Brian Scates

Dave McClure at Business Week recently published an article about the value of design to startups, in which I thought he made some good points about how important designers and marketers are to the success of startups and applications. Predictably, this didn’t sit so well with developers like Steve at Big Dumb Dev, whose sarcastic [...]

After one of our clients recently set up a twitter account for her company and we connected, she sent me an email that read “OK, seriously – how did you manage to get 439 people to follow you?  I mean, I’m sure you’re an interesting guy, but 439?  The race is on!” I had to [...]

Over the last few years, Apple has solidified itself as the cool kid’s legitimate alternative to the Microsoft mainstream. They have excelled at packaging hardware and software together in sexy ways with usability that has put all the first-movers on defense, scrambling to catch up. The iPhone has been a smash hit and helped them expand their Mac market share substantially. broken-iphoneBut when you’re at the top of the cool mountain, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep your footing. There are storm clouds on the horizon, and there’s a revolution brewing.

The torches are being lit over in iPhone land. The iPhone has been a cult success in spite of itself in many ways. Other phones had better hardware and more features, and the iPhone was missing long standard features like MMS. But nothing matched the allure of the all touch screen form factor and the brilliant iPhone OS. When the App store was released, that made up for many of the (still persistent) feature deficiencies. But now that App Store is becoming a real problem for users and developers alike.

After reading Tech Crunch’s article about AT&T’s current visual voicemail problems (AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure), I realized I haven’t received a voicemail in a long time myself. So I went to test it – first I called my wife’s first-gen iphone and left her a message. It didn’t show up immediately, but a couple minutes later it appeared. Then I called my 3G phone from my wife’s and left a message. It’s been half an hour, and I haven’t received anything yet. In fact, I can’t see my deleted voicemails either – it appears it’s simply not working at all. Now of course I have to wonder if I’ve missed any important calls. Not cool.

The web is abuzz lately with mounting campaigns against IE6. Web designers and producers have been moaning about it for years, but the reality has been that 20%+ of internet users have still used the old browser, avoiding the upgrade to 7 for whatever reason. There’s a reason it’s stuck around so long, even now, 8 years later, and a twitter campaign is not going to kill it. I do have a suggestion for easing development pain, though, and ultimately ending the bane of IE6.

Windows 7 pre-orders are flying off virtual shelves. Sony’s PlayStation 3 has lost the market to the Xbox 360. Some Microsoft commercials are being pulled because they’re too racy, and Apple is demanding they pull others. The ZuneHD actually looks cool. Natal is hailed as revolutionary. What the hell is going on? Is Microsoft cool [...]