Tag: apple

  • Intentional Delays in Apple Chess (so you don’t feel so bad)

    The source code for Apple Chess reveals the intentional inclusion of a time delay in the computer making its moves. As a comment in the source explains: Taking a rudimentary look at the code, it looks like kInteractiveDelay is for computer-human game modes (so an intentional delay to make us feel better), while kAutomaticDelay is…

  • Apple’s Implementation of the Duration-of-Exposure Effect: Screens at 70˚

    Hours after writing about the duration-of-exposure effect (whereby merely touching an unowned object increases our attachment to it and how much we value it), a post came into my feed reader pointing out how Apple Inc. take advantage of this effect in their “painstakingly calibrated” stores. Carmine Gallo, providing a glimpse into his upcoming book, The Apple…

  • Apple, Disney and Pixar: It’s the Products

    Written in early 2006 shortly after Disney’s acquisition of Pixar in a $7.4 billion all-stock deal, BusinessWeek looks at the relationship between the Disney and Apple CEOs and where their relationship may lead. Prescient in that it accurately predicted the Apple TV and the iPhone, the article also briefly looks at Jobs and his product-first…

  • Apple’s Strategy of Rejecting ‘Social Media’

    Apple’s ‘rejection’ of the practices pundits “always say you should do to succeed in the Internet economy” isn’t unique, but it does make for interesting reading: Apple doesn’t blog; it doesn’t Tweet; it does little on Facebook; it doesn’t engage with its customer base. It doesn’t ask the “community” for feedback or rapidly iterate based…

  • Apple’s Strategy: The Good and Bad

    The four major issues with Apple’s current product line and strategy that are “stifling the industry, consumer choice and pricing”, according to Jason Calacanis: Destroying MP3 player innovation through anti-competitive practices. Monopolistic practices in telecommunications. Draconian App Store policies. Wanting to own almost every extension of the iPhone platform. It’s tough to disagree with these…

  • Exporting Poor Work Environments

    After a long time of successfully managing to avoid the blog, I eventually clicked this past week when I was sent Fake Steve Jobs’ reaction to the news that an employee of Foxconn, one of Apple’s Chinese ‘manufacturing partners’, committed suicide shortly after reporting a missing iPhone v4 prototype. We can’t make these products in…

  • 10 Design Commandments

    The 10 commandments of design , as set forth by Dieter Rams: Good design… is innovative makes a product useful is aesthetic helps a product to be understood is unobtrusive is honest is durable is thorough to the last detail is concerned with the environment is as little design as possible As Jason points out,…