So Much to Read Lately

I feel ashamed to treat these as a bulk, but I have been quite busy lately and I could not give each the attention it deserved.

Anyway, first is one great article by Ben Brooks, which has already made quite a buzz: “Don’t Mimic Real World Interfaces”. While I find this particular issue not new in anyway, and highly logical, it seems that many people have been pissed off by iCal’s recent makeover.

Craig Grannell, in his article “Why you shouldn’t mimic real-worl interfaces in software” does add a bit to the argument, which reminded me that both John Siracusa and Marco Arment discussed with Dan Benjamin on Hypercritical #13 and Build and Analyze #17 the current mis-use of skeuomorphic interfaces and Apple breaking its own HIG.

Also by Ben Brooks, “Calendar Apps Suck, Here Are My Suggestions” brings the point that apps should be done in such way that they use the power and versatility our computers offer now, and not in the way that mimics what little technology allowed us to do in the past. It is particularly relevant to his former article, in which he said:

What [app X] did was not try to replicate the beloved [antic thing], instead they rethought what a [that-kind-of-thing] app was to be — and how it should be designed if it is only made for use on a computer, from day one.

Finally, John Gruber, in “Cutting That Cord”, tackles Apple and the fact that it is very late at the whole Cloud game. Great reading.