February 2012
1 post
January 2012
12 posts
“What really makes the iPhone work isn’t the hardware. Sure, the glass—designed...”
– Nicholas Thompson
At Least He's Honest
Alex Isenstadt writing for Politico:
Boehner dismissed Democratic claims that House control is up for grabs and argued that the once-in-a-decade redistricting process has made the GOP’s hold on the majority ironclad.
Redistricting “gives us a very strong foundation for the decade,” Boehner said.
“I think it will be nearly impossible” for Democrats to win back the House in November,...
xScope 3 Is Out →
Go buy it, loser.
2011 Was the Second-Worst Year for U.S. PC Sales... →
“Republican venality unintentionally reinforces the conservative argument that...”
– David Brooks, Where Are the Liberals?
Microsoft, Defying Image, Has a Design Gem in... →
Google TV on Lots of TVs at CES
From Electronista:
Google has removed the mystery from who its Google TV partners will be at CES with a full listing ahead of the show. Some using chips from Marvell and MediaTek, TVs from LG, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio will all run the Android-based TV OS. Vizio’s sets will be behind closed doors, but the rest should be public.
When Eric Schmidt said in early December that Google TV...
“Several things are worth noting here. The first is that, in today’s Republican...”
– George Packer
December 2011
20 posts
“People who say, ‘I’m not a computer person’ will be as disconnected from society as someone who says today,’I don’t know how to read.’”— Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror) December 31, 2011
“Nowadays, a candidate must believe not just some but all of the following...”
– American politics: The right Republican
“To the outside world, it has always been easier to mock North Korea’s craziness...”
– Unreality Check: From Kim to Kim in North Korea
The 15 Most Memorable Christopher Hitchens Quotes →
Newt Gingrich and the Rule of Law
Newt Gingrich commenting on his dislike of things he dislikes:
There’s “no reason the American people need to tolerate a judge that out of touch with American culture,” Gingrich said on CBS’ Face the Nation.
You mean like Brown v. Board of Education? Courts are required to uphold the rights of the minority as well as the majority.
And Gingrich recently has said judges should have to...
"So, What Phone Should I Buy?"
Normally I try to avoid reading, much less write about, the sloppy thinking and lazy writing that passes for “tech blogging” these days, but this muddled article trying to “answer” the question “which phone should I buy” was too much.
Now, if you’re my mom, this is the part where I’d say, “well, what do you want to be able to do with...
“Hitch lived so large, and so beyond the rules, that his mortality seems...”
– Jane Mayer on Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens, 1949 - 2011
From The New York Times’s review of Hitchens’s most recent book, Arguably:
Anyone who occasionally opens one of our more serious periodicals has learned that the byline of Christopher Hitchens is an opportunity to be delighted or maddened — possibly both — but in any case not to be missed. He is our intellectual omnivore, exhilarating and infuriating, if not in equal parts at...
“It looks like a human was involved in choosing what went where,” Marissa told...”
– Marissa Mayer addressing Google designers, as quoted in “In The Plex” by Steven Levy
I believe this because it so closely follows Apple’s visual design guidelines: cl.ly/CYHZ— Adam Spooner (@adamjspooner) December 13, 2011
I really want to know who believes this might actually be an authentic email from Apple?
Marshall Bock's Blog: iPhone 4S Template →
marshallbock:
Pretty much every decent iPhone app ever made also has a website extolling the virtues of the app and its features. And pretty much every one of those sites has one thing in common: an image of an iPhone, its screen displaying a shot of the app. It’s an incredibly common …
Power in Numbers - China Aims for High-Tech... →
“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets...”
– George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism
“Another Friday in the race for the Republican nomination: one wishes one could...”
– Amy Davidson
You Guys Are Millionaires Right? →
Some very true reflections on being an independent software developer.
The Lack of Innovation in Google's Latest Products
Google’s going into retailing:
Google Inc. is aiming to challenge the e-commerce supremacy of Amazon.com Inc. by diving deeper into the fast-growing world of Internet retailing.
The Web-search giant is in talks with major retailers and shippers about creating a service that would let consumers shop for goods online and receive their orders within a day for a low fee, said people...
“Try new things, all the time. Especially those that are a little outside your...”
– Dan Frommer, blogging about better blogging.
So many blogs confine themselves to simple prose and ignore the opportunity to integrate media of all kinds. Support for mixed media is one of the reasons I love Tumblr and have stuck with it for so long. Some people have one “real” blog...
“All that was lacking was background imagery of strip malls and the Kardashians...”
– The Guardian takers on the Grammy Nomination Concert, which I didn’t even know was a thing.
November 2011
7 posts
Marketing Conspiracy Theories
Seth Godin on the marketing of conspiracy theories:
People don’t embrace them because they’re true, they embrace them because they are more satisfying, they show agency and intent, and they provide a level of solace by implying external causes to significant events.
At the heart of the marketing of a conspiracy theory is that it must be non-falsifiable.
A key tenet of...
Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst... →
By a former Google Reader PM.
Google TV Cost Logitech "Dearly"
Logitech CEO Guerrino De Luca, as reported from hip new techno land The Verge:
De Luca suggested that Google TV was far from ready at launch, going so far as to call it “beta” software on one presentation slide, and that the company made a massive misstep by believing that it would revolutionize television right out of the gate.
It’s fascinating to me that anyone would think...
A Primer on Bezier Curves →
Don't Give Your Users Shit Work
Brilliant essay by Zach Holman:
Some people still like shit work. They can spend an hour moving Twitter accounts to special Lists, and then at the end of it look back and say “Boy, I spent an hour doing this. I really accomplished a lot today!” You didn’t. You did shit work.
October 2011
28 posts
Jonathan Ive on Steve Jobs
My favorite speech from Apple’s “Celebrating Steve” event last week was given by Jonathan Ive. He used personal stories to illustrate the qualities that made Jobs special, and he clearly spoke with emotion about the loss of his self-described best friend.
His remarks about the fragility of ideas were particularly good:
Hey Jony, here’s a dopey idea.”
And...
Some People Will Just Never Agree
About two months ago, The New Yorker published an article surveying the latest crop of books foretelling American decline. (This isn’t a post about American decline.)
One section regarding people and their beliefs stood out to me:
The reason we don’t have beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains is not that we have inadvertently stumbled upon stumbling blocks;...
Some industry watchers suggested Apple should... →
Because “industry watchers” have such a great track record of being on the money when it comes to giving Apple advice on how to be successful. “Industry watchers” would have Apple still in the clone business, in the netbook business, and never in the retail store business.
Bringing someone from outside the company into a chairman role is one of the worst possible ideas....
High Order Blog: Appropriate Use of C Macros for... →
A post I wrote on the High Order Bit blog to help other developers avoid the many subtle and nasty problems that can be introduced by overly liberal use of C macros.
Secrets of the Little Blue Box →
“The 1971 article about phone hacking that inspired Steve Jobs.”
Dieter Rams: Ten Principles for Good Design →
8 tags
Steve Jobs at His Last Keynote
A picture I took at WWDC11 earlier this year.