February 2010
34 posts
Cult Of Mac is celebrating Steve Jobs 55th Birthday. They’ve posted the full transcript and video of Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University’s graduating class.
It’s a must watch if you draw breath. The first time I read this I had a ‘light bulb moment’ that changed me permanently.
“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
That’d be because they are idiots.
“In addition, revenue from iTunes is said to have been “marginal” for producers and distributors.”
Baloney. Make *everything* available, price it reasonably and people will fall over themselves to hand you money. Marginal commitment = Marginal return.
If it’s good enough for Alan Kay, it’s good enough for me.
“There are certain shows that will be sold on Apple for 99 cents,” Moonves said.
It’s a welcome, but itty-bitty step in the right direction. I think he meant ‘on the iTunes store’, not ‘on Apple’, but whatever, just make it happen!
Maybe they could just focus on making a better product rather than a cheaper one…
“I think it is very hard for those members of the public that don’t play games to relate to the debate.”
Couldn’t agree more.
“Certainly interesting and original. My first impression, though, is that if nothing looks like a button, and tappable text looks like non-tappable text, how do you know what you can tap?”
Gruber does it again.
Part of the genius of the iPhone is that it takes almost no effort to know what you can and can’t do. If the user has to stop and think about ‘how’, instead of just ‘doing’, it’s probably too hard.
Me: (tries to visit a local restaurant’s website via iPhone)
Restaurant website: I require Flash. Fuck off.
Me: I just want to know how late you’re open.
Website: Nope.
Me: But I’m on my phone. Don’t you have a little “HTML Version” link up in the corner or something?
Website: I’m ignoring you.
Me: What if I’m on my phone because I’m out, looking for a place to eat? Didn’t that ever occur to you?
Website: Fuck entirely off.
Me: (gives up, switches to computer)
Website: Oh! Hi! What can I help you with today?
Me: What are your —
Website: Hang on, I’m loading the music.
Me: Really.
Website: You’ll love it. It’s “Girl from Ipanema” arranged for steel drum and keytar.
Me: No, you don’t have to —
Website: Loading…
Me: All I want is —
Website: I SAID DOT DOT DOT.
Me: (drums fingers on desk)
Website: There we go. Isn’t that nice? It’s… what’s the word. Ethnicky.
Me: What are your hours?
Website: Take a look at our menu! It’s a PDF of a screenshot of a scan of a Word document printed on a dishtowel. With fonts!
Me: I don’t care. What are your hours?
Website: Don’t worry, the menu loads in a new window so the music won’t stop. Can I show you some broken images?
Me: What. Are. Your. Hou. Rs.
Website: I… I don’t know.
Me: (goes to Denny’s)
Brilliant.
If it’s true, I’d buy it. I get the feeling I’m not alone.
“…it won’t have Flash out of the box and has designed an interface that doesn’t currently have any multitasking support.”
Why is there no riot about this? There was/is uproar because the iPhone doesn’t do flash and have multitasking…
Microsoft spent quite a bit of time harping on iPhone’s lack of these features and have now done exactly the same thing. Curious.
Interesting thing worth noting, the 7 series software won’t be out until the last parts of 2010, by then Apple will have released the iPad and presumably, this year’s iPhone hardware and iPhone OS 4.0. This may be the ultimate example of the different product announcement strategies, and how well they work.
22mins of Windows Phone 7 action, requires Silverlight though :S
Finally! Good on them for ‘starting over’, it’s long overdue.
Great news! Seems like Adobe is feeling the heat a little…
Sometimes Engadget get really excited about things, I just don’t understand why.
- “and we seriously can’t stress this enough: the mini twins are small. “
Great Bags of Yawn batman!
- “ but with designs like this in the pipeline, they’ll definitely be demanding their fair share of attention over the next few months.”
The hardware won’t ‘demand attention’, it’s the whole widget. Hardware, software and the ecosystem.
It’s like saying, here is the iPhone…but it has no software on it. You have to go sort that out yourself, good luck with that. Without iPhone OS, Multi-Touch and the iTunes ecosystem, it’s just another lump of tech with a touch screen.
It’s my responsibility to play games like this extensively for Can Touch This. That’s the reason, really. *cough*
From the original article: “Net result: the latest publication of HTML5 is now blocked by Adobe, via an objection that has still not been made public (despite yesterday’s promise to make it so).”
Oops!
If Adobe spent as much energy fixing Flash as they do trying to break HTML5 *maybe* we wouldn’t hate it so much…
(via Daring Fireball)
This article made me giggle, are Adobe really that thick?
The iPhone has been out since 2007 and Apple have sold about 75 million iPhone OS devices in that time…so that’s about 9.something% of ALL iPhone OS devices have attempted to downland flash over the last 3 years. And…?
Suck it up Adobe, the web is moving on.
If I ever goto the US, I’m going here. Apple branded everything!?? *faints*
ngmoco has a new social game, We Rule, in the works. We’re excited to share it with you.
In We Rule, you will govern your very own kingdom. You will act as a city planner and landscaper—customizing your realm with buildings, banners, and botany. You’ll decide what crops to plant and ensure they are harvested on time. You will collect taxes from your citizens and manage a variety of shops and businesses - from bakeries and inns to lumber mills and ore mines.
We’re also pleased to announce we’re collaborating with App Store star Newtoy to create this innovative, next-gen social game. Newtoy has a strong development pedigree on a host of platforms - before iPhone and iPod, the team helped create Age of Empires and Halo Wars. More recently they’ve engineered smash mobile hits Words with Friends and Chess with Friends.
Soon you’ll have a chance to build a kingdom of your own. We’ll be revealing more about the game soon. And if you’d like access to exclusive info and screens, chat with gamemakers and help us make We Rule better, join the ng:community.
I’m going to try review this on Can Touch This, sounds totally addictive. :)
Big predictions, I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m going on record right now, Windows 8 won’t be released before Apple’s next big cat.
“Yeah, it’s something that we’re looking at,”
Microsoft Senior Product manager, Mike Tedesco says in an interview with T3.
Let’s hope ‘nothing to announce today’, actually means ‘nothing to announce ever’.
He said other stuff too…
“We’ve had tablet technology forever and both Windows 7 and Windows Vista automatically detect that and you can be running your Office on there.”
How’d that work out for you there Mike….?
Just ‘cause you can, doesn’t mean you should. Just sayin’.
Great graph showing where Microsoft make their money.
Interesting how the entertainment division is only just profitable yet they seem to do the most innovation (Xbox, not Zune) and online services has been a bleeder from day one. Proof you can’t buy your way into the market, I guess
(via Daring Fireball)
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this isn’t that surprising.
Why limit yourself to a one platform, especially if that platform is Windows? I’m more surprised it took this long.
I could do some serious damage to my monthly download cap with a 10 grand iTunes card.
Take that Mr Music Industry.
Interesting take on why Apple don’t push harder into the corporate world, outside of the iPhone.
I’d guess having the support infrastructure for needy corporate customers would outweigh the benefits of selling to them.
Dan
I don’t understand how Big Billy could possibly think it’s a good idea for Apple to do this with iPad…Microsoft have been flogging this deceased horse for a decade and got nowhere.
Surely that’s enough of a clue that the ‘old’ idea of tablet PC’s are as dead as that aforementioned horse.
Dan
All the stuff from thestormglass.com will be moving in here. New stuff will follow, stay tuned…or don’t. Whatever you like.
