Tech news moves fast but some discussion topics are timeless. Copyright and digital ownership is one of them and the Vergecast podcast covered it in depth on their episode two weeks ago. I really enjoyed listening to hosts Josh Topolsky and Nilay Patel break down where the movie, TV and music industry have to move to stay competitive. It’s all clustered at the beginning of the episode through roughly the first half hour.
There are many (too many) tech articles that summarize this year’s WWDC keynote news. If you read only one, check out The Wirecutter roundup first. All killer, no filler.
John Gruber on the new “next-generation” MacBook Pro:
The catch is that it’s expensive. That’s why it debuted alongside a brand-new update to the 15-inch non-retina MacBook Pro, rather than replacing it…surely we’re going to see displays of this caliber roll out across the MacBook line, one by one, as soon as it becomes economically feasible.
Best to compare it to the original MacBook Air from 2008. The first Air was expensive and not for everyone, but it showed the future of Apple’s (and, really, the industry’s) portables. That’s what the new 15-inch MacBook Pro is: the future of portable Macs.
I have decidedly mixed feelings on Gruber’s usual opinions but he really hits it dead on regarding the new high-end Macbook Pro. I’d predict by next year’s WWDC retina display tech will reach the Macbook Airs.
Osfoora was bumped up to 1.2 late last night on the Mac App Store. There’s a few miscellaneous bug fixes along with a brand new, better looking high-res icon. The big win though has to be Twitter’s live streaming API; I’m not the type that keeps Twitter open on in the background but many others consider this essential functionality.
Osfoora is my client of choice on the Mac. I love the Tweet Marker support, inline images and overall speed. It’s well worth the $5 sticker price.
This iMore article is the ultimate iOS 6 wish list. It’s smartly organized where every section examines what competing platforms already have (e.g. “what iOS could take from Android”). and far more comprehensive than I expected when I spotted it over on at Hacker News last weekend. Highly recommended.
In the midst of all these quick E3 news snippets this week, I appreciated this longer Wired story on Epic Games and the revolutionary effect of the Unreal Engine on modern gaming:
Then something surprising happened: Kismet [a simplified event scripting tool] democratized programming. “There were people who weren’t programmers but who still wanted to create and script things,” says James Golding, senior engine programmer. In other words, some artists weren’t content simply to draw the monsters; they wanted to define how they acted as well. Kismet let them do that. “When we got them a visual system,” Golding says, “they just went completely bananas with it.” This was off-label usage, though; while it was a great secondary benefit, Kismet hadn’t been designed for this task, so it was kludgy and slow.
And thus was born Kismet 2, which again converts tedious lines of code into an interactive flowchart, complete with pulldown menus that control almost every conceivable aspect of behavior for a given in-game object. Need to determine how many bullets it will take to shatter that reinforced glass? Kismet 2 is your tool. Once behaviors are set, they can be executed immediately and edited on the fly. With Kismet 2, Epic empowers level designers—the people responsible for conceptualizing the world—to breathe life into that world directly, rather than relying on programmers to do it on their behalf.
I knew gaming engines were crazy, but not that crazy.
Startup entrepreneur Ilya Lichtenstein on the effects of him picking up basic programming skills:
The lessons I’ve learned from actually building and launching products are invaluable.
I never ask for specific estimates or set hard deadlines for finishing a project. I know firsthand that the last 10% of a project can take 90% of the time.
I don’t say things like “This looks really easy to do, you can throw it together in a couple hours, right?” The most complex projects can look deceptively simple.
Exactly. I’ve worked directly with and for a business almost a decade now. Once you have as little as one or two decision makers on the business side with a technical background, it can have a huge positive effect on relations with the tech team.
There’s a lot of wireframing tips floating around online but they rarely focus on just web applications. It’s cool to see that kind of web focus over on Intercom’s design blog. Pay special attention to point three which focuses on speed and exploration:
If you can’t produce concepts quickly, then you’re working at the wrong fidelity. If your wire-framing serves only to deliver a grayscale version of what you’ve already decided you’re building then you’re wasting everyones time.
Marcelo Somers:
Facebook advertising doesn’t work because they focus on showing you ads based on who you are, not what problem you are trying to solve.
Ironically enough, Google is running around afraid of Facebook, but their ads have been better targeted all along because they are shown at a moment where one has a job that needs to be done.
Great point. I’ve always felt Facebook’s advertising wasn’t fully effective, but couldn’t articulate why succinctly. No more.
Designer Pat Dryburgh’s much passed around account of Photoshop upgrade woes is totally worth the attention it’s getting. His praise of small shops like Panic is what really sells his opinion:
How is it that a small, independent Mac development shop can make this experience so incredibly pleasing, while Adobe—a company with over 9,000 employees and 30 years of experience—can’t process an order quicker than 24 hours?
Wait… Photoshop CS4 just crashed. I think I’ve got my answer.
I find myself increasingly in the situation Pat did. The Adobe Creative Suite is awesome yet bloated, crash-prone, and overkill for at least half of what I throw at it. Pixelmator and [Sketch] have been logical next steps.