¶ Remembering Steve

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Steve Jobs:

It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.

Apple has put a beautiful tribute video on their homepage today in honor of Steve on the anniversary of his death.

If you'll excuse me, I think I have something in my eye…

Aaron Mahnke on Entitlement

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Aaron lays it out:

Here’s a great rule of thumb: until you create something yourself and then actually ship it, try to first find the positive in the products around you. Those products are the result of someone’s passion, hard work and innate genius. When we compare them to our own twisted, entitlement-driven expectations, we do nothing but insult their creators.

Aaron, as a member of your audience, I am standing — and applauding.

Authentication Baloney

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Everyone and their dog in the media seems to be crying foul about Apple over the fact that the new Lightning connector cable includes an authentication chip. And the media is making it out that Apple included the chip to make sure only their $30 cables would work.

Nevermind the fact that the 30-pin dock connector has had an authentication chip since 2005.

Darrell Tan:

When Apple released the iPod Video that was capable of playing videos in 2005, they added video out (composite and S-video), as well as an authentication chip to allow only authorized docks and cables to receive video out (including audio). Soon enough, China caught up with their release of “authorized” accessories, which contain the authentication chip that can be re-purposed for other use.

Hm, pretty sure you can buy cheap 30-pin cables by the boatload. Maybe Apple puts an authentication chip in to make sure the connector works properly and doesn’t fry your phone.

The Lightning cable hasn’t even been on the market for a week, folks. How about we let Apple and the accessory makers make some accessories first.

IFTTT Forced to Remove Twitter Triggers

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If you are a follower of this site on Twitter (@techese), then you have been benefitting from a Twitter trigger I have set up via IFTTT. IFTTT stands for If This, Then That. It’s simply really. For instance, I have it set up for “If a new post hits techese.net’s RSS feed, then tweet the title and link”. There’s a myriad of other useful things the service can do, right down to turning on a light in your home at a certain time if you have the right devices.

Amazing stuff.

Well, Twitter sure seems to hate amazing stuff lately (like, oh, you know, third-party anything). Twitter is forcing IFTTT to remove Twitter triggers. Now, not all triggers are disappearing. The particular one I use to post is staying. But this whole crusade of “all roads lead to Twitter and none lead out” is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I have no idea what is going on at Twitter. They really seem to be losing their way.

Mountain Lion without Skeuomorphism

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When Lion released its cockamamie Address Book and iCal UI, I found the apps to be far less usable than the Snow Leopard counterparts.

Mountain Lion made the functional again while renaming them to Contacts and Calendar, respectively, but the apps still have a cockamamie look to them.

These UI edits by Shtekeris over at The Verge’s forums are elegant, functional, and simply beautiful.

Apple, please hire this guy.