iphone

Showing 305 posts tagged iphone

"I Couldn't See It."

Alexis Madrigal spoke with outgoing Intel CEO Paul Otellini about the time Intel talked to Apple about powering the original iPhone:

“We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we’d done it,” Otellini told me in a two-hour conversation during his last month at Intel. “The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do… At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.” “My gut told me to say yes,” Otellini added.

First of all, either they passed on it or weren’t offered it — seems like a pretty clear-cut difference to me. Not sure why Otellini is trying to trying to obfuscate that. Actually, I get it — one way you’re arguably incompetent, the other way you’re dumb. Lose/lose. 

His follow-up statements sure makes it sound like Intel passed on it, even though Otellini’s gut told him to say “yes”. Yet another lesson in trusting your gut.

Tim Green: To me, there is a distinct movement towards a particular style and I would be very surprised if Apple were ignorant of it. It’s not “flat design” per se and it’s certainly nowhere near the “Metro” levels that people are suggesting they may follow, but it’s a mellowing out of the visual indicators that people need to trigger the idea of a tappable element. Why? Because this is not 2007 anymore, and we are all now fully aware of the medium and the process; we don’t need to be led garishly by the hand. There is still a sense of depth and tactility but done in a refined and suggestive way, sensitive to the changed perceptions that people have of interacting with touchscreens. That’s something important not being talked about nearly enough in all this “Apple is moving towards flat design” chatter: it’s not that flat design is necessarily “better”, it’s that Apple can start changing some things now because so many people have become accustomed to using the iPhone (and smartphones in general) over the past 5+ years. Not as much hand-holding in the design is required. Apple no longer has to try as hard to make new users think they’re just doing something like pressing a bunch of buttons on a screen. Hopefully that’s liberating for the design team. High-res

Tim Green:

To me, there is a distinct movement towards a particular style and I would be very surprised if Apple were ignorant of it. It’s not “flat design” per se and it’s certainly nowhere near the “Metro” levels that people are suggesting they may follow, but it’s a mellowing out of the visual indicators that people need to trigger the idea of a tappable element. Why? Because this is not 2007 anymore, and we are all now fully aware of the medium and the process; we don’t need to be led garishly by the hand. There is still a sense of depth and tactility but done in a refined and suggestive way, sensitive to the changed perceptions that people have of interacting with touchscreens.

That’s something important not being talked about nearly enough in all this “Apple is moving towards flat design” chatter: it’s not that flat design is necessarily “better”, it’s that Apple can start changing some things now because so many people have become accustomed to using the iPhone (and smartphones in general) over the past 5+ years. Not as much hand-holding in the design is required. Apple no longer has to try as hard to make new users think they’re just doing something like pressing a bunch of buttons on a screen. Hopefully that’s liberating for the design team.

Dear Apple, let's talk about photos

Peter Nixey:

Just so as you know by the way and don’t freak out but, I’d like to sort my photos when I’m sat on the loo. Or in the bus, or anywhere else I want to kill time with my phone. I don’t want to edit them when I’m sat at my desktop - that’s work time. It really pains me that I can’t do that and so my photos just pile up in a big heap while I waste time reading things I don’t care about on Twitter.

When you consider that the iPhone is now the most popular camera (in the U.S. if not the world), it’s sort of ridiculous that the photo management on the device is so obtuse.

Yes, it’s better than anything found on any point-and-shoot, but it could be so much better still. Just as Apple has moved app and music syncing away from the desktop, they need to move photo management fully to the cloud as well. The photos on my iMac are the only files I need to backup on a Time Capsule anymore. Everything else lives in the cloud.

[via Techmeme]

The Front Lines Of Stolen iPhone Market

Gerry Smith reporting on the undercover cops in San Francisco using iPhones to lure would-be criminals:

As the officers stand up and head for their squad cars, Garrity issues one last order: “Try not to lose the fucking phones!”

Crazy:

Given that nearly half of San Francisco residents own an iPhone — the highest rate of any city in the nation — this stolen phone bazaar amounts to a crucial conduit in an illicit, increasingly global trade.

Crazier:

Nearly half of all robberies in San Francisco last year involved smartphones, according to police.