Mark Waid, author of Superman Birthright, gives his (somewhat spoiler-y) review of the new Man of Steel film. Given that the film just came out last night and most people haven't had time to see it yet, I'm opting not to blockquote anything Mark wrote.
Once you've seen the film though, head over there and read the review because it's very good. I don't entirely agree with Mark's vision for how Superman should be characterized throughout the canon, but I definitely feel where he's coming from.
Marco Arment on what the iOS redesign means for app developers, whether they're established or relatively unknown:
“This big of an opportunity doesn’t come often — we’re lucky to see one every 3–5 years. Anyone can march right into an established category with a huge advantage if they have the audacity to be exclusively modern.”
This is something I hadn't thought of during my post-WWDC analysis (but then again, I'm not a developer). I mean, I knew that devs would probably be forced to update their visual design to better blend in with Apple's own apps, but Marco's right that this gives many non-established players more of a fighting chance than before.
Now I'm even more excited to see what happens next.
Matt Gemmell's astute take on the design of iOS 7:
“iOS 7 is much, much lighter – in the colour sense, and consequently also in visual weight. Breathable whitespace is everywhere, and is used to unify and homogenise previously disparate interface styles.
The overall impression is of brightness and openness. The extent of the change (and its consistency of application) only becomes obvious when considered in aggregate.”
This is true, there is a certain lightness to iOS 7 that seems refreshing. Call me crazy, but I expect that in the coming years we'll all be describing Apple software this way, using terms like: refreshing, room to breathe, airy, clarity, calmness, fluid, and so on.
Seems pretty Zen, doesn't it?
Yep, it’s true. Marco has sold yet another of his popular projects, The Magazine, but rather than going with a 3rd party, he sold it straight to its executive editor, Glenn Fleishman.
Glenn, who is rumored to possess olympian-level tweeting abilities[1] and is a past Jeopardy champion, has done excellent work in his role as editor of The Magazine[2] and I have no doubt he will do equally well in the role of CEO.
My congrats go out to Marco and Glenn, and I look forward to what they each have in the pipeline.
Neven Mrgan looks at the photo-upload dialogs found within many iOS apps, and calls for a little uniformity between them:
“Does it matter if apps are consistent on matters of this sort? Decades of UI theory seems to indicate so. Having the same button say the same thing in all situations means the user has to do less parsing of the text, and can simply rely on quick-glance recognition.”
Like Neven, I've been bothered by these kinds of dialogs for a long time.
The problem is that so many apps use different wordings for these options, and in different orders from one another, that I can't always parse them immediately the way I should be able to. If I don't double-check the list, it sometimes ends with me accidentally tapping the wrong option.
Obviously the problem is avoided if I take an extra second or two to verify which option I'm selecting, but when you're having to do this all the time between all the various apps that allow photo uploads, those seconds really start to add up. It would benefit everyone if there were a standard button layout apps would adhere to.
Go read the rest of Neven's post to see his suggestions for other developers on this matter. I agree with every one.
Jason Martin, technical director at Ars Technica:
“I spent the rest of the day in a state of foggy confusion and realized that I may have developed a bona fide new phobia. As more thunderstorms rolled into the area last night, I gathered groggy children to the center-most area of the house and created a makeshift pillow raft to sleep on. I even woke a sleeping toddler; only a madman does this.”
This is precisely why I hate sleeping near windows when a major thunderstorm is going on at night. Freaks me out.
Marco Arment details what it was like to help Tumblr grow into what it is today, and puts the rumors about his newfound "riches" to rest:
“As for me, while I wasn’t a “founder” financially, David was generous with my employee stock options back in the day. I won’t make yacht-and-helicopter money from the acquisition, and I won’t be switching to dedicated day and night iPhones. But as long as I manage investments properly and don’t spend recklessly, Tumblr has given my family a strong safety net and given me the freedom to work on whatever I want. And that’s exactly what I plan to do.”
Great piece full of lovely behind-the-scenes photos. Go check it out.
Wow. Congratulations to the guys at Pixelmator, they truly deserve it.
This is a pretty big update, if you're an iPad owner. Now you can generate passwords right from within the browser (they're calling it "1Browser" now), just as if you were using the desktop app.
They've also added 'Go & Fill' bookmarks to the iPad version, which really streamlines the process of logging into websites, saving you from having to go back-and-forth between 1Browser and the Vault.
The iPhone will be receiving both of these awesome features in a later update, but for now you can still use the other new goodies: the ability to share encrypted logins (be very careful with this) and advanced search functionality.
If you want to get the update now, click here.
Using features in the new 2.2 version of Pixelmator, the guys over at Abduzeedo show how easy it is to create a pretty cool Superman poster. Between this and the recent Acorn 4 update, the barrier to entry for getting into graphic design is lower than ever, and I love it.
New Scientist has a fascinating report of an ex-con who suffered a stroke and woke up having a newfound artistic sensibility.
