May 2012
1 post
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April 2012
2 posts
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Instagram + Facebook = a disappointed user
Instagram:
When Mike and I started Instagram nearly two years ago, we set out to change and improve the way the world communicates and shares. We’ve had an amazing time watching Instagram grow into a vibrant community of people from all around the globe. Today, we couldn’t be happier to announce that Instagram has agreed to be acquired by Facebook.
And I — as an Instagram user and long-time...
4 tags
March 2012
2 posts
2 tags
“One of the things that really irritates me in products is when I’m aware of...”
– Sir Jonathan Ive
[This is yet another reason why I hold Sir Ive in high esteem.]
1 tag
February 2012
5 posts
1 tag
“Every time I hear someone on a podcast say that RSS is dead I can’t help but...”
– Brent Simmons on Podcasts
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Tim Cook at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference →
Tim Cook:
Now, just about every company is launching a tablet. When we look at the competitive landscape, no one really made a dent in Apple’s market. We see some innovative models, Amazon for instance. Companies undercutting the iPad. I know it’s not all about price, but what do you think about that? Price is rarely the most important thing. A cheap product might sell some units....
1 tag
Ease of Use is User Respect
Rentzsch:
Brad Larson / @bradlarson:
@cieslak People seem to think that making stuff easy to use is only for the benefit of stupid users. Expertise comes in different flavors.
chris cieslak / @cieslak:
@bradlarson The same “stupid users” who fix your car, or perform surgery on you, or teach your kid a foreign language. Drives me nuts.
January 2012
2 posts
2 tags
1 tag
December 2011
2 posts
Prepping the Lombard: software for basic tasks →
These last months I have been neglecting my vintage Mac hardware (with the notable exception of my Newton MessagePads, which I use daily), mostly because my job as a freelance translator kept me…
Stephen Hackett's Hasty Review of the new Twitter...
After sharing a few UI-related impressions, Stephen concludes:
All in all, it’s clear to me that Twitter is trying to steer people toward areas of the service where things like promoted trends and stories can be seen easily. While that’s understandable, I really am not a fan of it taking up so much room in the iPhone app. With no way to re-arrange the default tabs across the bottom, I’m stuck with...
November 2011
5 posts
3 tags
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been....”
– Isaac Asimov - (via John Gruber)
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Death and Resurrection of an SSD →
Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch:
Summary: SSDs live fast, die young, and pretend to be OK even while they’re dying. Don’t use one without awesome backups.
And sometimes, they come back from the dead.
Fascinating report. I find maddening that in this day and age — where it seems that everything must be digitalised otherwise it’s not progress — we’re still having to deal with fundamentally...
This enemy of virtue? Why, tea, of course. →
There were many reasons why a young man or woman might have turned to a life of crime and lewdness in eighteenth-century England. Heart-rending tales of orphaned children, abandoned lovers, destitution and failed ambitions fill the pages of contemporary memoirs, newspaper columns and court records. But for some, one of the prime suspects behind the nation’s idleness and vicious inclinations was...
A few more words about my vintage Mac wishlist →
Since I started this weblog back in 2008, it featured a page called My vintage Mac wishlist, where I list some selected vintage Apple hardware I’m after. I think it’s all quite self-explanatory, but the kind of feedback I received over the years, generated by that page, has been rather absurd and disappointing. I’ve asked myself many times what’s wrong with people.
…
October 2011
7 posts
2 tags
“As always there are those who reveal their asininity (as they did throughout his...”
– Stephen Fry on Steve Jobs
1 tag
In loving memory →
Apple, 1984
5 tags
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What are we supposed to do with Google+? →
Garrett Murray:
I find Google+ confusing. Not its features or its design, but rather how I’m meant to use it.
Garrett raises some thoughtful questions I’ve been asking myself since I was invited to join Google+.
September 2011
2 posts
1 tag
“Science is a joke. Look at the scientific explanation for the origin of life as...”
– Dylan Moran, from What It Is (2009)
4 tags
August 2011
6 posts
1 tag
Twit Menulet doesn’t leave older Macs behind →
Not too long ago, I was complaining that the majority of Twitter clients was progressively leaving older versions of Mac OS X behind. Also thanks to changes in Twitter’s authorisation methods, most…
3 tags
A real terminal →
Although it doesn’t directly relate to vintage Macs or the classic Mac OS, I couldn’t not link to this: A VT220 serial console (circa 1983) set up as a terminal for a Mac Pro (circa 2010).
This…
16 tags
4 tags
July 2011
11 posts
3 tags
“If you don’t have a Magic Trackpad, you’re not going to enjoy Lion nearly as...”
