“The disruption was not that we now finally had a nice phone; it was that, for better or for worse, we would now never again be without a computer or the Internet.”
18 posts tagged Apple
Steve Jobs: Visionary, Inventor, and Very Challenging Photo Subject
This great article from Photo District News on Jobs’ difficulty as a photo subject also includes a gem towards the end — the story behind the portrait selected for Apple’s homepage tribute:
Albert Watson, who photographed Jobs just once for a portfolio of people in power that Fortune commissioned him to shoot in 2008, had a different experience from other photographers. “The one thing I insisted on was that we have a three hour window of set up time,” Watson says. “We were prepared…we set up to make [every shoot] as greased lightning fast as possible for the [subject].’ Watson says he had also read “a massive amount of stuff” about Jobs to help him conceptualize the shoot, and so he would be able to converse with Jobs intelligently.
When Jobs walked in, Watson says that his power, charisma and genius were palpable. “It was like when Clint Eastwood walks in to the room.”
Jobs didn’t look immediately at Watson, but looked instead at the set-up and then focused on Watson’s 4×5 camera “like it was something dinosauric,” Watson recalls, “and he said, ‘Wow, you’re shooting film.”
(Source: poynter.org)
A beautiful and fitting cover. I look forward to picking up a copy tomorrow.
“The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”
— Bill Gates
(Source: allthingsd.com)
Find My iPhone/iPad going free
You see, with iOS 4.2, Apple is making one part of MobileMe available for free: Find My iPhone/iPad. Users will be able to sign up for a free MobileMe account for the first time in order to use the service, which works on iOS devices in the form of an app. However, those users signing up for free accounts will not be able to use the other MobileMe services without paying the regular $99-a-year price, we’ve confirmed with Apple.
And just like that, it appears I’m paying $99 a year for MobileMe galleries, the only other part of the service I still actively use. I had been waffling on renewing the service this year, and this latest piece of news all but confirms that I won’t.
Here is how the dominos have fallen for my MobileMe subscription over the last six months:
- I migrated my contacts over to Google when I started using Google Voice in earnest.
- Dropbox has become my preferred solution for cloud storage.
- Google Calendar will be more than sufficient for my light calendar app usage.
- I’m already a heavy Flickr and Facebook Photos user. MobileMe was just the easiest solution for allowing friends to download full galleries.
There’s no way I can justify $99 a year for my limited use of MobileMe’s photo application.
After this, there can be no other.
Visual Differences Between iTunes 9 and 10
A year ago, I compared the then-brand-new iTunes 9 against its predecessor. New year, new version of iTunes, so here’s an updated comparison. It’s amazing to see just how much visual tweaking Apple does with each new major version of the application.
I’ve also slightly redesigned the whole thing this year so that you can easily view last year’s comparison, and a fun 8 versus 10 version as well.
The desaturated icons caught me off-guard, as it seems was the case for many. I’m less offended by the new icon. Sorry, Wilson.
It is fascinating to me that iTunes UI updates elicit the same kind of rage from the design community that you see from the general public when Facebook makes even the slightest change to their experience. My expectation is that we will all have adjusted by next Thursday, and might even start to like some of the new design shortly after.
Now excuse me while I start a “Petition to bring back the saturated icons in iTunes!” group on Facebook.
