Posted on December 3, 2007 by Rory Prior
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With its new dark window theme Leopard requires a shift in icon design for things to look right. In particular older icons designed in the 10.0 – 10.4 era often look blurry and indistinct. Why is this? Well often it’s due to drop shadows, vague outlines and colours not being strong enough to stand out well against the darker grey background. Luckily…
Posted on March 10, 2007 by Rory Prior
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I was just checking my referrals (as you do) and I noticed a bunch of people visiting from the Disco blog. Curious I thought, so I clicked through to see where I’d been mentioned. Turns out it’s midway down a very narrow long blog post about the development of Disco and its humble beginnings. What I read next was something of a…
Posted on January 5, 2007 by Rory Prior
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I came across this [obsolete link removed] today via Daring Fireball. I’ve dealt with Brian Ball [obsolete link removed] before when I had InstantGallery on macZOT last year and I’ve had a number of IM conversations with him since, my lasting impression is that he’s not someone I’d want to work with again. These revelations by the xPad developer (and other things I’ve…
Posted on December 3, 2006 by Rory Prior
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I noticed today that the MacZotAppADay organisers finally cottoned on that people are mirroring the freebie downloads they’re putting up each day this month – quelle surprise! It has came to the attention of the MacAppADay team that some site visitors are currently ‘mirroring’ applications. The ramifications of mirroring are worse than you might at first assume: To protect the rights of…
Posted on November 3, 2006 by Rory Prior
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What for years has differentiated Macs, and Apple devices in general from their UNIX and Windows brethren? The user interface, both physical and virtual. In recent years many including myself have noted the ever degrading quality of Apple’s user interfaces, increasingly eye candy has been the sole motivation behind many user interface decisions and usability and consistency have taken a back seat….
Posted on May 10, 2006 by Rory Prior
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Be small and unintrusive.NewsMac Pro was always a bit of a screen hog, the problem is when you’ve got a lot of information to display there is only so much you can do about making things physically smaller on the screen before you start to compromise usability. NewsLife is parred down to the minimum you need to see to use the app…
Posted on June 30, 2005 by Rory Prior
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I found all the original Mac sounds [obsolete link removed] available as aiff audio files so now I can enjoy a Wild Eep every time I miss-click in OS X, great! If you surf over to ThinkMac today or visit the NewsMac Pro product page you can see the cool new iPod silhouette people inspired product banners too.
Posted on February 4, 2005 by Rory Prior
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I’ve noticed that there might be some redundant functionality in NewsMac, the thing is I’m not sure what the preferable solution to the problem is – what’s the best way of marking things that you use a lot and want quick access to? Originally this problem was solved by the idea of favourites – you could mark any channel as a favourite…
Posted on January 13, 2005 by Rory Prior
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Apple has long been known for devising and popularising good solid computer user interfaces. However there has been an increasing, and worrying trend for Apple to throw conventional UI wisdom out the window to apparently either meet the whims of Steve Jobs or the marketing department. The spread of the brushed metal look, like a plague, across every flagship Mac application is…
ThinkMac Software
Designing toolbar icons for Leopard
Posted on December 3, 2007 by Rory Prior
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With its new dark window theme Leopard requires a shift in icon design for things to look right. In particular older icons designed in the 10.0 – 10.4 era often look blurry and indistinct. Why is this? Well often it’s due to drop shadows, vague outlines and colours not being strong enough to stand out well against the darker grey background. Luckily…
Category: commentary, mac Tags:
What are they smoking?
Posted on March 10, 2007 by Rory Prior
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I was just checking my referrals (as you do) and I noticed a bunch of people visiting from the Disco blog. Curious I thought, so I clicked through to see where I’d been mentioned. Turns out it’s midway down a very narrow long blog post about the development of Disco and its humble beginnings. What I read next was something of a…
Category: commentary Tags:
On the Ball
Posted on January 5, 2007 by Rory Prior
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I came across this [obsolete link removed] today via Daring Fireball. I’ve dealt with Brian Ball [obsolete link removed] before when I had InstantGallery on macZOT last year and I’ve had a number of IM conversations with him since, my lasting impression is that he’s not someone I’d want to work with again. These revelations by the xPad developer (and other things I’ve…
Category: commentary Tags:
‘A failure of imagination’
Posted on December 3, 2006 by Rory Prior
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I noticed today that the MacZotAppADay organisers finally cottoned on that people are mirroring the freebie downloads they’re putting up each day this month – quelle surprise! It has came to the attention of the MacAppADay team that some site visitors are currently ‘mirroring’ applications. The ramifications of mirroring are worse than you might at first assume: To protect the rights of…
Category: commentary, general Tags:
On the death of the HIG and the triumph of eye candy over usability
Posted on November 3, 2006 by Rory Prior
Leave a Comment
What for years has differentiated Macs, and Apple devices in general from their UNIX and Windows brethren? The user interface, both physical and virtual. In recent years many including myself have noted the ever degrading quality of Apple’s user interfaces, increasingly eye candy has been the sole motivation behind many user interface decisions and usability and consistency have taken a back seat….
Category: commentary, mac Tags:
NewsLife Philosophy
Posted on May 10, 2006 by Rory Prior
Leave a Comment
Be small and unintrusive.NewsMac Pro was always a bit of a screen hog, the problem is when you’ve got a lot of information to display there is only so much you can do about making things physically smaller on the screen before you start to compromise usability. NewsLife is parred down to the minimum you need to see to use the app…
Category: apps, commentary, mac, newslife Tags:
Sosumi
Posted on June 30, 2005 by Rory Prior
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I found all the original Mac sounds [obsolete link removed] available as aiff audio files so now I can enjoy a Wild Eep every time I miss-click in OS X, great! If you surf over to ThinkMac today or visit the NewsMac Pro product page you can see the cool new iPod silhouette people inspired product banners too.
Category: commentary Tags:
Mixed metaphors
Posted on February 4, 2005 by Rory Prior
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I’ve noticed that there might be some redundant functionality in NewsMac, the thing is I’m not sure what the preferable solution to the problem is – what’s the best way of marking things that you use a lot and want quick access to? Originally this problem was solved by the idea of favourites – you could mark any channel as a favourite…
Category: commentary, mac Tags:
Brushed metal and graphite blobs, wither the HIG?
Posted on January 13, 2005 by Rory Prior
Leave a Comment
Apple has long been known for devising and popularising good solid computer user interfaces. However there has been an increasing, and worrying trend for Apple to throw conventional UI wisdom out the window to apparently either meet the whims of Steve Jobs or the marketing department. The spread of the brushed metal look, like a plague, across every flagship Mac application is…
Category: commentary, mac Tags:
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