John Siracusa¹, ATP episode 229:

“I got this phone for $50 and it’s fine” might as well be Android’s slogan.

Daring Fireball:

Such a weird bug — and embarrassing for Apple because it makes the device look so dumb.

This hasn’t been happening to me, but ya. This is really embarrasing for Apple. Lol.

Armin Vit writing for his branding blog Brand New:

I was not a fan, at all, of the logo redesign from 2012. Not because I loved the old logo but because the new one was so stale yet trying to hold on to the quirkiness of the original with the multi-colored wordmark. Now that the wordmark is used in a single color, it has at least doubled down on its stale-ness. It still doesn’t inspire me to go on the site and buy something but it doesn’t confuse me as to whether I should be feel happy or dead inside when I see it, as the old logo did. Now it looks like a dead-pan wordmark operating within the not-trying-too-hard aesthetic and, while I still don’t like it, it functions a lot better.

CBC:

Kollar-Kotelly said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their claims that the ban was unconstitutional because the reasons given for the ban “do not appear to be supported by any facts.”

Has Trump ever said anything supported by actual facts? I can’t think of one single thing.

She said that other factors, including “the unusual circumstances surrounding the president’s announcement” of the ban, weighed in her decision.

Turns out you can’t just tweet laws into existence. Thank goodness for that.

My boss sent me this article, and I thought it was so well done. Slava Shestopalov for Muzli:

What is bigger: a 400-pixel square or a 400-pixel circle? Geometrically speaking, their width and height are equal. But look at the picture below. Our eyes immediately detect that the square outweighs the circle.

Now that I’m working full time as a web designer, I’ve been more and more interested in designing my own custom icon sets for clients’s websites. It can be tough making icons in a collection look balanced, especially when they’re all sorts of different shapes. This piece has a lot of tips and tricks I thought were useful.

Hit the title of this blog post to read the linked post.

Mac Rumors:

In all versions of iOS 11 prior to iOS 11.2, a calculator animation causes some symbols to be ignored when entered in rapid succession. As an example, if you tap 1+2+3 and then hit the equals sign quickly, animation lag is likely to case the result to be 24 instead of 6.

I tweeted about this last week. And I still feel really embarassed for them. Glad to see it’s getting fixed. (I guess)

Last week Webflow launched a bunch of new features to their browser based website design platform. From Webflow’s blog post:

Interactions 2.0 is the culmination of months of research, user testing, design revisions, and engineering ingenuity. And while we’re already working on improvements and additional features, Interactions 2.0 already offers more than enough for you to build some truly innovative interactions and animations.

Timeline driven animations. Scroll progress and mouse position interactions.

At work, we’re currently in the process of transferring to Webflow with some of our newer, larger projects. The kind of stuff that Webflow lets you do in comparison to other platforms is just amazing.

Check out this Interactions 2.0 product page to see the new animations in action.

Rolling Stone:

When Koizumi first got his hands on the new GameCube controller, the sense of resistance he encountered when pressing the sensitive analog trigger reminded him of playing with water pistols as a kid. He wondered: what would it look like if he took the 3D exploration gameplay from Super Mario 64, and gave Mario a water pistol to interact with the world?

I thought this was profound, and basically is the definition of an “a-ha moment”.

Anyway. With Odyssey finally out, I’ve been hearing lots of people talk about how much of a let down Sunshine was. I was 10 years old at the time, so I may be looking back at it through rose tinted glasses, but I really don’t think the game was as bad as everyone said it was.

Super Mario Sunshine deserves a place alongside 64, Galaxy, and Odyssey.

Polygon’s Super Mario Odyssey review:

The whole game is basically structured like a massive playground. Spend as much time as you want messing around; chances are you’ll be rewarded for it. And, just like I remember from my formative years, this emphasis on exploration and discovery serves as a bottomless well from which to draw buckets of good feelings. I can say with confidence that there hasn’t been another game this year that has so consistently had me grinning.
I’m something like 20 hours into the game so far, and absolutely loving it. There’s really nothing like playing a new 3D Mario game for the first time.