Ouya. Ooh no.
The Ouya is lovely to look at and the idea of an Android console sounds great, but in this case beauty is only skin deep.
Yeah, yeah. You’re already thinking what I’m thinking.
Design isn’t about how something looks, but how it works.
via DF
Splash Me
From Coffee and Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch
Asymmetrical Competition
Jonathan S. Geller at BGR on Apple’s plan to take over the living room while destroying Microsoft and Sony:
By introducing a game controller standard (this is incredibly helpful since developers now can build games that recognize a standard set of button controls and inputs that will work across every single game in the App Store), Apple has started to turn the volume up on Sony and Microsoft. Soon, you are going to be able to play a console-quality game on your iPhone or iPad with a game controller, and you’re going to be able to see it on your big screen television without any effort. This is game-changing!
Stranger things have happened.
Serious question: How do you think Apple’s “hobby” Apple TV is doing compared to Google TV?
Ok, that wasn’t a serious question because I’m willing to bet serious money that Google TV is closer to the true sense of the word “hobby” than Apple claims their Apple TV device is (13 million in sales?). And I’m taking into account all these devices no one is buying.
Ken Cosgrove
The episode where everyone is high on benzedrine was the highlight of this season of Mad Men.
GIF via Mad Men Screenshots with Things Drawn On Them
Make It All Optional
Tom Warren at The Verge tells us Windows 8.1 includes options to shut down from Start button and disable hot corners.
I believe Microsoft will continue along this trajectory until everything unique about Windows 8 is optional and we end up back here again:
Just drop in some long shadows and call it a day.
Long Shadows
You know, like, flat design is out, and like skeuomorphism is out-out.
Long shadows are the new coolness in flat depth.
Update your Dribbble pages, kids.
Or something.
Shitty Iconography Is Made By Companies Other Than Apple, FYI
Everybody is getting their panties in one, big, collective bunch over the icons in Apple’s beta version of iOS 7.
What about Sony?
What the fuck is on that little screen?
I can tell you what isn’t on that screen: consistency, sophistication and any semblance of a design system.
If it has a surface, we can advertise on it (say it like Schwarzenegger in Predator)
Micro advertising. Yay!
(title refers to this scene)
Prescient
Samsung, June 2013 (via The Loop):
Samsung Electronics has decided to ditch its unprofitable desktop PC business and devote itself to tablet computers and all-in-one laptops, company officials said Monday.
“Demand for conventional desktop PCs is going down,” said a Samsung Electronics official. “We will allocate our resources to popular connected and portable devices.”
Steve Jobs, 2010:
…and this transformation is going to make some people uneasy. People from the PC world, like you and me. It’s going to make us uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways. It’s brilliant. And we like to talk about the post-PC era but when it really started to happen I think it’s uncomfortable for a lot of people because it’s change and a lot of vested interested are going to change and it’s going to be different.
That Steve was full of shit, huh?
Merch
I’ve posted some new prints for sale up at Society6.
I have to say, I’m really digging how the illustrations look on the iPhone cases.
Looking Like Vs. Behaving Like
Wil Gieseler’s spot-on observation on iOS 7:
On previous versions of iOS, it was extremely difficult for a developer to implement a blurred background. On iOS 7, this effect is everywhere.On previous versions, using the accelerometer burned through the battery, so using parallax effects was a big energy trade-off. On iOS 7, this has been promoted to a system-level feature, and they’ve optimized the entire OS stack around making this particular feature as battery-efficient as possible.
That’s dedication to skeumorphism.
It’s funny how many of the people bitching about the superiority of “flat” design aren’t arguing it as a design methodology, but as a style.
In iOS 6, UI elements merely look like cartoon-y, physical objects. In iOS 7, Ive has made them behave like elements inhabiting a three dimensional space.
It’s the difference between modifying a Honda to look like Ferrari and building an actual Ferrari.
I’ll take the latter.
SC & P
via Brand New
Cool With Collateral
This was my takeaway from Man of Steel.
Superman is totally cool with collateral damage.
Early in the movie Superman’s father, Jor-el, tells him, “You can save them all.”
Right, except for the millions Superman killed while he was smashing General Zod through buildings in Manhattan.
Which reminds me, can we lay off destroying New York in movies for a few years? Shit.