In the 1990s, Apple’s PowerBook laptops included a company logo on the lid that faced the user sitting at the computer. When the lid was opened, the logo was upside down... A few years after Steve Jobs returned in 1997, he flipped the logo for good.
Wow, I didn’t know that. What a jerk one must have looked like with an apple upside down.
A lot has been said about how bad iTunes is. What bugs me most is that some actions within iTunes prevent me from actually listening to music. Sometimes iTunes is “Looking for iPhone...” and you can’t do anything until it’s done. And it still doesn’t do the most obviously useful thing for music listener: permanently display current track name somewhere. So we had to make Emcee.
But I’d like to take a look at the iTunes Store (including the App Store). How can it be made better?
What I hate about iTunes store is that it’s clearly a web site, but I can’t use a browser to browse it. The web view of iTunes is crippled and ridiculously slow. Why not use Safari? It will not only make the store better for the user, but I believe Apple will sell more songs and apps.
I can’t open a link in new window or tab. Sometimes I want to check out several things from a chart or from search results. Unfortunately, ⌘-clicking them won’t help, I’ll have to open each, then go back. I don’t think I’m the only one who forgets about going back.
I can’t add link to bookmarks. iTunes has a “wishlist”, but it’s only available on a Mac, not iPad or iPhone (or I wasn’t able to find it there). I want to use the Safari bookmarks manager with the store like with anything else and I want it to be synced between my devices. There are also, of course, no bookmarklets in iTunes, so I can’t tweet an app and I can’t send it to Instapaper (some apps have really long descriptions). No obvious way to save and share links is bad.
Some other things I can do in Safari but not in iTunes: zoom a page, drag an image (i. e. album art), pin a portion of a page to Dashboard, search history, find in page. I’ve found myself searching for a feature in an app’s description a couple of times, and I had to use eyes for that, which is just waste of time.
iTunes is already so bloated that it isn’t even funny. So adding all this stuff to iTunes is not an option. To make iTunes store better Apple should just move it from iTunes to Safari.
In previous versions of Photoshop I’ve always set up F2 to open Layer Options dialog. The layer name field was focused by default, so that’s how I renamed layers.
For mysterious reasons in CS6 Adobe has removed Layer Options from the list of things for which you could use a keyboard shortcuts. I was upset. I had to use mouse to rename layer (which takes ages). And why on Earth out of all things would they remove this from the infinite list of configurable shortcuts?
I was almost going to file a bug report, but found a new Rename Layer... item in the Layer menu. Of course it is listed in configurable menu shortcut list, so now I have F2 as a shortcut for it:
I found out that Layer Options were removed from the keyboard setup because the very dialog was removed from Photoshop altogether. That makes sense now that you rename layer with a dedicated command and select its color from a popup menu.
So if you had the same problem, now you don’t. And if you haven’t bothered to set up a shortcut to rename a layer, it’s about time to do it: it will save you tons of time.
Here’s a short review of Blackberry 10 from The Verge:
Cool stuff:
Also, the overall UI looks quite nice.
Summer is coming to the northern hemisphere, and here’s a mix to welcome it:
It’s progressive house again, some of the sweetest tunes I’ve found lately. Enjoy!
While everyone quotes Cook’s toaster and fridge phrase from the latest earnings call, I think the most important is this:
The key thing is, it’s important that Apple not become the developer of the world. We need people to invent their own stuff.
I want that, too. Today Apple is the only company in the world that does in consumer electronics stuff that matters. Even if you like Apple (as I do), it’s a reason to be worried, not to be happy.
Did you know that you could not just resize, but also move a window by dragging its border in Lion?
When you drag left or right border horizontally, you resize the window. But if you try to drag it vertically, the whole window will move. Same thing with top and bottom borders: try dragging them horizontally to move the whole window. Nice touch.
By the way, if you’ve missed it, when resizing Lion windows you can use Alt and Shift the way you do in Photoshop (to resize from center and to preserve proportions respectively).
MG Siegler on Microsoft:
Essentially, they’d follow the IBM path. Nothing wrong with that. IBM is still a great company, they’re just different from what they once were.
For some reason though, all anyone cares about is the consumer space. And, let’s be honest, Apple now owns it. If it’s not clear to you now, it will be in a year. Or two years max. It’s just the way it is.
In five years, Microsoft will be known as an enterprise company. That’s not controversial in my book, it’s just an observation on where things are headed.
My audio player is now available for everyone. It’s called Jouele.
There’s are many things to improve, but it’s already cool and works, which is enough to publish it. Also, it’s easier to use on your websites than any other player. Enjoy! By the way, it’s on Github, so you probably can commit bugfixes if you like (I have no idea how it works).
Oleg Andreev explains why unit share is not that imporant:
Units do not tell you much. There are very different categories of products and prices hidden behind the units. A person who buys a $50 phone does not usually consider buying an iPhone for $500. Or he may consider buying an iPhone instead of buying a cheap phone, handheld game console, wristwatch, a calculator and a flight to visit parents.
