TBR]