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when a people disarms, fascism against them tends to increase.

Also, when people eat less margarine, the divorce rate in Maine goes down.

https://www.fastcodesign.com/3...

But that's unmeasurable, except historically; when a people disarms, fascism against them tends to increase.

Japan? Australia?

I thought I was being obvious, but apparently not obvious enough.

Never underestimate how hard it is to convey meaning in written content.

These faces are a lot less scary than previous neural-network human faces attempts. https://www.fastcodesign.com/3...

It appears that the tacky "black and tan" bit is from the reporter here and not McDonalds.
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3...
It also appears they do remember history but are making an alt-right ethnic joke or something (what used to just be called being a prick)

Apple is building a new campus with Norman Foster that is estimated to cost $5 billion.

It seems to me that Apple is degrading rapidly. It is apparently very difficult to get manager like Steve Jobs.

LOL, seriously? You're surprised to find people on Slashdot blaming the user instead of the design?

This place is full of people who take pride in operating complex interfaces and wail at the thought of "dumbing things down" for "stupid regular users". It's technical-literacy elitism.

It's the same crowd still expecting the Year of the Linux Desktop, and claiming Apple only became* successful because of good marketing.

* I use past tense here because I'm the first to admit Apple has taken some steps backward on usability in recent years.

Apple has been accused of doing this sort of things many, many many many many times. Even before OS X ("macOS") and iOS, I also remember all kinds of features back in System 7/8/9 that started off as 3rd party extensions/programs but were pretty much fucked when Apple added something nearly identical.

I'm trying to think of a few examples where overnight a web site would be like "well, a clone of our app is basically in the new release of OS X...so we're out of business now." Can anyone with a better memory offer some examples?

I've worked 20 years in IT and never been drug tested once. Why do you "free" Americans put up with this?? It's software development not some job where you're going to hurt someone if you're impaired.

I seem to remember an Airbus crashing off Brazil due to software problems, One in Spain and probably a couple more; so apparently somebody did get hurt, and if the programmers were impaired, would that make any problems less likely?

I still don't understand what is so bad about Australis. Australis looks way more modern than the previous UI

That's what's so bad about it.

http://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/ sucks. Hiding functionality takes away from the thing people liked about Firefox: its customizability. Pre-ribbon UIs (hierarchical menus) were easy to document and troubleshoot over a medium as sparse as text messaging: View->Options->Foo->Bar, etc. Now it's "Click the hamburger, then the gear, and if the gear doesn't work, the, umm, what version are you on again? Maybe they moved it last week. Or took it out altogether."

See also: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name -- discoverability is not merely important, it's critical. Those non-modern hierarchical menus? With them, I can, within 30 seconds, get a feel for what my browser can do. Just click on "File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tooks, and Help" and see which things have submenus (click on those too to see what's there), and then move on to the next. Maybe another 10-20 seconds looking at what's beneath on "Customize..." or "Tools->Options". No mystery navigation.

And after using them a few times, I get a feel that "View" is where I toggle on/off things like whether I want a toolbar or a status bar, "File" does the same sorts of things every desktop application has done since Xerox PARC, and Tools-> options is where the cool stuff is. File for files, View for views, and Tools for the advanced stuff. It's almost like the words mean things and help build the user's mental model of how the damn thing works. Neat, huh?

What mental model is being built up by Hamburger, 3verticaldots, 3TriangularDotsAndTwoLines (for sharing), and IsThatAPaperAirplaneOrATriangle (gmail, send)? Other than not having to pay an engineer to localize words because Mozilla only has a $330M budget?

I still do not understand why it is so hard to have a flexible UI. Some people want a sidebar, a a statusbar, themes, etc... Why is there this unstoppable move to remove features and make everything look like an empty sheet of paper..

You're not a UXtard. Your job doesn't depend on changing things in the UX to make them more fashionable or marketer-friendly. You just want a UI, a means by which the user can interface with the computer through the software, and something feature-rich that allows for discovery, and eventual mastery.

