A stunning, yet surreal use of technology. I loved this video when it came out in 2005, and it was great to see it again.
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C4 Conference Canceled
C4 was billed as a Mac indie conference, but at its core C4 was a computer science conference.
I believed the best way to move software forward was to inform Apple programmers about better ways to build software — to infect the best top-downer minds with fertile discontent.
My hope was that developers would care primarily about user experience yet also be passionate about utilizing lingual and tooling advances.
Another Next-Gen iPhone Ripped Apart
The kids at Taoviet have really outdone themselves. From the looks of these images, the Vietnamese site has nabbed an honest to goodness 4th generation iPhone – a 16GB model to be exact. It’s clearly pre-production judging by the XXX placeholders on the backside stamp and likely lacks any OS other than a “Bonfire” test routine. Nevertheless, it looks authentic enough that we expect Apple’s henchmen to be busting down the guy’s door before he pries it open to reveal Apple’s chipset of choice.
Traveling With the iPad
While all of my thoughts contained in my iPad review still hold true, I’d like to expand that review in a very specific direction — what traveling with an iPad is like.
Since buying an iPad on launch day, I’ve used it at home and at work, but not many places in-between. In those environments, the iPad shines as a quick-and-easy way to handle email and other specific tasks in my workday.
MobileMe to be Free, Ad-Supported Service?
Boy Genius Report’s Michael Bettiol on MacDailyNews’ report that MobileMe may soon become a free service:
The question is: if MobileMe becomes free, will Apple dole out refunds to those who paid for the service within the past year, and will Apple generate revenue off the free service with iAds?
That is the question, without a doubt. This model would look a lot like Google’s — free syncing for calendar and contact information and email access, with ads served to members using the browser-based apps.
‘Stories Worth Telling’
Bob Sellers for the Huffington Post:
Yes, terrorism is a threat. But nobody died with the bomb that didn’t go off in Times Square. Twenty-three people lost their lives in the flood, and roughly twenty-thousand individuals so far have applied for federal aid to get them back on their feet. And while the oil leak in the gulf allowed cable networks to fill hours of programming by calling upon their usual political guests inside the Beltway to talk about the blessings and curses of drilling offshore, the reality is that the debate over drilling will not end with this spill — or the next.
Windows Phone 7 Inches Closer to Production
Paul Thurrott has posted some screen shots of a “near-final” version of Microsoft’s new mobile OS. It’s very clean and very simple. I like it.
[via Chairmen Gruber]
2012
Engadget’s lawyer-turned-blogger, Nilay Patel, on the AT&T iPhone exclusivity deal:
The term of Apple and AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity deal has long been a mystery – although USA Today reported a five-year arrangement when the original iPhone came out in 2007, that number has never been independently confirmed, and it’s been looking suspect in recent weeks as Verizon iPhone chatter has gotten louder. But we’ve been doing some digging and we can now confirm that Apple and AT&T entered into a five-year iPhone exclusive in 2007, based on court documents filed by Apple in California.
Jakob Nielsen on the iPad
The iPad etched-screen aesthetic does look good. No visual distractions or nerdy buttons. The penalty for this beauty is the re-emergence of a usability problem we haven’t seen since the mid-1990s: Users don’t know where they can click.
It’s a good read, but in the real world, the device is a breeze to use. I think the days of this type of thinking are limited.
iPad in Nine More Countries May 28
Apple today announced that iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK on Friday, May 28. Customers can pre-order all iPad models from Apple’s online store in all nine countries beginning on Monday, May 10. In the US, Apple has already sold over one million iPads and customers have downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store, as well as over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.
How Apple Could Look Less Evil
Brian Chen at Wired has some advice for Apple, and he doesn’t pull any punches.
Google’s New Design
Jon Wiley, Senior User Experience Designer at Google, on the search giant’s revamped design:
During our process we focused on people’s rising expectations for search. As the web has evolved over the past decade, people have been typing more sophisticated searches and seeking out specialized search tools to match. To keep pace with rapid change online, we have teams of engineers working across Google to develop new ways to present and refine search results. Our central challenge with our latest redesign was to figure out how to squeeze all these tools and technologies into a single page.