Pebble IT

Blue Circles — so hot right now!

The latest version of iTunes hasn’t been getting a lot of good press since its launch recently, especially of the design front. There’s the vertically-orientated close/minimise/maximise buttons, the monochrome icons in preferences and the sidebar, and the new application icon.

Dan Benjamin and John Gruber talked about these points in the latest episode of The Talk Show (highly recommended podcast by the way). At 42:55 John Gruber said this:

“…the problem is it’s yet another blue circle…it’s unbelievable how many icons in my dock are blue…and most of the blue ones are blue circles.”

This was an curious observation, and one I hadn’t hit on before. I worried for a moment as our logo is…a blue circle!

The pebble.it branding in it’s current form is a little over a year old. The remit for the design was for it to reflect our technical savvy and Mac leanings. So, in light of this revelation it looks like we were successful (could even say prescient)! As we’re not talking about an application icon here, we’re not battling to distinguish ourselves in a crowded Dock, so I don’t think it’s of any concern. Interesting convergence though.

To illustrate the point, please enjoy the slideshow of blue, circular application logos. I could of gone on, but thought 10 was enough!

Think Different

Despite the poor audio/video quality, this is a great video to watch for a number of reasons:

• this is Steve Jobs shortly after his return to Apple as interim CEO.
• we’re familiar with the large-scale Jobs Keynotes but this is an internal presentation to Apple staff.
• it introduces the very successful Think Different ad campaign.
• it’s one of the best five minute explanations of good branding available.

Enjoy!

(Source: kottke.org)

Apple will be holding a music-orientated event today, September 1st, at the Yerba Buena Centre, San Francisco (6pm GMT). As with any Apple event, speculation is rife - Steve Jobs is expected on stage to deliver updates to the iPod family, with further rumours suggesting a new Apple TV and announcements regarding the iTunes store.

Live Streaming

For the first time in a number of years, the event will be live-streamed via the Apple website - this time using ‘HTTP Live Streaming’ - an open standard championed by Apple and built into Quicktime in Snow Leopard and iOS devices. Unfortunately, this does mean that Windows and PowerPC users may not be able to view the stream (although, if you’re willing to play around with VLC, take a look at a possible workaround here).

We’re looking forward to a video keynote - previously we’ve all been glued to the text/photo updates from various live blogs such and Engadget and Gizmodo (which will still be happening, if you’re one of the unfortunates mentioned above). It’s been suggested that one of the main reasons for this approach is to test the $1bn data centre Apple have been building in North Carolina, as well as the possibility that they’re launching a streaming version of iTunes, similar to Spotify. If the latter, the live-stream would be a suitable demonstration of Apple’s capabilities in this arena.

Rumor Roundup

In the past few years, several case manufacturers have given us a preview into upcoming Apple products by leaking their new case designs in the weeks prior to a Keynote. More recently there have been leaks of individual parts and even complete devices - take the infamous iPhone 4 leak, for example. Here’s what we’ve seen so far:

• Leaked Nano cases and touch-sensitive display - this would take the Nano down to almost shuffle size, but what of the recently introduced camera?

• iPod Touch with front and back facing camera - suggesting Facetime capabilities.

• New Apple TV - an update to the much neglected media device - now with iOS?
• iOS 4 for the iPad - promised at the last keynote - iPad owners are chomping at the bit for this missing update.