tog
Latest
Philippe Starck wants you to make 3D-printed custom furniture
Philippe Starck is no longer satisfied with crafting exotic-looking products that don't change -- he wants to give you control over the design process. He tells the Wall Street Journal that his newly opened custom furniture venture, TOG, will eventually become an open source community that lets you create your own 3D-printed furniture and share designs with others. He'd also like to see kiosks that make it easy for anyone to produce their own furniture, even if they can't justify a 3D printer of their own.
Apple employee #66: Mac, iPhone and iPad created in similar way
In his latest post at AskTog.com, Bruce Tognazzini highlights the similarities between Steve Jobs's approach in bringing to market the original Macintosh, the iPhone, and now the iPad. For Tognazzini, known as "Tog" in computing circles, the success of these products is a byproduct of this approach. Like the original Mac, the original iPhone shipped with only a handful of apps. The iPhone also lacked common features on other smartphones, such as copy and paste, searching, MMS support, and contact search. Also, like the original Mac, the iPhone was created by a very small group -- most of them young and driven -- who worked in an ultra secretive environment. The small team environment meant that some capabilities had to be left out of a first release in order to focus on the most important features. The tradeoff, however, produces a superior user experience instead of a "rambling labyrinth of disjointed features." The result was a core that could be built upon for years without the need to start from scratch. While Tog doesn't mention it, this focused and "essential feature" mindset also serves a marketing function. It gets people talking. Think about how excited you were when an iPhone firmware upgrade presented you with something new, such as copy and paste. Remember, too, how much buzz this generated in the media and how Apple touted these features. These highlights and more, including details on the decision to add arrow keys to the Mac, are detailed in Tog's post. Bruce Tognazzini's knowledge of the Mac stems from his experience at Apple. During his 1978 to 1992 tenure at Apple as employee #66 (Steve Jobs is #0 and Steve Wozniak is #1), he founded the Apple Human Interface Group and acted as Apple's Human Interface Evangelist. He went on to work at Sun Microsystems, led the design of WebMD, and is currently a principal at the Nielsen Norman Group.
The Daily Grind: Paying extra for age restrictions
One of the things we've heard over the years is the idea of age-restricted MMO servers. Now, before we get torched up one end and down the other, we know that age isn't an absolute indicator of maturity. (We've all seen enough collective guild drama across all age ranges to know better.) There are, however, some things you never have to worry about when you're dealing with adults -- like enforced bedtimes, losing your main tank or healer's account to poor report card grades, or the "AFK, mom calling me to dinner" thing. Of course, the argument can be made that you don't generally hear "afk, changing diaper" with younger players, either. The fact that groups like TOG (The Older Gamers) exist at all does indicate at least some preference for older players to play with other older players, but it's by no means a definitive thing. As such for today's Daily Grind, we'd like to ask you what your take is on this idea? Would you be willing to pay extra to be able to play on an age-restricted server? Do you think the idea of restricting different ages to different servers is a bad idea? As a parent, would you feel better if you knew your children were playing on a server with other children, rather than potentially landing in some rather non-PC adult guild/chat channels? Or as an adult, would you feel better about that non-PC chat if you knew there was very little chance that there were impressionable young eyes around?
Tog on iPhone
Bruce Tognazzini has written another great article expounding his take on the iPhone. The mouse and other pointing devices, Tog reminds us, were around for 20 years before Apple made the technology work in an affordable and accessible manner. Multi-touch gestures are no different, he affirms. "Multi-touch gestural interfaces have been hanging around in the laboratory, screaming for release, for as long as the mouse hung around...Apple didn't invent the concept of the multi-touch interface. They've just, by all evidence, built the first one that, like the Mac before is, is (relatively) inexpensive, attractive, and accessible." He discusses the design from both a hardware and a software perspective. It's a great column, and I highly recommend that you get a nice cup of coffee and set aside some time to read it, enjoy it and savor it.
