From BGR:
Apple is looking at further automating its production lines for popular devices including the iPhone, a new report from Taiwan reveals, with the company supposedly planning to automate production this year for its iPhone 6 batteries in order to “reduce its manpower demand.”
Those pesky humans trying to do ‘jobs’, so silly.
In talking to dozens of people around Silicon Valley over the past eight months–engineers, entrepreneurs, moneymen, uncomfortably inquisitive cosmetic surgeons–I got the distinct sense that it’s better to be perceived as naïve and immature than to have voted in the 1980s. And so it has fallen to Matarasso to make older workers look like they still belong at the office. “It’s really morphed into, ‘Hey, I’m forty years old and I have to get in front of a board of fresh-faced kids. I can’t look like I have a wife and two-point-five kids and a mortgage,’ ” he told me.
When my wife and I moved to San Francisco last April, I interviewed with a few startups and I discovered with my 14 years of experience, I was very over-qualified for what they were looking for in a designer, both in experience and salary.
via The Onion
If you’re one of those people bitching about Flappy Bird no longer being available on iOS, I suggest you play Badland.
The gameplay is great and much more varied than Flappy Bird, and the artwork is gorgeous.
—Benjamin Franklin
via Bombtune
How long has it taken a company to design a beautiful in-window air conditioner? Wikipedia says the ‘through-wall’ version was invented in 1935 by Chrysler. Quirky and General Electric just announced the Aros and it’s beautiful.
So roughly 80 fucking years. Jeez.
I say thank you, Nest. You’ve alerted people to the fact that there’s a lot of home products that need to be rethought.
via Secret
Great piece by my friend Jory Kruspe on ‘The Bleed’:
We are starting to see a renaissance in the world of design for the web. Some may call it a trend, but from the perspective of a designer in the profession for many years, much of the current designs are being informed by an approach that has been in place for quite some time now. The approach is one that maximizes the available space in the browser and is usually characterized by the use of large photography or video. The term I will use in identifying this approach to web design is ‘Full Bleed.’
He’s absolutely right.
Since we decomissioned Adobe Flash from the heavylifting job of building websites, the combined powers of HTML5, Javascript and CSS have come a long way.
These new ‘cutting edge’ HTML5 sites use full screen video/image backgrounds and custom typography—things we were using 12 years ago in Flash (yep, I’ll be that crabby old bastard talking about the good ol’ days).
I make this point not to strip praise from all web designers doing great work today, but to point out the precedents on which today’s work builds.
Know your fucking roots.
As someone who appropriates the imagery of others in his artwork, I keep a close eye on cases like the one between Richard Prince and Patrick Cariou:
The appeals court ruled that of the 30 works by Mr. Prince in question, 25 were permissible under the fair use exception because they manifested “an entirely different aesthetic” from Mr. Cariou’s pictures. Five works were sent back to the lower court for a determination. The terms of the settlement concerning those five works were not disclosed in court papers filed Tuesday, but the documents make clear that none of the paintings will be destroyed – an option that the federal judge in the 2011 decision had made available to Mr. Cariou.
We don’t mind stealing from others, until they steal from us.
Google is now in the wearable OS game with Android Wear.
The Google voice assist is a great feature, but the same weather, time and text messages on your wrist just isn’t compelling.
When you compare what Google and Samsung are doing with wearable tech to what Apple is working on with detailed health-tracking, it puts things into perspective.
Am I missing something?
Indeed, since the launch of the iPhone the net profits earned by the collection of protagonists shown was $215 billion. 60% has been earned by Apple, a newcomer to the market. That figure is also consistent on an ongoing basis, having reached 60% as early as 2011 and remained in a band around that figure since.
The fact that this happened without corresponding dominance in units shipped shows evidence of something startling: Consistent value creation.
To earn profit is hard, to do so in an outsized way is very hard and to do so with consistency shows a defensibility of market access that is rarest of all. The only cases where this typical is in a monopoly or protected market situation (aka cronyism.) Apple’s lack of market monopoly coupled with a (near-) monopoly in profits can only be explained by disproportionate value creation.
Value creation is one of those things Wall Street has a problem with because they can’t quantify value beyond the tangibles like the quality of manufacturing.
Apple perplexes analysts because they create different types of value, the most elusive being emotional value. “You can’t put a number on emotional value,” they say.
Meanwhile, Apple continues to do just that.
Zack Epstein is absolutely correct.
The best part of iOS 7 is the overall speed improvement. When I say it’s faster, I’m talking about motion transitions, time for apps to load, swipe-to-deletes in Mail, everything.
In reality each interaction is probably “only” fractions of a second faster, but you add them all up and it’s huge.
Unexpected 3-D with CSS. Pretty cool.
Say what you want about skeuomorphism being passé. Bullshit.
As someone noted recently (who’s blog post I’ve forgotten), Apple didn’t get rid of skeuomorphism at all in iOS 7—it’s layers and layers of UI behaving like semi-transparent/frosted glass, and the simulated physics of animations continue to be refined (like when you drag iMessages up and down with your finger).