So funny! My favourite bit:
Shop assistant: I see you’re admiring our myCube, fueled by dreams and powered by imagination
Homer: What does it do?
Shop assistant: You should ask yourself what can I do for it?
Homer: Ok, what can I do for you? Please I’m begging you!!
Shop assistant: Sir it’s not even turned on yet
Homer: But it’s glowing
Shop assistant: That light confirms that it’s off
thought this was quite a nice bit of visual design - the genre placeholder badges in the new version of iTunes … also very impressed with the ‘genius’ playlist maker thing …
wow, just been playing around with the last.fm iphone app, it really is very good - means you can forget saving up to buy that iphone with the biggest hard drive, just get the cheapest one and instead of transferring music from itunes you can just listen to it all online … very nice.
I’m really excited to see what interesting things come out of this - just having a quick browse around some of the good ‘uns look like Netnewswire (at last a proper RSS reader!), Remote, Super Monkey Ball, and the MooCowMusic’s Band
Interesting article this morning from Ashley Highfield (head of BBC Future Media & Technology) talking about possibilities of the BBC getting more involved with Apple now that they’ve released a time-based system of DRM in their new movie rentals feature within iTunes:
… Apple’s (long anticipated) move to a rental model means that we can look to getting BBC iPlayer onto this platform too, as we should be able to use the rental functionality to allow our programmes to be downloaded, free, but retained for a time window, and then erased, as our rightsholders currently insist.
Personally I think this would be really good, I think it’s a big problem that alot of video sharing sites also seem to have their own media library - what would be really great is let people download content which can be used in the player of their choice?
I was gonna do a post about the new Macbook Air, which is undoubtedly very cool, however I thought this was quite interesting - article in Gizmodo comparing Jonathan Ive’s work at Apple to the product designer Dieter Rams who worked at Braun during the 50’s and 60’s:
When you look at the Braun products by Dieter Rams—many of them at New York’s MoMA—and compare them to Ive’s work at Apple, you can clearly see the similarities in their philosophies way beyond the sparse use of color, the selection of materials and how the products are shaped around the function with no artificial design, keeping the design “honest.”
This passion for “simplicity” and “honest design” that is always declared by Ive whenever he’s interviewed or appears in a promo video, is at the core of Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:
• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.