Ged Carroll

Category: design | 設計 | 예술과 디자인 | デザイン

Design was something that was important to me from the start of this blog, over different incarnations of the blog, I featured interesting design related news. Design is defined as a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, interfaces or other object before it is made.

But none of the definition really talks about what design really is in the way that Dieter Rams principles of good design do. His principles are:

  1. It is innovative
  2. It makes a product useful
  3. It is aesthetic
  4. It makes a product understandable
  5. It is unobtrusive
  6. It is honest
  7. It is long-lasting
  8. It is thorough down to the last detail
  9. It is environmentally-friendly – it can and must maintain its contribution towards protecting and sustaining the environment.
  10. It is as little design as possible

Bitcoin isn’t long lasting as a network, which is why people found the need to fork the blockchain and build other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin uses 91 terawatts of energy annually or about the entire energy consumption of Finland.

The Bitcoin network relies on thousands of miners running energy intensive machines 24/7 to verify and add transactions to the blockchain. This system is known as “proof-of-work.” Bitcoin’s energy usage depends on how many miners are operating on its network at any given time. – So Bitcoin is environmentally unfriendly by design.

On the other hand, Apple products, which are often claimed to be also influenced by Dieter Rams also fail his principles. They aren’t necessarily environmentally friendly as some like AirPods are impossible to repair or recycle.

  • Beme & more news

    Beme

    CNN Brings In the Social App Beme to Cultivate a Millennial Audience – The New York Times – major news site suffering from lack of consumer trust (election coverage, fake news environment etc) buys YouTube V-logger to get some baes – and people wonder why the news media appears broken. Beme was founded by Casey Neistat was one of the first generation of YouTube bloggers. Beme rolled out a mobile app to syndicate their content

    Business

    The taxi unicorn’s new clothes | FT Alphaville – is sadly symptomatic of the emperor’s new clothes groupthink dominating the sector. Though it does explain the sector’s obsession with popularising the idea that public transport can be done away with. (Less investment in public transport will lead to fewer competitively priced alternatives, empowering the Uber monopoly in the long run)

    The Truth About Uber’s Otto Deal — The Information – hedged against the Otto founders, Sir Martin Sorrell could learn something ;-)

    Economics

    The Eurodollar Market: It All Starts Here | Zero Hedge – this is what keeps the UK afloat

    Brexit negotiators identify UK’s aces in the hole | FT – interesting read, ultimately the UK doesn’t have leverage across all the other 27 countries on the same things so could bounce out with nothing resolved

    Ideas

    ‘Millennials’ is a useless term | Jed Hallam | Pulse | LinkedIn – interesting that this had to be written. Whatever happened to tribes? More related content here.

    This Is What Happens When Millions Of People Suddenly Get The Internet – BuzzFeed News – Facebook’s influence in Myanmar is hard to quantify, but its domination is so complete that people in Myanmar use “internet” and “Facebook” interchangeably. According to Amara Digital, a Yangon-based marketing agency, Facebook has doubled its local base in the last year to 9.7 million monthly users. That number is likely to spike again, after Facebook launched its Free Basics program, a free, streamlined version of Facebook and a handful of other sites.

    Innovation

    Apple’s China R&D effort could fail to move the needle | FT – I still think that Apple needs the lab there because of the unique Chinese internet eco-system and the hardware design excellence in China

    Luxury

    No Price Like Home: Big Spenders Reappear in China — The Fashion Law – sales picking up in Mainland China

    Porsche Macan owners in China vent their anger at copycat maker – The owners are being asked whether the vehicles are genuine German cars or just Zotye SR9s with a Porsche badge stuck on the front hood.

    Media

    Creative Hub – Facebook – great ad examples

    Apple expert panel on shift from a hit-driven to services business – Business Insider – “I’ll play both sides of it for you, Steve. On the one hand, they haven’t had innovation for a long time and it looks really bleak and it’s been six years [if you measure by the iPad, which was introduced in 2010]. On the other hand, if after eight years they do something as big as the iPhone or the iPad or the iPod, then we’ll forget about, we’ll forget about those doubts.”

