JetLinks
Jetlinked: Goodbye Macworld
From my day job: equinux has written about some of our Macworld experiences over the years and how we made the decision not to go back this year. It’s a good look behind-the-scenes at Macworld and worth reading if you’ve been or plan on going.
equinux blog: Goodbye Macworld
Read MoreJetlinked: iPad UI Roundup
Sebastiaan de With has posted a very comprehensive analysis of some of the new UI elements introduced on the iPad:
As usual with a large Apple product launch, I’ve written up this post to round up the good, the bad, and the ugly of all the new interface and interaction designs that were set loose on the world by the company that’s regarded as the most influential and skilled when it comes to designing experiences.
Man, where do I begin.
He’s done a terrific job of scrutinizing all the videos and screenshots on various websites as well: Cocoia Blog
Jetlinked: 20 Beautiful Mac apps
Designreviver has a nice list of 20 Beautiful Mac apps that is worth checking out. There are only a few picks I disagree with:
- Pixelmator’s black icons on a HUD window background have always bothered me and seem like a bad UI choice
- iStatmenus is pretty, but never feels very Mac-like
- TuneUp is the antithesis of a beautiful Mac app. It leeches onto iTunes and looks & feels more like a Firefox plugin than a Mac app.
But the list has a few lesser-known entries as well, so it’s worth reading for a few gems that you don’t see on every other list (I’m typing this in blogo which I hadn’t heard of before…).
Jetlinked: Simple Desktops
I just came across a nice collection of simple, clean desktop backgrounds that I had to share. For example:
Head over to Simple Desktops to check them out!
Read MoreJetLinked: Installing applications on the Mac still broken
Lukas Mathis has posted some thoughts on the issues Mac newcomers have with .dmg files. I also talked about this issue a while back in a post on the most common issues switchers have, but it’s worth noting it again. I agree with his followup post that adding another file format isn’t really the way to go either – DMG files are a great feature to have – once you’ve understood them. But from a usability and customer support perspective, a simple zip file seems to be the better choice.
I’d still be interested to see what kinds of customer support issues you run into with zip files though:
- Do people using alternative browsers, that don’t automatically open “safe” files like Safari does, struggle with them?
- Do users who prefer to manually download updates have several versions of the same app sitting in their Downloads folder?
- Are there any issues if users have a 3rd party archive tool installed (I’m looking at you StuffIt)?
But despite those questions, I think there is a valid reason to reconsider whether .dmg files should still be considered “best practise” for app distribution.
Read MoreJetLinked: Tweetie for Mac
Enough has been said about Tweetie for Mac, so I’m just going to link to it, in case you’ve been living under a rock and have missed it.
Bottom line is: The UI is fantastic, support for dragged in images is great and I believe it sets the bar a little higher for UI design on the Mac in general.
There are some additional features I’d like to see at some point, but from the look of the responses on Atebit’s Get Satisfaction page, some of them are already planned.
- Support for stored searches
- Sync state with the mobile version and across Mac
You can find out more about Tweetie on the Atebits website.
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