Posts in Rants
Messages From the Future: The Fate of Google Glass

Man, time travel sucks. I mean think about it, you know all this stuff- and I mean you really know this stuff, but of course you can't say, "You're wrong, and I know, because I’m from the future."

So you pretend like its just your opinion and then sit there grinding your teeth while everyone else bloviates their opinions without actually knowing anything. Of course my old friends hate me. I mean I was always a know-it-all, but I really do know it all this time, which must make me seem even worse.

Anyway I was catching up on current events and was surprised to realize that I had arrived here smack dab before Google started selling Glass.

Truth is, I'd actually forgotten about Google Glass until I read that they are about to launch it again. Which itself should tell you something about its impact on the future.

So here's the deal on Google Glass. At least as far as I know - what with my being from the future and all.

It flopped.

Nobody bought it.

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My First Message From the Future: How Facebook Died

It was a hot, sunny Boston morning in July, 2033 - and suddenly - it was a freezing London evening in Feb 2013, and I had an excruciating headache.

I have no clue what happened. No flash, no tunnel, no lights. It's like the last 20 years of my life just never happened. Except that I remember them.

Not knowing what else to do I went to the house I used to live in then. I was surprised that my family was there, and everyone was young again. I seemed to be the only one who remembers anything. At some point I dropped the subject because my wife thought I'd gone crazy. And it was easier to let her think I was joking.

It's hard to keep all this to myself though, so, maybe as therapy, I've decided to write it here. Hardly anyone reads this so I guess I can't do too much damage. I didn't write this stuff the first time around, and I'm a little worried that the things I share might change events to the point that I no longer recognize them, so forgive me if I keep some aspects to myself.

As it is I already screwed things up by promptly forgetting my wife's birthday. Jesus Christ, I was slightly preoccupied, I mean, I'm sorry, ok? I traveled in time and forgot to pick up the ring that I ordered 20 years ago… and picked up once already. All sorts of stuff changed after that for a while. But then somehow it all started falling back into place.

Anyway - that's why I'm not telling you everything. Just enough to save the few of you who read this some pain.

Today I'll talk about Facebook.

Ok, in the future Facebook, the social network, dies. Well, ok, not "dies" exactly, but "shrivels into irrelevance", which was maybe just as bad.

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Why Apple's Interfaces Will Be Skeuomorphic Forever, And Why Yours Will Be Too

"Skeuomorph..." What?? I have been designing interfaces for 25 years and that word triggers nothing resembling understanding in my mind on its linguistic merit alone. Indeed, like some cosmic self-referential joke the word skeuomorph lacks the linguistic reference points I need to understand it.

So actually yes, it would be really nice if the word ornamentally looked a little more like what it meant, you know?

So Scott Forstall got the boot - and designers the world over are celebrating the likely death of Apple's "skeuomorphic" interface trend. Actually I am quite looking forward to an Ive-centric interface, but not so much because I hate so-called skeuomorphic interfaces, but because Ive is a (the) kick ass designer and I want to see his design sensibility in software. That will be exciting.

And yet, I'm not celebrating the death of skeuomorphic interfaces at Apple because - and I can already hear the panties bunching up - there is no such a thing as an off-state of skeuomorphism. That's an irrelevant concept. And even if there was such a thing, the result would be ugly and unusable.

Essentially, every user interface on Earth is ornamentally referencing and representing other unrelated materials, interfaces and elements. The only questions are: what's it representing, and by how much?

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Steve Jobs

Years ago my business partner at Red Sky, CEO Tim Smith, used to tell a story about having met Steve Jobs in a most unusual, almost comic, situation. Tim has, after all these years, felt the pull to write it for posterity, or therapy maybe.

It's a great read. If you're a bit stunned at the loss of Steve Jobs you will appreciate it as I did.

Read Tim's story here.

I never met Steve. I always thought I would some day, egoist I am.

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Rhapsody Acquires Napster, Apple Terrified

Wow, maybe doctors could deliver this news to test your yawn reflex.

It's rare that something is so unbelievably boring that it transcends being ignorable and actually makes me want to write something about it, but man, did the folks at Rhapsody pull it off. Now that I think about it - I never thought of Rhapsody as having "folks at" before now.

Both music service-cum-companies have hovered so far down the food-chain of cultural relevance that I'm sure those of you who are old enough shared my first thought which was - "Wait, there is still a Rhapsody AND a Napster?"

The whole thing is so low-rent, it smacks of having happened on EBay. "In your cart: (1) Napster - size: small, and (3) Pair Mens Socks - Black."

Like those Batman sequels with the nipple-suits where they started pulling in 3rd tier villains like Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, you wondered who the bozos were that went for that.

