There have been two approaches in bringing touch computing to the masses. The first approach, largely championed by Microsoft, has been to add touch to historically cursor driven desktop operating systems. The second, pioneered by Apple, has been to build touch-first user experiences. My main criticism of the added-on touch in Windows is that user […]
Author Archives: Jack Wellborn
Earlier this month John Siracusa co-wrote and released Front and Center. Its sole purpose is to make windows in modern macOS1 behave more like they did in classic Mac OS (System 1 to Mac OS 9). In his announcement of Front and Center, John succinctly describes the difference: In classic, when you click on a […]
If there is one word I would use to describe what makes an Apple-like experience, it’s “cohesion”. Any Apple enthusiast is aware of the company’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). The Macintosh has had one since 1984. iOS has had one since the launch of the App Store in 2008. Even WatchOS and tvOS have their […]
A gross game undoubtedly played by hardware companies is to offer a low end variant that is markedly less desirable than what is sent out for review. Apple has long done this with iPhone storage where even the so-called Pro model starts with a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage. Apple also did it with the […]
I was a bit taken aback by the prevailing cynicism surrounding yesterday’s iPhone announcement. It’s not that I expected people to have been excited, rather that any reaction to new iPhones would have been well tempered by this point. Like many, the original iPhone was the single most exciting product announcement in my lifetime. It […]
As a sucker for all things Mac history related, I couldn’t help but click when Michael Tsai highlighted Andy Hertzfeld’s YouTube channel on his blog. Watching the Frox demo, I had two competing thoughts: This is an amazing technology demo for 1990. This is a mess of a product demo. Some like to deride Steve […]
I saw this come through my Twitter via the venerable Loop. Version Museum is a self described “visual history of your favorite technology”. It’s like candy for anyone who has even a passing interest in the evolution of graphical user interfaces. I can’t help but point out how much Windows changed from version 1.0 to […]
Scott Rosenberg for Axios writes: Apple, Facebook, and Google are all firmly on the record now: they agree that privacy is a good thing, that government should protect it, and that you can trust them to respect it. The catch: Each company defines privacy differently and emphasizes different trade-offs in delivering it. This isn’t the […]
As part of what I can only describe as the result of some sort of nerdy midlife crisis, I purchased a used Apple Extended Keyboard II. Why The Apple Extended Keyboard II The Apple Extended Keyboard II was a favorite keyboard of my youth that I acquired along with my least favorite Apple computer, the […]
From Max Willens at Digiday: Today, publishers are still having trouble selling their Apple News inventory directly, sources said. Three cited Apple News’s limited user targeting, which doesn’t allow the use of third-party data or IP addresses, as reasons for them being unable to sell a meaningful amount of ads on Apple News. A fourth […]