Pebble Supporters Are Pissed Over Rumors It Will Sell Itself:

Pebble, the maker of the original e-ink smartwatch, has a lot of passionate and loyal customers, and those customers are pissed. Following the rumors that Pebble is about to crumble under the heel of Fitbit, the company’s many Kickstarter backers are in an uproar.

As we shared earlier today, rumor has it fitness tracker maker Fitbit is in talks to buy Pebble, dismantle the business, and take all the tech. It’s a smart move for Fitbit, and an ouch move for Pebble, which would be selling for a tenth of what watch maker Citizen offered it last year.

Hey, this is business. Too bad. I was never a fan of Pebble. The design of the user interface is interesting, but I still think the hardware designs are ugly.

I always like it when greedy startup founders reject huge offers only to end up settling for a fraction of the amount later on. At the same time I can understand why Pebble rejected the offer. Citizen would have had no idea what to do with Pebble if they had acquired them.

This detail about the yet-to-be-shipped Pebble 2 Kickstarter rewards is infuriating:

Things are bleaker for Pebble Time 2 backers. Those backers were expecting an update in November with an anticipated ship date of January 2017. Instead, many woke up this morning to find that there was still no news on shipments. (Pebble last communicated to backers October 26.) However, there was news of Pebble possibly disappearing completely.

They raised $12.7 million dollars and still have unfulfilled rewards.

That’s bullshit.

The members of Designer News are tackling Apple’s problems for them.

(sing the title like Neil Young’s Old Man)

Jim Dalrymple is happy to report Neil Young has put his albums back in Apple Music.

So nobody bought your shitty, Toblerone-shaped PonoPlayer, did they, Neil? I think a lot of us knew this wasn’t going to work when he first launched his Kickstarter project for it back in October of 2014.

Slate contributor Seth Stevenson reviewed the PonoPlayer in February of 2015. He compared the remastered, ‘PonoMusic’ version of Neil Young’s “There’s a World,” with the iTunes version.

He couldn’t tell the difference, so he conducted the experiment on his colleagues:

I figured maybe my ears were faulty. So I ran an informal experiment. I asked several Slate colleagues to turn their backs while I played them the same 30-second clip on both devices, through headphones. Then I asked them to pick which clip they thought was higher resolution. I mixed up the order—at times playing the Pono first, and at times the iPhone. Some people borrowed my Polk headphones for the test while others used their own equipment. (The quality ranged from Apple earbuds to Klipsch in-ears to high-end Sony studio cans.)

Bottom line: Not one person had any clue whether they were listening to the Pono or to the “inferior” iTunes track. There was zero confidence in determining which was which. When forced to state a preference, six out of seven people actually picked the iPhone as the higher-quality experience. An eighth person refused to guess because he simply had no idea. These folks were in their 20s and 30s, all avid music listeners. A couple of them write about music professionally and one is a video producer.

I think Young’s intentions were good, but I think he wanted to believe so badly that his music sounded better that he convinced himself he was hearing higher fidelity sounds where none existed.

Neil Young unintentially made a placebo music player and sound format.

Yesterday Microsoft launched their Slack competitor, Teams.

Then Slack responded in a full-page ad and on their site/Medium:

Dear Microsoft,

Wow. Big news! Congratulations on today’s announcements. We’re genuinely excited to have some competition.

We realized a few years ago that the value of switching to Slack was so obvious and the advantages so overwhelming that every business would be using Slack, or “something just like it,” within the decade. It’s validating to see you’ve come around to the same way of thinking. And even though — being honest here — it’s a little scary, we know it will bring a better future forward faster.

However, all this is harder than it looks. So, as you set out to build “something just like it,” we want to give you some friendly advice.

That, my friends, is what’s called passive-aggressive. It’s also douchey. This is how nerds talk shit. Soooo intimidating.

After checking out their product video, I’m quickly reminded of what I just wrote earlier today about Microsoft always being a day late and a dollar short.

I’ve been using Slack for a few years now with different companies. I think it’s solid, but I don’t think it’s as amazing as a lot of reviews make it out to be. From the two companies I’ve used it at I’ve actually found Slack to be the place where a lot of people waste time not working, posting animated GIFs and sharing stuff. I’m sure those companies were complete edge cases.

The reality is I won’t be using Microsoft Teams unless a client or the company I’m working for asks me to. It looks interesting based on the screenshots and you can clearly see where they’ve been influenced by Slack.

On October 26th, Microsoft unveiled their new all-in-one, touchscreen Surface Studio.

From everything I’ve seen and read about it, it looks like an amazing integration of hardware and software. This integration used to be the sole domain of Apple, but now Microsoft and Google are coming to realize the practical and financial benefits of controlling the whole widget.

First thought: will this machine make me move to Windows? No.

