Kevin Foxs Offer to Google Reader

post from Daring Fireball on 02 November 2011 11:03:19 PM. © Daring Fireball

Kevin Fox:

As the former lead designer for Google Reader, I offer my servicesto Google, rejoining for a three month contract in order torestore and enhance the utility of Google Reader, while keeping itin line with Google?s new visual standards requirements.

Is there anyone, anywhere, who thinks the new Google Reader is an improvement?

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Read The Full Article:
http://fury.com/2011/11/my-offer-to-google-reader/

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Scaling Down the Mac Pro

post from Daring Fireball on 02 November 2011 10:03:20 PM. © Daring Fireball

Marco Arment:

It?s impossible to significantly change the Mac Pro withoutremoving most of its need to exist.
But I think it?s clear, especially looking at Thunderbolt?sdevelopment recently, that Apple is in the middle of a transitionaway from needing the Mac Pro.

I concur.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.marco.org/2011/11/02/scaling-down-the-mac-pro

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Ian Hex Compares UI Typefaces

post from Daring Fireball on 02 November 2011 10:03:20 PM. © Daring Fireball

Interesting comparison, but fundamentally flawed. I think Hex overlooks something essential: how the fonts are rendered by the OS. Each of these operating systems uses different anti-aliasing algorithms — even Mac OS X (which uses sub-pixel anti-aliasing by default) and iOS (which never uses sub-pixel anti-aliasing). A proper comparison should show these fonts as they are rendered on each system.

His criteria are too analytical. You want to know why I think Helvetica Neue is a great UI font for iOS? Because it’s beautiful. And the problem with font that “wins” his comparison, Droid Sans, is that it’s ugly. You know it’s ugly when even Google thinks it is.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.design-by-izo.com/2011/10/18/what-should-i-look-for-in-a-ui-typeface/

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Gold Standard

post from Daring Fireball on 02 November 2011 10:03:20 PM. © Daring Fireball

Nicholas Kolakowski, reporting for eWeek on a “research note” by analyst Jack Gold:

Apple will lose its overwhelming dominance of the consumer tabletspace within the next three years, according to a prediction fromanalyst Jack Gold.
His research note also predicts that Microsoft will own roughly 10percent of the consumer tablet market by that 2014-2015 timeframe,beating out Research In Motion?s QNX operating system with lessthan 10 percent but losing out to iOS (30 percent) and Android (50percent).

That’s the same Jack Gold wrote the following regarding the iPhone in 2007:

Can it succeed? Frankly, and contrary to the reactions of Applefans and the stock market, I am pretty skeptical. I don?t thinkthis device will meet the fantastic predictions I have beenreading. For starters, while Apple basically established themarket for portable music players, the phone market is alreadyestablished, with a number of major brands. Can Apple remake thephone market in its image? Success is far from guaranteed.
Why am I not impressed?

I don’t know, but I know why I’m not.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Apple-iPad-Will-Lose-Tablet-Dominanc
e-Gold-765430/

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Defending Androids Hardware Buttons

post from Daring Fireball on 02 November 2011 10:03:20 PM. © Daring Fireball

Steven Van Bael makes the case for Android’s hardware Back button. Only fair to give the other side a voice.

Here’s one thing I don’t like about the Android Back button that I’ve never seen a counterargument for: it presumes that you, the user, remember the activity stack. If you turn your phone on and you’re looking at a web page in the browser, if you don’t remember what you were doing immediately before opening the web page you’re looking at, you have no idea where you’re going to go if you hit the Back button. Could be another app, could be another web page, could be the home screen. And if hitting the Back button takes you somewhere you didn’t want to go, there’s no Forward button to reverse it. Drove me nuts.

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Read The Full Article:
http://vbsteven.com/?p=521

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Revolutionary Lifestyle app for Women Beauty
Products - MyCosmetics

post from prMac on 02 November 2011 09:36:00 PM. © prMac

After the enormous success of MyCosmetics, Bubble Surprise introduces MyCosmetics 1.3, for iOS devices, now in English, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Spanish languages. My Cosmetics 1.3 app is the best solution to keep track of cosmetics and beauty products. MyCosmetics is designed both for the professional market segment and non-professional users. MyCosmetics tracks expire dates and organize cosmetic and beauty products.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-33197.htm

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PlugBug Charger

post from Daring Fireball on 02 November 2011 08:03:40 PM. © Daring Fireball

How in the world did no one think of this before?

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Read The Full Article:
http://twelvesouth.com/products/plugbug/

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Mark OConnor Swapped His MacBook for an iPad and
Linode

Fascinating, really. What enables him to work solely from an iPad is that he does all his work in Vim. So it’s the fact that he’s a code-writing Unix nerd that allows him to use the seemingly least-Unix-nerd-friendly computer ever as his sole work machine.

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Read The Full Article:
http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-for-an-ipad

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Apple Seeds iOS 5.0.1 Beta

Just out the door:

iOS 5.0.1 beta contains improvements and other bug fixesincluding:
Fixes bugs affecting battery life
Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation
Contains security improvements

I can’t think of a good reason why the multitasking gestures weren’t enabled for the original iPad in 5.0.0.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/02/apple-posts-ios-5-0-1-beta-for-developers/

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Mobile Web Browser Market Share

Interesting mobile web browser market share numbers from Net Applications. iOS continues to grow, now accounting for over 60 percent of mobile web traffic; Android’s share of mobile traffic is at 18 percent. BlackBerry is way down at 2 percent.

Also interesting, in contrast, are the mobile share numbers from Ars Technica for October: 40 percent for iOS, 37.5 percent for Android. So web-wide, iOS has more than three times the web browsing usage of Android, but on a site like Ars, Android shows far larger usage.

(DF’s OS share numbers for October, according to Google Analytics: 54% Mac OS X, 27% iOS (17/10 iPhone/iPad), 16% Windows, 1.6% “Linux”, 1% Android.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1&qpcustomb=1

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