2012-03-27
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Apple shop fronts and interiors, from CLOG: Apple (via).
(Regular readers will know I’m a sucker for grids and repetition.)
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“Diagrams by MacRumors readers expressing their opinions about the new Apple campus” in Clog: Apple, issue 2 of the magazine which “explores, from multiple viewpoints and through a variety of means, a single subject particularly relevant to architecture now”. This issue focuses on the proposed building.
Image via DesignBoom; URL via Buzz, who posted a nicer picture of the cover after seeing my photograph of an issue of the magazine (which I’m going to have to go back to SFMOMA today to actually buy).
[Social Network] Island
- muttley: I remember ages ago I tried to get someone to buy an island with all of Google's money and establish a new country
- muttley: Except Google Island would be oddly boring and no-one would socialise - except for the civil servants who would have obviously fake "fun" during mandatory periods in the very prominent yet empty common areas
- muttley: Facebook Island would be chaotic and everyone would be out partying so much they wouldn't realise that the civil servants were rummaging through their stuff selling it to third parties
- muttley: Everyone on Apple Island would be very good looking and most stuff would just work perfectly. Except if you ever tried to step off the path you'd be tasered. And fat people would mysteriously disappear.
- hitherto: muttley: on Twitter Island all conversations would be mercifully short, but everyone would be yammering on about so much stuff you'd have no real idea of what was going on...
- hitherto: The other problem with Facebook Island: there'd be a very inviting-looking landing dock for you to reach the island, but a 30% chance that it's actually mined and will blow you to smithereens when you try to land.
2012-03-08
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I don’t have much nice to say about these murky things. (Maybe they look good on a retina display?)
Apple’s new map tiles. Perfectly in keeping with your 70’s leather desk calendar app I guess.
Cartography has undergone a genuine revolution over the last decade; we’re at the stage where the barrier to creating your own map tiles is very low indeed and where talented people are producing some really stunning tile sets - subtle, bright, clear and thoughtfully designed. Usually in designing a map you make a trade off at some level between legibility and data density (masters of the craft can push back successfully against that trade off but it’ll still be there at some point). These Apple tiles are a big step back from using the default Google set both in terms of legibility and data density and at a basic level they just look ugly.
I can’t really find much to disagree with in this assessment of the tiles. There’s a definite sense of Apple’s software going with skeuomorphs, and the strange details here (like the wavy lines to denote oceans) seem part of a determination to try and shield users from the fact they’re using technology.
As a friend said over dinner yesterday, it’s come to something when you look to Microsoft for clean interfaces, but that’s what the new Windows phone and Metro UIs seem to be providing. Why Apple seems so keen to shy away from this remains a mystery to me.
(Source: geocommons.com)
2010-12-14
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One of the first things I do when setting up a Mac is change the following setting, which I expect very few people know about. It’s great if you like to keep a machine muted, or listen to music, or leave headphones plugged in when you’re not wearing them.
In System Preferences → Universal Access, go to the Hearing pane and switch on “Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs”. That’s it. Personally I also then turn down the alert volume, and also switch off the volume change notification sounds, which means I can listen to music without the computer interrupting, or leave headphones off and still find out that my bash prompt is “beeping” at me.
(I did mention this previously, but thought it worth being a bit more informative about how to do it.)
2010-12-13
Apple Settings Pro Tips
If you’ve ever been annoyed at the large gaps between volume settings on a Mac, help is at hand:
If your keyboard has volume keys, [to] change your volume by smaller increments, hold down the Shift and Option keys as you press [them].
This trick also works for brightness. Meanwhile, shift alone also does something: you can temporarily toggle the “Play feedback when volume is changed” setting.
One thing I haven’t found documentation for (although I’ve not looked particularly hard for it) is that holding option with a function key brings up its preference pane. For example, option + brightness opens Keyboard, while option + volume opens Sound and option + Exposé opens, well, Exposé.
[Edit] I’m told this works on 10.5 as well, while option + key works back to 10.3.
2010-10-21
iPhoto ‘11 and Letterpress Printing
iPhoto 11 prints letterpress cards
Which is kind of weird.
What i think they mean is that they have a bunch of pre-letterpresed cards, printed with a design which you can slot your photo into. Your photo is then digitally printed over the top of the letterpressed card. Not sure how they could scale it otherwise…
Anyone? Bueller?
If you watch the video of the keynote, about 22 minutes in is the introduction to the letterpress feature, including the video that’s embedded in iPhoto ‘11. That shows cards which take a photo as an insert on the inside.
Still, it’s an interesting choice of addition to the things you can print from the application.