Second thought: will this machine make other people move to Windows? I’m not sure.

It’s in Microsoft’s DNA to be a day late and dollar short on everything they’ve done, at least for the last decade. Windows Phone was late, their Surface tablets were late, and now an iMac competitor. I’m feeling a little déjà vu with the Surface Studio.

Microsoft is like the kid in college who needs until the summer to finish their thesis paper. Sure they might turn a great paper, but everyone else has moved on.

In case you forgot, the original Microsoft Surface was a big-ass, $10,000 table. In 2007, when the original iPhone launched and the race kicked into high gear for dominance in mobile computing, Microsoft decided to go big and impractical. Now let me be clear: the Surface Studio is way more practical than its great grandpappy was, but there still is a wiff of impracticality in it.

Microsoft is going after the high-end, creative segment of the desktop market with the Surface Studio, a segment dominated by Apple. They’re barely making a dent in the mass market with their phones, tablets, and laptops. So now they think they can eat Apple’s lunch and steal away desktop users? It’s possible, but I’m not convinced.

On the other hand, there’s been considerable backlash over the new MacBooks Apple announced, but we’re only a week out. Let’s see where we are this spring. We’ll be seeing new Mac desktops by then too.

The New York Times is buying The Wirecutter for $30 million:

The New York Times is buying The Wirecutter, a five-year-old online consumer guide.

The Times will pay more than $30 million, including retention bonuses and other payouts, for the startup, according to people familiar with the transaction.

Brian Lam, a former editor at Gawker Media’s Gizmodo, founded The Wirecutter in 2011, and has self-funded the company’s growth.

The Wirecutter provides recommendations for electronics and other gadgets that are both obsessively researched and simply presented. The Wirecutter also owns The Sweethome, which takes the same approach for home appliances and other gear.

I’ve been a fan of The Wirecutter for a few years now. I think of them as a Consumer Reports for gadgets, although the range of products they review is pretty wide. I dig how they usually have only one recommendation for a product category (and a few runners up).

They do the best job of any site I’ve ever seen of answering the question, “I need a [product category]. Which [product category] should I buy?”

Just last week I went to their site for a recommendation on a surge protector.

Om Malik, writing for The New Yorker:

That Samsung is facing such steep costs suggests the appeal of the original Apple design. When I asked John Maeda, the former president of the Rhode Island School of Design, why, then, people have turned on the design of the iPhone 7, he pointed out that perhaps these critics “seem to believe that there’s some as yet unimaginable transcendence that can happen in a small, palm-shaped, rectangular device.” Maeda said that he spent time with designers at Sony and felt their frustration designing a television set “because all you can really do is design the rectangle that the TV sits within. . . . Everything else around that screen really doesn’t matter.” The same problem holds for the iPhone. All that matters is the screen—its size, brightness, and resolution. “Now that we have all those dimensions sated, it’s basically the challenge of designing a TV set all over again,” he added.

Regarding the designers at Sony, they’re literally thinking within the the box. This is like a mobile phone designer saying in 2006, “All you can really do is either a clamshell design or something like a Palm Treo or Blackberry,” then you fast forward to 2007 and the iPhone exists. Clearly there are some small-minded people working at Sony.

To say that, “everything around the screen […] doesn’t really matter” misses the point and many opportunities completely. What a shitty way to think. Disregard for hardware is why Samsung currently has exploding phones major airlines are banning from flights.

Hardware and software are two sides of the same coin.

In September Vlad Savov wrote a great piece for The Verge on how hard it’s getting for competitors to keep up with the iPhone:

It is to Android manufacturers’ great credit that they’ve been able to build phones the size of an iPhone with specs many times better. But even once they’ve negotiated the RAM, display, battery, and design issues, they come up against the classic problem of fragmentation. Each new generation of iPhone has only one processor and two screen sizes and resolutions — so game designers and app developers know the exact hardware that they’re targeting with their new software. With Android, on the other hand, there’s a diversity of processor and graphics chips, unevenness in screen sizes and resolutions, and never any certain minimum standard of either hardware spec or software API.

This only speaks to the internal hardware that optimizes performance. There’s the external hardware you feel when you have a phone in your hands and it’s one of the main reasons so many people covet Apple products. The fit and finish. Yes, Steve Jobs’ dad taught him to use quality wood on the back side of a cabinet no one would see, but he knew damn well the front mattered a hell of a lot too. It all matters.

Hardware continues to evolve. In most cases it’s incremental with the occasional leap every so often. Apple is barely scratching the surface of what’s possible. They were the first to introduce pressure sensitivity on their multi-touch screens with 3-D Touch on the iPhone 6S. Before that they were the first to introduce a fingerprint reader on the Home button in the form of Touch ID on the iPhone 5S.

