I really enjoyed this extended design post by Mark Boulton. What’s awesome is the specificity here: detailed recommendations for characters per line to maximize readability, how to avoid hanging punctuation and much more.
The Verge‘s Andrew Webster:
In order for the Wii U to truly succeed, Nintendo needs to create experiences that could only be possible with the GamePad, and that are good enough to make people want to buy the console. Speaking to the New York Times, Fils-Aime said that the GamePad “allows us to create content that shows different ways to play together but have fundamentally different experiences.” Now Nintendo needs a game that exemplifies that philosophy.
Exactly. Mark my words: the idea of selling a cheaper version of the Wii U without pack in software is a huge, huge mistake.
Kyle Orland makes the case for Terry Cavanagh’s (developer of cult platformer VVVVV) retro, trippy arcade game. I agree with him; it is often frustrating, but it’s addictive as hell. Perfect way to kill 30 seconds between subway stops.
Matt Asay writing for The Register on Zuckerberg’s recent Disrupt comments where he dumped on HTML5:
There’s a lot of blame to throw around, and HTML5 is only one target. Instead of pointing his finger at HTML5, Zuckerberg might be better served by looking inside his company to see how it was deployed. Facebook’s approach to HTML5 has been hobbled by politics and a lack of expertise, both in HTML5 and in mobile. Zuckerberg is correct that today’s HTML5 tools aren’t perfect, but in this case the problem may lie more with the craftsman than with the tools.
Bingo.
Really dug this wallpaper work by Instagram designer Tim Van Damme. Slick and great looking backgrounds for retina iPads, iPhones, the 15″ retina Macbook Pro and the 27″ Cinema Display (which, should be noted, has less screen pixels than the 15″ Macbook.)
The always dependable Karina Longworth outdoes herself on this extended Village Voice piece. Before it closed, its gigantic collection VHS taps and DVDs shipped overseas, Kim’s Video was a fixture of the NY film scene. Before torrents went mainstream, these guys had basically everything you wanted, especially for cult and foreign film selections. I remember hearing about the now famous South Korean film Oldboy playing over at Cannes…and two days later spotting it on the shelf under new releases at Kim’s (some clever attendant got a universal DVD overseas.)
Upstatement is a small web firm that assisted with the massive Boston Globe switch to a fully responsive design. In this blog post they go through some of their choices made: workflow, tools, break point decisions and more.
Biggest surprise for me came with their primary design program: InDesign. Not Photoshop or Illustrator? Strange at first, but their reasoning appears pretty sound.
Not super crazy about developer Troy Hunt’s title (“uncultured” comes off as a bit crass), but he brings up some excellent points about working in web development for an international audience. Does your site support automatic currency conversion? How about something as simple as proper dd/mm instead of mm/dd for users outside the U.S.?
Watts Martin:
What makes Apple the fabulous and infuriating company that they are is their mix of conservative minimalism with crazy risk-taking, running ahead of the herd betting that everybody is going to stampede in their direction. There was no mix this time. Neither the iPhone 5 nor iOS 6 are ahead of the herd. And depending on what Android 5 does, iOS 7 may need to make one hell of a leap not to be behind it.
I’d still argue the wide breadth of apps are the iPhone’s strongest selling point, pushing it ahead of its competition for now. I even find little fault with the iPhone 5’s hardware – gorgeous, minimal, and build quality that few others touch. But in terms of iOS as an operating system? We’re hurting, big time.
Dieter Bohn for The Verge:
Like Microsoft in the 90s and early 2000s, it is taking a very conservative approach to updating its core UI in the name of accessibility and consistency. Apple is keeping the iPhone in a very familiar and safe zone, but does it really need to? It’s risky, taking something that’s massively successful and trying something new and different with it. Most companies don’t do it, but Apple has a reputation built making those kinds of bets. Perhaps it doesn’t deserve that reputation anymore.
As Bohn himself states later in the article, Apple’s not close to the Microsoft Windows Vista fiasco state of Microsoft circa 2000. But do big Apple fans like myself have reason to be concerned? Certainly.