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Copying is the way design works (2020)

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Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#191

Post by turnsout »

lolinder wrote: post #104
tptacek wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same difference. At some point you're just arguing about what the number was. I don't care about the broader argument, but the right to buy $1MM of private shares is, in fact, real consideration.

Is it real consideration that anyone could consider to be worth "all the IP that you happen to be able to see while on this tour", or is it real consideration that Xerox thought was worth "an opportunity to see how we run the best tech lab of our generation"? Don't forget that Apple presumably got paid $1M dollars out of the deal in addition to the tour. I'm having a hard time seeing the argument that the right to pa…

It was 100% an above-board trade. Xerox at that point had poured an ocean of money into PARC and hadn't really seen any return on it. I don't think they would have seen it as an IP transfer, because it wasn't. Apple didn't rush out to implement Smalltalk. Instead they were inspired by the principles, misunderstood some stuff, and came up with something 100% better for the average consumer.

Xerox wasn't stupid—they were trying to get some value out of this research lab that was, on paper, lighting money on fire.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#192

Post by turnsout »

lolinder wrote: post #88
turnsout wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a frustrating misunderstanding of the history, and the history is fascinating. Xerox invited Apple to tour PARC in exchange for $1M worth of pre-IPO Apple stock, which today would be worth [checks notes] more than that. There was no theft. Apple engineers got to see the Alto, not the Star (the screenshot in the article is wrong, the chronology is wrong). The visit was so fast that Apple engineers thought…

Your version makes it sound like Apple gave Xerox $1M in stock in exchange for the visit. Most sources I can find don't mention the stock at all, but the one that does [0] makes it pretty clear that the offer was to let Xerox buy stock from Apple pre-IPO in exchange for the tour, which is a very different story: > Jobs's company stood on the precipice of a public offering guaranteed to make him and any investors weal…

You're right—bad phrasing on my part

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#193

Post by lancesells »

carlmr wrote: post #136
burningChrome wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When parallax scrolling was cool and different, I designed an architecture site for a local architect using the effect. It was very similar to this site where you had jarring transitions, background changes and images moving at different speeds. https://doubble.group/sg/ The end result was very similar to site above and we all got a lot of positive feedback when their current clients saw it because they were blown aw…

>When parallax scrolling was cool and different, I designed an architecture site for a local architect using the effect. A friend of mine designed such a site with his web design company. I instantly thought, amazing but horrendous. On that note, why is Apple still successful with this? Everything is moving on their website.

They use their product landing pages as a commercial but you can see they make that top nav easy to get to buying it or tech specs.

Personally, I dislike scrolljacking but the other animated elements that come up in the viewport are pretty well-done. It's all ultra-sanitized and corporate but there's a lot of effort and finesse put into it.

Phone comparison landing pages:

https://www.apple.com/iphone-15-pro/

https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-z-flip6/

https://store.google.com/category/phones?pli=1&hl=en-US

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#194

Post by pimlottc »

lancesells wrote: post #193
carlmr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When parallax scrolling was cool and different, I designed an architecture site for a local architect using the effect. A friend of mine designed such a site with his web design company. I instantly thought, amazing but horrendous. On that note, why is Apple still successful with this? Everything is moving on their website.

They use their product landing pages as a commercial but you can see they make that top nav easy to get to buying it or tech specs. Personally, I dislike scrolljacking but the other animated elements that come up in the viewport are pretty well-done. It's all ultra-sanitized and corporate but there's a lot of effort and finesse put into it. Phone comparison landing pages: https://www.apple.com/iphone-15-pro/ https://…

The iPhone 15 Pro page is a good example, as soon as you click “Buy” or any other link on the top nav, the pages become much more conventional while still retaining a consistent and functional style. The dynamic scroll hacking stuff is only on the main marketing pages.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#195

Post by jpc0 »

lupire wrote: post #82
zogrodea wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not doubting, but can you give a few examples of Microsoft trouncing others? I do recall Disney (a main reason copyright laws last so long, and who didn't want Steamboat Willie to enter public domain). I also think of Amazon (which the creator of the Elm programming language describes as having "the Jeff problem" because they steal smaller people's/team's ideas), although that's a different problem. I can't say a…

Did you miss one of the largest antitrust cases in history, litigated for a decade?

> ... they steal from others and trounce others for stealing from them.

Explain how the antitrust case or its conclusion proves the quote above?

Mozilla/Netscape had a browser that could have competed with Microsoft, they didn't litigate them for stealing. The antitrust case was about it being effectively impossible to overthrow their monopoly because of the platform being locked down.

