I speculated that Apple’s grouping of products to be updated in the autumn meant that they were opening up a gap in the spring for a new product of some kind. Horace Dediu, who is a lot smarter than I am, thinks Apple might be moving to a six-month update cycle for at least some of their major hardware products (I don’t think they’re going to be doing OS updates on a twice-annual basis yet). I didn’t think this made any sense until I got to his third reason:
Consumer anticipation. This year saw two quarters where sales were soft due to “product transitions” as awareness among the mass market of new product rumors caused growth to dry up. Too many potential buyers are now conditioned to wait for fall to buy iPhones thus sapping demand for half the year. Apple ends up with an inability to meet demand for half the year and a sales lull for the other half. Clearly this is suboptimal.
Remember how many people felt burned by the fourth-generation iPad update? If Apple does move to this fast update cycle, expect a lot of people to bemoan it. It’s better for Apple, though, and will be better for consumers as a whole, as these products will be fresher (though they will also “rot” quicker).
Jean-Louis Gassée says much the same as I did, only he explains it in fuller terms than I did. Smart piece.
Michael Lopp takes us inside his editing process to get photos up on Instagram. There are some good tips here if you want to emulate his high-contrast style, but his best piece of advice is this:
A good picture tells a complete story. There is a beginning, a middle and an end. Unlike an actual written story, the words are captured in objects, color, light and arrangement. But the combination of each of these aspects is only half the story. The other half is provided by the viewer. It’s the story they tell themselves as they process the image in a way that is entirely unique to them.
Absolutely.
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll have noticed that, more than having a specific aesthetic, I try to tell a short story in each photo. It’s not always (read: usually) successful, but whether it’s a lovely autumn day, a rainy wintry day, or an oppressive interior, there’s something there that I like. That’s really important: being intrigued by the scene yourself, and trying to impart that sense to your viewer.
Since Lopp shared his software of choice, I figure I should; in the spirit of open-ness, and all. I usually shoot with the standard camera, and import into one of Snapseed, Afterglow, or PictureShow (that last one can be a bit of a pain sometimes). I aim for a lower-contrast look, with a certain depth to the tonal quality. Once I’m finished bouncing the photo between those apps, I finish it up in VSCOcam.
By the way, the above are affiliate links. I’m recommending the apps genuinely (they’re all good), but I do get a small kickback if you buy one of them.
Speaking of the new iMacs, Marco Arment thinks Apple’s cheating:
Take a look around Apple’s iMac pages — how long does it take you to find a picture that shows the thick bulge in the back accurately? Nearly every photo of it is from a misleading MySpace perspective. That’s the sort of trick that Apple doesn’t usually need to pull.
I disagree. This is the same bit of clever design that is used to make the MacBook Air look thinner. While there are a few more photos of the Air from a planar side view1, most of the photos are from a raised camera perspective. The Air feels much thinner in person, even if it’s hiding a bulge. Similarly, the new iMac almost always appears as razor thin as it is in the photos, even if it isn’t.
Take a look at just about any hands-on photos: the new iMac needs to be rotated to such an oblique angle to even begin to see that bulge. For well over 80% of a horizontal rotation, it looks as razor thin as the edge. Why destroy the illusion?
Chris Armstrong:
Putting form over function in a desktop computer initially sounds nuts: why would the thinness matter if performance suffers? There’s plenty of space on a desk, and desks don’t complain about weight.
I’d argue that the move, although unfortunate for some users, was the right thing to do. This becomes clearer after examining the 21” iMac’s bigger sibling, the 27” model.
Armstrong argues that had Apple given the 21″ model a 3.5″ hard drive like the 27″ model instead of a 2.5″ hard drive, the smaller iMac would have looked like the big one’s ugly sibling. While that’s true, the end result is that the 21″ isn’t as good as the 27″ model — even though it looks better, it performs worse than it would have.
But what Armstrong curiously doesn’t argue is that these performance losses will likely go without notice for the vast majority of 21″ iMac customers. That is to say that the performance tradeoff is worth it for most people.
What is the advantage to Twitter by adding photo filters to their app? It must increase mindshare, but who will stop using Instagram in favour of this? Most importantly: how will this help generate revenue for Twitter?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: making any assumptions about Apple’s future based on their past is an easy way to be wrong. With that caveat in mind, let’s do exactly that.
