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IPhone 4

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Re: IPhone 4

#41

Post by neonfunk »

btmorex wrote: post #12

>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams. Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.

It's not so much "love" as it is obsession; and obsessive people tend to be at least colorful, if not interesting, just given how much time they're willing to devote to a subject seemingly so minute. This article is the 1st I've read since the initial batch of reviews that I didn't stop reading after the 1st paragraph.

Re: IPhone 4

#42

Post by saint-loup »

dieterrams wrote: post #18
jherdman wrote: post #15

"... but I’ve had fun trying out FaceTime with a few iPhone 4-enabled friends" This sentence is absolutely delicious to my mind, specifically the use of the word "enabled". It's as if to own a device was to somehow be an upgrade for one's person. Is this how we've really all come to think of devices now? Are they extensions of our bodies? A whole raft of questions has drifted to the shores of my mind.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000R3PJ74/ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/clark/clark_index.html

David Chalmers, in his preface of Clark's Supersizing the Mind :

"A month ago, I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain. It has replaced part of my memory, storing phone numbers and addresses that I once would have taxed my brain with. It harbors my desires: I call up a memo with the names of my favorite dishes when I need to order at a local restaurant. I use it to calculate, when I need to figure out bills and tips. It is a tre- mendous resource in an argument, with Google ever present to help settle disputes. I make plans with it, using its calendar to help deter- mine what I can and can’t do in the coming months. I even daydream on the iPhone, idly calling up words and images when my concentra- tion slips. Friends joke that I should get the iPhone implanted into my brain. But if Andy Clark is right, all this would do is speed up the processing and free up my hands. The iPhone is part of my mind already."

Re: IPhone 4

#43

Post by pkulak »

"This is the result of a new manufacturing process Apple has pioneered. No other company gives a shit about things like this."

Samsung is doing this for their new displays. And they were out before the iPhone 4 was even announced. But, to Gruber, if it's not Apple, it's automatically crap. No sense acknowledging its existence.

Re: IPhone 4

#44

Post by csmeder »

btmorex wrote: post #12

>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams. Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.

Thats like asking do great mathematicians enjoy the description of a great proof.

"The overall quality seems impossibly good. The proof is beautiful to behold and there is a timeless nature to it. It’s like a love letter to Pierre-Simon Laplace."

Sure its a little corny, but F#ck, for the majority of even moderately wealthy designers the iPhone 4 is probably the most well designed item they have ever touched. Yes, the average person could care less of the design quality, but for those who do care its a big deal.

Re: IPhone 4

#45

Post by gojomo »

Chump wrote: post #34
ugh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downplayed? In what respect?

He tries to emphasize that it happens in only "marginal strength areas" (see also this other post: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/29/gaywood-signal-i... ) but iPhone 4s displaying 'full bars' have been shown to suffer the problem (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNmXrVNeGzs )

On the iPhone, signal-strength bars are not a reliable indicator of your local usability. My iPhone 3gs regularly shows 4 or 5 bars -- at the same instant it can't initiate a call or send an SMS. It's either showing some abstract measure of signal strength, unrelated to whether traffic can actually be sent, or it's been programmed to lie.

Re: IPhone 4

#46

Post by jsz0 »

btmorex wrote: post #12

>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams. Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.

What's wrong with that? People love cars, architecture, sculpture, jewelry, watches, clothes, and all sorts of other objects. There's also nothing wrong with a purely utilitarian view of the world either. I don't see any good reason to judge either way.

Re: IPhone 4

#47

Post by danudey »

dieterrams wrote: post #17
btmorex wrote: post #12

>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams. Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.

I like reading it very much.

I like reading it because it's interesting. I can read a hundred reviews where the author says 'The build quality is good and the phone feels solid in your hand.' Those reviews are typically as exciting, fresh, and captivating to read as a first-generation Blackberry is to behold.

It might be a little over the top sometimes, but that's part of what I like about him.

Re: IPhone 4

#48

Post by jws »

axod wrote: post #27
elbrodeur wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a designer, Helvetica Neue (even without italics) is a huge step in the right aesthetic direction. His original point was not so much about the font, but about the platform. He lays the groundwork, showing that the platform was higher resolution and therefore it made more sense for a font that displayed better at higher resolutions to be used. I think it's a valid point and a great critique -- how is it contradict…

Surely it's like saying "Ford pay so much detail to every part of their cars, it's amazing the level of care put into each and every model" and later saying "Of course Ford did forget to include wheels on this particular model"

Or maybe "Of course Ford did forget to include tail fins on this particular model".

I don't think I've seen oblique, sans serif type used in an iOS user interface. Content, sure, and Helvetica is there for you, but this is the system user interface font. I think the clarity demanded of the system user interface argues against the subtle change afforded by slanting the font.

Oblique sans serif fonts are generally sort of an apologetic placeholder for: "Here is where I would have used a nice italic font, but my type designer couldn't pull that off in this clean, minimalist font, so please imagine that he did."

Re: IPhone 4

#49

Post by narrator »

btmorex wrote: post #12

>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams. Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.

I think this article is a great demonstration of Poe's Law.

Re: IPhone 4

#50

Post by danudey »

pkulak wrote: post #43

"This is the result of a new manufacturing process Apple has pioneered. No other company gives a shit about things like this." Samsung is doing this for their new displays. And they were out before the iPhone 4 was even announced. But, to Gruber, if it's not Apple, it's automatically crap. No sense acknowledging its existence.

I might be mistaken, but I believe he's referring specifically to bonding the LCD display to a capacitive piece of glass, rather than just regular protective plastic.

(Does Samsung use glass in their displays? They all look plastic to me.)

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