Tag Apple Inc.

Entries 6 Total

Apple’s attention to detail

Aug 26, ’10 7:13 PM

People often falsely assume I advoc­ate and use Apple products because I think they’re trendy or because I’m some kind of gad­get freak.

The truth is our world is awash with badly designed, badly craf­ted things. Apple is one of the few havens in a sea of people and organ­isa­tions that don’t give a fuck about the details. Atten­tion to detail is why I use Apple products:

In July 2002, Apple filed a pat­ent for a “Breath­ing Status LED Indic­ator” …They described it as a “blink­ing effect of the sleep-mode indic­ator in accord­ance with the present inven­tion mim­ics the rhythm of breath­ing which is psy­cho­lo­gic­ally appealing.”

The other day, I noticed that my friend’s Dell laptop had a sim­ilar fea­ture but with a shorter fade-in-fade-out period. Its rate was around 40 blinks per second, or the aver­age res­pir­at­ory rate for adults dur­ing strenu­ous exer­cise — not very indic­at­ive of some­thing in sleep-mode.

It’s inter­est­ing how a lot of com­pan­ies try to copy Apple but never seem to get it right. This is yet another example of Apple’s obsess­ive atten­tion to detail.

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The Guardian’s new iPhone app

Dec 14, ’09 11:49 AM

The Guard­ian has just released an iPhone app. It’s only avail­able U.S./UK/Ireland for now but they’re work­ing on other countries.

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The definitive Snow Leopard review

Sep 1, ’09 6:55 AM

John Siracusa’s in depth review of Snow Leo­pard, Apple’s latest upgrade to the Mac OS X oper­at­ing sys­tem. Always worth the read.

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Idiots at Apple out of control: censor English dictionary

Aug 5, ’09 8:52 AM
Ninjawords dictionary iPhone app

Ninja­words dic­tion­ary iPhone app

When I pur­chased an iPhone it was with the cas­ual under­stand­ing that I was buy­ing into a product that was con­trolled not by me, in the way I con­trol my com­puter, but by the com­pany selling me the product, Apple.

It’s what Jonathan Zit­train describes as a “tethered appli­ance.” In con­trast to a “gen­er­at­ive PC.” Have enough of these tethered appli­ances and the inter­net would cease being the internet.

The latest neg­at­ive example of this teth­er­ing is the most out­rageous App Store rejec­tion to date: the cen­sor­ship and adult-rating of the Eng­lish dic­tion­ary!

Update: If you’d like a chance to tell these self-appointed arbit­ers of cul­ture what you think you can go to the Ninja­words App Store page (App Store link) and click on the “Report a Prob­lem” but­ton at the bot­tom. You’ll need to use an iPhone as the “Report a Prob­lem” but­ton doesn’t seem to appear in iTunes.

Update 2: Apple’s vice pres­id­ent Phil Schiller responds to Gruber.

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The next iPhone

May 22, ’09 7:31 AM

John Gruber, with prob­ably the most reli­able low-down on the next iPhone, due to arrive in July.

And, in the mean time, work­ers appeal to Apple dir­ectly to end iPhone supplier’s labour abuse.

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The Fear and the closed internet

Oct 3, ’08 8:55 AM

Dar­ing Fireball’s John Gruber explains why he thinks the man­age­ment of some of the closed aspects of Apple’s iPhone App Store are flawed.

And if that interests you, you might also be inter­ested in this inter­view with Jonathan Zit­train and a review of his new book, The Future of the Inter­net — And How to Stop It.

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