Last week, one of my colleagues informed me that the word “tweet” was now included in the Oxford English Dictionary (see “Quiet announcement” at the end of the page.) The noun and verb tweet (in the s
Over the weekend, I went to a sunset picnic on a rooftop in Brooklyn. The evening couldn’t have been more picturesque — a group of stylish women chatting and lounging on blankets, framed against a lav
Mad Men Gets All the Details Right—Except One AUGUST 27, 2008 Mad Men is a terrific show for lots of reasons, and it’s rightly been praised for its obsessive re-creation of the fashions, values, and e
A lot of ink has been spilt over the past week discussing the design language adopted by iOS 7. It is, without a doubt, the most significant visual change to the platform since it was introduced. It’s fascinating, somewhat flawed, forward looking yet slightly regressive all at the same time. It…
[June 19 update: David Simon has been kind enough to respond at length here . He points out that I falsely stated that collecting call records requires a warrant; I have corrected that statement in the post below.] I read with interest David Simon's recent blog post in which he responds to…
When I launched MacStories in April 2009 I wanted to focus on – as the name implies – Mac apps and the stories of the people who made them and used them. In the summer of 2009, I bought my first iPhon
Walt Disney speaks about 'the tricks of our trade' in this short video that introduces us to the MultiPlane Camera. It adds depth to backgrounds in cartoons.
“We spend a lot of time on a few great things.” — Designed by Apple in California In 1940, Ub Iwerks, the animator behind Walt Disney’s first Mickey Mouse shorts, came back to the Disney studios after
At the bottom of my recent post on App Store pricing , I ended a three-paragraph footnote 1 with this: Abolishing the “top” lists from all App Store interfaces and exclusively showing editorially sele
T he individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden , a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence c
iOS 7 Announced yesterday at Apple’s WWDC 2013 keynote, iOS 7 is a dramatic reimagination of Apple’s mobile operating system. iOS 7 introduces new user features and brings over 1500 new developer APIs
I’m working up to writing at greater length about iOS 7 because, well, blogging. In the meantime, I thought I’d make one specific point. The thing that bothers me most about the new operating system i
Introduction It's no secret that I don't like the Mac OS X Finder. Almost every article I've written about Mac OS X has included a litany of criticisms, from small annoyances to fundamental philosophi
Photo: Dory Kornfield You thought I wouldn’t find out, runners? Your lies stop now! Published in Having It Some · 9 min read · Jun 7, 2013 -- I’ve decided, at the age of thirty-two, to start running.
“Can’t innovate anymore, my ass.” Phil Schiller’s one-liner in yesterday’s WWDC keynote just may be one of the best in Apple history. People may forget what drives Apple, but Apple does not. Back in the dark days, before Steve Jobs returned, the company really had become mediocre. The success of…
Perhaps my favorite Steve Jobs keynote moment was one of his last, at the iPad 2 introduction in March 2011. The last demo of the day, just before Jobs introduced the idea that Apple existed at the in
Louis CK has a joke where he lambasts anyone who complains about the speed of their mobile phone by saying, “Give it a second! It’s going to space. Could you give it a second?” Yesterday, during Apple’s keynote on the redesign of iOS 7, I kept thinking about CK’s joke while trawling through the…
Editorial President Obama’s Dragnet Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a count
Mad. Furious. Instantaneous rage. I’m not proud to admit it, but there is a short list of seemingly inconsequential events that give me blind, piercing rage. It’s an embarrassing list that I cannot fully share, but here’s a few: When a single key on my keyboard is slowly failing. When you chew with…
This is Part 2 of an exploration of what changes, if any, may be coming to TV. Yesterday I examined why cutting the cord yet keeping the shows you watch (i.e. unbundling) was a fantasy. Also, I should
May 28, 2013 at 10:50 AM by Now that the Xbox One has been revealed , joining the already-released Wii U and the previously announced PlayStation 4 , we can finally get a sense of what the next genera
