A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
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Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#2It's incredible how much that UI screams "testing ui" and "default buttons" from some off-the-shelf ui toolkit. It's sufficiently functional, but not pretty at all. It's kinda cool to me to think that even Apple engineers use that style of UI when they don't have their own regular toolkit around.
Sufficiency for internal tools is the most important part of them.
One other thing of note is that the UI, especially the generic buttons, already followed the finger-sized buttons paradigm pretty closely. It looks like the only one that doesn't follow that is the list view for bookmarks; but, list views are hard and very different on phones than they are on computers, so it makes sense.
Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#3That phone interface has a very 80s retro-look to it, and I could imagine it appearing as a "futuristic smartphone" device in a movie from that decade. I honestly don't think it looks all that bad.
(Then again, I like artistically simple yet functional UIs and think gradients are far too overused now...)
Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#4That phone interface has a very 80s retro-look to it, and I could imagine it appearing as a "futuristic smartphone" device in a movie from that decade. I honestly don't think it looks all that bad. (Then again, I like artistically simple yet functional UIs and think gradients are far too overused now...)
Add some padding, coordinate the colors, change the font to something more distinctive, and you've got yourself a design language.
Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#5> It’s likely ‘skank’ in the name is a variation of ‘skunkworks’ which was the team working on the device.
Right, sure it is.
Urban Dictionary is nowhere near the mark then, with widely accepted definitions of the slang term from circa 2004: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank
Edit: To be clear I read it as being "trashy", "tacky", "ugly". There are numerous definitions, I wouldn't have attributed (nor imagine anyone else attributing) the most unsavoury definitions to anything.
Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#6> It’s likely ‘skank’ in the name is a variation of ‘skunkworks’ which was the team working on the device. Right, sure it is. Urban Dictionary is nowhere near the mark then, with widely accepted definitions of the slang term from circa 2004: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank Edit: To be clear I read it as being "trashy", "tacky", "ugly". There are numerous definitions, I wouldn't have attributed (n…
When was that brief period in the 2000s where ska got really popular and "skanking" re-entered the public consciousness as a dance style? Because I could imagine that inside Apple people thought of the "silhouettes dancing with iPods" ads as "skankPod" ads. That would make "Skankphone" a pretty obvious nickname for a phone project.
Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#7> It’s likely ‘skank’ in the name is a variation of ‘skunkworks’ which was the team working on the device. Right, sure it is. Urban Dictionary is nowhere near the mark then, with widely accepted definitions of the slang term from circa 2004: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank Edit: To be clear I read it as being "trashy", "tacky", "ugly". There are numerous definitions, I wouldn't have attributed (n…
I doubt it has anything to do with skunkworks or prostitutes.
My first thought was Skank as a verb, which fits best with the idea of a handicapped/faux iphone.
Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#8> It’s likely ‘skank’ in the name is a variation of ‘skunkworks’ which was the team working on the device. Right, sure it is. Urban Dictionary is nowhere near the mark then, with widely accepted definitions of the slang term from circa 2004: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank Edit: To be clear I read it as being "trashy", "tacky", "ugly". There are numerous definitions, I wouldn't have attributed (n…
it might be an ode to boings skunkworks witch designed a lot of their specialized planes, like the SR-71
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works
Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#9> It’s likely ‘skank’ in the name is a variation of ‘skunkworks’ which was the team working on the device. Right, sure it is. Urban Dictionary is nowhere near the mark then, with widely accepted definitions of the slang term from circa 2004: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank Edit: To be clear I read it as being "trashy", "tacky", "ugly". There are numerous definitions, I wouldn't have attributed (n…
it might be an ode to boings skunkworks witch designed a lot of their specialized planes, like the SR-71 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works
Lockheed Martin, not Boeing.
Re: A look at the Apple ‘Skankphone’, built before the original iPhone release
#10That phone interface has a very 80s retro-look to it, and I could imagine it appearing as a "futuristic smartphone" device in a movie from that decade. I honestly don't think it looks all that bad. (Then again, I like artistically simple yet functional UIs and think gradients are far too overused now...)
Add some padding, coordinate the colors, change the font to something more distinctive, and you've got yourself a design language.
Super flat. Digital native.