This Apple hating has to stop

I just came off this piece by Dan Lyons.

Almost nobody can manage a basic logical thought flow for all the rush of blood to the head around iPhone announcement time. Before making any kind of judgement, people need to get over the idea that Apple owes them something.

What's that? They didn't innovate fast enough for your liking? They set such high standards in innovation and delightful design that you're disappointed now? And this is newsworthy?

It's pointless looking at the Apple vs Samsung debate as a metric for judging comparative innovation. Patent laws are a joke, . Yes it's ridiculous that Apple can patent the round corners on their iOS icons. But Samsung are not without legal help. The laws are out there for any company to take advantage of. The battle you see is quite normal and very common in tech these days. You only have to look at Kodak, Motorola, etc.

Just because you now know what the word innovation or interface means, does not mean you're allowed to use those words to generate clicks. And it does not mean that your idea of innovation (the bigger screened Samsung) is the correct idea of innovation.

Mr Lyons has no idea about the fundamentals of design. "Apple got where it was by taking bold risks. Now it has become a company that copies others and plays it safe." Well, they took the risk of disappointing you, sir.

When the iPhone 5 came out with more incremental but nonetheless noticeable improvements, personally, it tells me that they are EVEN MORE serious about making a good phone.

And more: "Today it's a Toyota Camry. Safe, reliable, boring. The car your mom drives. The car that's so popular that its maker doesn't dare mess with the formula." This is called unobtrusive design, among other good things. This is design. And is certainly what Steve would have wanted.

The iOS interface hasn't changed since 2007 because it's awesome. Just know this.

Omega watches are great and all but you know those little hands on the face still just mostly go around in a circle. I'm wanting something a little more ENGAGING and INTUITIVE maybe, perhaps with a better INTERFACE. You know like maybe a fourth or fifth hand…

Insta#$%&

For me, looking at the photos that I've liked on Instagram is like watching Baraka. Only it's better cos they're my mates and doing stuff I can relate to, not a sea of Asian-ish people waving their arms in a particular direction.

To see the creativity and adventures of my friends around the world, in real time, puts me in a really good mood.

As an app it's perfect for now. I love it because it kind of an anti-social media, anti-rushing, anti-firsties, less is more approach to what is fundamentally another gamified experience. The content has intrinsic quality and scarcity. It allows people to consciously appreciate and share the very smallest events in their day. The one social platform that makes you slow down instead of speed up.

A picture is worth a thousand words? It sure beats twitter for information depth, if not written wit.

It also makes quite a lot of people get genuinely better at, and more interested in, taking photos. I've seen some peoples' skills increase rather dramatically over a short period of time.

Instagram provides a lot of creative practice in trying to communicate ideas visually. There is a richness and abstractness of communication that not many platforms can compete with. It's not always about pure photography, it's about making a commentary of sorts.

And really, the only thing you do is think in pictures and like in likes. It's very spaced out. Perfect, really.

What I would love to see is an export function for the photos I have liked. I want to be able to show others these photos and possibly even integrate it (in some kind on non-kitsch way) with the photography in my house. Not an LCD frame that rotates photos every few minutes but maybe some kind of electronic wallpaper that links to the feed. Come now nerds, do it.

Too much?

I don't always invent new words, but when I do...

Scroll around my other little baby, the award winning

Hot Acid Rhythm

for all-new vibescaping.

Ideas That Changed the World

I was given this book many years back. The author, Felipe Fernandez Armesto, portrays human history in terms of a series of intellectual and conceptual discoveries, adopted and understood by civilizations over time. I think it almost works better than a regular history book in the sense that history as a discipline is too much of a backward narrative for me. One tends to think of history as

event-facts

. But events are almost entirely the result of ideas, or sub-ideas (like the idea that say, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand needs to die).

When I see the world in terms of ideas and ages, and ages made from ideas, then everything makes so much more sense. Something like the whole of religion looks like just another man made idea, like cooking one's food, or democratic rule.

As the book begins from prehistoric time, one already is given a sense of the

whole

of humanity and what it means to be a race that grows off/with/out of planet earth.

By understanding, in this way, the ages and every smaller increment of time possible, I believe one is in a far better position to make educated predictions about the cycles or ages of at least the relatively near future. At least that's how I see it.

Check it out on

Goodreads

Absolut bottle tops and Illy tin lids. Wait, what?

Go find an Absolut bottle and twist the lid on and off a few times. Now go and do the same with a tin of Illy coffee. Sick!

Is this a kinetic aesthetic? Whatever it is, more of this vibe is needed everywah.