Astute observers of Apple will know that they have announced products at four events every year since 2008:
- The spring event was once the iPhone software update preview for developers, which became the iPad refresh event,
- WWDC in June affords Apple the opportunity to launch new Macs, updates to iOS and OS X, and was once the iPhone update event,
- A launch in September of new iPods, iTunes updates, and now the iPhone, and
- An event in October for new Macs, and now iPad updates
Since new iPads arrived this October, the spring event might be depreciated (or might have a new function). If you’re this astute, you’ll probably also know that Apple has an optional January event, which used to be Macworld. They’ve used events in that month to launch some important new products: in 2007, the iPhone; in 2008, the MacBook Air1; and in 2010, the iPad.2
As of right now, riding on the (admittedly dubious) assumption that the products Apple introduced since June won’t be updated until next June, what does that mean for 2013? There’s no way Apple is going to go for nearly two full quarters without releasing a single new product. It seems clear to me that they’re making way for a new product introduction in the first third of the year, and the question now is what that product will be.
In his interview with Brian Williams, Tim Cook noted that television is an area of “intense interest”, the same phrase he used at D10 earlier this year. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple is tooling up to build their own set, but it does mean that they’re looking at ways to improve the living room experience. They tried it with Front Row, and tried it with the Apple TV. The latter is becoming more successful, but it’s still a “hobby”.
As something that might be released shortly after the holidays — the time of year when people upgrade their televisions en masse — I don’t think Apple is going to stop selling a tiny box for an existing set. That market has too much potential for them to leave it. If Apple can get a small slice of the television set market, that’s good for them. But if they can have that slice and sell something to the rest of the market? That’s golden.3
I’m not sure this is the product for the first third of 2013. But I do think there’s something big coming up, and that January is going to be a huge month for Apple.
I speculated that the new iMacs were what Tim Cook was referring to, but I think I’m wrong. He clearly said that this was more than assembly. Alexander Hoffmann thinks that updated Mac Pros are the model that will be built in the US, and his reasoning is sound.
Craig Hockenberry explains what makes him king of the back end, if you know what he means. Fascinating look at the development process.
I’ve been using Twitterrific 5 for the past day as my main Twitter client and I think my initial assessment is still pretty close to how I feel about it: 80% of the time, it’s wonderful. 20% of the time, it’s maddening.
Federico Viticci has reviewed a new app for iOS called Party Monster. It’s essentially a music queuing and playlist creation app, and it’s pretty decent. But that’s not why I’m linking to it. This is the reason:
One more thing: Party Monster has a setting to refuse playing Nickelback. If you add a Nickelback song to the Library, not only will it be grayed out, upon tapping Party Monster will also pop up a dialog saying you chose to exclude Nickelback.
On the one hand, this is absolutely one of the best innovations of 2012. On the other, why do you have Nickelback in your library to begin with?
Businessweek has a decent interview with Tim Cook. He comments on the whole gamut of issues facing Apple right now, but this stuck out:
And next year we are going to bring some production to the U.S. on the Mac. We’ve been working on this for a long time, and we were getting closer to it. It will happen in 2013. We’re really proud of it. We could have quickly maybe done just assembly, but it’s broader because we wanted to do something more substantial. So we’ll literally invest over $100 million. This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people, and we’ll be investing our money.
Fascinating. That explains the new iMacs.
Shawn Wilkins reviews the newest version of the oldest Twitter client for the iPhone:
You now have full control over how you want to display your tweets, gaining the ability to fine-tune every aspect of it. You’re allowed to choose the font, the line spacing in tweets, and the size of avatars. You’re even given the opportunity to change brightness from within the app itself if you find yourself squinting from the backlight. There is an array of customizable features in this version of Twitterrific, and you have 100% control over all of it.
I really like a lot of what the Iconfactory has done for Twitterrific 5, but I dislike this many customization options. It’s a strange blend of simplicity and complexity: there’s no way to block a user or report them for spam, but I can dick around with the timeline’s leading all I want. Likewise, there’s no linking to Favstar or other third-party services (save for the venerable Instapaper and Pocket), but avatars can be resized to seven different sizes, or they can be turned off entirely.
There’s a lot to like about the app, though. Twitterrific 5 now includes the ubiquitous pull to refresh gesture, with what is simply the best animation of any implementation ever of that feature. There are a few new UI sounds, all of which are delightful, and it’s a generally well-designed app.
