Month: February 2012

The New Vimeo ⇥

Nice redesign from the video sharing site that cares about what videos look like. Lots of great tweaks that help sort out the clutter, make things faster, and put the video in the spotlight.

The Critical Thought of Creativity

This is a refined version of a talk I gave on Friday afternoon to a group of high school students.

This is what I know, or rather, this is what I have learned.

From a very early age, I was imbued with the creative ethos. My dad handmade around half of the furniture in the house, designed exquisitely with references to Scandinavian ideas and De Stijl art. Surrounded by these pieces had an obvious effect on my aesthetic taste. It was obvious to me that these objects were not arbitrary shapes, but designed and crafted. I grew up in this designed environment.

I was also provided with technology from a relatively early age. We had dial-up internet, yes, but it was connected to a box running Windows 95, the most recent version. Yet these pieces still churning in my head could not prepare me for the next influence. It hit me with the power of Sugar Ray Leonard.

I sat in front of a Macintosh for the first time at twelve years of age. It was an iMac G4, the one with the impossibly-thin floating screen connected to a white domed base by a single, highly-polished arm. The design of the computer struck me, obviously. Its bright white body was in stark contrast to the foul beige boxes on either side of it. It grabbed me from a clearly aesthetic point, but its interface was what changed everything I knew.

It was painfully clear that the people who designed the OS X user interface did not do so out of pure style, but out of a pervasive sense of elegance through functional simplicity. The traffic lights-as-window controls were the first indication—it was perfectly obvious what each did. Everything I knew about design vanished in an instant, replaced by a realization that everything that is designed must be done so critically.

Design isn’t a creative endeavour, but a thought exercise with the bonus of visual reinforcement.

Enrolling in art school served to reinforce this idea in a most brutal way. Every part of a creation, whether it be an object or an essay, must be questioned and questioned again. These skills of critical thinking are not inherent, I do not think. They must be learned. Some learn them when they’re 13, and some when they’re 30—a few refuse to enlighten themselves, preferring to encase their head in dogma.

I managed to get a sense of aesthetics from a young age, and immersed myself in the ideas of Dieter Rams and Pininfarina. I learned Photoshop, HTML and CSS without taking a single class on the subjects. Auto-didacticism is a practical way to learn these skills. However, it’s almost always a necessity to attend a higher education institution to gain the mindset of a critical thinker. Moreover, the way in which to engage this level of thought is to take socially- or creativity-related classes. Make no mistake: this isn’t a dig at the sciences or a prod at math. They are worthy disciplines in their own right. However, the level of exploration and self-critique that is offered by the arts opens the mind a hair wider than you’d otherwise experience.

If you go to a post-secondary institution—I highly recommend you do—it’s worth taking a photography class, or a creative writing class. In my first year, I took a glass casting class. The skills I learned are almost certain to never be used again; I do not have a kiln in my basement. But the ideas expressed by everyone in that class, and the level of thought required for any of those projects are concepts that I can appreciate and apply on a daily basis. Your education is ongoing, and your time in a university should not be a means to a degree, to get a job, and then to retire. Life is not a countdown, but an adventure.

Do You Know Where Your Kids Are? Because I Do ⇥

Scott Hanselman got an odd message from a stranger through an iPhone app. Turns out it was a child, and he could see their precise location because they had enabled it on their end. I’m surprised kids have iPhones, but I’m not surprised parents aren’t more aware of the location services. As Hanselman says:

You’ve had the Drugs Talk, the Sex Talk, now have the Location Services Talk.

Apple Takes on the Galaxy Nexus, and by Association, Google ⇥

Florian Mueller notes that Apple is pulling out the big guns:

When companies like Apple assert patents against Android devices, some of the infringement contentions relate to features that reside at the level of extensions developed by OEMs. Google has sometimes refrained from implementing certain features in “stock Android” just to steer clear of infringement, knowing that some of those functionalities would be implemented by OEMs anyway.

In this case, stock Android itself is at issue. This means that Google cannot deny its undivided responsibility for any infringement findings.

As always, Mueller’s analysis is respectable and fine-grained. I find these patent wars ridiculous, to an extent, but Apple isn’t going to sit around and let everyone else sue them, either. Don’t write to me and let me know how Apple is the instigator, because I will mock you. These are battles that go many ways.

Also, you’ll note that they aren’t suing Windows Phone 7, or manufacturers of those products. Google had the opportunity to make Android something unique and interesting, but they blew it. Of course, they can differentiate Android now, but it’ll be by the force of the courts, not their own will.

Place Your Bets ⇥

The Macalope, succinct as ever:

Founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, who died months before the Samsung ads started airing, would likely have wanted to create some sort of counter attack. He was, after all, the chief architect of the Macintosh and the remarkable first ad promoting it.