    Facebook To Target Streaming Viewers By Linking User Profiles With IP Addresses | IPG Media Lab – big potential targeting opportunities

    WeChat censorship offers a blueprint for Facebook, but it still shouldn’t enter China | Techinasia – I think Facebook wouldn’t be able to cope with the competition

    Online

    Facebook has cut off Prisma’s Live Video access | TechCrunch – Facebook doing vintage Microsoft

    Do China’s Celebrities or Influencers Have More Power? | L2 – traditional celebrities still win out

    An update on Google’s feature-phone crawling & indexing | Google Webmaster Blog – this is big news for the mobile web and will encourage feature phone services to fall back on SMS

    Security

    Infineon joins Chinese IoT security push | Electronics EETimes – to develop security technologies for smart home appliances that are manufactured and used in China

    ‘Tesco Bank’s major vulnerability is its ownership by Tesco,’ claims ex-employee • The Register – You’re probably only as secure as your least secure system

    Technology

    RISC-V Expands its Audience | EE Times – open source hardware design

    The Macintosh Endgame | MondayNote – interesting analysis, the problem is that iOS doesn’t have a user experience conducive to knowledge work like typing all day long

    Web of no web

    Fitbit To Buy Pebble — The Information – consolidation as the sector folds in on itself in the face of limited demands

    Watching the World Rot at Europe’s Largest Tech Conference – The Atlantic – the ennui of conferences in general

    Curiosity | Merck Group – interesting spin on the usual innovation corporate positioning

  • MacBook Pro surprise

    My initial reaction to Apple’s MacBook Pro wasn’t overwhelmingly positive. Now that I’ve tried one very briefly, I realise that it’s an unpleasant MacBook Pro surprise.

    Thin

    I didn’t feel that much of a weight different between my current machine and the new model MacBook Pro. Who gives a flying fuck about the laptop being even thinner than the current MacBook Pro? You have to wonder if Apple really believes customers are gagging for a thin incompatible clamshell of mediocrity? I’d be more interested in power density of the battery – more charge and better performance from the laptop. Some connectors that I actually use would be great as well.

    Display

    If you already have a retina display laptop this is exactly the same.  The touchpad display is interesting, but it seems to take no account of finger span in the way the controls work on a couple of the default apps that I tried from the perspective of a touch typer.  I suspect that the 11″ MacBook Air was killed because Apple is desperately hoping sales will go to the iPad Pro.

    Tactile experience

    Apple made a big deal of the keyboard, but the truth of it is that it was wasted. The real effort was not about user experience and more about making things thinner. It isn’t the improvement on the previous MacBook Pro keyboard experience despite the clever engineering involved.

    Real world performance

    I’m a bit spoiled from a tech point of view. I am working on an early 2015 model MacBook Pro (Retina) 3.1GHz Intel Core i7 with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of solid state storage. I have an attached SuperDrive by USB and two Apple Thunderbolt displays.  The graphics performance is adequate with an Intel Iris Graphics 6100.
    about this mac
    Having had a quick play with the new MacBook Pro there didn’t seem to be a real world performance difference. You probably would need a machine that is five years old or more to get a speed bump from this unpleasant MacBook Pro surprise.

  • Jia Yueting + more news

    Jia Yueting

    LeEco’s CEO Jia Yueting Says Company Overstretched, Now Running Out of Cash – Slashdot – possible acquisition target for Huawei? Jia Yueting is the epitome of a Chinese success story. LeEco was a sprawling technology conglomerate, he owns billions in assets and has an actress trophy wife. LeEco started off as an online video platform, Netflix would be a good western analogue. The LeEco service is on Chinese smart TVs. From there Jia Yueting expanded LeEco into smartphones including a share in Coolpad and mobile apps. Jia Yueting spearheaded a move into Chinese real estate, sports and even electric cars through Faraday Future. All of this expansion has been funded by listings and a mountain of debt that financed the Jia Yueting expansion efforts.