In short, your opinions no longer matter. You're just some old washed up hack like these guys: http://www.fastcodesign.com/user/don-norman-and-bruce-tognazzini

I mean, what do they know? They only invented the things that made Apple great. Fuck them. Hamburger menus and self-hiding options for everyone!

I really know nothing about how Amazon works internally, so perhaps you can enlighten me.

how do they manage to do such great things with software?

By ripping off Android for their mobile platform and then screwing developers who sign their awful agreement?

How do they manage to operate such a huge warehousing and logistics operation?

By allegedly exploiting and shorting their employees and having soulless fulfillment centers/neo-sweatshops?

...and the divorce rate in Maine correlates directly with margarine consumption, and the number of people who drowned by falling into a swimming pool correlated with the number of films Nicholas Cage appeared in, etc.

Correlation isn't causation: http://www.fastcodesign.com/30...

But in the U.S., Crawford laments, 'we focus on steering all extra money and attention toward kids who are struggling academically, or even just to the average student' and 'risk shortchanging the country in a different way.'

No, you utter imbecile. The problem of the western culture is not fund distribution. It's attitude.

Our "stars" are musicians, actors and professional athletes. Certainly people who work hard and having natural talent definitely helps - but it's not the smart, gifted people we adore in our culture. There's no science-based equivalent of the Super Bowl. The closest we get is that we sometimes thing astronauts are pretty cool.

You want more smart people in your country? I don't have a magic pill for that, but I can give you an indicator of how close you are: When the sexy girls fuck the geeks instead of the football studs, you're getting somewhere. When this map has more scientists on it than coaches, you're pretty close. When we pay two-digit millions in salary not to people who pretend to be a robot from the future on camera, or throwing an air-filled dead pig gut around, but to people who work on curing cancer or inventing new methods for energy production, then you won't have to worry about not having enough brains in the country.

The funding thing is just a small part of that culture.

Indeed.

Errol Morris used almost exactly that setup to interview Robert McNamara in The Fog of War: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663105/errol-morriss-secret-weapon-for-unsettling-interviews-the-interrotron

A Financial Times photographer visits an Amazon fulfillment center in England. This is what your one-click purchases are doing to people.

You can do some neat stuff with hot glue. ABS, being a bit stronger of course, would support some unique work of its own.

Although three is way too young an age to have your mind warped by having whitespace define blocks, you can program in python on an iPad.

Another option is Codea to learn to code, or the more recent ScriptKit.

But really three is probably too young for a real coding environment...

Windows 8 can be seen a a lot of things, and I doubt Sinofsky was the sole dictator who had everything made to his personal design. that's not quite the way things work, however....

guess who the new head of Windows div is? Julie "Ribbon" Larson-Green..... also the same person who was responsible for... well, guess.

"Unlike other companies that maybe have one person at the top, we don't have a [design] czar at Microsoft," says Julie Larson-Green, VP of program management for Windows. Of Metro, she adds, "Its not like Steve [Ballmer] decreed it." One former longtime Microsoft manager put it bluntly: "I don't think Steve could even spell the word design." And unlike Steve Jobs, who was infamous for meddling in every detail of Apple's product launches, Ballmer didn't go to any of the rehearsals at Milk Studios for the unveiling of the Surface; his part was played by a stand-in till he arrived on the day.

So if the brass were so indifferent to design, how did this thinking emerge at Microsoft at all?

In May 2009, Julie Larson-Green corralled 150 thought leaders from various Microsoft groups (Office, Phone, Bing, Xbox) in the Redmond, Washington, campus conference center to kick off planning for Windows 8.

Just as stupid as bamboo and cardboard bikes. There's nothing wrong with using steel or aluminium for your bike frame. If you treat it right, it will last 20+ years, at which point it can be recycled into a new bike. Even if you leave it out in the rain, the frame will most likely still last 10+ years, its the rest of the components that really don't like rain that much.

The problem is the anti skeupmorphic folks have terrible outdated looks and some of the functionality is missing that people are used to for the last 20 years.

