One of the things that stood out for me amongst all the hype around the Motorola Droid before the device hit the market was the screen resolution: a whopping 480 x 854 pixels. At first I thought it was a misprint. Once I verified the specs, I started making my design templates for the Droid…
I updated one of my two Macbook Pros to Snow Leopard yesterday, and although the official price tag for the new OS is only $29, the real cost is a bit higher. For one thing, I was running older versions of a couple of apps – specifically FontExplorer and Parallels – that are not compatible…
Whenever the conversation turns to Apple, there erupts a certain amount of troll vs. fanboy squabbling. Usually there are a few would-be referees in the mix too, telling everyone to shut up because the topic is worn out, or pointless, or both. And so it has been lately with the iPhone App Store saga. Nonetheless,…
What if the company that made your computer forced you to use only their web browser and email application? (Remember, Microsoft was prosecuted for less than this). What if that company could dictate what software – of any type – other companies were allowed to make for your computer, what you were allowed to install…
Remember CD-ROMs? Remember how cool they were and how for a brief moment in the early 90s it seemed every possible thing was being CD-ROMified – from children’s books to topo maps to baseball cards? CD-ROMs were briefly so cool that people would pay $200 a pop for the latest and greatest titles. Then they…
The purpose of the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines (requires login) is to help developers create well-designed experiences for the iPhone that also measure up to Apple’s reputation and high standards. The guidelines drive toward a consistency, and to this end they encourage developers to take advantage of a sizeable library of existing components. Somewhat understandably,…
In the latest version of mail.app in Leopard, some of the fields have moved. I had some trouble sending mail because I was used to the older version, and I couldn’t find the field for setting the SMTP port and authentication. Anyway, I have it up and running now, so I figured I’d post some…
Ok, this isn’t exactly a new topic, but some thought-provoking (and entertaining) nuggets have come across the wire recently. This photo nicely sums up my long series of rants about Apple’s one-button mouse. Several people sent me this parody of an exercise whereby Microsoft redesigns the iPod packaging. I’m not sure who’s responsible for My…