December 2009
75 posts
“Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent...”
– Bruce Schneier for CNN, via Daring Fireball
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Things I've Been Wrong About: Mac OS X User...
mnmal:
rentzsch:
I was pretty sure it was impossible to build a system on top of Unix that approached the user experience of a Mac. Many tried, all failed.
I thought the only possible route if you wanted a friendly user experience and Unix capability is to architect it like the BeOS: kernel, frameworks, UI, and then offer a POSIX compatibility layer on top of that. I didn’t think you could...
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Nottingham →
Very similar to Notational Velocity, with the added benefit of native Simplenote syncing.
No Donuts For Canadians →
Rogers screwing over Android owners in Canada, by not allowing firmware updates. Yet another reason for which Android will have a tough time competing with iPhone. Apple (being Apple) makes sure carriers don’t pull this kind of crap with iPhones.
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“Every new developer has problems on a new project. The extent of our sympathy...”
– titus (from Daily Life in an Ivory Basement : Aggressive Competence)
langer:
American audiences have long preferred to buy their cultural sensitivity on the cheap, and Avatar is no exception here. Cinema regularly lures its viewers into an empty sense of mea culpa by safely buffering any requisite admission of guilt with the distantiation of history, of fairy tales, or of good old fashioned exaggeration. Our collective sins are pointed out for us in a way that...
“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s...”
– Jeffrey Zeldman
“Almost all the growth that’s available to you exists when you aren’t...”
– Seth Godin, Tribes
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※ nail in search of a hammer
You know someone’s done a good job building an app when you’re trying to find reasons to use it more often.
Take OmmWriter, a new writing environment for the Mac. It has me captivated, and it’s almost asking me that I use it more. That I write more, that I take more time to quiet down and just listen to the echoing sound of my words loading onto the canvas. The experience...
“Provided you did not make any changes to your registration after October 21st,...”
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“Always implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee...”
– You Arent Gonna Need It
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If you ask beginning programmers to write a calendar control, they often think to themselves, “Oh, I’m going to write the world’s best calendar control! It’s going to be polymorphic with respect to the kind of calendar. It will have displayers, and mungers, and this, that, and the other.” They need to ship a calendar application in two months. They put all this...
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on....”
– Steve Jobs
iStockHell →
clientsfromhell:
Introducing our latest creation: iStockHell, a collection of the worst stock photography known to man. Go check it out!
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LEGO Digital Designer : Virtual Building Software →
Not as good as actually building with Lego bricks, of course.
8 questions and a why
Who are you trying to please?
What are you promising?
How much money are you trying to make?
How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?
What are you trying to change?
What do you want people to say about you?
Which people?
Do we care about you?
from 8 Questions and a Why by Seth Godin.
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“Not everything, all the time, completely, forever. Just enough. Enough to start,...”
– Enough | 43 Folders
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Code Simplicity →
mnmal:
There’s just too much complex stuff in the world. Complex stuff can’t be used, and it breaks too easily.
Complexity is stupid. Simplicity is smart.
Code Simplicity focuses on the idea of simplicity: simple things, simple thoughts, and simple ideas that can make the world of computing a better place.
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clientsfromhell:
“Can you give us another option for the front page? It’s not quite what we are looking for but aren’t sure of what we want either.” —
Isn’t this largely why people hire designers? Or why people ask for the opinion of the chocolatier, or the home decorator, or the accountant?
We don’t each become subject-matter experts in every field out there. So when we...
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“Smart data structures and dumb code works alot better than the other way around.”
– Eric S. Raymond, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” (via mnmal)
“If we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction,...”
– Bruce Schneier
David Foster Wallace Was Not Afraid →
fraidycats:
David Foster Wallace, in November 2007:
“In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?”