Special Characters Followup

This is a bit of a followup to last week’s special characters post. Back in the earlier days of this blog I tried to follow Betalogue’s style of representing modifier and meta keys by making them actually look like keys. It was a simple bit of css however I had to make sure I cast [...]

Software Making Hardware Commodities

John Siracusa, now that his podcast is finished, has up a blog post at his seldom updated Hypercritical blog. It’s a great post reflecting on some trends at CES. The point is that it’s hard for hardware vendors to reinvent themselves with software. Very few have done it. The successful hardware vendors like Apple or [...]

iCloud Documents

Adam Fields had an interesting post about the problems of iCloud documents. Over on ADN Dan Frakes had an interesting discussion going on the same subject. Let me address Fields comments since I think he brings up some really good points.

Philosophy of Computer Science

The Philosophy of Computer Science at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The SEP has other articles of interest if you search for more narrow topics. This isn’t exhaustive of all the topics but does outline nicely a few of the major ones such as what on earth is an algorithm. Lots of overlap with questions [...]

Applescript, iOS and Apple’s Evolution

John Gruber has a short article in MacWorld on the persistence of Applescript. Regular readers know that I think for most users needing automation that Automator simply is the better choice. Power users will quickly come up against the limits of Automator though. Applescript is ideal for them. However while Applescript has persisted in an [...]

Obj-C for the Server?

Someone was arguing today that Obj-C for the Server is coming. I’ve no background to make an opinion beyond skepticism about libraries. At one time WebObjects was Obj-C but that’s a product that’s been dead for years. Steve Streza clearly thinks the claims are nonsense. The claims about the JVM seem wrong. In some ways [...]

Mathematica 9

I just found out there is a home edition of Mathematica for only $295 or $149/year. Tempted. Tempted. I really want to get back into physics again and may have a chance to have some spare time in January. It’s been way too many years since I last did serious physics and my best bet [...]

Verge on Startup Crunch

Interesting story at the Verge on a startup crunch. To me the real issue, which besets more businesses than just computer services or software, is the whole business model. For the last 10 years the space has been dominated by a “get lots of users and get acquired” business model. That’s a horrible model even [...]

The iPhone 5 Size Problem

I love my iPhone 5. However I’m much more mixed on the screen size and shape. I’ve talked about it before but it was when reading Jeff Atwood’s take on the Surface and Yoga 13 laptop that I found the best expression of my frustration. Atwood’s take on Win8 is worth reading. I don’t think it [...]

Apple and Twitter

I’m coming late to the “Apple should just buy Twitter” discussion from last week.1 (See Patrick Gibson’s post although many forget last spring’s Gigaom story that ended up in Businessweek making the same argument) Honestly if the issue is primarily a talent acquisition, as many discuss it, then it makes a lot of sense. I’m sure Apple’s [...]

Thoughts on ADN

I’ve been using App.Net for about a month now. I suspect most of you have heard a little bit about it. It’s been discussed on podcasts a fair bit the last four months or so. I signed up not long after Tapbots came out with their Netbot client. It’s basically just Tweetbot with the Twitter [...]

Modern UI/UX Resources

Someone put up on tumbler a list of good books for UI/UX design. I’ve not read all of these. If I get the time I’ll check some of them out. They tend to be focused on very practical and particular issues rather than general issues of UI and UX design. I like to recommend Paul [...]

Apple Hardware Too Complicated?

I love Apple hardware. Even when I think the products failed, such as the Cube, I love that they were trying and pushing the technologies. Sometimes they push the technology right to its limits. For instance, despite all the praise, I’d probably not get this first generation retinal MacBook Pro because I think they are [...]

Pagination

Drang had up an interesting post this weekend on iBooks and scrolling. His basic argument is that paging is an artifact of the old technology of books. It’s a kind of skeumorphism. He also brings up, correctly, the recognition that most reading we do actually uses scrolling. Were scrolling so bad wouldn’t we eliminate it [...]

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