    Business

    Founder Dilution | A VC – great breakdown

    Culture

    Remembering the Clancy Brothers on the anniversary of Tom’s death (VIDEOS) – interesting to hear how the beat poets and and counterculture influenced something I thought was auld Irish

    Economics

    UK trade deficit widens unexpectedly as exports fall despite pound drop | The Guardian – “If we are lucky, the weak pound may boost exports, but I would highlight that export growth tends to be driven more by the strength of overseas demand, rather than the exchange rate.”

    Ideas

    A ‘Highly Lethal’ War Of ‘Fleeting’ Advantages: Multi-Domain Battle « Breaking Defense – exceptionally grim reading

    YouGov | Should Labour be a workers’ party, or a party of the liberal left? – interesting read, one can see that the ‘Labour voters’ are a more natural constituency for UKIP and the Conservatives. Classically the voters which kept Thatcher in power

    The influencer economy is real, but brands and agencies are at risk of destroying it | Campaign – great op-ed by Rob Hinchcliffe

    Innovation

    UPS, SAP, Fast Radius pact for industrial 3D printing – Business Insider – blurring the line between logistics and manufacturing

    Legal

    Google rejects EU Android competition charges | RTE – but they are an effective monopoly rather like Windows complete with bundling issues

    The legal questions at the heart of the High Court Article 50 ruling – BBC News – interesting how the points have been highlighted in terms of law. The precedent post-Brexit would be more interesting

    Marketing

    Shell #makethefuture – Best Day of My Life – interesting, odd music based campaign by Shell

    Media

    Decoding the GDPR and its implications for UK children | LSE Media Policy Project – interesting analysis

    Online

    Silicon Valley Is Worried That Trump Is Going To Grab Them By The Data – BuzzFeed News – interesting comments by Pinboard founder

    Retailing

    Shop Til You Drop? Shanghai Mall Opens “Husband Nursery” | What’s On Weibo – interesting trial by Vanke, I wonder if they will roll it out to other properties

    Security

    China’s new cybersecurity law is bad news for business | TechCrunch – its bad for non-Chinese businesses

    Technology

    Apple has killed off everything good about the Macbook Pro – TechEye – size zero design obsession bullshit

    Web of no web

    Sensor City strikes China Deal – not sure how UK will gain in longer term

  • iPod SSD

    iPod SSD

    Trawling eBay gives access to a cottage industry of predominantly China-based suppliers of the iPod SSD. They take iPod Classics and remanufacture them. They get new cases and new batteries and a new drive.

    SSD

    The real trick is in the new component put in the device. Out goes the Toshiba micro-hard drive of 120GB or 160GB and in goes a 256GB SSD. Apple had abandoned production of the iPod Classic because it couldn’t get the right parts any more. Technology had moved on and flash memory had replaced micro hard drive’s as storage technology of choice for portable consumer devices.
    iPod ClassicSwapping out the hard drive for an SSD provides an iPod with a number of advantages:

    • The iPod SSD is a third lighter than Apple’s version of the iPod Classic. This changes dynamics in usage. It no longer has the same heft, you feel less conscious of it in a pocket or jacket
    • The battery lasts longer. I now get about 30 hours of listening from the iPod SSD. By comparison I get 18 hours out of my smartphone. If I used the smartphone as a music player as well, that battery time would drop further. If I used a streaming service, that would sound worse, hammer the battery life and mobile phone bill even further
    • It holds more music. At 256GB up from 160GB in the last model of iPod Classic it makes the difference between being able to hold all of my music library with me or not. You don’t have Spotify when you have 15,000+ tracks to choose from
    • The same great iPod experience. iTunes still syncs with the device. It has a good quality DAC (digital-to-analogue convertor) chip. With the right headphones and a sufficiently high sample rate it is indistinguishable from CDs. Under normal circumstances it sounds better your typical smartphone – which is trying to do lots of job well
    • It is quieter than the original iPod Classic. There is no longer the noise of a hard drive spinning up and reading the music data from the disk
    • Vigorous movement is not a problem. Apple had done a good job with the original iPod Classic songs were cached in RAM to iron out temporary stoppages due to movement affecting the hard disk. An SSD had no moving parts so it isn’t an issue any more

    What becomes apparent is that Apple wouldn’t have had to make that much effort to make the product itself, but for no known reason it didn’t want to.