– Maniacal Rage: Thoughts on Lion, Part I
I think this is one of the most sensible pieces of advice regarding the use of the Magic Trackpad in combination with Lion.
Prepping the Lombard: iTunes and QuickTime →
After my DVD Player discoveries, my next step after applying the Mac OS X 10.3.9 Combo Update and installing all the aforementioned updates, has been to look for the latest versions of iTunes and…
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Joseph Cohen on the 'natural' scolling in Lion →
Cohen writes:
They reversed the direction of mouse scrolling! Crazy! But really, they needed to. With Lion, Apple is trying to change the user experience metaphor that has governed OS design since the 80s. It was a symbolic move, but one, to me, that ties together the new interaction paradigm – you interact with the content, not the OS.
Actually, you interact with the mouse or trackpad or...
Apple at a glance, May 1982 →
Thanks to a tweet by Jason Scott, I could download this beautiful 1982 Apple brochure from the Internet Archive, and I suggest you do the same if you love to have some bits from pre-Macintosh…
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Visual differences between iTunes 10 and 10.4 →
Garrett Murray:
iTunes Visual Comparison Update
Took a few minutes today to update my iTunes Visual Comparisons for the newly released iTunes 10.4. Roll over images (or on iOS devices, touch) to see the differences between 10.4 and 10.0. While you’re there, you can check out past comparisons (9 vs 10, 8 vs 9) as well as look at the big jump from 8 to 10.4.
The three semaphore buttons regain...
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Photo-Sleuth →
As usual, one find inspiring websites while looking for something else entirely. Brett Payne describes his site, Photo-Sleuth, as being A series of articles about old photographs, photographers and their subjects, but forgives to mention how fascinating the published material is. Worth a (good) look.
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I pulled a Crazy Ivan*
Dear followers,
I apologise in advance, but due to an imminent major change in my main blog, I had to change this Tumblelog’s URL as well, from http://quillink.tumblr.com to http://morrick.tumblr.com. If you follow my updates via the Tumblr interface, you won’t notice the change, but it’s essential that you update your bookmarks if you occasionally come and check here by...
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Modern Suite, by Shinntype →
When a type foundry or designer prepares a beautiful, amazing font specimen booklet like this, that is so rich in detail as well as informative… Well, you know you’re in the presence of things of the highest quality.
(Clicking on the link will either open a PDF file in your browser, or download it on your computer. If you want to visit the Shinntype foundry homepage, click here...
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{The Illuminated Mixtapes} →
An amazing project started in 2007 by designer Adam Parks. Beautiful illustrations, great design, and most of all great choice of music.
(via Khoi Vinh)
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Marco Arment on Google+ →
Marco Arment:
The network effect is extremely high in social networks. It’s absolutely a boil-the-ocean problem. For Google+ to be useful to you, most of your “friends” (in some context) need to be using it on a regular basis. And most people won’t use more than one social network regularly.
To get widespread adoption, therefore, this needs to take a lot of users away from Facebook,...
The strange cases of vintage Apple hardware... →
After an unforgivable delay, here’s another installment of my diverse experiences with vintage Apple hardware sellers.
2. The elusive Macintosh SE/30
I have wanted this particular Mac since the…
June 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Lukas Mathis has written a book →
Lukas Mathis:
The book is called Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web.
The book follows a typical design process. I’ve divided it into three parts: Research, Design, and Implementation. In each part, I introduce some of the most important techniques you’ll use […], and relevant concepts that will help you come up with usable designs (for example, I’ll...
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Polaroid’s SX-70: The Art and Science of the... →
Wonderful article — no, essay — by Harry McCracken on Polaroid, the legendary SX-70 model, his visionary creator Edwin Land, the rise and decline of instant photography. Lots of interesting photos, videos, quotes. Five pages long, but a really engrossing reading.
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Social Media Is Ruining Everything →
Leigh Alexander:
We have all shifted from being observers to being reporters. When something cool is happening we are not looking at or listening to it, we are tweeting about it or taking pictures of it for our Facebook or texting people who are not there. This is like a blah blah participatory shared whatever but it also means that we operate in a perpetual state of divided attention. The...
May 2011
4 posts
1 tag
3 tags
A side effect of iOS's folders
When Apple released iOS 4.0, one of the new features I was most happy about was the introduction of folders. At the time, I had 9 or 10 screens of applications on my iPhone 3G, and constantly flicking through them to get to a certain app was starting to feel severely counter-intuitive and unnecessarily tiring. The ability to organise my apps in folders was quite welcome, and the implementation of...