Provisionally Untitled

'Systems architects'

Great design and user experience must obey a system. 

Alan Kay:

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

Steve Jobs, on Apple’s Q4 2010 Analyst Conference Call:

[Q: Why do you think you have an advantage on the price point for iPad versus PC manufacturers?]

I think part of it is because we engineer so much of it ourselves. The A4 chip inside it is an Apple creation. Everything from the battery chemistry to the enclosures. And we’ve learned a lot from the miniaturization we’ve done on iPods and iPhones, and we’re a very high-volume consumer electronics manufacturer. So I think we’ve learned a lot, we’ve developed a lot of our own components where others have to buy them on the market with middlemen, you know, getting their cut of things. And I think we’re systems architects and know how to build systems in a very efficient way. So I think this is a product we’ve been training for for the last decade.

Apple is really serious.

On the topic of ecosystems, Marco said it best:

It’s not just a matter of interface design. Apple has built an entire ecosystem to support and enrich the iPad for both customers and developers. To be competitive, a newcomer to the tablet software market needs to replicate or sidestep the need for nearly all of Apple’s major efforts, including synchronization of media and data with Windows PCs and Macs, integration with popular web services, an integrated payment system that customers will actually use at a reasonable rate, a well-stocked music and video storefront, plenty of high-quality third-party apps and fun games, a sophisticated SDK and development environment, widespread retail availability and customer support, and an assortment of good first- and third-party accessories to fulfill common needs (cases, chargers, docks, screen protectors, extended batteries) and give the device new uses (tripods, speakers, styluses, input and output adapters, wall and car mounts).

Because when normal people — not gadget bloggers and geeks like us — need to consider an alternative to the iPad, they’re not just thinking of Apple’s lack of “openness” (as Google so vaguely and poorly defines it in relation to Android) or the iPad’s lack of some individual hardware feature. Buying an alternative means giving up Apple’s entire ecosystem. That’s worth it to some buyers, but it’s incredibly impractical for many.

Andy Ihnatko:

2) You will indeed need to copy one thing: the iPad’s ecosystem.

Don’t just hand a user a tablet and then say “Good luck with that; tell us how everything works out.” No. You need to give them apps, and content, you’ll need to provide people with other devices that work well with it. Apple left nothing to chance: they released the iPad with a whole suite of slick, affordable business apps that they produced in-house.

[…]

I honestly feel a certain amount of pity for everybody who’s trying to enter the tablet market this year. In every kind of creative endeavor — and great technology is indeed a form of creative expression — there’s a difference between real art and mere technical competence. It’s impossible to quantify but which everybody can intuit it almost instantly.

The world is full of singers, painters, actors, and dancers who can expertly perform any piece they’ve seen before. And then there’s Sinatra, Cézanne, Lemmon, Astaire … and Apple. The ones who push the art form forward because their instincts push them to ask questions that have never been fully considered before. The ones who create the templates that everybody else will follow.

Simon Sinek on leadership

Sinek starts with “Why?”:

Because there are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or authority. But those who lead inspire us. Whether they’re individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead, not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead, not for them, but for ourselves. And it’s those who start with “why” that have the ability to inspire those around them or find others who inspire them.

Brilliant talk. Hat tip to my pal Mauricio Ventura.

What Apple needs to do now

Adam Greenfield on skeuomorphic iOS apps:

I want to use the strongest language here. This is a terribly disappointing renunciation of possibility on Apple’s part, a failure to articulate an interface-design vocabulary as “futuristic” as, and harmonious with, the formal vocabulary of the physical devices themselves. One of the deepest principles of interaction design I observe is that, except in special cases, the articulation of a user interface should suggest something of a device, service or application’s capabilities and affordances. This is clearly, thoroughly and intentionally undermined in Apple’s current suite of iOS offerings.

Amen.

Designing for iPad: Reality Check

iA:

On a computer we have to take in account that the user physically operates between keyboard and mouse, while visually he moves between monitor, OS, app window and the inner visual order of the window. On the iPad, eye and hand movement are brought together and held captive within a massive black frame.