I think that quote (courtesy Phil Schiller at last night’s WWDC) represents a growing annoyance within Apple towards the continuing (and often nonsensical) writeups that have been circling the online world for some time. Frankly, it was a little surprising — Apple is known to take digs at competition, much like anyone else — but we don’t often see a statement of annoyance within their presentations, which is what this sounded like.

Image: Techcrunch

I get it too. Apple is a cash cow that sits on top of the smartphone and tablet market today and it seems almost ‘in’ to write negatively about the company. Fair enough, everyone’s always entitled to their opinion, but last night showed that it had severely scaled up, that even Apple is getting tired and annoyed by it.

But there was also a distinct Apple way in which they decided to respond. Apple iterated a focus on design principles, with a lot of context around the “Designed by Apple in California” tagline, and a rather lovely video (which is available on the same page). They took that a step further with the naming of the next version of OS X, Mavericks.

I think the star of the show — even if the most popular item was iOS 7 — was the Mac Pro. My first impression its first look was that the Mac Pro looked like a little nuke silo for your desk (perhaps that’s what they were going for), but to cram all of that in something that is 1/8th the volume of the current edition, that is some incredible work.

Image: Apple

This year, the rumor mill, while existant was far from explosive, with the only news coming out with any guarantee being that iOS was porting a flat design, the Mac Pro line would be updated and possible SDKs to Apple TV (which didn’t actually happen). Suffice to say TIm Cook’s insistance on doubling down on secrecy seems to have worked, for the most part.

There were also a few (indirect) digs at Scott Forstall and his reign — almost like the engineers were finally able to breathe again — with the changes to the design elements in both OS X Mavericks and iOS 7, and the overall loss of skeuomorphism. 

Oh, and how cool was that anki demo?

For those of you who have a couple hours to kill, the full keynote is here.

It goes something like this*:

W: ‘I’m not one of those people’.
M: ‘One of what people?’

You know, the kind of people who wouldn’t drink coffee at a petrol station at all, let alone on a first date. Ok, so there are principles involved.

M: ‘But it’s not just any coffee, it’s…’ coffee of a very specific brand.
W: Hmmm, but is it organic?
M: Yes, my princess, they have organic options
W: Oooh, you’re a classy guy.

Not that I was dying to try it or anything, but now I’m totally off this brand of coffee. I mean, what. Just, what. How. WHY?!

Folks, please chime in. Is petrol station coffee a turn on for a first date as long as it has an organic option?

The Coco Nails ad is starting to sound pretty good.

*Quoted from memory, not transcribed.

It hasn’t been all that long since Posterous was acquired (well, acuihired) by Twitter and I dealt with the closing of one of my favorite publishing platforms.* So my surprise — and subsequent introspection at my choices — at Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr was not surprising.

Acquisitions are tricky little things. Yahoo themselves, have a huge list of them, and the track record isn’t something to write home about just yet. But over the last few months, I do feel that Marissa Meyer’s moves have been largely positive towards Yahoo’s own spirit. The Tumblr announcement itself came in parallel with the long, long, long awaited major redesign to emancipated child Flickr.

And I will admit the initial signs are good. Unlike Posterous’ announcement which carried the rather dangerous ‘We’ll give you a way to export all your sites’, Yahoo’s announcement contained a very encouraging:

We promise not to screw it up.

Also worth reading is employee #2 Marco Arment’s thoughts on the acquisition and Tumblr as a product. 

I realize the title of this post is a little condescending of the term Yahoo, and probably is not the Yahoo under Meyer. But I also really hope they don’t Yahoo Tumblr.

Why, why do people have signatures that are 3 times the size of their emails. Imagine receiving an email with an ‘Ok’, and how if I’m not the intended recipient of that wonderful OK, I should instantly close the email lest I spontaneously combust into flames where I sit.

I think an email signature containing your name, a valid contact number suffices beautifully. Sure, your position and company with a link work, as does a Skype. Beyond that…

What does having the world’s longest disclaimer and a bunch of images/gifs achieve in an email signature? Particularly a corporate one.

I get the massive disclaimers of how messages are meant only for the recipient back in the days of snail mail and faxes but for email? The only reason why an email would be opened by someone else is if you sent it to the wrong bob, or they were hacked. But good thing you put in a disclaimer, so the hacker knows he shouldn’t read any further.