Was it everything I expected?
Let’s start with the first question, and let me simply say – yes it was everything that I expected. It was a retail shop opening but it was more how the store opened. I worked in retail from the age of 14 till I was 22, so that is 8 years of solid retail work. In two of the four companies I worked for I was involved in 3 shop openings, but no huge events like Apple opening their first in Perth and with none of the theatrics. I expected hype and I got hype, along with friendly service and a great example of beautiful industrial design.
Was it fun?
If you think arriving in the city at 7am, standing in line for 2 hours in -0.4C tempretures and hanging with your best friend in the whole world before meeting up with other new/old friends to witness a fantastic example of retail launch fun, then this was well and above it.
(Note: I’ve lined up in car parks for 14+ hours to see small intimate gigs by Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins so this was a walk in the park.)
Did they give you ‘the clap’?
Yes! One of the most odd feelings you will ever experience is walking into a store and being met by 30+ staff clapping you in, shaking your hand and giving you high fives *Eiffel tower!*
Will you experience this type of retail event again?
Never say never I guess, but unless it is another Apple store opening I doubt I’ll experience something like this. I can’t see another company, especially another tech company take this leap and this approach into the retail market. That being said, yes Microsoft have their retail stores in America but I think it will be along time until they come to Australia, let alone Perth … and search on YouTube and you’ll see the ‘boot-scooting’ Microsoft do to welcome their customers.
Why?
Because I wanted to do it. I don’t need to justify it to anybody, if somebody called me a “sheep Apple fan boy” then their instant dislike for a company simply because they are ‘that’ company is worse than my apparent fan-boyism. True? I use this one companies products because they all work together, no screwing around with BETA version 2.3a etc for my phone. It works, it works with my computers, it works with my media centre. It is my choice. People that know me well would know that if Nintendo were opening a store, I’d be there too. (Am I blind Nintendo fan boy too? )
Where was I? Oh yeah, all in all, the experience was fantastic. Once in the store we walked around for a little bit, chatted with some staff about the whole set up experience, saw some of the iPod touches that are basically mobile checkouts, looked at some future possible purchases and enjoyed the experience. The exciting thing is now knowing that if I have a problem with any of our Apple products that we can make an appointment with their Genius staff, head right into the store and get it fixed. Something that most other tech / hardware / software companies simply can’t offer in the retail world.
So after months of blogging about this, I’m glad we finally have a store. I’m glad my parents can head in for one on one training classes, I’m happy I can get things fixed without having to send them away, I’m excited there is free open wifi (yay!) and I’m glad Perth has the flagship store in the CBD.
Seriously, go visit and view my photos up on flickr too!
PS: Walking back to the car, poor Sony store around the corner, 10.30am on a Saturday and not a person in store.
Looking at the Apple retail page for the Perth store there is a banner area saying “Featured In-Store” and a picture of the new iPhone 4. Considering the fact the iPhone isn’t set to be released here for another month or so this display model could be the biggest attraction for the new store, besides all the other shiney stuff.
I guess we’ll have to wait until Saturday, look forward to meeting a few other people there and all fighting over the iPhone 4 … if it is there. Because let’s be honest, when does Perth ever get lucky. This is most likely just a web admin that duplicated a site template and forgot to remove the iPhone 4 banner. Right?
This is where Ashes comes in.
Bringing the first native iPad app built on the Fever API from Shaun Inman’s Fever° webapp1, Ashes is a slick RSS reader that allows you to burn through your feeds by seeing hot, trending topics. Read articles in a built-in browser, send them by email, and save them to Instapaper. Syncing with Fever°, Ashes works perfectly2 online and offline.
Ashes is the best way to keep up on the news that matters most to you.
- 1 Ashes requires you to have Fever°, so go buy it.
- 2 Internet is required for syncing, reading full articles in built-in browser, email, and Instapaper.
So fellow Fever users, keep an eye (or two) out for this when it hits the app store.
In closing, here is a David Bowie singing Ashes to Ashes on the Reality tour.
While not the full desktop version of Photoshop we are used to, the app seems to be perfect for those quick on the go fixes you want to do for that picture before you upload to Twitter or Flickr. If you’ve taken a photo on your night out and it has come out a little dark, you can now pull Photoshop out of your pocket and do some exposure touches while waiting for that next drink at the bar and then upload.
With a simple to use interface you’re able to do the following:
Basics: Crop, Rotate and Flip
Colour: Exposure, Saturation, Tint, Black and White
Filters: Sketch, Soft Focus
Effects: Vibrant, Pop, Border, Vignette Blur, Warm Vintage, Rainbow, White Glow, Soft Black and White
I took it for a quick spin using a photo I took at a recent Handsome Furs show, the original (on the left) was still a great shot but I added a warm vintage effect, upped the saturation and a few other touches here and there. It isn’t the greatest Photoshop work ever done but it was done in less than 15 seconds and ready to saved, emailed or uploaded.
With this app now, I can say goodbye to a few single apps I’ve had for rotating images, cropping and colour effects. This is version 1 and I hope that Adobe will see the benefit in adding new features to this app, there are a lot to choose from.
So if I’ve sold you on getting this FREE app, head to the iTunes store and get it … although currently only for people with US iTunes accounts I’m sure it will filter onto the other international stores eventually.
It is hard to believe that this browser is still being supported and still being used 8 years later. Nothing in the tech industry should be used for this long, what’s next ZIP drives going to make a comeback? In its day IE6 was a good browser, but its day ended a long time ago.
As a web developer it is hard to explain the “pain” I’m referring too, but just imagine you design and build something that works across all browsers perfectly … then you need to spend 3-4 hours (or more or less) to hack it together to work in IE6. Use PNG’s? Forget it. Use min-height / max-height? Forget it. I could keep going but I won’t, in short there are so many CSS attributes that it just can not render. As long as Microsoft continue to support this browser the web industry will still have to support it for clients that either won’t upgrade or can’t upgrade.
Maybe this doesn’t mean anything to most of you, but this is my livelihood and it is a pain still having to be limited to something that was built 9 years ago where the things we can do on the web now where seen as impossible. Sure it is not for every client, but majority out there still want their website to be viewable by majority of web users and while IE6 is still used by a large number of people then we have to support it. To give you an idea as of July 2009 14.4% of people still use IE6, this is nearly equal to the 15.9% that are using IE7 and more than the 9% that are using IE8. We can’t ignore these people yet, as much as we would like too.
WHY UPGRADE?
“But why do I need to upgrade my browser” you ask. “And Internet Explorer 6 works just fine as far as I can tell”. Well, the reality is a bit different. The fact is Internet Explorer is a proverbial dinosaur where the internet is concerned. And like the dinosaurs it has no place in the modern internet. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you want an in-depth look at all the many reasons why Internet Explorer 6 is ready for the garbage bin swing by the extensive Wiki at IE6: Do NOT Want! Or if you just want to get a basic idea, here are the three great reasons for upgrading Internet Explorer right now:
IE6 DOESN’T WORK THE WAY IT SHOULD
Internet Explorer 6 never worked the way a browser should work. As a result the pages you visit with this browser don’t necessarily display properly. Web designers and developers have bent over backwards for years to accommodate this unfortunate circumstance but now they are starting to leave Internet Explorer 6 and its users behind. So if you don’t upgrade your browser now, chances are more and more of the world wide web will either become harder to surf or inaccessible to you.
IE6 IS A SECURITY RISK
Internet Explorer 6 is full of security issues, holes and other bugs that put your computer, your data and your privacy at risk. There are many reasons for this but right now the main one is that Microsoft themselves stopped developing Internet Explorer 6 in 2006 (so close to 3 years ago) and replaced with a new version of the browser. In effect, if you are surfing the internet with this old browser you are exposing yourself and your data to all sorts of nasty tomfoolery for no reason.
IE6 IS OLD AND OUTDATED
Internet Explorer 6 is old and outdated. And just like it would make no sense to hold on to a crappy old black and white TV if someone offered you a shiny new High Definition flat screen TV for free, holding on to Internet Explorer 6 is just plain silly because the upgrade is free directly from Microsoft. In the end it is just a piece of software, it has no sentimental value and the new one is both safer, easier to use and give you a whole host of new features you never had before. And as a bonus the web sites you visit will act the way they are supposed to. Bottom line? If you are still stuck in the browser dark ages, take a few minutes and upgrade now.
HOW TO GET USERS TO UPGRADE
You can educate your client with browser stats that less and less people are using IE6 (which is a good thing), you can set up a redirect on your website to an information page about the benefits of upgrading or even a creative little idea like the people at ie6update.com.
So “happy birthday” IE6 I guess … I really hope I’m not posting a birthday message next year.
Now it has happened, and with watching this brief demonstration … I think I can live without it.
Just imagine reading this on a quiet flight and opening to a certain page to then have the entire cabin hear what advert you’re looking at and I doubt the magazine comes with a headphone port. While the idea seems amazing – ground breaking etc, I just get past the vision of Gob Bluth and Franklin in Arrested Development. “My name is Judge!”
View the CBS advert:
The negativity aside this still holds some “YAY” factor to me. Somebody has finally done it. To be able to get portable video, into this size and into a mass produced publication is amazing. Take the sound away and this could possibly be the future for print advertising in decades to come. It is the first risky step to what could eventually become a new element to an industry that is slowly dying … depending on who you ask.
While the new interface upgrades look fantastic and I’m sure this leading to bigger and better things with future OS X releases … the designer in me just can’t get past the front cover of the box art, and I’m not alone.
When you compare it to the graphical boxes for releases of years gone by, this one just comes across as “typical” and “expected“. Not typical by Apple’s standard, but just typically ordinary and logical … words I would never use to describe the artistic direction from Apple. So at first look you can understand why people would be questioning why Apple have made such a decision.
Yet there would be some logic behind the design direction and this is when it begins to make sense … to me at least.
1. This has always been stated not to be seen as full release, hence the cheaper price. This was not the huge advance interface steps that we saw in Panther to Tiger, and then Tiger to Leopard. So why should they be held to having the giant X on the front of the box?
Could this be the first steps Apple are taking to get the adoring Apple fan base to stop referring to OS releases as OS X? Could this be the last OS X release and they would prefer the focus is on the new brand of ‘Snow Leopard’ and not OS X – Snow Leopard, as was with Leopard a few years back. With the branding having equal weight on this new design, it is definitely allowing for a traditional phase in the branding of this product range.
It is with this concept behind the actual product I can see why they created packaging that is clearly separated from the previous releases.
2. Now this is fairly obvious. The product is called Snow Leopard. Snow = White. Majority of the box is white. What better way have seamless packaging that by having a photograph of a Snow Leopard in the snow fading into the rest of the white on the box?
Look I studied design, I’ve been working as a designer in the commercial world for 7 years now and yeah I would be shocked too if this was the best idea I came up with too. Yet, I really think that looking at this subjectively and not knowing the FULL marketing plan behind this and future directions for Apple, this could very well be the perfect decision.
Yes it is simple, yes it obvious and I was like you too and thought “Huh?” at first but … Why shouldn’t a simple design like this work? This is Apple, a company named after a fruit and their logo is … surprise surprise an apple. Like life itself, design shouldn’t always be over complicated and as we all know sometimes the most obvious solution can be the best.
So I’ll stand up proud and say I don’t mind the Snow Leopard box art … who is with me?
It was looking at my iPhone that got me thinking, is the name of this device the biggest thing holding it back. Will Apple have to change the highly successful name one day to allow the “phone” to grow and to make consumers see this as more than a phone.
Yeah yeah, I know that might sound like a crazy statement. What is in a name? We all know how great this device is, I don’t need to “blah blah” on about it … so if you own one, can I ask do you just see this as your phone? or is it more than that?
The reason I ask this is because could the fact that the word ‘phone’ is in the title is the main reason some people find it hard to see it as anything more. We’ve all been mobile phone users for over a decade now at least, we’ve seen the evolution from crappy phones to mediocre phones to now phones that have a feature set similar to a personal computer.
There are people I know that are iPhone owners who often frustrate me with comments like ‘Oh I’m not paying $12.99 for that game, its just expensive‘ yet they will happily pay $59.00 for a similar game on another portable device like the Nintendo DS or PSP.
A game that I’ll use as an example is the (sort of) new racing game for the iPhone, Real Racing, developed by Melbourne based gaming company Firemint. This game that plays extremely well, has impressive graphics and that could easily be sold for five times the price on any stand alone portable gaming device is yours for the price of discounted b-grade Disney movie from JB Hifi. Yet … ‘this is to expensive’ for some.
The logic still baffles me, considering that with any iPhone game you’ve got the extra bonus that you’re able to purchase this game without leaving the house, have it with you anywhere you go without needing to take a cartridge or disc with you, receive updates and advancements to the game allowing the game to always stay ‘current’- yet it is still seen as a ‘questionable purchase’. This doesn’t even take into consideration the cheaper games that are a few dollars. Those few dollars some will happily throw to a busker on the street singing a terrible version of Cold Chisel’s – Khe Sanh, yet will take hours or days to think about spending that $2.49 on an app that developers spent weeks or months building so that you can use it anytime, anywhere as much as you like.
Does this mentality stem from our history with gaming on our phones? Are we still bitter about those terrible games we spent money on to play a crappy golf or Tetris game on our Nokia 6120 back in the early 2000′s? I know it’s hard to move on people, but I think we can now. I think we have to start seeing mobile games in a different light. It is no longer the fact that the games that are being developed are less than great and aren’t worth to be in the same price point as Nintendo DS or PSP games. Mr and Mrs iPhone consumer it is time we got that idea out of our subconscious – this is not just a phone that can play games.
The fact is, everybody that has an iPhone will always say “Oh this is more than a phone, its got my email, my IM clients, my web browser, it’s camera … etc” … so why can’t it be also classed as serious portable gaming device too? Something that is seen as an equal and the price of the games are seen as equal too. Now Im not saying that EVERY game is super amazing, there are a lot of shit games (and I’ve purchased my fair share) but with the App Store only being around for a year so far we are still in early days and within those early days there have been many amazing games released amongst the hundreds of less than average ones.
So if you’re reading this and you’re offended that Im calling you cheap for not wanting to a) pay for any apps or b) not pay for apps over a certain price, then perhaps the problem isn’t mine and you should really ask yourself – what is the iPhone. A phone? or something more?
How can this mentality ever change?
Does this mean that in 12 months time when Apple are (hopefully) to release a new version of the phone that we will see an entire new name? It is a logistical marketing nightmare that it seems Apple have backed themselves into. Unlike the iPod that was ambiguous with its naming it had the freedom to evolve through different phases, what started off as a music player, then turned into a video/music/photo/gaming device and then also eventually evolved into a touch screen device with a whole range of new features. All still known as being part of the iPod family. I think it is fair to say that to majority of the public out there, as it stands the iPhone will always be seen as simply a phone first and other devices second due to its name.
As a designer and a lover of music, it goes without saying that my love for album artwork is what inspired me to become a creative in the graphic design industry. We are starting to enter an era though where the digital age is taking over and in years to come to idea of a ‘physical’ release could come secondary to the digital release of a music album.
Read the full article here on SP.com: Physical or Digital graffiti?
I’ll be following this up with a look into what this means for music collectors, will it become about the size of your hard-drive and not the size of your shelves? Your thoughts?
The two ‘extras’ Im reffering to is the use of Favourite icons in your web browser and web clip icons on your iPhone / iPod Touch. Below are two step by step guides in how create both of these for your next website.
Favicon
defn: A favicon (short for favorites icon), also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark iconis an icon associated with a particular website or webpage.
Nothing new, these have been around for years but it still surprises me how many sites don’t have them. As I’m putting together these ‘little extras’ for Sunky Speaks I thought I would document a ‘how to guide’. I’ll go through this using Photoshop, sorry to all non-Photoshop users but it’s the easiest way to do it. Ok, lets get started.
- Stop. Think. Begin. Take the time to think about what you’re going to be putting in as the favicon, I mean really think about it. This icon will end up being 16px * 16px, so if it is a thin line drawing that is your clients logo then its not going to look that great at such a small size. With Sunky Speaks I would love to include the logo as a small icon, but once it gets to that size it will be near on impossible to read the words ‘Sunky Speaks’, so I’ve come up with an alternative idea.
- Plugin first. Next you’ll need the Windows Icon (ICO) file format Photoshop Plugin, this will allow you to export to the .ico file format. (download here) Make sure to install the plugin before you open up Photoshop. To install the plugin just copy it into your Photoshop plugin folder, for Windows: C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Photoshop CS3Plug-Ins and for Mac: Applications > Adobe Photoshop C3 > Plug-Ins. Then open Photoshop and it will be installed.
- Design time. 16px * 16px is a small canvas area, it can be very difficult to create something clear in that space. So instead we will start our project with a canvas set at 64px * 64px (this is because it is always better to use even multiples when you plan on resizing files). Do this by selecting File > New, and opening a new canvas that is 64px * 64px pixels in size.
- Happy with the design?Best thing to do first is test the design, select Image > Image Size menu and enter 16px * 16px. Click on Resample Image and select “Bicubic Sharper” from the drop-down menu. This is the best setting for making sure that an image doesn’t blur as it’s being resized. If it’s still not sharp enough for you, always go back and oversharpen, oversaturate and/or heighten the contrast of the original image and then resize it again. Like with anything, you may need to tweak the design to get it to look just right.
- Saving. Like with any file go to File > Save As and make sure you name the file favicon.ico. Under format you must choose Windows Icon (ICO) from the pulldown menu. (Note: This format will only be available in Photoshop after you download and install the plugin).
- Uploading and coding. Upload this new file to the root folder of your website, and then add the following code to your website in the <head> tag.
<link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="/favicon.ico">
- Testing. You should now have this appearing in your address bar:
But what happens if its not working, and you’re thinking “Wha Happened?“. Check your code and file first. Still no good, next thing to try is clearing your browsers cache and that should fix it. If you’re using IE6 (please upgrade) you will need to add the URL as a Bookmarked favourite before it can work.
iPhone / iPod Touch web clip icons
defn: The icon graphic that appears on your home screen when you add a web clip from Safari.
The biggest selling mobile device(s) in the past few years, that also boasts with the strongest web capabilities of any other phone out there and people are still not making sure their users get the full experience when visiting their site. If somebody loves your site and plans on visiting it on a regular basis, why not give them a pretty icon to view when using their phone rather than a tiny screenshot of your website.
Open up Photoshop, or your preferred editor.
- Name your file to be “apple-touch-icon.png”
- Set both the width and height to be 57px. If you’re resizing a larger logo or image, remember to set your resize option to be “Bicubic Sharper” like we did for the favicon, just gives your a sharper image.
- Save your file out and then upload it to your root directory of your website.
- To test that it worked, open up Safari on your iPhone / iPod Touch and add your website to your home screen. To do this, click the + button at the base of your browser and it will open the screen below. Finally select ‘Add to Home Screen’, if you’re doing this via your cellular network you might find it take a few seconds to display.
- Go back to your home screen to your new icon nested next to all your other apps, now doesn’t that look more at home than a boring old screenshot?
Thats it, hope you’ve found these guides helpful. Any questions just ask away.