Steve Jobs, in his biography, on his meeting with Larry Page after the former became CEO:
We talked a lot about focus. And choosing people. How to know who to trust, and how to build a team of…
Sweating the details of iOS 7 Published in Thoughts and words · 5 min read · May 10, 2013 -- “Completely flat,” “Like Android,” “Microsoft-flat,” etc., etc., etc. The talk about how Apple is going to
Last year, Jony Ive was interviewed in the London Evening Standard . It makes for interesting reading (despite the awful title). Our industry is in the throes of an aesthetic shift. At one end of the spectrum, there’s the stitched leather and wood of iOS; at the other, the stark, ascetic…
We’ve been managing our photos together for almost a decade now. Things were nice and simple at the start and we both knew what to expect from each other - I pulled my photos off my camera on the comp
The first real-world demo of Google Glass’s user interface made me laugh out loud. Forget the tiny touchpad on your temples you’ll be fussing with, or the constant “OK Glass” utterances-to-nobody: the supposedly subtle “gestural” interaction they came up with–snapping your chin upwards to activate…
Triptych Image: Left Panel: Kelly Mark, "Nothing Is So Important That It Needs To Be Made In Six Foot Neon"; Middle Panel: "La Fonda Dancers"; Right Panel: HGs, "Freemon Street"
“What, in the end, makes advertisements so superior to criticism? Not what the moving red neon sign says — but the fiery…
Betaworks has been in the news a lot lately for, well, disrupting the news. It recently purchased Instapape r and before that Digg , and it's currently working on an alternative to Google Reader . But
"History teaches us nothing except that something will happen' - Hugh Trevor-Roper In the 1990s, the PC market was mostly a corporate market (roughly 75% of volume). Corporate buyers wanted a commodit
The price of a brick. NOTE: This blog has been moved to here http://www.realityprose.com/what-happened-with-lego/ “What happened with Legos? They used to be simple. Oh come on, I know you know what I’
How I Became a Hipster Henry Alford with his bicycle, which he rented to get the true Brooklyn experience, at a busy corner of hip and chic in Williamsburg. Credit... Casey Kelbaugh for The New York T
A few months ago I was on this Jet Blue flight from New York to Burbank. And I like Jet Blue, not just because of the prices. They have this terminal at JFK that I think is really nice. I think it mig
In Memoriam 1942 – 2013 “Roger Ebert loved movies.” RogerEbert.com Reviews Great Movies Chaz's Journal Blogs Far Flungers Channels Contributors Judy Try as she might, Zellweger’s Judy never goes beyond an impression of the multi-talented artist; her all-caps version of acting failing to allow the…
Late last night, Apple released a new iPhone ad. It’s pretty great and a lot of people have taken to the interwebs to say so. But, as usual with the marketing stuff that Apple puts out, there’s a bit more going on here. Specifically, I think that the ad says an interesting thing about the way that…
There once were two planets, new to the galaxy and inexperienced in life. Like fraternal twins, they were born at the same time, about four and a half billion years ago, and took roughly the same shap
Published in Be Yourself · 5 min read · Apr 25, 2013 -- To understand why I was only a little shocked — in an oh-my-god-you-had-sex-and-talked-about-it way, not a look-at-this-predator kinda way — whe
I’m sitting at my desk at the University of Washington trying to conserve energy. It isn’t me who’s losing it; it’s my computer simulations. Actually, colleagues down the hall might say I was losing it as well. When I tell people I’m working on speculative theories about dark matter, they start to…
Title : Dark Matter Search Results Using the Silicon Detectors of CDMS II Authors : The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) collaboration A schematic showing the usual interaction between incoming par
via @TheTech 3 min read · Apr 20, 2013 -- I got back to my room late, after a long dinner with a friend. I’d been teaching all week at the University of Wisconsin in Madison; I’d spoken to three class
To anyone who has visited the current “campus”, it’s obvious that Apple has outgrown it some time ago. It’s also obvious given the increase in headcount and operational expenses over time as can be se
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