Steve Jobs famously said (via):

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

On the flip side of that quote, design is not just how it works, but what it looks and feels like.

It’s also really great if it the battery doesn’t explode in your pants.

AT&T and T-Mobile have halted all Samsung Note 7 distribution amid more reports of ‘safe’ models igniting.

Spontaneous combustion. I believe this is the first phone feature Samsung hasn’t copied from Apple. Well done, South Korea.

If you’re reading this and you still have a Samsung Note 7, the always helpful Jim Dalrymple has posted a must-have accessory. You’re so thoughtful, Jim.

Let’s play a game, it’s called Who Said It First?

Here’s your first clue:

“Our product represents the best in hardware and software, designed and built together.”

What’s that? You said Apple? I thought so too! I thought about when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone in 2007 and he said that Alan Kay quote, “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” (YouTube)

Apple has ‘controlled the whole widget’ since the company was founded in the 70s. Yes, they had a brief stint licensing their OS to OEMs from 1986 to 1991 but it didn’t pan out well. When Steve Jobs came back to the company in 1996 he doubled down on their integrated approach which was one of many factors contributing to the success of the iMac, iPod, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch to name not a few, but the majority of products released by Apple in the last 15 years.

So if someone at Apple didn’t say it, then who did?

The quote above is from Google’s hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, and he said that earlier today at the unveiling of Google’s new phone, Pixel.

Here’s what the Pixel looks like:

Doh! My bad. That’s the iPhone 6 from last year. How the hell did I mix them up.

Here’s Google’s new phone for 2016:

Looks pretty unique, doesn’t it?

Hell, it doesn’t look anything like an iPhone 6. It doesn’t even have a Home button, just a big-ass chin! And those plastic bands at the top and bottom of the device, those have to be there! There’s literally no other way to make a smartphone without those bands. Except for the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Asus ZenFone 3, but those guys use black magic to make their phones. They cheat.

What? No, that shiny bezel around the face of the Google Pixel is from the iPhone 5 from 4 years ago so like, the statute of bezel-copying has expired, dude.

And let’s not even get into how everyone was making plastic phones before Apple started making unibody aluminium products and started plastic-shaming their competitors.

There’s a Tumblr site devoted to all the examples of Samsung blatantly ripping off Apple. I think it’s time someone started one for Google ripping off Apple. There’s many less examples, but I have a feeling those numbers are going to rise.

Google’s original mission statement was “organizing the world’s information.” (link)

They need to amend it to include, “…and putting it into devices we copies from Apple.”

Seriously, Google, you called your new phone the fucking Pixel? What a shitty name. Pixels aren’t even visible to the eye on mobile devices anymore. It’s like calling the new the HP printer the Ben Day. If this is an attempt to be hipster ironic, it’s really weak.

Farhad Manjoo doesn’t think Apple is cutting edge anymore:

The absence of a jack is far from the worst shortcoming in Apple’s latest product launch. Instead, it’s a symptom of a deeper issue with the new iPhones, part of a problem that afflicts much of the company’s product lineup: Apple’s aesthetics have grown stale.

Apple has squandered its once-commanding lead in hardware and software design. Though the new iPhones include several new features, including water resistance and upgraded cameras, they look pretty much the same as the old ones. The new Apple Watch does too. And as competitors have borrowed and even begun to surpass Apple’s best designs, what was iconic about the company’s phones, computers, tablets and other products has come to seem generic.

And

It’s not just that a few new Apple products have been plagued with design flaws. The bigger problem is an absence of delight. I recently checked in with several tech-pundit friends for their assessment of Apple’s aesthetic choices. “What was the last Apple design that really dazzled you?” I asked.

This article could have been written 5 years ago. If people keep writing ‘Apple is Doomed’ stories, I suppose there’s a chance they’ll eventually come true.

I’m curious if automobile news sites complain that the Porsche 911 doesn’t delight anymore. That the design is basically the same as was last year and the year before that.

Perhaps the problem isn’t with Apple’s design chops, design chops I feel are still top notch. Perhaps the problem is with Manjoo and people like him. It’s easy to become jaded and fickle. It’s as if people expect (demand?) the things they buy will solve all their problems and constantly delight them in the process.

I think what happened is Manjoo was given a creative writing assignment: Apple presented a great, albeit iterative product lineup, we need you to show us why is was shit. If this was the case, Manjoo was doing a great job until the last two paragraphs:

And while Apple has slowed its design cadence, its rivals have sped up. Last year Samsung remade its lineup of Galaxy smartphones in a new glass-and-metal design that looked practically identical to the iPhone. Then it went further. Over the course of a few months, Samsung put out several design refinements, culminating in the Note 7, a big phone that has been universally praised by critics. With its curved sides and edge-to-edge display, the Note 7 pulls off a neat trick: Though it is physically smaller than Apple’s big phone, it actually has a larger screen. So thanks to clever design, you get more from a smaller thing — exactly the sort of advance we once looked to Apple for.

