AIR is MEH

What's with Apple punishing their early adopters? They are Apple's most ardent supporters, lining up hours if not days before a product release, paying full price and at times creating the artificial demand (iPhone) which garners even more free publicity for Apple. Yet they are treated like crap, e.g., the iPhone price-drop fiasco and now the $20 software upgrade demanded by Apple for the iPod Touch. Did Apple really need to make another $20 off each of their Touch early adapters?

Followed Jobs' keynote earlier today via MacRumorsLive and came away a bit disappointed. I'm glad I didn't fly out there to attend it in person. I had my MacWorld tickets all ready since last fall, thankfully my employer would've never given me the vacation time. Saved me the round trip airfare. I'm not a big Apple fan, the only Apple product I own is the Shuffle, but the rumors about a tablet caught my interest. I've been diligently following every Mac site since then and was totally let down today. At the end after Randy Newman's performance, Chewy and I were hoping Jobs would do his "and one more thing" bit, hopefully for the tablet... but nope.

The MacBook Air is a bit disappointing. Jobs boasted about the size. My Toshiba Portege 2000 from 2002 had similar dimensions. In fact, I think the thickest section of the Portege 2000 is still thinner than the thickest section of the new MacBook Air. In addition, the Portege had a ton more ports. Progress? Sure the Air has the LED back lit display, nice full keyboard that automatically illuminates, the integrated iSight and the multi-touch touchpad (still with one damn button), but what it doesn't have is the wow factor that is expected of Apple's products.

Now let's talk some design. Gizmodo has a great write up comparing Dieter Rams/Braun with Jonathan Ive/Apple. An impressive post given that it's not a design-driven site. Another sign that times are changing, design permeates through everything!

The MacBook Air has lines that remind me of the first generation iBook that came out in 1999. I had to use one at times during my D.A. shifts at Carnegie Mellon and they weren't pleasant experiences. I would have preferred that they kept the clean blocky lines with smooth corners from the existing MacBook lines, but they had to taper in the bottom half of the case to make it look thinner. It looks like a flying saucer.The mock up that circulated the web showed a screen that went right up to the edges, obviously that didn't come through. The MacBook Pros have screens that go almost up to the edge, leaving a small bezel, I'm assuming they couldn't get away with that because of the thickness of the screen here.

Leaving the optical drive out and including an option for the SSD drive, it's obvious Apple wants to move forward, but it's sort of doing so without really doing anything revolutionary. Snore. Let's hope the tablet PC is still in development and rather than dressing things up, it better be truly revolutionary. Still out of the Apple camp for now.

Melting Pot Post (just catching up)

Catching up on the many 'draft' mode entries I have saved. But before I begin, a notice for all those versed in Photoshop, want to win some sweet Apple products? Enter this free contest (4 different contests requiring you to collage some photographs creatively, or naughtily for the first one round). The Crestock Photoshop Contest 2007, thanks Mike.

NYC Taxi logos, aren't they awful? We didn't need a logo then, we don't need one now. Especially if it's this crap coming from Smart Design. Obviously the city meddled with it too much and the designers at Smart Design succumbed to it. Manage your clients! This is why we need Garden in Transit. All those painted flowers on the hoods you see on cabs everywhere were painted on vinyl by school kids and applied by volunteers. If anyone wants to get a group together I'm down.

Redoing a crappy logo doesn't hurt, just respray/reapply on every single cab in town. No worries. But getting a tattoo you aren't happy about? The recourse isn't very simple, even with laser removal. So to properly assess a tattoo's application to your body why not overlay it onto a 3-D model of yourself and see how it works with the light. No way to see what the aging process does to it right now, maybe Zimmerman will consider it in the future. Check out Needled for more information on Loïc Zimmerman's work. Still think it's easier to just get the design done in henna before you make it permanent.

The Piracy Paradox, an interesting observation on how the fashion industry need copycats to induce obsolescence furthering the industry's growth. Credit goes to Elmo for forwarding that New Yorker article. Additional reading can be found on Christopher Sprigman's blog, one of two law professors who coined the term, Piracy Paradox.

Reebok, are they the vehicle Adidas will be using to out-Puma, Puma? Disregarding Nike's Transformers Air Trainers III and TakaraTomy's Prime and Megatron. Tugging at my nostalgic strings a set of five sneakers customized for each Lion making up Voltron have been designed and released to the public. I think the designs are awful but it's freaking VOLTRON! And it's freaking expensive... I'll be passing on this one.

