the 25 billionth app downloaded from apple...
… was downloaded by someone chinese.
… was called “where’s my water” (no jokes).
… was rewarded with a $10,000 itunes gift certificate. what do you even do with that much fake money?!?
March 6th, 2012
November 2nd, 2011
so, i was too quick to get excited… and sort of right to be suspicious about google mutely handing over the best of its best to apple…
according to techcrunch, the new gmail-for-ios app is unusable.
oh, fail.
finally! hallelujah! i haven’t downloaded this yet, but i wonder how different it’ll be from the latest version of the gmail app for android, which i think is the fastest, smartest, and best-designed iteration yet. would google willingly give the best of one of its best apps to its biggest competitor in the mobile phone market? rationally speaking, it should, since gmail users use all kinds of phones and os’s. but there’s a *lot* more at stake here than equal-opportunity playing nice.
(via the apple app store)
October 5th, 2011
i saw one tweet that fondly pointed out the precise timing of steve jobs’ death; while he obviously couldn’t control the number of years he had left, how appropriate that he passed away a day after the iphone 4s keynote: it’s almost as if he was waiting to make sure his baby was in good hands.
(photo via the nytimes obituary)
duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude. i’m an android fangirl, but this… this…
apple is a marketing MACHINE.
October 4th, 2011
this apple “concept video” is about to go viral, and i’m about to help. this is what the past thought its future looked like…
(Source: youtube.com)
August 25th, 2011
leaving his irreversible impact on business aside, i’m interested in his influence on our social behavior. obviously he changed the way people engage with music, information, news and entertainment, but his legacy also changes the way people engage (or don’t) with one another in public spaces: people are “talking” via NFC tags to advertisements and store windows as much as they are to one another; the texture and rhythm of our working day now has no definitive endpoint; and so on. there is a new imperative to look busy in public, to be texting, talking to someone on the phone and to be checking e-mail (preferably all at the same time). in cafes, once locations for talking, flirting, daydreaming, you now find ranks of freelancers, connected to their laptops by the umbilical cords of their earphones, eyes down. jobs contributed to a complete reconfiguration of our social architecture. his contribution to design’s canon of wonders, of course, is jonathan ive’s seductively slick, ice-cubes-of-the-gods product styling of eminently caressable handhelds and monitors that catapulted technology from the grubby engineer’s workshop into the millennial zeitgeist of the round-cornered, gloss-surfaced wallpaper lifestyle. jobs’s more significant contribution is in this remarkable set of tools he has provided designers with. it’s arguable that design has got better since the advent of the apple mac, but it’s certainly become more complex and awe-inspiring.
alice twemlow, chair, mfa design criticism, school of visual arts, new york, in an nytimes piece on the job jobs did. more than any of the others, i think her comment does a remarkable job (har, har) of connecting apple and its ceo to the sociology of everyday computer users.
what makes steve jobs so great?
the answer is obvious… once you see it on your screen. if you read one thing today, read this piece.
inside apple
this cover story appeared in fortune magazine several months ago, available only to subscribers or to paying one-off-ers (as an “amazon single”). this look behind the fortress-like walls of one of the world’s most profitable companies is fascinating, and well worth a read, even if the stories it tells verge on mythology.
August 17th, 2011
someecards does it again… and this time, apparently, with verizon’s approval?
http://www.facebook.com/verizon?sk=app_114794571946708
(Source: someecards.com)
August 16th, 2011
ios has always been beautiful, and i love the ease and classiness of the user interface when i’m playing with our ipod touch or ipad2. but i always felt that there was so much more raw coolth to android — the way you could customize, the way you could add on apps and workarounds, the way google’s services integrate so neatly into anything you’re doing… i also don’t particularly like the look of mail, or the gmail app, on ios (google obviously has its priorities right, and apple probably doesn’t want to capitulate totally to google’s style…)
but this video almost (*almost*) makes me wanna switch from my incredible to the new iphone. their hardware is sleek, their software is smart… but their marketing? that’s sheer genius.
(also, i’m still a teeny bit bitter that there’s no instagram on android. the vignette app i’m using instead is cool, but it’s got nothing on the ‘gram.)
(Source: apple.com)
July 13th, 2011
dan ariely: "you've been gamed!"
a light but insightful piece in wired magazine on how several giant online companies — from apple to zynga — use basic consumer psychology to keep you coming back (and spending more). you might want to kick yourself for falling prey to such textbook ploys; but let’s face it, these companies are raking it in for a reason: millions more like you are doing the same things too.
June 23rd, 2011
apple patents "directional audio"
imagine if all you needed to do with your phone in order to dial a certain number, increase the speaker volume, or shut it down was move it left or right. a new apple patent might just make that possibility a reality: it’ll generate audio cues that seem to come from different directions, and if you want to fire off a command you just have to move your phone in the direction from which the appropriate command seems to be coming. the technical patent diagram isn’t super enlightening, but the concept is a very cool way to keep people’s eyes off their phones and on the road (as one such use case would allow).
n.b., some of htc’s phones already allow you to turn down, or totally silence, ringer volume, by what direction you turn your phone in while it’s ringing.
March 10th, 2011
apple = winning
postulate 1: sxsw (south by southwest), the major music/film/tech fest happening in austin, has long been known as where the cool kids define cool before said cool hits the rest of the world.
postulate 2: the festival begins tomorrow — also the day the ipad 2 comes to market.
postulate 3: there isn’t an apple store in austin.
so, apple is *creating* a 5,000 sq. ft. popup store which will open in time for the launch on friday.
sheer genius.