Unfortunately, there are some notable missing features. Despite the option to choose a video when composing a new tweet, uploading them doesn’t appear to be supported. The video compresses but, as Twitter doesn’t have a video service (yet?), it never uploads. There are also no push notifications.
Twitterrific 5 isn’t a free update for current Twitterrific owners, but that’s okay — right now, it’s just $2.99. If you want a simple Twitter client, it’s a good pick. If you like some of the power options that Tweetbot has, you probably won’t enjoy this update to Twitterrific.
Farhad Manjoo of Slate:
American Giant has found a loophole in the process. The loophole allows Winthrop to spend a lot more time and money producing his clothes than his competitors do. Among other things, he was able to hire a former industrial designer from Apple to rethink every aspect of the sweatshirt, from the way the fabric is woven to the color of the drawstrings around your neck. The particular loophole that Winthrop has found also explains why he wanted to chat with a technology reporter: It’s called the Internet.
American Giant’s clothing looks like a resurgence of manufacturing quality at affordable prices. I don’t usually wear hoodies in public any more (I dress like a grownup these days), but their mock neck sweatshirt looks right up my street.
Unfortunately, this is yet another great thing not available in Canada (at least, not officially). I’ve emailed their customer service department and I’ll update this as soon as I know more.
Update: American Giant tells me that they’re working to offer international billing and shipping options.
Betsy Mason of Wired:
Planned cities are laid out all at once and built from scratch. They are designed with a purpose in mind: to optimize traffic flow, or to maximize access to green space or to keep everyone in their proper place. They are born from many different inspirations.
These cities are strangely beautiful from space, though there are very few that I’d like to live in. A city planned from above rarely results in a great experience at street level.
Design is how it works, not how it looks. Gmail 2.0 is still designed poorly.
Wii Woes
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ignorethecode.net
Lukas Mathis on the Wii-to-Wii U upgrade experience:
At this point, all of my stuff had been deleted from the Wii, but the Wii U had decided that it couldn’t read my SD card. Which meant that all of my games were in limbo, neither on my Wii, nor on my Wii U. I was starting to come to terms with the idea that Nintendo had effectively stolen my Wii games from me.
Mathis’ experience sounds like one of the better ones I’ve read. I can’t imagine what it would be like if this were any worse, which it has been for some.
Reddit user “Builderboy2005”:
In development for several years, I have finally released Portal for the Ti83/84 calculator! Written using the Axe parser, you can now play through 38 different test chambers, using Portals, cubes, buttons, and other elements from the valve game.
As someone who struggled with creating a basic TI-83 interpretation of “Snakes and Ladders“, this is incredible. I don’t have a graphing calculator kicking around, but you should download it and give it a whirl. It looks very impressive.
New favourite Tumblr (via Nilay Patel). The origin story:
We’re about generating clicks. You can do it too. Follow these simple steps: (a) take a design patent, (b) pretend its a utility patent, (c) rant about it, (3) profit. Declare the patent system hopelessly broken. Its easy.
Absolutely delightful.
Via Shawn Blanc comes Nicholas Coldicott’s visit to Irukaya, ostensibly the finest coffee in Tokyo. With rules like “no pictures” and “no talking to the owner”, it had better be:
On paper, the rules look forbidding, but the longer you spend in Irukaya, the more they make sense.
It’s not a place you go for a caffeine fix. It’s a sanctuary that happens to serve java.
Contrast this with Aisha Speirs’ critique of similar overbearing rules:
Instead of ostentatious barista performances, snobbish service and superfluous branding, small coffee shops should focus on what they are perfectly poised to offer: friendly, local service that will tempt even those with Starbucks loyalty cards.
I find myself agreeing with the intent of Speirs’ critique, even if I don’t agree with her praise of Starbucks (“there’s clearly something to be said for the company’s reliability”). Something that meets in the middle is ideal. The shops I frequent have superlative coffee, without so much pretence.
Graham Cluley for Sophos’ Naked Security blog:
If you were not logged into Tumblr when your browser visited the url, it would simply redirect you to the standard login page. However, if your computer was logged into Tumblr, it would result in the GNAA content being reblogged on your own Tumblr.
Very simple, and very clever. The hackers say they warned Tumblr weeks ago about this vulnerability.