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The Created-With-Care Edition Saturday, October 7, 2017

4 Thoughts On Design From Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive, by Marty Swant, AdWeek

Asked what he detests, Ive said “most things.” That’s because he said most things are built in an opportunistic way, either because of cost or a demanding schedule. He said products are very rarely “built for people.”

Ive said the design team was inspired by the “loathing” the team members had for their older, pre-iPhone phones. He said they were “soul destroying.” Ive said that while we don’t always know why we might like something, we can sense when it’s created with care. That relates to everything, from selecting raw materials down to the design process.

Jony Ive Design Talk At The New Yorker TechFest, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Jony says there are two behaviors: being inquisitive and curious and light on your feet. But at the same time, if you’re going to do something new, there’s a reason it hasn’t been done before and you must be determined. He said this change is exhausting but required.

Jony Ive Is A Human Man With Good Taste In Shoes, by Adam Clark Estes, Gizmodo

I thought about the interview and realized how many times David Remnick asked Ive a question and invited him to be humble. Ive never bit. He’d meander his way back to discussing the search for perfection, the quest to build things with paramount utility that not only worked well but looked great. And in looking around my world, I realized once again how Jony Ive (along with Steve Jobs and an army of geniuses in Cupertino) has managed to create a series of products that are as ubiquitous as the shoes on our feet. No wonder Ive’s not so eager to be humble. He’s still human, though.

Apple Rather Have Uber Than TextExpander In the App Store

Sandbox Transparency, by Daniel Jalkut, Bitsplitting.org

Mac apps such as TextExpander essentially became unqualified for the Mac App Store with the advent of sandboxing, because they require access to system services such as monitoring the user’s keyboard input, in order to provide valuable macro text substitution. If entitlements were transparent across the board, and users were consistently informed about the extent of an application’s capabilities, it would empower users to make more reasonable decisions about the software they run. It would empower them to allow apps like TextExpander that are currently disallowed by the App Store’s sandboxing policies, and it would empower them to reject apps like Uber that are, surprisingly, allowed to capture footage of users’ activity even when running other apps.

Apple's Staffing

Apple's Bruce Sewell Retires As General Counsel, Replaced By Former Honeywell Exec Katherine Adams, by Roger Fingas, AppleInsider

Apple on Friday revealed that the company's current general counsel, Bruce Sewell, will be retiring at the end of 2017, to be replaced by Katherine Adams, who was previously a senior VP and general counsel for Honeywell.

Apple's Exec In Charge Of Back-end Technology For iCloud Has Left, by Jordan Novet, CNBC

Eric Billingsley, director of internet services operations at Apple, was in charge of operating infrastructure for iCloud services, including the iCloud Drive document storage service that competes with services like Dropbox and Microsoft's OneDrive.

A source close to the situation said that Billingsley's old team is reporting to engineering vice president Patrice Gautier.

Shutting Down AIM

So Long, AIM. For Years, For Millions, You Were The Internet, by David Pierce, Wired

For all we like to worry about how much of life happens on the internet now, a lot of life happened on AIM. Friendships and relationships started, ended, and often took place mostly in a chat window. It always started the same way: one person waiting for the other's name to pop up on their Buddy List, then trying to wait at least a few seconds before chatting them so as not to seem desperate. Long before group texts, we planned life on AIM.

[...]

Even now, there are features AIM figured out that nobody else has successfully replicated. If someone was trolling you or being offensive on AIM, you had real power: a "warn" button that would actually slow down the internet connection of the person on the other side before eventually cutting them off. It's odd, too, that away messages have disappeared: in a world where we'd all like to be a little less connected, a way to say "I'm here but not really" couldn't be more useful.

AIM Was Perfect, And Now It Will Die, by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic

AIM showed us how to live online, for good and for ill. We all live our whole lives in text chains and group threads now. We plan every hangout, we send every news article, we proclaim every relationship in the river of text it taught us to sail. Honestly, that river has been a little scary lately. Instant messaging, once a special thrill, now sets the texture of our common life. But AIM taught us how to live online first. So AIM, my old buddy, don’t feel bad if you see us shedding a tear. We know what you have to do. For we’ll see you waving from such great heights—

“Come down now,” we’ll say.

But everything looks perfect from far away.

“Come down now,” but you’ll stay.

Stuff

Review: Beats Studio3 Wireless Offers Noise Cancellation & Apple's W1, At A Premium Price, by Roger Fingas, AppleInsider

If you want Apple W1 features and noise cancellation, this is the only game in town. Some people will also prefer the Beats look as a fashion statement.

Autistic Students Use App To Learn The Basics Of Music In Richmond Area Schools, by Justin Mattingly, Richmond Times

Across the U.S., one in 68 children -- or 1.5 percent -- has autism spectrum disorder, according to the CDC. Helping build foundational music knowledge helps this growing population, Van Dam said.

“It’s expressive. You can say something about how you feel,” he said. “It’s giving kids the opportunity to explore what they want to say.”

Pixelmator For macOS Updated With HEIF And Apple Photos Support, by John Voorhees, MacStories

In addition to bug fixes, Pixelmator 3.7 supports importing HEIF image files. Pixelmator can be opened directly from Apple Photos now too.

Develop

Apple Urges Developers To Create And Promote ARKit Apps, by Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider

A brief message posted to Apple's Developer News and Updates webpage outlines three key resources produced to assist in the creation and marketing of ARKit apps.

Why Many Developers Still Prefer Objective-C To Swift, by Paul Hudson, Hacking With Swift

But if you’re still using Objective-C, you’re not alone – many other developers still prefer Objective-C to Swift, and with good reasons. I got in touch with some Objective-C developers to ask what’s holding them back, whether they feel Objective-C development has become stigmatized, and more – here’s what they had to say…

Don’t Get Too Comfortable At That Desk, by Steve Lohr, New York Times

New office designs are coming to a workplace near you, with layouts meant to cater to the variety of tasks required of modern white-collar workers. Put another way, it means people don’t sit in just one place.

[...]

The new model eschews the common dogmas of work life: Everybody gets an office, or everyone gets a cubicle, or everybody gets a seat on a workbench. A diversity of spaces, experts say, is more productive, and the new concept is called “activity-based workplace design,” tailoring spaces for the kind of work done.