“I have paid no attention to Apple since Steve Jobs’s return and will just assume it’s still 1984 for the sake of convenience.”

Sums up the “why didn’t Apple advertise during the Super Bowl?” line of thought.

Retro Design is Crippling Innovation ⇥

A very well-written take on skeuomorphism in used interfaces by Clive Thompson. I only take real issue with one sentence:

[Apple’s] iPhone app, Find My Friends, includes astonishingly ugly, faux stitched leather that wastes screen space.

A toolbar of any other texture uses the same amount of space. This seems like a weak argument driven by aesthetics but attributed to function. That said, his critique of iCal for Mac is sharp and accurate, yet he neglects to point out the even more egregious offences of Address Book.

Thompson’s thesis, though, is sound: skeuomorphs that are hard to shake are marring innovative progress.

Apple Stock’s Lofty Heights, in Context ⇥

With a market value of about $460 billion, Apple is worth more than Google, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, Ford, Starbucks and Boeing combined.

Comically absurd. Imagine if you went back ten years and told them that Apple would have the biggest swinging member on the planet. Nobody would believe you.

If 2 GB is Excessive, Why is AT&T Selling 3 GB Mobile Data Plans? ⇥

Kevin Fitchard:

But AT&T just overhauled its plan pricing. It’s newest mid-tier plan charges customers $30 for 3 GB. Why is AT&T inviting new customers to consume a full gigabyte more of data while telling older customers – who pay the exact same monthly fee – that 2 GB of data is excessive?

Via M.G. Siegler, who quips “great question”.

Sometimes I look at the phone carrier situation in Canada and compare it to the carriers in Europe and Japan, and it depresses me. Then I look at the carrier situation in the US and realise that it could be worse.

The Barista’s Curse ⇥

Jason Diamond, in an op-ed for The New York Times:

This is what disturbs me about these encounters: I realize that no matter where I go in life, how much money I make, or how much fun I have making it, I will always be a barista to somebody.

It’s tough to quit a reputation, especially when it’s one you absolutely need to leave behind.

Hipster CEO Also Apologizes ⇥

Hipster CEO Doug Ludlow:

It’s Hipster’s goal to provide a fun and beautiful service for our community to share where they are, and what they are doing – creating a safe environment for our users is of the utmost importance to us.  However, when we built our “Find Friends” feature for iOS, we clearly dropped the ball when it comes to protecting our users’ privacy.

That makes it two for two.

iOS Address Book Access Should Prompt the User for Permission ⇥

Marco Arment weighs in:

We can’t prevent services with poor judgment or low ethical standards from doing creepy things with the data once it’s sent to them. We can’t even realistically use App Review to only permit access to the Address Book fields (email, name, phone, etc.) that are justifiable for any given app to access, because there are too many gray areas.

But Apple can, and should, assure users that no app can read their contact data without their knowledge and explicit permission.

He practices what he preaches, too. Instapaper is very explicit and privacy-conscious about how it uses this data.

Stealing Your Address Book ⇥

Dustin Curtis:

Usually, when I am curious about something Apple has done, I try to understand the design thinking that went into the decision. In this case, I can’t think of a rational reason for why Apple has not placed any protections on Address Book in iOS.

Apple has been very clear about their stance on applications asking for specific user data. Steve Jobs himself noted that whenever an app requests location data, the API itself throws up a confirmation dialogue. It’s perplexing that there are no similar provisions in place whenever an app requests personal data.

Google Says It Won’t Support Fair Licensing in Open Standards ⇥

Daniel Eran Dilger:

In a distinct departure from the agreement voiced between Apple, Cisco and Microsoft regarding the need for fair, transparent, understandable and consistent licensing policy for open standards, Google has promised to continue to wage Motorola’s increasingly hostile patent wars.

I’m confused: I was told that Apple was the uncompromising, overly-litigious asshat.

Groupon Announces Fourth Quarter 2011 Results ⇥

Fourth quarter 2011 net loss attributable to common stockholders decreased by 89% to $42.7 million, or a loss of $0.08 per share, from a net loss attributable to stockholders of $378.6 million, or a loss of $1.08 per share, in fourth quarter 2010.

GRPN is down 15% in after-hours trading. Something still seems fishy with this company. Also, they’re still losing massive amounts of money, despite the “improvements” they cite:

Full year 2011 loss from operations was $203.4 million, compared with the loss from operations of $420.3 million in 2010.

Path Regains My Trust ⇥

Path CEO Dave Morin has clarified their privacy situation by updating the app, making the sharing of private data and optional feature, and deleting any saved data on Path’s servers. Good move.

Chrome Beta for Android Hands-On ⇥

Josh Topolsky puts his fingers all over Chrome for Android, and it looks pretty flaky based on the video. It is a beta, and it scores well on performance tests, but the UI responsiveness leaves a lot to be desired.