If you like beautifully designed interfaces that focus on usability through the creator’s deep understanding of good typographic principles, Microsoft continues to impress*.
It’s a shame that Apple, formerly the company whose products you used if you preferred well-rendered type, would rather focus on pixel-painting. The same Apple that once said, “A word can paint a thousand pixels,” seem to have forgotten their own mantra. Words, when used correctly in interfaces, can communicate far more in far less time.
To the fanboys who are about to protest about how Apple are the deity of interface design, remember that Apple’s default font of choice for their notes application is Marker Sans, a Comic Sans clone. Don’t even try to argue that one.
Before you light your torches and sharpen your pitchforks, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not saying that iOS and OS X are bad OSes. Far from it. As a consumer, both of them ‘just work’ and, thanks to the initial success of the iPhone hardware (remember that for the first year, there was no App Store for iOS), Apple were spurred into releasing a terrific SDK for developers. We’re now blessed with a rich development community that builds and integrates experiences into every digital point in your life across all your shiny Apple toys**. What I’m saying is that as a designer, type fan and developer of applications, it would be terrific if they could spend a little more time creating tools that allow for better typographic principles, wider font choices*** and clearer rendering.
Video Via Engadget, More details at AllThingsDigital
*Yup. This from the company that thought it was fine to use Arial as a substitute for Helvetica in their OS. How times have changed.
**I much prefer Apple’s industrial design and packaging to their software aesthetic. One simple, reduced, pure; the other pushing skeuomorphic nonsense on a generation that have never used the original (I’m looking at you address book). The two are at odds.
***Why haven’t Apple created a Typekit for iOS?
Biggest news for Publishers since the introduction of the iPad
With the subscription deadline looming, Apple has tweaked the language of their developer agreement.
Old Subscription rules:
11.13 Apps can read or play approved content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is sold outside of the app, for which Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues, provided that the same content is also offered in the app using IAP at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app. This applies to both purchased content and subscriptions.
New Subscription rules:
11.14 Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app
Anyone complaining about Apple’s 30% cut can now adjust their App Store subscription price to cover it. That’s sure to keep the content creators happy.
This is huge news for Apple app developers.
You can now create your own gift codes for any of the Apple app stores. Want to run a promo? Easy!
