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Justin O’Beirne, former head of cartography at Apple, explains why Google Maps has a multiple year advantage on the competition.
Basically, it’s about the structures/building footprints Google can display thanks to their satellite imagery and Street View efforts. Nobody else has this level of precision.
Bye Apple Maps!
Here’s another example:
[Source: Google Maps’s Moat]
Butterfly keyswitches are a design failure that should be abandoned.
Yes indeed.
[Source: Fixing the MacBook Pro]
Consider this.
Jane has an Apple Watch, she travels often and has a weather complication on her Watch Face. Jane took a plane from New-York to London. She just landed in London.
Her watch changes the time automatically.
However, Jane has to go to her Apple Watch app on her iPhone and change the weather manually.
This is cumbersome.
Apple Watch should have a setting which would allow automatic detection and change of the weather complication based on the user’s current location.
(Not the biggest experience problem of the Apple Watch? It’s all about the details, man.)
Apple Pay is the first step in Apple’s financial services takeover
Apple Pay is a huge deal – much bigger than iWatch – and no one is talking about it enough
And here is a nice summary by Andrew Finn for Wait but Why?
Rumor: Design of Apple’s new big-screen iPhone will be cross between iPhone 5c & 7th-gen iPod nano
I bet it’s going to look like an iPad Mini or an iPod Touch. Basically, curved metal.
iWatch May Use Optical Sensors to Measure Heart Rate and Oxygen Levels
How I think this is going to play out:
1. Apple releases sensor-laden bracelet that won’t be branded as a watch. Innovative because of the miniaturisation of its sensors—but not incredibly feature rich. Will be a great success.
2. Apple releases iWatch 2 with more sensors and it’ll be an even bigger success.
Their recruiting of talent surely cannot become fruitful as early as the first release of the iWatch.
I look at myself as an artist if anything,” Mr. Jobs said. “Sort of a trapeze artist.
In 1983, Steven Levy interviewed Steve Jobs for hours about his recent breakup and the birth of the Mac.
At some point, Levy asked Jobs what he saw himself as. To which Jobs replied “Sort of a trapeze artist”.
It’s funny that no one noticed this is the exact one liner Bob Dylan used while interviewed in Austin in 1966:
Reporter: What do you consider yourself? How would you classify yourself?
Bob Dylan: Well, I like to think of myself in terms of a trapeze artist.
Now, now, Steve, everyone is going to call you a thief again.
Apple Interested in Liquidmetal Alloys for Home Buttons, Touch Sensors, and Tamper-Resistant Screws
One of these patent applications proposes using Liquidmetal alloys in pressure sensors such as those found in buttons and switches on mobile devices, offering greater durability under repeated use.
Sweating the details, as always. Design changes like these seem incremental but they higher the delight users get from their product.
Apple investigating built-in solar power converters for iPhone, MacBook
Some interesting new tech. It makes me remember that the only thing I want my iPhone to do is to last longer. If the iPhone 6’s only new feature is a much longer battery life, I would be the happiest man on earth.
Good iOS app design is obsessed with touch. Bad iOS app design takes touch for granted.
Jared Sinclair explains why he doesn’t like iOS7.
Don’t get me wrong, I think iOS7 is more modern and has better functionality. But aesthetically, I think they made a mistake by reducing the touchness factor of the OS.