nikf.org

➶ Research Roundup: Responsibility reports from Foxconn clients besides Apple

If you’re wondering how the other tech firms that have their wares manufactured by Foxconn fare in supplier responsibility, Dave Chartier’s made a handy list of all the annual reports.

Sunday February 5th, 2012

Five Years

Beside my desk, there’s a drawer. In it are some gadgets: three Palm Pre devices, two iPods, an iPhone 3G and most treasured of all, my original iPhone. From time to time, I’ll take it out. Remind myself of its cold aluminium shell. The plastic antenna cover, the light far-less dense body compared with its seemingly-vacuum-packed 4S-branded successor. The screen that’s just a shade beneath the glass. The square switches in iOS that already feel so alien, the metal dock. The Voice Memos icon.¹ The fact that the device doesn’t do folders for apps, and that for a while it didn’t even do apps.

It’s five years to the day² since the iPhone was first announced. Half a decade. All things considered, it’s truly amazing that for a piece of kit so seemingly old in its industry, the original iPhone still fascinates me. Over the last few weeks I’ve been wondering what it was that captivated me, when later in 2007 I was finally able to get my hands on one. All I can say is that, for a device that had so many spec-sheet shortcomings, the iPhone felt considered. It was the first mobile phone I owned that I actually loved to use. The compromise and expense of the iPhone made sense when you used it. All the small details, the finish, the joy at how it worked. How great it was to use a phone that had been tested, considered and used by the people who built it.

In the months after its launch, I got to know my iPhone pretty well. I commuted 2 hours each way by train to the office, cursing the lack of 3G in the device on a rail route that to this day still doesn’t have 3G.

The original iPhone was built on a different set of compromises to the competition - how it worked was (at least to begin with) more important than everything that it did. Say what you will about the empirically-lacking feature set: it all seems to have turned out pretty well.

The screenshot is circa iPhone OS 2.0 alongside iOS 5.0.1 - as far back as my LittleSnapper library goes, alas. Thankfully, Florian has a grab of Apple.com back in January 2007 ↩
You can grab the Macworld 2007 keynote from Apple’s Keynote feed ↩

Monday January 9th, 2012

➶ iOS: A visual history

Nice run-down by Dieter Bohn at The Verge.

Tuesday December 13th, 2011

On page 331 of the printed version (in chapter 25), Isaacson quotes Steve Jobs saying, of Yoko Ono, “I can see why John fell in love with her.” Again, this is may be a very minor detail, but Isaacson quickly moves on in the story. I think this is a blatant example of his incuriosity. When have you ever heard someone take Yoko’s side in the “Yoko broke up the Beatles” argument? The fact that Jobs, as die-hard a Beatles fan as there ever was, could say such a thing is intriguing, to say the least. This, I think, could have been a whole chapter. Steve Jobs was, apparently, the kind of person that, unlike the rest of the Beatles, could see what John saw in Yoko. A little exploration of what that says about Jobs’s and Lennon’s common traits would have been fascinating.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, A Review, via Buzz Andersen.

Sunday December 4th, 2011

➶ Justin Williams on iPad Magazines

Tonnes of good points in here.

Sunday November 27th, 2011

➶ Dave Chartier on the iTunes (Mis)Match

iTunes Match sounds like a great product, but the pitch is confusing as all get out. I dare you to find someone who who hasn’t been reading all the tech coverage and Everything You Need To Know posts to tell me what this product or service or subscription or add-on or plugin does. I triple dog dare you.

For all Apple’s legendarily clear communication, iTunes Match is terribly described.

(Source: chartier)

Tuesday November 15th, 2011