One of my biggest pet peeves is when Mac users put their Mag Safe adapters in backwards. This is the equivalent of clipping your finger nails in public in the tech world. Really, don’t be that person.
I keep seeing people do it though, so it made me wonder if people realize why the adapter is designed that way. See the image above. If you put the adapter backwards it blocks your USB port.
Moral of the story: don’t clip your fingernails in public.
When Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the new iPad, some designers and developers scrambled. The reason for the panic was because the third generation tablet had a beautiful retina display—four times the resolution as its predecessors. That meant apps had to be designed @2x for the retina. We didn’t do anything at Xhatch. Why?
We had our retina display assets ready three months before the announcement.
One night while working with my colleagues we talked about the rumor of the new iPad. There was rumor that it would be a widescreen format and the industrial design would change. We could have listened to the rumors on Tech Crunch or Mashable, but we didn’t? Why? We do not care what they think or report. Our team had to make a decision: should we wait until the announcement to know for sure or take a gamble?
We took a gamble, and it paid off.
We looked at the iPhone retina display and took a guess that the 1024×768 iPads would be upgraded to a 2048×1536 resolution. For those who don’t develop iOS apps, the retina display and non-retina display (such as the iPhone 3G and 3Gs) have different assets, differentiated by “file.png” and file-@2x.png”. That’s how iOS knows which assets to use for which device.
I figured if we were wrong, we would just have some huge ass assets and scale down to the original size. We were hoping and praying that for some reason there wouldn’t be a wider resolution that change the proportions.
In the end, we were so glad that it was right because it saved us so much time since all the graphical assets were ready. Our apps were retina display ready three months before we even knew we had to design for it.
Design what is about to come, not just what is already out there.
Design for the future.
Wow, was he right. I must admit, I was skeptical at the time. When it came out, I wondered to myself, “why would I give up my perfectly good Motorola RAZR and iPod (now classic) for one device?” Then, I didn’t see the potential. I don’t know if many of us did. That’s what made Steve great. He knew what we wanted before we even knew we wanted it. A few reasons I’m thankful for the iPhone:
Happy Birthday, iPhone. I can hardly wait for the years to come. I still dream of one day having a carbon fiber iPhone.
And you? How has the iPhone changed your life? No, I do not think it is ridiculous to say it is a life-changing device.
I’m moving to New York in eight days. Wow. My mother and I are very close, and I know she’s having a hard time accepting the fact that I will be so far away. We went shopping today and I decided to buy her a MacBook Air so we can talk on FaceTime and Skype. It’s not the same as in real life, but hopefully it’ll help her.
Mom bought me so many things for me when I was a kid. Now that I have money, it’s time for me to return the favor.
Dear Steve:
I never got the honor or pleasure of meeting you in person, but I feel compelled to write this to share with you and others in the community about how much you meant (and continue to mean) to me.
I was at Uptown Espresso near downtown Seattle, where I was working on some User Interface designs on my 15″ MacBook Pro. It was a normal day of sitting with my computer, thinking, creating and designing. My friend Melissa IMs me and asks if I was okay. I said “Yeah, why?”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
Mel asked me if I heard about you, and I said no. She told me that King 5 News and Komo were reporting that you died. I responded to her “Steve Jobs has died about five times on Twitter.” I didn’t want to believe her, but was very afraid that what she was telling me was true. I was praying and hoping that she was pulling my leg.
She wasn’t.
I couldn’t help myself but started crying at the coffee shop. People were wondering what was wrong with me. I was not heartbroken by the loss of the man who is CEO of Apple, or the guy who unveils products, but a teacher and mentor I never met.
There were two instances where I remember feeling this type of sadness for the passing of two people I have never met, when Pope John Paul II and Michael Jackson passed. This one was the worst.
For me, Apple is about the community before it is the product. Your ability to capture and recognize beauty and innovation in the simplest things were inspiring to me. The emphases you had on typography for computers, inspired by a calligraphy class you took at Reed College—that was (and is) the type of inspiration I wanted to have.
You were (and are) one of the reasons I became passionate about design—ever since I was a kid, but especially in the most recent years. I began to discover design as functionality, which grew my passion for User Experience Design and User Interface Design. I didn’t want to make things just pretty, but simple, functional and practical. Besides Marie, you are one of my greatest mentors. It was not necessarily his products that inspire me, but how you innovated and the process of creating those products…what considerations were made to create it.
I thought about how I could honor you; if I should make a design tribute, a video, or something like that. It became clear to me that there is only one way to honor you.
To keep living.
My promise to you is that I continue to live my life how I have been—full of inspiration, wonder and most importantly, curiosity. It is my obligation as a designer and creator to do this. I need to remember how much hard work it takes to be innovative, imaginative and creative.
For me, I still need to mourn. After that, it’s back to the wireframes, drawings and designs.
Thank you for everything you have taught me, Steve. I will honor your legacy the only way I know how…to live my life as inspiring as possible.
Oh. One more thing…
After I heard about your passing, I saw someone trip over a power adapter of a PC and almost knocked the entire computer down. I can’t help but think you might have chuckled.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]