I mean, once it went "legit" who the hell kept using Napster anyway? BestBuy - of all companies - bought Napster. Someone at BestBuy must have thought that was a big idea. "Gentlemen, my kids seem to know all about this 'Napster'. Can you imagine if we had the Napster? Why, we could appeal to 'generation x' and bring our brand into the new millennium using the world wide web."

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Why Teenage Users Do Not Indicate Your Technical Future

So I had to sit through yet another meeting today where some breathless 30-something expert urgently asserted that email is going away because, as we all know, "teens" signal what's coming in the future. And since teens use Facebook and Twitter and SMS, and don't use email, that naturally means email will soon go away for all of us.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg earlier defended this idea, employing a recent PEW report that only 11% of teens email daily (a significant generational drop). Then she said:

"If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today."

You've heard this elsewhere right? A bunch of times probably.

And it makes a terrific little sound bite, and feels all edgy and smart and progressive.

And it would be - except for the fact that it's completely dumb and wrong.

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Archive, RantsJoel Hladecek
Gap is the Biggest Wussy on Earth

So we all saw the new Gap logo. It looked weird. It looked wrong. It looked like all sorts of other unbecoming words that were broadcast over Twitter and Facebook within hours of its unveiling.

Then, in what is going to be (or should be) remembered as the biggest corporate branding fail of the last decade, Gap caved in to all the little whiny Tweeters and defensively pulled its shiny, new logo.

Anyone who thinks that move was rational - that pulling the new logo was the best thing Gap could have done in the situation - is somewhere between equally ball-less and an idiot.

No, it was the worst thing Gap could have done in the situation.

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Confessions of an Apple Freemason

I love Apple products. But something has been troubling me...

People have been calling me and my kind Apple Fanboys for many years. Before that term was trendy they called us Apple fanatics. I used to resist these labels since from my point of view I was just reporting the obviousness between Macs and PCs. It wasn't my fault Apple products were superior.

Anyway this isn't about who's better or who's right . That's old news. Apple is kicking butt these days and most of the anti-Apple people I've known have finally let go of their irrational embrace of a Windows PC-only paradigm, bought iPhones, iPods, iPads and iMacs and we can finally move on.

And my story starts there.

Because as any true Apple Fanboy will tell you, it feels oddly disorienting to see Apple kicking butt . Yeah, it's what we fought for over the last quarter century, and yet now that we have arrived, the universe is out of balance, only perhaps not in the way you might expect...

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Archive, RantsJoel Hladecek
Going Social On Your Ass

Three years ago some ad agency dweeb leaned into my office and smirked "Dude, our campaign just went social".

And I think, after a brief pause, my immediate reaction was to throw up in my mouth. I silently hoped I would never hear that stupid little term again. That something "went social".

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How the Apple Dress Code Undermined the iPhone

I can't be the only one. The only lifelong Apple fan boy who wears shirts with collars on occasion. Am I?

I ask because if there were others, if maybe even one of us worked for Apple on the iPhone team, the iPhone headphones would be designed differently. It's a fact - no two ways about it. That somehow this critical design flaw should never have survived the Apple design process, unless of course, they really all do wear t-shirts - exclusively.

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Archive, RantsJoel Hladecek
Hey Apple, The 90s Called and Wants It's White iPhone Back

When Apple started using the color white as it's industrial design foundation back in the late 90s - it evoked all the coolest parts of Star Wars' Storm Troopers, 2001: A Space Odyssey - and bathroom fixtures all at once. It was a powerful design conceit that differentiated the company assertively for a decade - and big-banged out trends that are still rippling their way down the lower design food-chain today.

Then, with the advent of multicolored aluminum iPods, Black MacBooks and silver iMacs, Airs and Mac Pros, it looked as though His whiteness was finally, at long gasping last, bowing out. And none too soon.

The fact is, the whole white consumer technology thing has been done to death. There is all manner of non-Apple, white and plastic-chrome "iWhatevers" on the market. So ubiquitous is the white and "chromed" plastic look that anything done that way today usually has "made in taiwan" embossed on the side or comes from a gum ball machine.And then

Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G.

When I saw the white and chrome iPhone 3G - an exclusive color way for the premium 16GB model - I remember mildly deflating and uttering, "...really...?" And then I think I just squinted at it - waiting for the coolness to kick in. A reality distortion field. A different angle. Anything.

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Archive, RantsJoel Hladecek
Why Do Music Ringtones Suck So Bad?

Sorry for the belligerent title. But you know it, I know it, and everyone you know knows it, except maybe those 11-year-old-girls at the mall who smell like strawberry lip-smacker and buy Live Strong-knock-off rubber bracelets that say "I'm Rad" at Wet Seal, that music-based ringtones are so very lame.

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Archive, RantsJoel Hladecek