Opinion

It's great to see that Apple constantly innovates their input devices. They brought the mouse to the mainstream (by taking Xerox's design further) in the first place. Later they brought in the hockey puck design which was innovative in it's shape and design. Next, they came up with a simpler one button design, which was used by millions. The mighty mouse really broke new ground, but unfortunately the nipple broke too easily. Here is the history in detail.

Now the Magic mouse combines the best of the mouse and the trackpad into one input device. Hopefully this new design eliminated all the problems the previous designs had and we finally have the ultimate mouse. Well done Apple!

Have you noticed that the more pressing the deadline the cleaner your apartment gets? Procrastination is a problem almost every designer struggles with. Group hug guys.

We make excuses like: I work better under the pressure of time, close deadlines make me more creative or I'm not inspired to do work today. It is true that stress caused by an approaching deadline releases adrenaline and other chemicals in your body, which can make you think faster and be more focused. However increased productivity is only a perception. You're doing great considering you only spent 3 hours of the job before the very deadline, but you would've done much better spending those 3 working hours by spreading them out over a week.

There are 3 reason why people procrastinate. If you can recognize why you do it you can make a mental effort to overcome the internal block.

Apple after suing the The Victoria School of Business and Technology in Canada (logo on the left) for the similarity of their logo to the Apple trademark, now decided they are going after Woolworth and their newly launched identity (logo in the middle). While the logos clearly not similar, other than showing the same fruit, Apple's problem is that Woolworth may in the future sell electronics, which may create confusion for consumers.

They failed with Seinfeld badly, then they tried a different approach, which also didn't work. The Songsmith ad was the ultimate fail. As an Apple user I can't stop laughing, as an adman I can't stop crying.

Now, they reach out to the holy grail of advertising: "When all else fails use kids or puppies". The first ad shows a cute little girl creating a typically horrible Powerpoint presentation.

Can't wait to see what the puppy will do. Wait, I have an idea: I think for the dog should start windows media player, then fart to rhythm while dancing in a funny hat. Yes, that will make me buy Windows 7.

Let me contemplate for a minute what the logos will look like in let's say 100 years. (I admit the comfortable thing about predicting the future so far ahead is that nobody will be able take you up on it.)

I think three distinct influences will shape the profession of branding and identity design.

Apple with the iTunes, 8.2.1 update blocks non-Apple phones from appearing as an iPod in iTunes. This is a blow most importantly to Palm, because their Palm tre has been advertised to work with iTunes.

Officially Apple did this because they do not test non-Apple products with iTunes, but it's clearly a move to protect the iPhone market. The message is clear. If you want iTunes and iTMS on the go you have to get an Apple device.

I would like to state that Apple does have the legal and most importantly moral right to do this. Just as Microsoft has the right to include IE in Windows. There is nothing wrong with a company protecting and upselling their own products. They can and should do this. There is no obligation from one company to help competing companies. And, on the long term, such protective behavior will benefit everyone.

British foreign Office minister Chris Bryant said that the historic emblem of the red cross risked undermining the work of the humanitarian organization, because of the religious connotations of the cross and crescent symbols currently used by the international body.

It's time for another Graphic Mac Rant. Back in February, I went off on Apple's lack of menu bar customization. Today, just one day after Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), I have a whole new dump truck to unload on you - covering the cry-baby, booger-eating, Apple complainers flooding the interwebs about everything released and announced at WWDC. You can read the rant here.

It seems Apple just can't win with some people!

I think the web will fundamentally change within 2-3 years. The internet came to a point where separation of different tasks will become necessary for organizations to stay competitive.

I think there will be 3 different types of internet companies, which will emerge from existing companies practicing one of these tasks well or from new ones taking advantage of the opportunities created by this new setup.

The first layer of organizations will be content owners, such as news sites, blogs, archives, etc. These are sites that focus on creating and organizing original content. This content will be tagged and put into format that computers can make sense of using technologies of the semantic web concept. They will not be focused on sorting or presenting this data to their viewers. They will be primarily making money on syndicating this original content to the next two layers.