Jul 4
Hello from Vermont!

Hello from Vermont!

Jun 27

The One With the Rainbow Flag

Jun 19

In the Cards

John Gruber responds to Justin Blanton’s To Pre or Not To Pre:

The entire user interface is built around the concept of cards rather than apps. So while the iPhone’s Mail app already stays running while in the background, what you cannot do on the iPhone but can on the Pre is have multiple email messages “open” at the same time.

There are a few things going on here. The SDK only displays a single 320 x 480 window per application. This is most likely some combination of a design decision (application switching happens through the depth axis) and an engineering decision (it’s easier to manage windows when an app gets only one of them). Developers, of course, are free to implement an interface like the ‘pages’ in Mobile Safari. (Ah-ha! The card metaphor has been on the iPhone since day one.)

So the decision not to implement pages in Mail has nothing to do with whether the iPhone OS supports cards or whether a developer is capable of displaying and switching between multiple open documents in any other way. My guess is that implementing pages in Mail was either considered too trivial or too confusing to implement.

The interesting thing is that views within an iPhone application belong to a window object. Currently, of course, an application can only display one of these, but I suspect it wouldn’t be too hard for the OS to allow multiple windows of an application to behave like cards.

Status: Delivered

My iPhone has been delivered to my apartment, but unfortunately I’m about 34,000 feet above Indianapolis. (In-flight wireless is OMG totally worth it.) All you cool kids have fun unboxing today. I’ll just hold my breath until Monday.
Jun 18

iamdanw:

Is that a marching band? made up of monks? on segways? whilst on fire?

It took me a while to realize they were performing something by Philip Glass. It turns out you actually can listen to his music, so long as it’s not played on his damn synths.

Jun 16
There are certain objects that convey upon us, when we first see them, the simultaneous feeling of a heartfelt hug from an old friend and a swift smack upside the head. We have a natural tendency to enjoy designs that are clever, or cheeky, or smart. As soon as something becomes too clever, though, we recognize the sheer simplicity of the design, and our reaction becomes, “I could have thought of that!” The truth, however, is that you didn’t, and you’re left with the realization of how hard it is to unearth that obvious design. Our only consolation is the residual warm fuzzies we still feel from enjoying something so clever in the first place. (LED clip by Sungho Lee, via Notcot and Designboom)

There are certain objects that convey upon us, when we first see them, the simultaneous feeling of a heartfelt hug from an old friend and a swift smack upside the head. We have a natural tendency to enjoy designs that are clever, or cheeky, or smart. As soon as something becomes too clever, though, we recognize the sheer simplicity of the design, and our reaction becomes, “I could have thought of that!” The truth, however, is that you didn’t, and you’re left with the realization of how hard it is to unearth that obvious design. Our only consolation is the residual warm fuzzies we still feel from enjoying something so clever in the first place. (LED clip by Sungho Lee, via Notcot and Designboom)

Jun 15
Bank error in your favor. Collect $300.

Bank error in your favor. Collect $300.

Jun 12
Hey, that’s my name!

Hey, that’s my name!

Jun 8

David, on WWDC: This is like attending a taping of Gossip Girl.

Having done both, I can say with certainty that they are nothing like each other.
Jun 6
LISP remains an influential language in ‘key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension.’

— James Iry. A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages