– After its launch on Mac and iOS last summer and its recent introduction to Windows, Style Check has arrived on Android with version 2.1 of iA Writer. It has been one of our best received and most requested features, therefore we worked hard to make it available for all platforms.
– This week we published two long posts on Monopolies, the Apple Tax, and Subscriptions. Both articles come to the conclusion that lowering the 30% fee Apple charges developers would benefit everyone. The tax is at the core of their Antitrust case, at the core of the developer's business model. And in the end, it is in our common customer's interest to lower it, because profitable development produces better software.
– Companies selling apps via subscriptions use drama to sell: "Either subscription or we die.” As customers, we don't like to add more recurring payments to our monthly credit card bill. Begrudgingly we all accept subscriptions as a new reality. There is a limit to how many we can add to our credit card bill before we ask: Is this necessary? Is there only one business model for software, and, well, for anything now?
– Everything around us is designed. Design shapes cities, gives form to houses, sketches and connects spaces; designers define our environment, our things, bodies and minds. Design is political.
– Icons sparen Platz. Icons sehen schick us. Icons geben einfache Antworten auf nervige Fragen wie: Kann man das alles etwas etwas frecher machen? Wie können wir da mehr Marke reinbringen? Womit peppen wir den Entwurf nun noch auf? Icons sind praktisch. Icons sind ein Segen. Wir ♥ Icons. Bis zum Wahnsinn.
– Icons save space. Icons look crisp. Icons give quick answers to hard questions: How do we make it nicer? How can we brand it? How do we make it more fun? We ♥ icons. Until they start messing with our minds.
– Blog comments have an innate communication problem: You can't discuss and moderate the discussion at the same time.
– All things have an interface. Shaping interfaces is shaping the character of things. The brand is what transports the character of things. When looking at McDonald’s, iPod, or Nintendo DS it becomes quite obvious that the interface *is* the brand.
– すべてのものにはインターフェイスがあります。インターフェイスを形作ることは、そのもののキャラクターを形作ることです。ブランドとは、そのキャラクターを世に伝えるものです。マクドナルド、iPodや任天堂DSを見ていればインターフェイスこそがブランドであることが分かるでしょう。
– 95% of the information on the web is written language. It is only logical to say that a web designer should get good training in the main discipline of shaping written information, in other words: Typography.
– Since I’ve started developing websites I’ve been looking for the ideal layout. Today I got another hint on the direction to take. Jacob Nielsen calls it the “F-Pattern”.