Yes, that's exactly what I hate about skeuomorphic interfaces: they rip out some of the functionality that people are used to for the last 20 years for the dubious benefit of making an app look exactly like a physical object. Consider the much - and deservedly - maligned OS X Calendar app. I don't mind the appearance so much, although it's not my favorite. It's that the calendar is less useful now than it was in Snow Leopard when it still looked like an app and not a desk calendar. Flipping from month to month is animated to look like a physical page curling up out of the way. I freaking hate that. I like pretty interfaces and polished UIs, but that stupid time-wasting animation slows down my ability to actually use the app.

Others have said it much more eloquently than I could, but the gist is the same: I value form, but not at the expense of function. Again, I'm not anti-"shiny". I love having a beautiful, elegant desktop. It's just that I'd rather start with a functional app and make it pretty than start with a pretty app and try to make it functional within an artificially limiting UI framework.

Inside Apple, tension has brewed for years over the issue. Apple iOS SVP Scott Forstall is said to push for skeuomorphic design, while industrial designer Jony Ive and other Apple higher-ups are said to oppose the direction. "You could tell who did the product based on how much glitz was in the UI," says one source intimately familiar with Apple’s design process.

After reading that, I realized that this was indeed true and in fact there has been an alternate philosphy besides the skeuomorphic design which is the "war on color" in some aspects of OS X (e.g., the flat gray scroll bars, the gray linen background for the virtual desktop manager, even the world map for changing the time zone). So, now I'm wondering if the skeuomorphic faction led by Forstall has lost the debate, was Ive and the other minimalist design people behind the "war on color" and if that's true, is that what we'll see in future versions of the OS with Ive leading the interface design? I'm not sure how I feel about that, I really don't like using an OS that is drab and boring, it's depressing (I actually liked Aqua for the most part, which was also Forstall's invention I guess). Either way, it's good to know that Apple isn't afraid of rocking the boat still. That skeuomorphic crap might have been good for increasing everyone's vocabulary with regards to interface design, but it was annoying as hell to use.

Now, if only Apple would admit they screwed up the document versioning system beyond repair and give us a proper "Save As..." since the dawn of the computer (or thereabouts) I would consider Apple as having fully realized the error of their ways and moving decidedly in a less terrible direction. But alas, Federhigi is still in charge and they haven't brought Serlet back from retirement unfortunately.

Blaming things on "this isn't how Jobs would've done it" is getting a bit old now. He wasn't perfect. He had plenty of bad ideas and even let several of them ship over the years (e.g. putting the vents for the G4 Cube on top of the machine, overdoing it with skeuomorphisms, wanting to name the iMac the MacMan, and I haven't even gotten into things like Antennagate and the like). And especially so in this case, since Apple has had a long history of shipping out aluminum-clad devices with anodized colors. I recall hearing or reading something that I believe Jony Ive said about how as things wear they want for them to wear well, much like good leather will as it takes damage and gets scuffed. That is, things will be scratched up, but the trick they were using was to use materials that would wear that damage well (e.g. the original iPhone that you mentioned). Minor scuffs and dings may detract from how pristine their devices look, but it may still be in keeping with their design philosophies, though I do agree that this device seems a bit more susceptible to injury than I would think they would like.

Side note: Wired had an interested article about Gorilla Glass yesterday, and it's worth a read if you find that stuff fascinating at all.

From the article: "During my reporting for Fast Company's feature on design at Microsoft, which was part of our October design issue, I spoke with a number of designers, Apple veterans, and industry insiders hostile towards Apple's approach to software design."

As long as consumers like it, why should anyone care what "designers, Apple veterans, and industry insiders" think?

From the article: "It's also why many industry leaders are excited for Windows 8. For the design of its new operating system, Microsoft took a surprisingly refreshing approach, distancing itself from skeuomorphism while emphasizing a flat user interface that's minimalist to the core. Sure, real-life visual metaphors still exist in the UI--an envelope to represent the mail app, a camera to denote the photo app--but the icons are without embellishments: no bevel, no 3-D flourishes, no glossiness and no drop shadow. It's Microsoft's stripped-down UI that many find appealing--a welcome alternative to Apple's approach to software design."

