Powerful track and I’m really digging those gritty background graphics:

I find it humorous HTC is calling this normal-sized phone their One Mini.
It reminds me of how American fast food joints and movie theaters call enormous soft drink cups small.
I guess when you have more and more people inhaling huge cups of Coca Cola and getting obese in America, the HTC One Mini is a small phone.

Farhad Manjoo says you won’t finish reading his article on Slate (via The Verge):

I’m going to keep this brief, because you’re not going to stick around for long. I’ve already lost a bunch of you. For every 161 people who landed on this page, about 61 of you–38 percent–are already gone. You “bounced” in Web traffic jargon, meaning you spent no time “engaging” with this page at all.

So now there are 100 of you left. Nice round number. But not for long! We’re at the point in the page where you have to scroll to see more. Of the 100 of you who didn’t bounce, five are never going to scroll. Bye!
Still there?

Cap Watkins smartly observes iOS 7 is unpolished by design.
Matt Mullenweg’s 2010 post on this topic keeps getting better with age:

Many entrepreneurs idolize Steve Jobs. He’s such a perfectionist, they say. Nothing leaves the doors of 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino without a polish and finish that makes geeks everywhere drool. No compromise!

I like Apple for the opposite reason: they’re not afraid of getting a rudimentary 1.0 out into the world.
Most of the noise you see right now surrounding iOS 7 is in reaction to veneer, to styling, not to design. If you watch the demo videos of iOS 7 on Apple’s site, you’ll see there’s been fundamental human interface changes to the operating system beyond the Helvetica 45 light and semi-transparent panels.
I haven’t even brought up the most obvious point: Most people complaining about iOS 7 haven’t even used it yet.
Don’t knock it ’til you try it.

Mike Rundle says iOS 7 Went Too Far In The Other Direction
People weren’t happy with the over-indulgent skeuomorphism in iOS and and now people still aren’t happy.
I’m with John Gruber that the skeuomorphic training wheels needed to come off, iOS 7 looks beautiful.
If you create anything—music, art, writing, computers, whatever—listen to criticism (if you want, good criticism does exist), but trust your gut and do what you think is best.
Like Andy Warhol says:

Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.
Remember, Rolling Stone magazine trashed Led Zeppelin’s first album when it came out.
Screw what people think.

“One of the finest protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.”
—Alain de Botton (via swissmiss)
This is one of the reasons I’m not going to be bummed when my Kickstarter project misses it’s funding goal next Friday.
I have a lot of creative things cooking right now.

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee.
Is coming back.
*I love that he drives Dave Letterman in a 750 Volvo wagon. Ha.

—Bo Dahlbom

Talks At Google recently had Daniel Dennett come in to speak about some of the topics in his book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (via The Verge).
It’s really interesting even though a good chunk of it was over my head. It’s about 35 minutes long with about 25 minutes of Q&A.
I love this quote by Dennett’s student Bo Dahlbom on thinking tools:

Just as you cannot do very much carpentry with your bare hands, there is not much thinking you can do with your bare brain.
Sounds eerily similar to the Steve Jobs quote that fueled my Kickstarter from last year:
A computer is like a bicycle for our minds.
Brains are cool.
Brains using tools are even cooler.

Like recipes being passed down through generations in a family, Microsoft is determined to continue to confuse the shit of out consumers:

Upcoming Windows 8 devices with small displays (under 10 inches) will come bundled with Office 2013 Home & Student, a version of Office that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. If you walk into a store later this month and purchase Acer’s 8-inch Windows 8 device you’ll get the free version of Office, but if you opt for a 10-inch Windows 8 Acer tablet you won’t. Alternatively, if you opt for a 10-inch Windows RT device, like the Surface RT, you will get a copy of Office that also includes Outlook RT. If you purchase a 7- or 8-inch Windows RT device when they’re available you’ll also get a free version of Office. If it all sounds confusing, that’s because it is.
I was naively optimistic to see Microsoft start fresh with Surface and Windows 8.
Oh well.

Interesting theorizing by Dustin Rowles on Mad Men:

Look, I’m not saying you should put much stock in this theory (unless it pans out), because I’ve clearly lost perspective. I’m officially giving Matthew Weiner way too much credit. But then again, in all the reading about Mad Men I do, I’ve also noticed that a lot of critics are coming around to the theory I had after the season’s opening episode that Don Draper may die at the end of this season, although I still maintain that it will be a death of the Draper identity, and not of the body; he’ll reclaim his Dick Whitman identity after Megan dies.

But what if Megan is already dead? Is it possible? Let’s examine the compelling evidence.
via Flavorwire

David Barboza, for the NYTimes on company, Xiaomi, the Apple Knock-off Extraordinaire of China:

China is notorious for its knockoffs. But now comes a knockoff of one of the gods of American ingenuity: Steven P. Jobs.
In a country where products like iPhones are made but rarely invented, Lei Jun — entrepreneur, billionaire and professed Jobs acolyte — is positioning himself and his company as figurative heirs of Mr. Jobs. The Chinese media have nicknamed his company, Xiaomi, the “Apple of the East.”

The title is a stretch, by almost any measure. But Mr. Lei nonetheless is carefully cultivating a Jobsian image here, right down to his jeans and dark shirts. He is also selling millions of mobile phones that look a lot like iPhones. Chinese consumers — and deep-pocketed investors overseas — seem to be believers.

And yet Mr. Lei’s biggest believer may be himself. He bounds onto podiums to introduce new cellphones. He proclaims things that may, to many, sound outlandish. For instance:

“We’re making the mobile phone like the PC, and this is a totally new idea,” Mr. Lei, Xiaomi’s chief executive, said during an interview at the company’s spacious, high-rise headquarters here. “We’re doing things other companies haven’t done before.”
It brings to mind a quote I love by fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto:
Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find yourself.
Yamamoto is absolutely right. All creative people—artists, musicians, writers, designers, athletes—all start out by imitating their idols. This is how you learn. Copying is a meaning to an end with most creatives, true creatives.
For people like Lei Jun though, copying seems to be the end, not the means. There’s no desire to try and copy Apple with the intention to at some point leap-frog them and do something better.
At least with Android there’s are clear lines of departure between it and iOS. Android started life copying iOS very closely, but because the philosophies of Google and Apple differ so much, Android has charted it’s own hackable, “open”, ad-monetized course.
Imagine what Xiaomi is doing with aping Apple’s product and software design in any other industry. Imagine Kia copying the design of the 458 Italia by Ferrari. Or if Nickleback decided to clone the sound of Radiohead and call themselves TelevisionLegs. You can do these things, but it doesn’t make it right or admirable.
I can’t respect posers.

In her March 2013 TED Talk, Amanda Palmer asked not how we make people pay for music, but how we let them.
What a great talk.

I’m in the process of weeding through all my starred links in Google Reader before the service shuts down next month.
This meaning I’ll be posting a lot of links you might have already seen. Or haven’t seen.
The thing about great links is they usually have an solid shelf-life.