Perhaps you made a poor design choice if…
…you have to label your sink to keep people from peeing in it.
Is That a Tower in Your Pocket?
Since I’ve been using iOS almost exclusively in my music making for the last few years (mostly with custom apps I’ve built using iRTcmix), it’s been exciting to witness the progress in the computing power of these devices. I’ve idly speculated about their power relative to their Mac predecessors, but I haven’t seen any direct comparisons. The current devices, while still limited compared to MacBooks, have started to feel a lot less computationally cramped. Considering I replaced my 2008 MacBook relatively recently, this comparison from John Gruber was encouraging:
To put that in context, the iPhone 5S beats my 2008 15-inch MacBook Pro by a small measure in the Sunspider benchmark (with the MacBook Pro running the latest Safari 6.1 beta). The iPhone 5S is, in some measures, computationally superior to the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro from just five years ago. In your fucking pocket.
And it looks like Gruber just about called it 5 years ago.
If a 2007 iPhone is loosely equivalent in terms of computing power to a 2000 PowerBook or 1999 Power Mac, that puts the spread at around seven or eight years. Extrapolate forward, and it’s therefore not at all unreasonable to think that a 2014 iPhone will pack the computing power of today’s MacBook Pro.
Oh My Yes
Why yes, I am tired of typing. Thanks for asking! On the other hand, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, fuck you.
What is a Game?
Playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
– Bernard Suits
Low Bridge
When faced with a user interface problem, perhaps you should consider changing the interface.
Doing the Same Thing
If other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks, and you’re putting in 100-hour workweeks, then, even if you’re doing the same thing, you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.
– Elon Musk
If other people are putting in 100-hour workweeks, and you’re putting in 40-hour workweeks, then, if you’re doing the same thing, you can achieve in a year what it takes them four months to achieve.
– Damon Holzborn
Minimalism is Boring (and that’s ok)
G.K. Chesterton once wrote that there is “no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only an uninterested person,” and minimal music has opened me to the truth in that statement. If I know that beauty can be found in 468 fourths, then perhaps it can be found in other places as well—my disinterest more and more gives way to curiosity.
One of the strengths of minimalism, like chance and indeterminate music before it, is that it embraces new approaches to listening. Much new music (or New Music) suffers from a failure to promote a manner to reach it.
Less Dorky than Glasses?
Part of me wants to think this is kinda neato. The other part of me thinks that these guys saw Google Glass and thought it just wasn’t privacy violatey enough.
Via momupro.
America: Land of the Free and the Home of the Marginally Happy
United Nations report: U.S. 17th happiest country in the world.
Via The Big Waah.
Game Over
Horace Dediu gets to heart of the gaming device issue:
That is where mobile is the clear winner. More people will hire mobile devices for their primary gaming activity. And as mobile devices get inexorably better, they will be hired for use in the setting where consoles have been king: the living room.
Whether dedicated gaming machines are better for gaming is moot. There just may not be enough hardcore gamers to support the industry. Smartphones are nearly universal (in the markets that would matter to game companies, at any rate) so devices that can play games are already ubiquitous. Since a smartphone comes with gaming capabilities “for free,” more and more people are forgoing the dedicated device, as Dediu’s charts demonstrate.