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Proterra wants to build autonomous vehicles for public transit
The company that built an electric bus capable of driving 350 miles before needing a recharge wants to take public transit to the next level: autonomous driving. Working with the University of Nevada, Proterra has launched an autonomous driving program to help develop self-driving electric buses in Reno. The idea is simple, but implementation is complicated, partially because Proterra buses have to serve the public and abide by completely different laws than private vehicles. That's why the company's CEO says autonomous bus lines will probably never run without a human co-pilot.
Apple designers discuss their iconic work in web series and e-book
Much has been said about Apple's attention to design. Now FastCoDesign.com has packaged an exhaustive oral history of Apple design in a series of six articles, four of which have been published as of today. The full oral history is also available in a book by Max Chafkin titled Design Crazy, available in the iTunes Store or on Amazon for US$1.99 It's a great look at some of the designers who have worked or still work at the company, and also offers more amusing / infuriating anecdotes about former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Here are some highlights so far: Cordell Ratzlaff (manager, Mac OS human interface group; now a user experience director at Google): "We'd meet with Steve on Tuesday afternoons. He would come up with the craziest ideas. At one point, Steve wanted to do all of our error messages as haikus. He would leave, and we would all think, What is he smoking?" Don Lindsay (design director, Mac OS user experience group; now VP of user experience at BlackBerry): "Shortly before the unveiling of the iMac, Steve turned his attention to the user experience on the Mac OS X. He hauled the entire software design team into a room, and in typical Steve style, he just declared everybody in the room to be an idiot." Tim Kobe (cofounder, Eight Inc., an architecture firm that worked on display designs at Macworld conferences; now works on the design of the Apple Stores): "For the first two or three years, people didn't talk about the stores; they talked about the experience in the stores. Because the people who worked there were so different, and the way you engaged with technology was so different." Dan Walker (chief talent officer; now an HR consultant): "I'd like to tell you the iPod was because of some deep skunk works R&D operation, but it didn't happen that way. It started because Jon Rubinstein was at the Toshiba factory in Japan. They had these tiny hard drives, and Ruby saw the potential." Matt Rogers (firmware engineer, iPod division; now cofounder at Nest): "Before we launched at Macworld in January 2007, I was sitting in the bathroom using one of the devices, and I was like, this is revolution. I'm checking email in the bathroom. That was the moment when I realized this is a totally different kind of device."
FastCo looks at 8 devs who revolutionized the App Store
July 10, 2013 marked the fifth anniversary of Apple's App Store. To say that the App Store revolutionized the way we interact with our mobile devices would be an understatement. The sheer size of the App Store today demonstrates that it has indeed taken on a life of its own, creating an entire economy unto itself. Today, there are over 900,000 apps in the App Store, with over 50 billion apps having been downloaded to date. Even more impressive is that Apple has paid out over $10 billion to developers thus far. Over the last five years, the App Store has of course had its fair share of controversy. From apps that were inexplicably banned to apps that were curiously let in, Apple initially struggled to curate the App Store in a fair and transparent manner. But over time, Apple became a tad more open about its app rejection policies, and these days, it seems that Apple, by and large, has gotten things under control. Ever since Apple first released the iOS SDK, developers have not only pushed the platform beyond what many thought was possible, but they also influenced the way mobile apps were developed, marketed, and most importantly, used by the masses. With that in mind, FastCompany this past week took a look at eight iOS developers who helped revolutionize the App Store. Though the list is in no particular order, it's somewhat fitting that Loren Brichter is the first entry. Brichter, a former Apple employee who helped work on the original iPhone, was the man behind Tweetie, an immensely popular Twitter client for iOS that was eventually bought out by Twitter. A number of Brichter's UI innovations have since become common in the mobile app space. It's natural to reach your thumb to the top of your phone's screen and pull down to refresh the page, even now part of Apple's core apps. It was Brichter, though, that designed that feature, implementing it in one of Tweetie's updates.... the pull-to-refresh gesture took on a life of its own... Also listed is Steve Demeter, a name that may sound familiar because he was one of the first App Store success stories. Demeter famously made $250,000 in just two months with his app Trism. Apple even featured Demeter in one of its promotional videos shown at WWDC some years ago. The success and wild profitability of Trism, not to mention the fact that the app was the result of a lone and independent developer, really drove home the notion that there was a lot of money to be made in mobile apps. A lot of it. More importantly, it demonstrated that a single developer could really make some serious cash with a smart idea and effective execution. The entire list is worth a read and includes notable names such as Mike Matas and Kevin Systrom, along with other folks who may not be as familiar but who have been behind apps you have likely downloaded and used.
Daily Update for April 18, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Hitting it big in the App Store ... or not
Lots of developers are aiming for huge success in the App Store, and it seems like nearly every day we're reading about someone who made a big game and is picking up something like a million dollars a day from customers clicking that little "Install" button. L'Escapadou didn't make quite that much -- it's a studio that works on "educational and fun apps for iOS," and in this blog post, developer Pierre Abel walks through the $200,000 the company has made on the App Store so far. As you can read, however, it's a combination of a lot of hard work, and a little bit of luck -- Abel worked for months on the few apps he's produced for the store, and only after he got covered in the press for the right audience did he see a nice jump in sales. Also note that it took multiple updates -- none of his apps soared in revenue right out of the gate; he had to provide new content based on customer feedback and support his released apps before he saw the charts curve upwards. But not everybody sees even that level of success. FastCompany recently posted an accusation that the App Store was "more of a casino than a gold mine," excerpting a new book called "Appilionaires" that suggests developers investing big in the App Store might as well just put all of their money on black at Harrah's. Maybe it's true, that the App Store is the "world's most competitive software market," but to hear this excerpt tell it, success with an iOS app is all luck -- being in the right place with the right app at the right time, to get swept up into the machine of fame and success, or losing all of your money and time invested with a great app that no one ever notices or sees. Of course the truth is somewhere in between -- some great apps do sit there for a while before anyone notices just how good they are, and some terrible apps get caught up in hype or marketing and pick up lots of revenue anyway. In the end, the App Store works very much like any other marketplace: You need to have a product that people want, and then show people it exists and convince them that they want it. Despite the "gold mine" dreams, creating and releasing an app is a lot of work, even if some people are better or more experienced at that work than others. There is money to be made on the App Store -- that's for sure. But how that money is made and by whom is controlled by many factors, of which luck is only one.
The Gizmodo iPhone saga flowchart
Fast Company has come up with an awesome Gizmodo iPhone Saga flowchart to help us follow the increasingly confusing case. The flowchart allows users to pick what they believe to be the true facts, and it lets them follow the trail to its "obvious" conclusion. Possible outcomes include: it was all an Apple conspiracy, bloggers are journalists, and Gizmodo bowed to corruption to get site traffic. So, where did you end up?