The current crop of litigation against Apple reeks more of the Microsoft antitrust case than any Disney cases.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#196

Post by jpc0 »

Kiro wrote: post #159
DJBunnies wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh, physics?

Yes, that can be used in a game engine for example.

I think the point being made is that there is very little room for creativity there... There are tons of examples of physics engines written in multitudes of languages with a full range of quality of implemention.

Now if the LLM had known to look for and found dark matter or gravitational waves all while sitting there on your computer comparing micro changes between CPU cycles, maybe you would have a point. To my knowledge most physics engines do the even emulate Newtonian physics nevermind more modern variants

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#197

Post by phpnode »

bluGill wrote: post #186
phpnode wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The DJs that are innovative, crate digging, slightly pretentious music nerds are almost exclusively hobbyists, with a vanishingly tiny percentage of them being able to eek out a meagre living from it. The majority of full time DJs cater to mainstream audiences who absolutely do want to hear the same 50 - 100 tracks on rotation every time they go out. They want to dance and sing along to music that they're fa…

A typical DJ is allowed one weird song nobody has heard before. If it is a long show maybe one per hour. The rest better be songs the majority of people know and sign along with.

Yes, ideally played when the dance floor has been full for a while to encourage people to go to the bar and buy another drink.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#198

Post by jpc0 »

visarga wrote: post #122
kivle wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to expand on myself. "Experience" means something very specific for humans. It means you have done something for a long time, and you have failed at it. And you have learned from experience. By definition, LLMs don't have any experience at all. They are trained and become a fresh "brain", and then they make the same mistakes, over and over and over, until they either get a new prompt that might correct themselves…

What I meant is 1. LLM generates an idea and 2. the user responds positively or negatively or 3. the user tries the idea and comes back to continue the iteration, communicating the outcomes. For example the LLM generates some code and I run it, and if it fails I copy paste the error. That is the (state, action, reward) tuple which defines an experience.

Sounds like the LLM facilitated a human to gain experience, by making mistakes for the human and then correcting those mistakes also likely in an incorrect way. LLMs are effectively very very bad teachers.

The LLM given the same inputs tomorrow is likely to return similar responses. If a human did that they would likely be concidered to have some sort of medical condition...

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#199

Post by Suppafly »

bluGill wrote: post #187
chefandy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hitch was that I was going to design really cool sites, with all kinds of animations, huge text, have really cool navigation menus, etc. In short, I had a very romantic idea that I would dictate some incredible design to my clients. I thought I was like the Frank Lloyd Wright of design and whatever I showed people they would swoon and then go with whatever uber cool thing I showed them. hmmm... That approach is…

UI and UX designers had their heyday in the 1990s. Every UI I see today shows that UX designers were not invited to have input.

>UI and UX designers had their heyday in the 1990s.

But also back then, anyone could and did call themselves a UI/UX developer because it was trendy to do so and paid well. Most weren't actually good at it.

Re: Copying is the way design works (2020)

#200

Post by The5thElephant »

chefandy wrote: post #119
burningChrome wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I was a UI/UX guy for about 5 years and worked for a company that pumped out thousands of sites a year. A bunch of their designs won awards and I saw their model and thought I could do that, it seemed easy. The hitch was that I was going to design really cool sites, with all kinds of animations, huge text, have really cool navigation menus, etc. In short, I had a very romantic idea that I would dictate some inc…

> The hitch was that I was going to design really cool sites, with all kinds of animations, huge text, have really cool navigation menus, etc. In short, I had a very romantic idea that I would dictate some incredible design to my clients. I thought I was like the Frank Lloyd Wright of design and whatever I showed people they would swoon and then go with whatever uber cool thing I showed them. hmmm... That approach is…

So many comments here are just anecdotal experiences pretending to be absolute statements.

Web design used to be filled with ridiculously detailed and "over" designed websites that rarely were hyper-focused on clarity or efficiency of communication. It's only recent years where that has become such singular focus, and in turn has created a sentiment that UI and web/app experiences have lost their charm.

Many of the currently popular marketing site designers in the design community do come from UI/UX and web-design backgrounds, and they are popular because they design over-the-top big-text animation-filled websites that catch your eye.

The core of UI design is not "clarity". That is one adjective you can aim for, and you will find a wide range of opinions on what it means and how to measure whether you were successful or not. But "user interface/experience" does not imply it HAS to be an efficient one. Some UI/UX is designed for delight and delight alone.

The person you are replying to got into the industry with the same attitude most UI/UX designers I know had starting out. The people who approach it with your attitude have mostly been engineers. In the end most meet somewhere in a happy middle.

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