marks' shared items
iTunes has a long history of violating the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. In past releases, iTunes designers have removed the title bar and borrowed the brushed aluminum look from Apple hardware.
iTunes 10, released yesterday, carries on the tradition of divergence. This time, the designers have toyed with the window controls. As you can see below, the close, minimize and zoom buttons have shifted from their conventional horizontal arrangement to a vertical arrangement.
I can imagine stylistic and practical explanations for doing this. The new layout has a better visual feel to it, and it uses the space more efficiently. Still, it's quite a bold departure from such a fundamental aspect of the Aqua interface standard. (The new volume control also violates the standards, but not quite so shockingly.)
Are we glimpsing a brave new world of window controls? What do you think?
My keys have me recalling another example of beausage. That’s not leather you’re looking at, but cardboard. It’s been treated with seven years of sliding, rubbing, and the natural oil of little and medium-sized human hands.
Big Chair was inspired by the cardboard furniture of Frank Gehry and built with the help of my summer architecture class in July 2000. The goal was to emphasize the strength of the material by constructing a lightweight piece of “playful” and durable furniture for the classroom that could support enormous weight. Four months after completion it went through its only modification. Since then it gracefully withstood four years of abuse in my fifth grade classroom and another three at the hands and feet of my children and their friends after migrating to my home. In June of 2007, as we moved away from Pasadena for a year-long adventure / self-granted, creative sabbatical, it was left on the street with a “free” sign and was taken by a new, unknown owner.
Former American president George W. Bush is widely known to use nicknames to refer to journalists, fellow politicians, and members of his White House staff.
Courier allows you to share files, images, photos, movies, and more with all your favourite online services.
Pro: useful, and simple to use. Con: it has a wood-effect user interface, everything seems to be animated, and there’s a prominent slider that practically demands a finger-swipe.
In other words, the iOSification of the Mac desktop is here. Which I find… worrying.
But this one’s a good one: Chromac. It enables Safari-like keyboard shortcuts for bookmarks in the bookmarks bar, and I’m using it right now.
(Huge thanks to Stuart Maxwell for this one.)
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What? That? Up there? The picture? Well, I’ll tell you about that in a second. First, a story…
Before my wife, Princess Bethany, and I got married, we took a course on money management for couples. The course was led by Ruth Hayden, author of the very excellent book For Richer, Not Poorer: The Money Book for Couples. You should buy it. Seriously. You see, money differences and problems are one of the leading causes of breakups and divorce. Anyway, one of the strategies she advocates is to figure out how much money you need every month for your day to day stuff beyond bills, divide it by 31 to find your daily budget, and then get that amount in cash (yes, the dead tree, smokable kind). Spending cash makes you very conscious of exactly how much you have to spend. The rule is that when it’s gone, it’s gone, and you have to do without.
It’s a killer idea and one I don’t do often enough. Largely because getting and dealing with cash these debit card days is kind of a pain. Online purchases in iTunes, Amazon orders, software purchases - there are plenty of things you can’t easily pay for in cash. Which brings me to the screenshot above. It’s an iPhone app called Left to Spend (iTunes link). Here is how the developer describes it:
To use ‘Left to spend’, all you need to do is set up a daily allowance that you KNOW won’t break your budget. Every day this amount will be added to your total allowance. Whenever you spend money you simply open ‘Left to spend’ and enter the amount, which is then subtracted from your total allowance. If your total allowance is running low, you need to slow down your spending and wait for your allowances to accumulate. As long as you never get below 0, you’ll never have to worry about money again.
Yep, a solution to the problem. Cash, or no cash, track spending just the way it was recommended in my story above. It’s an elegant little app that does one thing well (Paging Mr. Mottram!). Not only that but it is an excellent first project for a struggling student abroad so help him out with a few cents from your daily budget.
(Submitted to Minimal Mac by the developer, Lauge Jepsen. Full disclosure; He did give me a freebie code to check it out. Doing so did not guarantee a review – positive or otherwise.)
