Month: October 2011

Thoughts and Observations Regarding This Week’s iPhone 4S Event ⇥

An excellent writeup from John Gruber, of course. His observation regarding the October 12 rollout:

This coming Wednesday, 12 October, is going to be one of the biggest software release days in Apple’s history. Probably the biggest.

Three application updates, two new apps, one major OS update, a minor of the same and an all-new cloud storage and syncing system, all launching to the public in a single day.

There are some more truly excellent observations throughout regarding Apple’s retail stores, the final departure of Jobs, and the iPhone 4S itself.

Candids ⇥

Mike Matas has a small collection of candid photos Jobs took of himself testing the then-unreleased Photo Booth application.

Steve Jobs and I ⇥

Louie Mantia:

In April 2010, I joined the iTunes team and was tasked with creating the next iTunes icon. I wasn’t the only one working on it, but after many icons were presented, Steve Jobs chose one of mine.

Great little story.

Remembering Steve Jobs

I gathered a few of my favourite quotes recognising the passing of Steve Jobs. I would like to share them with you.

From designers and writers

There are no words for a day like today. I left work to people silently placing flowers outside 1 Infinite Loop. I could only hear cameras.

— Taylor Carrigan

Gutted. I’d so hoped that Steve had another comeback within him. His innovations have made my career possible, and I’m so grateful for that.

— Meagan Fisher

Steve Jobs did what he wanted to do, and left the world a better place. I can’t think of a better eulogy than that.

— Jonas Wisser

I am thankful for Steve’s life and what he accomplished. But I also remember that he was still just a man, like all of us. We continue by seeking to live with intention, by loving those around us, pursuing our dreams, trusting our gut, and remembering that life is fragile.

— Shawn Blanc

[T]ruth be told, I never gave up hope that Steve would beat this again. What a life.

— John Gruber

If you want to honor Steve, don’t mourn. Do your best work every day. Live your life to the fullest. Never settle. His spirit lives on.

— Sebastiaan de With

From public figures

We met Steve Jobs while he was at NeXT. I was awed by hearing his COMPUTER play a terrifyingly lifelike guitar recording. Bye, great mind.

— Teller

His death is our huge loss.

— Moby

Thanks for the tools, the inspiration, the possibilities… Miss you already Steve.

— Trent Reznor

Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

— Barack Obama

The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.

— Bill Gates

Steve ⇥

It doesn’t matter that we all knew this was coming sooner rather than later. This is a chilling day.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

Verizon (Re)Compresses JPGs ⇥

I did not know this until Louie Mantia pointed it out on Twitter. The weird thing is that this isn’t mentioned anywhere (aside from the very fine print of a Verizon contract, I presume). This isn’t mentioned on Apple’s site, nor Verizon’s site. It took a little bit of digging, but I found this nugget on Boy Genius Report:

We are implementing optimization and transcoding technologies in our network to transmit data files in a more efficient manner to allow available network capacity to benefit the greatest number of users.

This apparently began in February.

Google’s Management Doesn’t Use Google+ ⇥

Michael DeGusta:

Management caring deeply about their company’s products and using them every day is almost always a prerequisite of making great products. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg really does use Facebook all day. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo tweeted at least 30 times just yesterday. […] Eric Schmidt apparently couldn’t find time to even join Google+.

Eric Schmidt:

Our policy is we try things, we celebrate our failures

Schmidt is probably celebrating in private.

Coffee and Community ⇥

I link to Alex Beecher’s blog fairly frequently because he’s always posting terrific stuff. His latest piece concerns the loss of the traditional café culture over the last decade or so.

Siri Understands Accents ⇥

MG Siegler

Siri didn’t work for me when UK English was turned on. When I switched to US English, it worked perfectly.

This is very cool, except I prefer to keep my phone in British English. This is because iOS does not have an option for Canadian English, and it attempts to “correct” my spellings of colour, neighbour and centre when set to English. Therefore, I would either have to create keyboard shortcuts for every -or and -er word in English mode, or dictate to Siri with a (poor) British accent.

3.5 Inches ⇥

On the eve of a new iPhone, possibly with a rumoured larger screen, Dustin Curtis analyses the rationale behind Apple’s stubborn use of a 3.5 inch diagonal display.

Rumored iPod Classic, Shuffle Discontinuation ⇥

Marco Arment skewers the rumours of the demise of the bookends of the iPod lineup:

Most of these reasons for [the iPod classic’s] discontinuation have been true for years, and it’s still inexplicably here.

True enough. This is its tenth year, however, and I do believe this is the best year to say goodbye.