“I'll paint three or six or nine pictures at a time. I see those numbers in my head all the time. Canvases became too costly, so I started painting the ceilings and the wallpaper and the floor. I can't stop painting and sculpting. Give me a mountain and I'll turn it into a profile. If you give me a bare tree I'll change it, so when spring come all the leaves will create the face, the mouth, the lips. Without hurting the tree.”
The mind can be a mysterious and often wondrous thing.
(via @pourmecoffee, who you should be following if you're not already)
This is nuts, Alex Guyot managed to chain 25 automated actions together in Drafts 3.0:
“ Previously, the maximum amount of actions I (or anyone, as far as I know) have been able to chain together, was five. I didn't think this was enough for my stress test of new versions of Drafts, so I decided to try to chain more. My goal was not greater numbers for the sake of having greater numbers. I wanted to put together a chain that would fire off an action for every single service that Drafts is connected to, as well as chaining to a variety of apps which support x-callback-url.”
He posted a video of the process in action, so head over there and watch it. I'm duly impressed.
Federico Viticci lists many of the things I'd like to see in upcoming versions of iOS, and also several I hadn't even thought of. I'm especially on board with the idea of having more inter-app connectivity.
The Verge interviews the man behind Apple's iconic product images. The Apple stuff is interesting of course, but I particularly liked this part:
“What do you photograph for fun?”
“My kids! I know that sounds boring but it’s not. I’ve been taking a photograph of them everyday since they were born. This is a great outlet for me because it’s very different than my normal work. It’s something I can do and not worry what a client or anyone else thinks. Without that pressure I can take risks and experiment. I’m the dad that shows up to baseball games with a 400mm lens. I can hear my kids say to their friends, "It’s just what my dad does — ignore him.”
John Roderick reviews the latest Michael Bublé album from the perspective of someone who grew up listening to big-band music, and somehow weaves a Jennifer Anniston backstory into the mix:
“The arrangement is massive, full of stadium-filling electric guitars but brimming over with swirling orchestra too, like Journey teamed up with the Moody Blues. Jennifer Aniston is literally crying now, standing in her kitchen, a dropped milk carton splattered at her feet, all her fame and money no comfort to her in the absence of ever having found her true love.”
I've really been digging John's writings on music lately, particularly his other popular piece, Punk Rock is Bullshit.
Frasier Spiers looks at the history of iOS:
“Three times in my career, Apple has shipped software that conventional wisdom said basically couldn't be done. The first was the Carbon layer of Mac OS X: most of the Mac toolbox running on a preemptively multitasking, protected memory Unix kernel. The second was Rosetta: PowerPC apps running unmodified and, for the most part, perfectly well on Intel processors.
iOS was the third. Conventional wisdom said that you couldn't possibly get a desktop OS running on a phone. Conventional wisdom said that you couldn't get rid of a user-visible filesystem. Conventional wisdom said you couldn't require all software on the platform to come through a first-party app store.
Right now, just before WWDC 2013, I think it's important to take time to appreciate exactly what iOS has achieved.”
He presents some fantastic data points, then delves into items he believes iOS should improve on for power users. Highly recommended reading, so grab a cup of coffee and go check it out.
Iain Broome was nice enough to let me ramble a little about my writing setup on his blog. Go check it out and peruse his other work because there's great stuff to be found.
Chris Bowler:
“My confidence and trust in free services is at an all time low. [...] So in the arena of read-it-later services, I've been thinking about options where I would be considered the customer.
I realized that one company that I do trust, for whom I am the customer, offers such a service. But it's one I never gave any consideration since it launched, I suppose because I was already enjoying some other service at the time. This company is Apple and the tool is Reading List.”
Chris makes some excellent points in this piece. I will remain an avid Instapaper user for the foreseeable future, but if the service were to ever shut down, I would probably give Reading List a shot over something like Pocket.
I don't typically dabble in Apple rumors around here, but this one makes me very excited, with only a slight tinge of worry:
“According to multiple people who have either seen or have been briefed on the upcoming iOS 7, the operating system sports a redesigned user-interface that will be attractive to new iOS users, but potentially unsettling for those who are long-accustomed to the platform...”
Keith Hennessey, former advisor on economic policy to George W. Bush, explains to his Stanford students that GWB is actually quite an intelligent man despite the public caricature of him.
“President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard. He’s highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what we were presenting.
I use words like briefing and presentation to describe our policy meetings with him, but those are inaccurate. Every meeting was a dialogue, and you had to be ready at all times to be grilled by him and to defend both your analysis and your recommendation. That was scary.”
I'll be honest, my opinion of Bush's intelligence was likely shaped early on by the combination of his gaffes and his political choices, along with an assumption that he only got into office thanks to his father.
Then again, I was in 10th grade when 9/11 happened, and like other teenagers, I was much quicker to judge somebody's character based on little information back then. My opinion of Bush was formed rather prematurely and calcified that way throughout his presidency, especially as the Iraq War continued unabated. In my mind, he never really had a chance at redemption.
Reading this article was eye-opening though. I still vehemently disagree with much of Bush's politics, but perhaps a reassessment of his intelligence is in order. If anybody reading this knows about any good sources on the subject, I'm all ears.