So Apple’s design prowess is in trouble, but Samsung continues to make smartphones that are practically identical to the iPhone. So this means what? Samsung’s industrial design is superior to Apple’s?

And then comes Manjoo’s final caveat:

An important caveat: Samsung’s software is still bloated, and its reputation for overall build quality took a hit when it announced last week that it would recall and replace the Note 7 because of a battery defect that caused spontaneous explosions. To the extent that making a device that doesn’t explode suggests design expertise, Apple is still ahead of Samsung.

Ok, so Apple continues to break sales records with their phones, has top-rated customer satisfaction but somehow, “The real danger is in Apple’s long-term reputation.” Not Samsung’s reputation because I guess we all know they’re rip-off artists so they get a pass.

It looks like Microsoft has some updates coming to Skype:

It was recently reported that Microsoft wanted to buy Slack for $8 billion. Slack, for those unfamiliar, is a messaging app for teams that’s been getting quite popular recently. Now, Microsoft is working on a direct Slack competitor under the Skype brand, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meet Skype Teams.

Skype Teams is going to be Microsoft’s take on messaging apps for teams. Skype Teams will include a lot of similar features which you’ll find on Slack. For example, Skype Teams will allow you to chat in different groups within a team, also known as “channels”. Additionally, users will be able to talk to each other via Direct Messages on Skype Teams.

Now this is the Microsoft of old that I know and love: reacting to what other companies are doing, rather than innovating on their own.

As a longtime user of Skype, it’s hard for me to see how Microsoft has improved it since they bought it in 2011.

Apple is going to remove abandoned apps from the App Store:

It’s cleaning time in the App Store. Apple sent an email to its developer community indicating that there will be some upcoming changes in the App Store. If an app no longer works or is outdated, it’s going to get removed from the App Store. And it’s about time.

“We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated,” Apple wrote.

And:

And Apple is not going to stop at abandoned apps. The company will also fight spammy app names. For instance, if you search for “Instagram” on the App Store, one of the first results is an app that is called “[app name] Photo Collage, Picture Editor, Pic Grid, F…” and then it gets cut off.

It’s about time. I’d rather have less & better than more & shitty.

Vesper, the note-taking app created by John Gruber, Brent Simmons and Dave Wiskus, is shutting down:

What went wrong was very simple. We never made enough money. Why we didn’t make enough money, what we should have done differently to make more money — those are complex questions (which I’ll tackle below). But what actually sunk Vesper was not complicated. Even as a relatively popular app at a relatively high price (for iOS), revenue was never high enough. Brent took a job at the excellent Omni Group in September 2014, and from that point onward the writing was on the wall. We could have, and probably should have, shut Vesper down a year ago. But we loved it too much. Or at least I did.

I bought Vesper when Gruber announced it on his site because I knew there was probably a lot of care and attention put into it, but the truth was, I had already started my relationship with SimpleNote (SimpleNote was acquired by Automattic, the makers of WordPress, in 2013).

I can’t remember if SimpleNote had their native OS X app from the start, but they did have a web app version which I used all the time. It’s still a part of my daily workflow and note-taking.

In the original version of his post (Google screenshot), Gruber mentions the font-licensing as one of the two, big, ongoing costs to keep the app running (he seems to have removed any mention of fonts). As a designer and type aficionado, I can understand the desire for great typography in an app or website, but I wouldn’t let it break the bank, especially with the solid lineup of fonts to choose from in iOS.

Vesper uses Ideal Sans, from Hoefler & Co. who are notorious for their hefty licensing fees. Back around 2011-12 I worked briefly on the redesign and rebuild of HBO.com while at Roundarch (now Isobar). We looked into the licensing of HBO’s identity typeface, Gotham, for use on the web and I think Hoefler & Co’s license was in the tens of thousands per month (a quick look at the current HBO.com reveals they still use a version of Gotham).

It’s too bad Vesper didn’t pan out. I’m a big proponent of creating things you want to see and use in the world, not creating for some imaginary customer or fan in your head. Q Branch did just that and I respect them for it.

As Gruber points out, their timing and execution were just a little off, and sometimes that’s all that separates the successes from the failures (for more on timing, talent, practice Outliers by Malcolm Gladewll is a must-read).

Step 1: You create a comic of a dog sitting in hell.

Step 2: Make sure your comic becomes an Internet meme. In this case, the “This is fine” meme:

Step 3: turn your meme into a real, plush doll:

Step 4: Put plush doll on Kickstarter and raise over $380,000.