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.

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?

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.

Last week everyone was talking about Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report which she presented at the D11 Conference on Monday.
A lot of the content in the report is information we nerds and geeks already know about the Internet and computers and mobile devices, but there’s also a lot of eye-opening information.
The slide that stood out the most to me was this one:

I’m 36-years-old so I remember the left side image. I’ve experienced the right-hand side too.
This isn’t a post to talk about how the future is doomed for the kids today. Every generation says that. The kids are going to be fine. Millenials are going to be fine. Hipsters are going to be fine. Everyone is going to figure shit out.
… but it is worth noting the differences between both scenes above.
In the 1990’s photo, the audience has a one-to-one connection with the musicians on stage. It’s direct, focused and visceral. It’s how I experienced every concert in high school and college.
In the 2010’s photo, the connection is no longer one-to-one between the audience and the performers. A middleman has been inserted between the two sides. What this means is the priority is to capture a great version of what’s happening, not to experience the performance. I know this because I’m guilty of pulling out my iPhone and recording bits at concerts in recent years. It’s a tempting and easy thing to do, but I’ve quickly found myself feeling like a cameraman doing a job and not a guy at a concert enjoying a great band with my friends, beer in hand.
Keep this in mind next time you’re at a event. I’m not saying ban yourself from recording anything (if it’s allowed), but limit it. Make sure you’re you’re taking in the experience with all your senses.
I don’t know about you, but I would much rather remember going to a great concert, than remember recording a great concert, ignoring the band and my friends (and my beer) in the process.

The Verge: Apple’s bounce-back patent receives ‘final’ rejection from US patent office
It’s clear Samsung has copied a shit ton from Apple’s iOS, iPhone, iPad, retail stores and everything in-between.
That being said, I don’t think Apple, or any other company should own the patent on elasticity, virtual or otherwise.
As a web designer who started his career in 1999, I’ve seen seen many examples of (Flash) interfaces and websites that used bounce-back interactions in contexts similar to those in iOS years before the iPhone came to be.

Facebook has rethought the mobile experience with their new flavor of Android, Home:

Introducing Facebook Home

The family of apps that puts your friends at the heart of your phone.

With Home, everything on your phone gets friendlier. From the moment you turn it on, you see a steady stream of friends’ posts and photos. Upfront notifications and quick access to your essentials mean you’ll never miss a moment. And you can keep chatting with friends, even when you’re using other apps.

This phone is clearly not for me.

When I described Home to my wife in the car earlier today, she replied, “I don’t like the sound of it. Most of my friends’ lives aren’t all that exciting to me.” I agree with her. The lives of most of the people I’m connected to on Facebook aren’t very interesting either, so having their updates front-and-center on my phone doesn’t appeal to me (conversely, I don’t think my life is exciting to most of the people I’m connected to on Facebook).

I do acknowledge there are probably a lot of people this does appeal to. People who have to be constantly updated every time a friend eats a cupcake or wipes his/her ass or takes a picture of his/her kid. No thanks.

My life is to be lived, not to follow what everyone else I know is doing.

After using Mountain Lion for a month now, I’m certain of it.
Snow Leopard is dealing with a guy with one personality… Mountain Lion is dealing with a woman, PMSing, with multiple personalities.

Evolution in the design portal model.
Love it.
via Designer News

The Verge: Jony Ive reportedly pushing ‘flat design’ in a newly collaborative environment at Apple
I think Windows 8 is about to find out how flat design is really done.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins talks some shit about the iPhone:

The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.
I’m a little confused.
Below is the iPhone (left) and the Blackberry Z10 (right). Even when you factor in the interesting UI gestures how are they leapfrogging the iOS? (or Android for that matter)

*Z10 image via Ars Technica

Last night, while I was gettng ready for bed in my hotel room, I decided to find out what else Siri was programmed to say.
I asked her, “Tell me a story.”
In the story Siri told me she mentions someone (or something) named ELIZA. I decided to find out who or what ELIZA was.
Turns out ELIZA was one of the first natural language processors ever written:

ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users’ responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly human-like interaction. ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1966.

[…]

ELIZA was named after Eliza Doolittle, a working-class character in George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, who is taught to speak with an upper-class accent
There’s a bunch of cool little details they programmed into Siri.

I just got a new iPhone 5 and I’m having fun finding out all the different responses Siri gives to questions.

I find the knee-jerk, negative responses to Google Glass interesting. I have a feeling they’re mostly coming from the 30+ demographic I’m a part of, but I have no proof.
I agree with John Gruber that Sergey Brin is a hypocrite when he stands on stage at TED with his stupid-looking Google glasses on and calls cellphones “emasculating”, but I wouldn’t go so far as say Google Glass isn’t the answer.
Google might be run by engineers and nerds and not always as cool as Apple, but they’re not afraid of shipping 1.0 versions of anything. In fact I think “Beta” should be permanently set below the Google logo. This is, in fact, a quality they share with Apple.
Mat Mullenweg on the rudimentary perfection of Apple:

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.
Now that Google has Glass out in the real world they can start making it better, the same as Apple did when it launched a very beautiful but very 1.0 iPhone in 2007.
Google and Apple are both skating to where the puck is going, and the puck is moving away keyboards and touchscreens and towards natural speech and our other senses. Google is doing this with Now and Glass. Apple is doing this with Siri (and whatever might be in the works for an iWatch?).This isn’t to say traditional input methods are necessarily being phased out, we’re just getting more options for how we interact with our computers.
So Gruber may be right that Google Glass isn’t the answer right now, but let’s see what happens in a few years.

At the NYTimes, Lance Hosey on why we love beautiful things:

Great design, the management expert Gary Hamel once said, is like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography — you know it when you see it. You want it, too: brain scan studies reveal that the sight of an attractive product can trigger the part of the motor cerebellum that governs hand movement. Instinctively, we reach out for attractive things; beauty literally moves us.