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.
A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.
Ever since I got my hands on the new iPod touch, I have been in love with multi-touch technology. If you are like me and enjoy touch screen technology, and have an extra $100k in your pocket (unlike me), you can pick one of these babies up at Neiman Marcus.
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.”
Hej Du! This post is for Grizz, who seems to repeatedly lose the email message that contains his favorite video… I wonder what my grandkids will be teaching me someday?
…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.
Microsoft looks to have made a huge step forward in Graphical User Interfaces and how we interact with computers by announcing it’s new “Surface” hardware/software.
Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content.
With Surface, we can actually grab data with our hands, and move information between objects with natural gestures and touch.
Surface features a 30-inch tabletop display whose unique abilities allow for several people to work independently or simultaneously. All with out using a mouse or a keyboard.
The first surface products are not scheduled to arrive until Winter 07, so we’ll have to wait and see if this new user interface can live up to it’s promises.