Inside Adidas Factory: Some photos of an adidas factory, bandwidth exceeded right now for the photos so check back later. Apologize for not posting this when I found it...

What is working though is this quick page of some very cool business card designs. Have a look, it'll only take you a second for you to see where I steal my ideas from.

I love the UPS white board commercials. Do you? Read more about them at Slate. The guy featured in it is actually the creative director of the campaign, Andy Azula, not some actor or famous designer... way to pump up his resume.

The end of advertising as we know it. Yes IBM (IBM Institute for Business Value study), thanks for the notice... haven't read their paper yet but I'm assuming it's worth a read for all of you who are in the field. Going to try to get through their executive summary tonight, assuming its still in one piece, been sitting in my bag for a while.

Pattern Analysis of MegaMillions Lottery Numbers, I drop a buck every so often as long as the jackpot is over $50 million. Anything less is chump change =T. It's funny, in school you never really consider playing the lottery, it's such a waste of money. But the mentality changes once you start working, sure did when I started out as an intern... anyway the study won't really help but make sure you read up on the comments, the discussion had my mind spinning. All you math geeks must be loving this huh? I didn't understand a damn thing.

Designing FiringSquad’s Reference Home Theaters, sure wish I had this when we were putting our setup together. Boatloads of information in one easy to understand article. So rather than trolling AVS Forum, do yourself and read this as a primer.

Terry thinks Goldman Sachs will eventually take over the world. Not as crazy as it sounds... hell I bet they would do far better in the White House than Bush and Cronies. Look what Bloomberg did for NYC! So now Goldman alumn, John Thain, has taken over at Merrill is it time to buy into Merrill? Here's an old feature written when Thain took the top job at NYSE. What did he say then and what was actually done? Call him Mr. Implementer...

NFL logo gets an update and how about them Cowboys?

An updated shield is in store for those who will be watching the 2008 NFL Draft. The new logo employs less fussy straight-serifed font, less stars (now each star represents a division, there was no reason for the original 25 stars), a streamlined badge and the football is modeled after the one on top of the Lombardi trophy. While the current logo isn't too old, a refresh has been overdue. Like people have stated, less is more and it is true in this case (anyone read the Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda yet?). The logo is still flat and easy to produce across all media unlike the other 'shield' update (the UPS logo) which I also like, excellent! Now I wonder, what does it take to be the NFL's Senior Vice President of Marketing? Lisa, since you are leaving your position at year end, may I take over?

Last Night: If a non-football fan was watching the Cowboys vs. Bills game last night, they would have been instant converts. Heck I bet my Grandmother would've gone ape shit over the game, feigning field goals in her apartment or high stepping it into the kitchen and back.

Though I don't particularly care for either team, Romo has been good to me in terms of fantasy points and I also started Folk this past week. Collectively I needed 10 points from them to keep my perfect record alive. Easy, Romo tore through the previous games and if Folk was average at best I would still only need a quarter of Romo's regular production to take the match-up. Of course the trap game theory came true and I was left to agonize for the entire game not knowing whether or not Romo would pull down all the points Folk was stacking up (I'm too cheap to pay for Stat Tracker and lazy to do the math).

Anyway back to the game, how about it? Pasquarelli has a great recount up on ESPN if you for some reason had something better to do on a Monday night (like watching the Yankees lose, sorry bro; or going to bed early so you can wake up for your daily run before work, T. Kong you missed out).

The final minutes saw a flurry of activity which stuttered when Owens couldn't hold onto the 2-point conversion. At that point, with 20 seconds left I thought it was over, turned off the TV and sulked as I stumbled into my bedroom. Plopping into my chair, Rommel was kind enough to IM me telling me the Cowboys recovered the onside kick at which point I sprinted back out to the living room (note to self, get that damn monitor out of the hallway; and a pat on the back for having that IR automatic hall light installed). So on a night where Romo followed his hero Favre into the dog house (hell his performance would've made Grossman look good), Nick Folk bailed him out with his steely nerves. Seriously that guy is ICE COLD. His first 53 yard game winning field goal was negated by a time-out call by the Bills and what did he do? He got up there and did it again. To the Bills, it was a valiant effort and I feel sorry for your team and your fans.

This Sunday is going to be interesting. Patriots at Dallas. Romo, Folk, and Moss. I need the game to be an offensive showcase! Wish it was the night game, hopefully I'll finish the MS Bike Tour and get home before the game starts.