apple

Stay foolish

25 August 2011

Steve Jobs has retired from his throne. A seat at the head of an engineering company who became the most valuable emporium with a designer as a king, as opposed to say… a software company with a royal engineer.

As a practicing designer this brings me mixed feelings, considering that this is the man who has powered perfection and has been rumored to obsess about every typefont, ligature, color and hue value that goes out for production, not to mention the millions of mock ups he approves and rejects, possibly explaining why Jonathan Ive is not always smiling.

Steve Job is arguably the invisible hand of creation and creativity; a gestalt for many designers, artist and the creative types who have spent many fruitful laborious hours in the pursuit of a more aesthetically pleasing world, by choice. Continue reading Stay foolish

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iCloud

6 June 2011

Apple is loosing its magic and even though some fanboys would probably kill me for stating such obviousness the truth is that Jobs & co haven’t been capable of impressing and wowing the public over the last couple of Developer Conferences.

Today they announced a few catch-ups with the competitors for iOS 5 coming next fall (iMessage, better notifications, over-the-air updates, split keaboard, tab browsing, twitter integration… full video this way) and new few essentials, but having said that they announced the only thing that could really catch our eye… iTunes finally meeting the cloud.

We’ve known about iCloud for months (and expecting it for years) and it has finally arrived. The new free (and underline free) service for Apple users should allow you to automatically download any new music purchased to all your devices over Wi-Fi — or over 3G if you choose. Well, music… and the rest of Apple’s vision of the cloud: including iTunes, Photo Stream, Storage, iBooks, Backup, App Store, and all the MobileMe apps (Contacts, Calendar, Mail) with up to 5GB of storage.

Unfortunately this service is for now only available in the U.S. and if you’re willing to use & synch other music you hadn’t bought via iTunes then you’ll have to purchase the 25$ / year iTunesMatch service (booooo, Spotify does this for free!!).

Not enough storage with 5GB? You can always buy more of course!

A lot of catching up Apple?

rejoice & shout! true notifications are finally here!
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New Yorker goes iPad

9 May 2011

It was just a matter of time before Conde Nast made the iPad move for their less digital-oriented (Wired, Arstech) publications, so starting today one of our favorite cultural references, The New Yorker, will have a subscription equivalent for the Apple slate.

Maybe one day all these publications that keep appearing for Apple will arrive to Android (sooner or later they will), but until then, the iPad keeps being the partner of choice for launching the digital versions of most publications.

What doesn’t change is the necessity to subscribe to read it ALL… so as with many other iPad mags before, the weekly edition is also available through In-App Purchase on the App Store (with access to the web-based edition for $5.99/month or $59.99/year. Cheap? Mmmm well, if you think it’s cheap you can always go for the duo…  print and digital bundled subscriptions for $6.99/month or $69.99/year.

Ahhhh the inevitable road to hell is now more clear… I mean, towards content digitalization.

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Ping

1 September 2010

Bada Ping? We yet don’t know what the “Ping” effect will bring but Apple’s latest & sharpest move announced today wasn’t a nano with a touchscreen or an iPod touch with a front facing camera… it was the “Facebook & Twitter meet iTunes” move….

Continue reading Ping

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Nissan Leaf iAd

18 August 2010

Now what do we have here? Nissan’s first iAd! And is not one of those fugly admob or Google-served ads for Android. So for once I’m going to stick up for Apple’s advertising platform. Their user-friendly experience is demonstrated once again (even with highly sexiness) for something as intrusive and bothering as an app add….  Continue reading Nissan Leaf iAd

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No Jacket required

28 July 2010

It’s always funny to see how big companies use the most “subtle” marketing techniques to communicate on their competitor’s weakness.. whether they’re true or not. The antennagate is Apple’s worst PR crisis in years, and has grabbed so many critics on how Steve Jobs handled it… “free cases for everyone who cries”…

Continue reading No Jacket required

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