And yet in the real world, virtually everyone loves iOS, while Windows 8 is shaping up to be an epic flop. If these "insiders" are so out of touch with reality, maybe they need to be replaced. Were these, by any chance, people who got fired by Apple for not getting it? If that's the kind of people Microsoft is hiring now, I guess Windows 8 starts to become at least understandable, if not forgivable.

In this article, linked from the original article posted, we finally get the real answer as to why some UI designers don't like "skeuomorphism":

"But aside from aesthetic reaons, it is hard to see how these designs will ever evolve beyond derivative representations. Will they just change color and increase their visual fidelity?"

And there you have it: designers don't like it because it makes them redundant. It's really that simple. The idea that there might actually be an optimal UI, and that once you get there you might not need to pull the rug out from under users every year, is anathema to the "UI designer" crowd.

It's by design! Fail fast, fail often.

But can we please put these one some people and run them around before saying bullshit like "Apparently the shoe can improve performance by 3.5%"?

But... but... the designer says it's world's fastest shoe, you need more proof than that?

" French-born engineer and designer Luc Fusaro... tested the shoe on several competitive sprinters... it can improve performance by as much as 3.5%"

Gee, I mean, if that's what the press release says, then who am I to question it, right? Clearly that's been independently confirmed by top scientist and numerous studies have been done... oh wait, they haven't been? You mean, article on /. titled "Student Creates World's Fastest Shoe" is about a student who says he created the world's fastest shoe with no independent studies, no research backing up the claim, no.... nothing? Really?? Wow. Fail. Seriously? Ok, I invented the worlds fastest.... keyboard. Ya. You heard me. Increases typing speed by 3.5%, resulting in almost an entire hour saved every 40 hr work week. Proof? I said it, and tested it, with office workers that type a lot, isn't that proof enough? Hold on, I'll send out a press release and get it on /., that should be enough proof....

Surprised it took me this long to find a post talking about the vast media conspiracy to discredit Ron Paul. This, in spite of the fact that Paul has gotten much more attention than his polling levels could possibly justify. But yeah, there is a "media blackout" and the establishment is out to get him. Shit, the news media even treat this kook with kid gloves. He just doesn't appeal to most people. Sorry. Get over it.

You can't honestly expect me to believe this when I have seen it for _myself_ first hand? Can you? Do you even follow the news on a regular basis? I do, and it is clear that there is a coordinated effort in the news media to discredit _any_ ideas that do not conform to the status quo. Do you think this has anything to do with the fact that 90% of media in the US is owned by 6 companies? Here's a hint, it does.

I am a liberal. I voted for Obama. I don't think Ron Paul is a godsend. I sure as hell think he's better than the other choices.

If making catgirls becomes illegal in Britain, we'll just make them in Japan. That would be disastrous. The Japanese are already years ahead of us in catgirl technology. We cannot afford a greater catgirl gap.

here's a link to the article that gawker used. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663683/far-better-than-3-d-animated-gifs-that-savor-a-passing-moment

Funny, though, those 'open' Macs only appeared after Jobs was gone!

Even more funny, the idea od non-expandability was the main concept of the Macintosh before Jobs even heard of the project.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663212/the-untold-story-of-how-my-dad-helped-invent-the-first-mac

There were to be no peripheral slots so that customers never had to see the inside of the machine (although external ports would be provided); there was a fixed memory size so that all applications would run on all Macintoshes; the screen, keyboard, and mass storage device (and, we hoped, a printer) were to be built in so that the customer got a truly complete system, and so that we could control the appearance of characters and graphics. Jef Raskin, not Steve Jobs.

it's an implementation of the same math that that the Antikythera mechanism does but it's done in a completely different fashion.

Woz explains the device on his own page as well as the math behind it: http://acarol.woz.org/antikythera_mechanism.html
There is also an article about his LEGO device: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662831/how-one-engineer-redesigned-an-ancient-greek-mechanical-computer-out-of-legos

more information about the Antikythera mechanism can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism