Dan Kois, Slate:

The problem isn’t with passengers, though the evidence demonstrates that many passengers are little better than sociopaths acting only for their own good. The problem is with the plane. In a closed system in which just one recliner out of 200 passengers can ruin it for dozens of people, it is too much to expect that everyone will act in the interest of the common good. People recline their seats because their seats recline. But why on earth do seats recline? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if seats simply didn’t?

As a 6'2" guy with a frame primarily comprised of legs, reclining seats on airplanes annoy me. I could be on a 30-minute flight and people will still recline. Not because they are bad people, but because seats recline. It’s expected. I’m not mad at them, not really any way. I’m mad that in the year 2013 we still design airplanes as if tent people¹ will inhabit them.

Charlie Kindel offers his answer to Horace Dediu’s question:

It only focuses on one customer: The Consumer.

In my experience, the behaviors and culture of an organization (large or small) that focuses on the Consumer as a customer is diametrically incompatible with the behaviors and culture of an organization that focuses on Business as a customer.

The idea being that Microsoft’s interests are split between consumers and business, while Google’s interest are split between consumers and advertisers.

Horace Dediu poses an interesting question about Apple’s innovation:

But what I wonder is why there isn’t a desire to copy Apple’s product creation process. Why isn’t the catalyst for a new category or disruption put forward by another company? More precisely, why isn’t there another company which consistently re-defines categories and repeatedly, predictably even, re-defines how technology is used.

Put another way: Why is it that everyone wants to copy Apple’s products but nobody wants to copy being Apple?

Lance Hosey, writing for The New York Times, on the depth of our attraction to particular aesthetics:

Certain patterns also have universal appeal. Natural fractals — irregular, self-similar geometry — occur virtually everywhere in nature: in coastlines and riverways, in snowflakes and leaf veins, even in our own lungs. In recent years, physicists have found that people invariably prefer a certain mathematical density of fractals — not too thick, not too sparse. The theory is that this particular pattern echoes the shapes of trees, specifically the acacia, on the African savanna, the place stored in our genetic memory from the cradle of the human race. To paraphrase one biologist, beauty is in the genes of the beholder — home is where the genome is.

Last week, Maker’s Mark announced that they would water down their whiskey in an attempt to alleviate potential shortages.

Today, COO Rob Samuels and Chairman Emeritus Bill Samuels reversed course:

You spoke. We listened. And we’re sincerely sorry we let you down.

So effective immediately, we are reversing our decision to lower the ABV of Maker’s Mark, and resuming production at 45% alcohol by volume (90 proof). Just like we’ve made it since the very beginning.

That didn’t take long. Quality wins again.

Alan Taylor, The Atlantic:

A half century ago, much of the news in the United States was dominated by the actions of civil rights activists and those who opposed them. Our role in Vietnam was steadily growing, along with the costs of that involvement. It was the year Beatlemania began, and the year President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin and delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. Push-button telephones were introduced, 1st class postage cost 5 cents, and the population of the world was 3.2 billion, less than half of what it is today. The final months of 1963 were punctuated by one of the most tragic events in American history, the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Let me take you 50 years into the past now, for a look at the world as it was in 1963.

The photos are very intriguing, if not difficult to view. It is important to recognize the great strides that we’ve made for civil rights in 50 years. It is equally important to recognize that 50 years isn’t time enough to heal all wounds.

Louie Mantia on overuse of the term “skeuomorphism” and how it differs from realism:

Making standard UI elements look beautiful shouldn’t be condemned, and it seems that Apple has done a wonderful job in attracting millions of people to use iOS because of these choices. Other apps might be able to get away without using textures and gradients, and that’s fine too. Visual and UI designers should just do the right thing for their users, whatever that means.

I agree with Mantia. Many of Apple’s apps are made great by textures, while games like Letterpress look awesome with flat design.

Len Shustek, The Computer History Museum:

With the permission of Adobe Systems Inc., the Computer History Museum is pleased to make available, for non-commercial use, the source code to the 1990 version 1.0.1 of Photoshop. All the code is here with the exception of the MacApp applications library that was licensed from Apple. There are 179 files in the zipped folder, comprising about 128,000 lines of mostly uncommented but well-structured code. By line count, about 75% of the code is in Pascal, about 15% is in 68000 assembler language, and the rest is data of various sorts.

You’ll especially enjoy the commentary on the source code.

Sacha Greif on the highly-textured iOS user interface:

With the iPhone, designers were suddenly offered a platform with a single rendering engine, fixed dimensions, and a much higher limit on asset weight (not to mention a great display with vibrant colors). Is it any wonder some of us went a little overboard?

Greif nicely describes the difference between realism and skeuomorphism (currently an overused word). Realism versus flat design is at the heart of the argument. Given the popularity of recent Google apps and games like Letterpress, Greif places his bets on flat design. Is flat design better? I’m not so sure it’s “better” rather than it’s a breath of fresh air for a six-year-old platform.

Patrick Riley, The Lost Ogle:

Although Justice is now safe and sound, some people were not too pleased that an Amber Alert was used to help rescue him. The alert apparently interrupted a key moment in last night’s Bachelor broadcast, triggering a flurry of angry tweets from young, naive and complete shallow Oklahomans. Their embarrassing reactions are the type of things you’d expect to see from people who enjoy the lowest form of mind-numbing entertainment.

Assholes.