    I suspect that part of this is down to:

    • The law of big numbers. The iPod Classic revamped in this way would be a decent business for most companies, but just isn’t as big as Apple is used to
    • A modified iPod probably too simple a design solution. Apple likes to take a big step forward (even when it doesn’t) – there are no plaudits or design awards in an iPod Classic with a solid state drive

    The reimagined iPod is a development in sharp contrast to Apple’s new product developments:

    • Loved products bought by key Apple advocates have not been updated or ignored: the Mac Pro and the Apple Display (which Apple has abandoned)
    • Moving out of entry level products. With the MacBook Pro and MacBook line-ups, the entry device is now a secondhand laptop rather than the 11″ MacBook Air or the non-Retina MacBook Pro
    • Big bets that aren’t resonating with the marketplace: the Apple Watch has been a best selling smart watch; but is in a category which lacks a compelling reason to purchase. The iPad is a passive content consumption device for most consumers. It has a replacement cycle that would be more familiar to television manufacturers than a computer company

    More related posts here.

  • New Apple MacBook Pro

    I slept a few naps before pulling together these thoughts on the new Apple MacBook Pro. I have been a Mac user since it was the mark of eccentricity. I am writing this post on a 13″ MacBook Pro and have a house of other Macs and peripherals.

    Theatre
    Apple launched a new range of Apple MacBook Pro’s on October 27, 2016. This was a day after Microsoft’s reinvigoration of its Surface franchise.  Apple ignores timing and tries to plough its own furrow. But comparisons by journalists and market analysts are inevitable.

    Microsoft has done a very good job at presenting a device that owes its build quality to the schooling that Apple has given to the Shenzhen eco-system over the past two decades.

    The focus on touch computing feels like a step on a roadmap to Minority Report style computing interfaces.  Microsoft has finally mastered the showmanship of Apple at its best.

    Apple’s presentation trod a well-worn formula. Tim Cook acts as the ringmaster and provides a business update. Angela Ahrendts sits at a prominent place in the audience and appears on a few cut-in shots. Craig Federighi presented the first product setting a light self-depreciating humour with in-jokes that pull the Apple watchers through the fourth wall and draws them inside ‘Apple’. Eddy Cue plays a similar role for more content related products. In that respect they are interchangeable like pieces of Lego.

    Phil Schiller came in to do the heavy lifting on the product. While the design had some points of interest including TouchID and the touchpad the ports on the machine are a major issue.

    Given the Pro nature of the computer, Apple couldn’t completely hide behind ‘design’ like it has done with the MacBook. So Phil Schiller was given the job of doing the heavy lifting on the product introduction.

    There was the usual Jonny Ive voiceover video on how the product was made with identikit superlatives from previous launches. It could almost be done by a bot with the voice of Jonny Ive, rather than disturbing his creative process.

    It all felt like it was dialled in, there wasn’t the sense of occasion that Apple has managed in the past.

    User experience
    Many people have pointed out that Microsoft’s products looked more innovative and seemed to be actively courting the creatives that have been the core of Apple’s support. In reality much of it was smoke and mirrors. Yes Apple has lost some of the video market because its machines just aren’t powerful, in comparison to other workstations out there.

    The touch interface is more of a red herring. Ever since the HP-150 – touch hasn’t played that well with desktop computers because content creators don’t like to take their hands too far from the keyboard when work. It ruins the flow if you can touch type; or have muscle memory for your PhotoShop shortcuts.

