Apple recently posted an iPhone update which, among other things, adds an “iTunes” icon to the iPhone home screen.
I love where they put it. They didn’t put it where consistency tells you to put it. That would be on the left side. They put it where context tells you to put it. On the right side right above the iPod icon. Even the icon’s arrow points right down to the iPod.
A few other observations… This is currently the only button on the screen (perhaps besides the SMS button) that makes Apple any incremental money. Setting it off by lining it up on the side really makes it stick out. I think that had something to do with the decision. It’s also the only icon in purple. It really stands out. I think that was intentional too.
Anyway, I love that Apple favored context over consistency in this design decision. Consistency is the easy choice. Context is the thinking choice.
It’s cool how Apple’s design language keeps evolving. One product design follows another. There’s a continuity this way, yet things continue to feel new. And it’s interesting how their small designs influence their large designs.
Take a look at the back of the iPhone. It’s silver on top, black on the bottom. Then take a look at the new iMac. It’s is black on top, silver on the bottom. The top of the iMac looks like an iPhone rotated to horizontal orientation.
The iPhone design has influenced the new iMac design just as the widescreen iPod influenced the previous iMac design:
The old iMac basically looked like a huge iPod and the new iMac looks like an iPhone. I love watching them iterate and evolve. Each product playing off the next. Each new material finding its way into new products. Even the iPhone onscreen keyboard, the MacBook, and new slim keyboard keys have related shapes. This is design at its best.
Just one more thing…
Absolutely stunning.
An open letter to people who wear those Bluetooth headsets that blink:
In case you haven’t noticed, your eyes are actually located in front of your ears.
So that blue light that blinks incessantly can’t actually be seen by you. The rest of us, however, do see it. And it annoys us. Stop.
“But how else will I impress the ladies?” you ask. I suggest purchasing some of those rims that keep on spinning after you stop.
Here comes Cover Flow
As the world gets iPhonified and Leopardized, get ready for more Cover Flow (video), the scrolling interface with forward/backward arrows that mimics a CD collection or jukebox selection.
Jobs spent much of his talk showing how Leopard will help users more efficiently find files. Leopard’s new Finder will include Cover Flow, a new way to navigate through folders. Borrowed from iTunes, Cover Flow will let you flip through documents in the Finder, just like you can flip through songs in your iTunes library.
New Apple.com subnav
In a nod to this trend, Apple is using a scrolling horizontal subnav at the redesigned Apple.com:
Horizontal scrolling doesn’t often get this sort of prime time play since, as Jakob Nielsen puts it, users hate horizontal scrolling and “always” comment negatively when they encounter it.
Continued…
A hundred dollar laptop must be a piece of shit, right? Actually, there’s some impressive technology in the One Laptop per Child machine being hawked by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte. He discussed it last night on 60 Minutes.
For one thing, it’s the first laptop with a screen you can use outdoors in full sunlight. It’s also built to withstand harsh weather (“You can pour water on the keyboard…You can dip the base into a bathtub. You can carry it the rain. It’s more robust than your normal laptop. It doesn’t even have holes in the side of it. If you look at it: dirt, sand, I mean, there’s no place for it to go into the machine.”)
Other features: A built-in camera that takes stills and video, a stylus area, ear-like radio antennas that give the computer 2-3 times better Wi-Fi range than a regular laptop, the battery lasts 10-12 hours with heavy use, and you can charge it up with a crank or a salad spinner (a minute or two of spinning gets you get 10-20 minutes of reading).
Continued…
