According to this Gizmodo post, Dieter Rams’ (a designer for Braun in the 50’s and 60’s) work can be seen influencing the designs of one of the most currently prominent industrial designers, Apple’s Jonathan Ive.
Don’t be everything to everyone. This is important to remember for people, businesses and in this case, software. Have an opinion. Be loved and hated. Be a strong brand.
This interview/discussion between Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal: Technology) and Jason Fried (37signals) covers a lot of good points. And many of them apply to much more than software development. It is worth watching even if you couldn’t care less about software.
A few takeaways:
It is good to say no. Helps keep your idea/product/business simple.
WWSJD - What Would Steve Jobs Do? Probably say no. This had helped lead to Apple’s success.
A company should have an opinion.
Being hated & loved is better than being (UMA) universally moderately appealing (I just created a new acronym).
Consider your customer’s experience first. Open source projects often fail, in the consumer market, because the customer experience is not considered first. Open source software is built from the code out, instead of the interface in.
As a Mac user, Carbon Copy Cloner is my backup software of choice. Mike Bombich’s CCC software looks to have just gotten an upgrade to 3.0.
CCC 3.0 features a new interface designed to make the cloning and backup procedure more intuitive and more responsive. Users have better control over what gets backed up, and are provided with detailed information about the progress of their backup. In addition to general backup, CCC can also clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. CCC’s block-level copy offers the absolute best fidelity in the industry!
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0 requires Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later.
“Early adopters always pay a premium. “Early adopters” being a business term meaning dipsh*ts who stand in line for 6 hours…for a freaking phone. It’s not a price cut, it’s a repeal on the nerd tax.”
“If you didn’t have to be the first on your block to have the latest gizmo, you would now have an extra $200 to spend on your imaginary girlfriend.”
…and for all others not willing to be chained to AT&T in order to use the Apple iPhone.
On the downside, why does the iPod touch not include Mail.app or Google Maps, as the iPhone does? It would also be great to see the 16GB of flash memory boosted to 32GB soon.
Oh, and the other small thing that is missing from the “Vermonter’s iPhone”? The phone.
From a company often praised for it’s intuitive graphical user interfaces (or “guituitivity“) comes a good example of a bad user interface. The iTunes “Clean” and “Explicit” tabs are backwards and inconsistent with the rest of the GUI (and the metaphor of Tabbed documents).
To me, the tabs above show that we are currently on the Explicit version, not the Clean. Why would the darker inset “Clean” image apply to the light colored pane we are currently viewing? I have been tripped up by this several times.
From Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines:
Take advantage of people’s knowledge of the world by using metaphors to convey concepts and features of your application. Metaphors are the building blocks in the user’s mental model of a task. Use metaphors that represent concrete, familiar ideas, and make the metaphors obvious, so that users can apply a set of expectations to the computer environment.
Tabs, in the real world, are visually linked to the document you are viewing.
Although, The iTunes design team seemed to get it right on the front page:
Here the lighter tab is connected to the lighter pane below, as it should be. The darker tabs, when clicked, pull other pane’s to the front.
In science, absolute proof of a theory is considered impossible to achieve (you know like global warming…and gravity), but I think we have proved my theory that people in this world are absolutely, without a doubt, weird.
As if we needed proof, here he is in all his glory, the professional line-sitter, Greg Packer. Already well-known for his desire to be first in line, Greg starting sitting in front of the 5th Avenue NYC Apple Store this past Monday at 5 AM, waiting for tomorrow’s release of the much-anticipated iPhone. Does he care that much about the iPhone? Not at all (see video below). So what does this guy love so much about always being the first in line? Maybe he was always last in the lunch line in school, or maybe he makes a bundle selling Wii’s and signed Brandy posters on eBay…who knows.
Regardless of how weird he may be, I still find myself envious that he will have an iPhone and I (living in wonderful Vermont) will not.
“Leopard is shipping in October. Basic version, $129. Premium version, $129. Business version, $129, Enterprise version $129. Ultimate version, $129. It’s all the same… most people are going to buy the ultimate version.”