    Apple didn’t invent the Surface Dial because it already had an equivalent made by Griffin Technology – the PowerMate. In fact the PowerMate had originally been available for Windows Vista and Linux as well, but for some reason the device software didn’t work well with Windows 7 & 8.

    I can see why Apple has gravitated towards the touchpad instead. But it needed to do a better job telling the story.

    Heat
    Regardless of the wrong headedness of Microsoft’s announcements, the company has managed to get much of the heat that Apple used to bring to announcements. By comparison Apple ploughed exactly the same furrow as it has done for the past few years – the products themselves where interchangeable.

    The design provided little enthusiasm amongst the creatives that I know, beyond agitation at the pointless port changes and inconvenience that conveyed.

    While these people aren’t going to move to Microsoft, the Surface announcements provided them with a compare and contrast experience which agitated the situation further.  To quote one friend

    Apple doesn’t know who it is. It doesn’t know its customers and it no longer understands professionals.

    Design
    Apple’s design of the MacBook Pro shows a good deal of myopia. Yes, Apple saved weight in the laptops; but that doesn’t mean that the consumer saves weight. The move to USB C only has had a huge impact. A raft of new dongles, SD card readers and adaptors required. If like me you present to external parties, you will have a Thunderbolt to VGA dongle.

    With the new laptop, you will need a new VGA dongle, and a new HDMI dongle. I have £2,000 of Thunderbolt displays that will need some way of connecting to Apple’s new USB C port. I replace my displays less often than my laptop. We have even earlier displays in the office.

    Every so often I transfer files on to a disk for clients with locked down IT systems. Their IT department don’t like file transfer services like WeTransfer or FTP. They don’t like shared drives from Google or Box. I will need a USB C to USB adaptor to make this happen. Even the encrypted USB thumb drive on my ‘real life’ key chain will require an adaptor!

    I will be swimming in a sea of extra cables and parts that will weigh more than the 1/2 pound that Apple managed to save. Thank you for nothing, Apple.  Where interfaces have changed before there was a strong industry argument. Apple hit the curve at the right time for standards such as USB and dispensing with optical drives.

    The move to USB C seems to be more about having a long thin slot instead of a slightly taller one. Getting rid of the MagSafe power connector has actually made the laptop less safe. MagSafe is a connector that is still superior to anything else on the market.  Apple has moved from an obsession with ‘form and function’ to ‘form over function’.

    The problem is one of Apple’s own making: it has obsessed about size zero design since Steve Jobs used to have a Motorola RAZR.

    Price versus Value
    So despite coming with a half pound less mass and a lot of inconvenience, the devices come in at $200 more expensive than their predecessors. It will be harder for Apple customers to upgrade to this device unless their current machine is at least five years old. I don’t think that this laptop will provide the injection in shipments that Apple believes it will.

    A quick word on displays
    Apple’s move away from external displays was an interesting one. There can’t be that much engineering difference between building the iMac and the Apple Display? Yet Apple seems to have abandoned the market. It gives some professionals a natural break point to review whether they should stay with Apple. Apple displays aren’t only a product line but a visible ambassador of Apple’s brand where you can see the sea of displays in agencies and know that they are an Apple shop. It is the classic ‘Carol Bartz’ school of technology product management. What do you think of the new Apple MacBook Pro?

    More information
    Initial thoughts on Windows 8 | renaissance chambara
    Size Zero Design | renaissance chambara
    Why I am sunsetting Yahoo! | renaissance chambara
    Apple just told the world it has no idea who the Mac is for – Charged Tech – Medium
    Apple (AAPL) removed MagSafe, its safest, smartest invention ever, from the new MacBook Pros — Quartz
    How Apple’s New MacBook Pros Compare To Microsoft’s New Surface Studio | Fast Company | Business + Innovation – a subtly cutting article on the new MacBook Pro
    New MacBook Pro touches at why computers still matter for Apple | CNet
    Apple’s new MacBook Pro kills off most of the ports you probably need | TechCrunch