iTunes reinvented music. Pixar, now part of Disney, elevated animated films. The iPhone changed telecom. And the new iPad has other computer makers scrambling to respond. Rocking one industry could be luck, but upending four? That’s smart.
He is a visionary, a micromanager, and a showman who creates such anticipation around new products that their releases are veritable holidays.
Jonathan Ive got named “Smartest Designer” this year. Both awards are well-deserved.
Arnold Kim, on a leaked Apple-branded screen that has been making the rounds this morning:
We’re not sure what to make of it. The screen isn’t the right proportion to be used in the current iPod nano, though Apple could change the design. We’re also taking their word on it that it’s even a touch screen.
I’m not sure a touch-based iPod nano makes much sense, especially if Apple is going to continue to push it to runners using Nike+.
If you haven’t read this, you should. For parents of terminally ill children (like Merri and I), this is simply amazing.
Chris Foresman at Ars Technica, on the new MobileMe Calendar beta program announced today:
The current Calendar looks very similar to iCal on Mac OS X. The new Calendar Web app gains new views for month, week, and day, as well as a handy list view. These seem to map very closely to the Calendar UI on the iPad. Along with the UI changes, Apple is adding private calendar sharing with other MobileMe users, public sharing via CalDAV and a read-only Web view, and event invitations with RSVPs. Like the new Mail, Calendar will also gain performance improvements as well.
It’s interesting that both MobileMe Mail and now Calendar have been overhauled to match closely what is on the iPad. Clearly, Apple wants iPad owners to be comfortable with MobileMe’s web apps — and vice versa.
Like iLife before it, iOS is slowly proving to be Apple’s playground for new user interfaces. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mac OS X 10.7 had an iOS feel about it in certain areas — Snow Leopard’s interface just feels thin compared to the iPad and MobileMe.
Also interesting: this beta breaks compatibility with OS X versions previous to 10.6.4, Entourage and Outlook — the new system is powered by CalDAV.
Another brilliant Apple-related Onion piece.
LeBron James has made at least one decision, just not the one the basketball world had been waiting for.
The most sought after NBA free agent of 2010 has joined the social networking site Twitter under the moniker ‘kingjames’, his publicist Keith Estabrook confirmed with Reuters on Tuesday.
More than 84,000 people have signed up to follow James as speculation mounts as to where he will play next season, even though he has not yet made a single posting.
Good grief.
The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it. The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.
I think he’s on to something.
The original iPhone was great on day one. It couldn’t do as much as today’s iPhone, but it performed its feature-set extremely well. There were almost no rough edges or unpolished areas in its hardware or software, and nearly everything seemed justifiable, well conceived, and well executed.
Apple tends to do that a lot. It’s deeply ingrained in their culture, priorities, and product development practices. In brief, their philosophy seems to be to ship only what’s great and leave out the rest. That’s why, instead of having a bad copy-and-paste implementation for the iPhone’s first two years, we just didn’t have one at all.
Android as a platform, both in hardware and software, doesn’t reflect this. Nearly every hardware and software release has major shortcomings or rough edges. Many details and design decisions are lacking, wrong, or inexplicable.
As a Droid owner, I have to agree. While I like Android overall, anyone who would say it is as robust and as polished as iOS is just plain wrong.
Hyperspectral images of a draft of the Declaration of Independence reveal that it originally used the word ‘subjects’ instead of ‘citizens’ at a critical juncture. After writing “our fellow subjects,” author Thomas Jefferson scrubbed it out and replaced it with the familiar alternative.
In just three months on the market, Apple’s iPad has come to represent 0.17 percent of all Web browser traffic tracked by Net Applications. The iPad’s June total managed to exceed Android, which represented 0.14 percent of all Web browsing traffic.
Behind both of them was another iOS-powered device from Apple, the iPod touch. In June, the iPod touch took 0.12 percent of the Web browser share, according to Net Applications.
I think this is a statement on the size and capabilities of the iPad, not the number of devices on the market. I know I’d rather browse on my iPad than my Droid or an iPhone.
To get anywhere, a project inside Microsoft needs an executive sponsor, and for Pink, Allard had been that guy from day one. It was his baby. Of course, Allard was a visionary, an idea man; Lees – like most Microsoft execs – is a no-nonsense numbers guy, and to put it bluntly, he didn’t like that Pink existed. To quote our sources, Lees was “jealous,” and he was likely concerned that Kin was pulling mindshare (and presumably resources) from Windows Mobile’s roadmap. With enough pressure, Lees ended up getting his way; Pink fell under his charge and Allard was forced into the background.
Having Lees in control changed everything, if for no other reason than he didn’t care about the project at all. This was right around the time that Windows Phone 7 was rebooting, and Pink didn’t fit in his game plan; to him, it was little more than a contractual obligation to Verizon, a delivery deadline that needed to be met.
The Kin was a flawed concept from the start. With a severe lack of features that consumers expect to see on a device that sold as much as a regular smartphone and required a smartphone-like data plan, almost everyone — from reviewers to the teenage market that was supposed to buy them in droves — brushed the Kin off as a failed product,
In a company as bureaucratic as Microsoft, it’s not surprising such a shoddy device could be brought to market. Apple may be stretched thin sometimes, but they’d never have such a misguided, hobbled product on the market, let alone pull the plug on it two months later.