Twitter is two things. It is a concept — everyone in the world connected in real time — that’s so obvious in retrospect that it is impossible to imagine it not existing. It is also a product that has had a rough time living up to that concept.
A good piece by Matthew Panzarino on Twitter’s recent launches and struggles to establish a product that makes sense to new users and investors. I’m curious to see where Twitter takes the service in 2015 – Panzarino mentions a redesign, which could be interesting (especially on iOS).
This week Federico tells his story of setting up his 3DS, Myke bemoans Pokemon Shuffle and they both discuss Majora’s Mask 3D and Alto’s Adventure.
A good show on last week’s Virtual. If you haven’t read it, check out my review of Alto’s Adventure here (and expect more this week). You can listen to the episode here.
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When the young people of Tokyo want to go shopping, they head for Harajuku. A fabled wellspring of youth culture, the neighborhood offers international retail chains on its main streets and tiny purveyors of bleeding-edge fashion in its back alleys. On this Saturday morning in mid-December, a throng of extremely excited twentysomething men and women crowd into the grand opening of a 1,700-square-foot shop located across the street from H&M and Forever 21. As they enter the store, they’re greeted by two costumed characters: a deadpan bear and an exuberant
I’ve wanted to understand Line for a while now, and Harry McCracken published an in-depth look at the company today. Fascinating story and impressive ability to turn something “simple” like messaging into wholly different monetization routes.
This week, Myke, Federico and Stephen cover Jony Ive, Project Titan and iOS extensions.
A fun episode of Connected this week, but I’d recommend listening after reading The New Yorker’s profile of Jony Ive and Apple’s design team. You can get the episode here.
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Today, my friend and co-host Myke Hurley is launching Behind the App, a special series of his podcast Inquisitive focused on app development. From the description of the first episode:
In the first episode of “Behind the App”, a special series of Inquisitive, we take a look at the beginnings of iOS app development, by focusing on the introduction of the iPhone and the App Store.
I’ve seen Myke working on this for the past four months, and I’ve listened to the first episode. Everything about Behind the App is top notch and you won’t find this kind of in-depth tech storytelling anywhere else. The pacing is just right. The story is fascinating. The music is by Brave Wave (seriously). The guests have something useful and relevant to say. The script is well done. I know I’m being impartial when I say that Myke had the right idea at the right time and he’s making the best of it.
As of today, I have three episodes recorded of the series. I expect it to run for maybe 10-15 episodes, but I’m going to see how that fares as I continue to plough through.
Making these shows has been an incredible amount of work, but I am so proud of them. It’s totally different in style and production to anything I have made before, and I am learning new skills as I progress. I think I’m getting better at it every day too.
I genuinely believe that my last five years in podcasting has taught me all of the base skills that I needed to do this, and ‘Behind the App’ is going to teach me what I need to know for the next five years.
I’m genuinely excited for Myke and the whole team behind this. Grab your podcast app of choice (or use a web browser), listen at whatever speed you like, and wait for the next installments of Behind the App. I know I will.
All About Apple, an Italian non-profit organization that’s been operating for over a decade, has launched a crowdfunding campaign for All About Apple Museum, the “most comprehensive” exhibition of Apple and Apple-related products with over 9,000 pieces in its collection. The organization has assembled a team of volunteers and has been granted permission to use a new location in Savona, Italy, and they’re seeking funds to finish the project.
All About Apple has shared a video detailing their goals for the museum (in Italian, with English subtitles).
As seen in the video and campaign page (English version here), All About Apple has been curating pieces that range from classic Macs and NeXT workstations to old Apple marketing material, iPods, accessories, and even Steve Wozniak’s original toolbox from the 70’s.
I didn’t know this organization before, but it sounds like an incredible effort and an interesting project. You can read more about All About Apple here and back the project on Italian crowdfunding platform Eppela.
Here’s something you don’t hear every day: next week’s episode of ABC’s Modern Family will take place entirely on the screen of a MacBook Pro. The Verge writes:
In the Modern Family episode, we’re looking at the computer screen of Claire Dunphy (Julie Bowen) while she’s waiting at the airport. She’s had a disagreement with her daughter Haley (Sarah Hyland) and can’t reach her, and over the course of the episode Claire jumps across multiple Mac apps and video chats to talk to her family and track Haley down (apparently everyone in the Modern Family universe uses Apple products for convenient FaceTime and iMessage sessions).
The best part, tech-wise, is that the graphics have been entirely recreated manually for resolution needs, forcing the authors to cope with changes in the Yosemite betas.
“I was building the assets for Yosemite back when Yosemite was still in beta,” he said. While it helped ensure the episode wouldn’t feel dated when it finally aired, it also led to the unfortunate situation of Brown finishing up assets, only to have to tweak or swap things around when Apple updated the interface in a new build. “It was frustrating to be like, ‘Act one, totally locked,’ and then come in Monday and hear the FaceTime notification has changed.”
The trick was producing footage that would look good (and prove readable) on a giant living-room TV. That required the technical intervention of a post-production team, which worked for months to create a replica of Apple’s OS X “Yosemite” desktop operating system painstakingly updated with every revision to the software.
“Basically, what you’re seeing on screen is all hand-made,” said John Brown, the show’s motion graphics producer, who had previously worked on commercials for the Google+ social network that uses a similar narrative approach.
Modern Family isn’t new to Apple devices. In 2010, before the iPad’s release, the show featured an episode focused on the device and Phil (one of the characters) struggling to get one on launch day.
Earlier today, The New Yorker published an extensive profile of Jony Ive. The in-depth article covers a wide range of topics, including Ive’s early life and career, thoughts on design, Apple Watch, relationship with Steve Jobs, and more.
It’s a must-read. Instead of pulling out relevant bits to reprint them here with fancy headlines, I’m going to use one paragraph about Ive’s sense of care and ask you to enjoy the full story over at The New Yorker.
We were in the fast lane of I-280, in squinting low sunshine. When I asked for examples of design carelessness, Ive cranked the conversation back to Apple. He has the discipline to avoid most indiscretions, but not always the facility to disguise the effort. “At the risk of sounding terribly sentimental, I do think one of the things that just compel us is that we have this sense that, in some way, by caring, we’re actually serving humanity,” he said. “People might think it’s a stupid belief, but it’s a goal—it’s a contribution that we can hope we can make, in some small way, to culture.”
Other clues suggest a major scrub to the iTunes store, which will rid itself of thousands of titles including soundalikes and certain covers, all at Apple’s discretion, say insiders. Moreover, the disallowed music includes artist rerecordings, favoring original or best-of versions and, critics contend, the major labels that retain those rights. Additionally, featured-artist sliders, previously chosen editorially, may now be determined by sales velocity, leaving some to wonder if iTunes is becoming less like a Tower Records and more of a Target – limited selection and a focus on hit titles. “Until now, iTunes has been good to the indies,” contends one vet. Conversely, an Apple source says such case-by-case house-cleaning to eliminate duplicative and deceptive versions is routine.
(Emphasis mine)
The “scrub” to the iTunes Store has been previously reported, and, as Halperin and Christman note, it has, to an extent, been performed in the past as well.
I have, however, a hard time believing Apple will transform featured recommendations into Top Charts-like carousels determined by “sales velocity”. The company has traditionally taken a lot of a pride in its editorial curation with sections refreshed on a weekly basis and highlighted on the front page of iTunes. They bought Beats Music last year, which included an in-house editorial team of music curators and critics. And, they recently hired Zane Lowe, well known for his excellent taste in emerging artists and classic albums. If Apple is indeed planning to abandon editorially curated sections on the iTunes Store, all signs point to the contrary.
