A great episode from Dave Caolo and Aaron Mahnke with Shawn Blanc as special guest. They discuss The Focus Course, working from home, and answer listener questions (including one from yours truly).
A great episode from Dave Caolo and Aaron Mahnke with Shawn Blanc as special guest. They discuss The Focus Course, working from home, and answer listener questions (including one from yours truly).
Aaron Mahnke’s new podcast, Lore, has been a runaway success. It’s currently in the top 10 on iTunes and shows no signs of stopping. If you like stories about folklore, monsters, myths, and creatures, you should definitely subscribe.
Back before the iPad was announced and rumors were swirling of an imminent tablet-like product release, I advocated for Apple to name the device “Apple Tablet.” And when the name “iPad” was unveiled, I hated it. But, here we are five years later and I don’t see quite as many people bemoaning Apple’s decision to name it as they did.
However, The Verge’s Chris Ziegler thinks Apple should drop the prefix on the iPhone and simply call it “Apple Phone.” And, I couldn’t agree with him more. At this point, the prefix feels outdated and has been muddied by the multitude of companies who’ve named their products with it in hopes of cashing in on Apple’s mindshare. It’s not as cool as it once was.
If the iPhone was announced today, I don’t think it would have been called “iPhone,” and not just because we’re in an age of slightly generic, to-the-point product names with Google Photos, Apple Watch, and the like coming to market. Apple’s smartphone would have been called “Apple Phone” because I think the company believes that Steve was the only one who could bestow a product with The Magic Prefix.
Aaron Mahnke’s theory on the “i” prefix:
Well, I have a theory about that, and if I’m right, we will never see another iProduct again. I believe that every new product that was released during the time that Steve Jobs was at the helm of the company had a chance at gaining that famous prefix. Not all of them got it, but the big ones did. Those were the ones that needed a publicly recognizable name that pointed back to Apple without having to say so. They were the products that were sure to take off, gain traction in the public mind, and cross the lips of the average consumer. And they were all products that found their origin (at least to some degree) in the mind of the Wizard himself: Steve Jobs.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we never see another product with an i-prefixed name from Apple again. As if the folks at Apple all believe that only Steve had the authority to bestow a product with an i-prefixed name.
Aaron Mahnke on what he calls “Digital Lung”:
I used to think I could spend my entire day following tech news, trying to stay caught up on twitter and App.net and following digital rabbit trails. Sometimes I came close, in the moments when I allowed it. But I’m busier now, and as demand for my design work continues to grow, I’ve abandoned my RSS reader in favor of silence and peace. Sometimes I feel like I need to go all the way and disconnect from it all. I feel numb most of the time and I’ve been trying to figure out why.
I’ve had many of the same feelings lately, work at my day job is getting more demanding and, as a result, I’ve been spending less of my free time reading tech news and writing. I’m hoping that my lack of motivation is still just the residual effects of the holidays taking their toll on me and that I’ll be back on the saddle writing more frequently.
I like the new slide-up player features but I’m not happy about the addition of Playlists. It adds another tap between viewing a list of my subscriptions and viewing a list of all of my unplayed episodes. I really miss the old Reeder-style view buttons along the bottom.
And, I’m not the only one who plans on holding onto the older version.
Writer and designer Aaron Mahnke recently released his latest project, Helvetindex Cards. They’re beautiful index cards that are designed to be simple and incredibly functional.
I’d love to buy a pack of these but unfortunately I’m not much of a pen and paper guy. All of my notes and organization is done on my iPhone and honestly, I’d rather carry one thing than my iPhone and a small stack of these cards. My father on the other hand was always a huge fan of organizing his life with index cards and I’m sure he would have loved these.
My only real problem with these index cards is the name. I understand the idea behind the name, but I think a better name could have been found. And, it wouldn’t have the problem of being associated with other helveti-products.
