This is form.

What I enjoy most about working on apple products are the plethora of—well designed and developed—apps to choose from. The majority of these tools are light on the wallet, making them easy to try. Over the years and many apps later, I have aquired my favorites, but I’m always curious of what others prefer.

My current setup is: a 15″ MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB memory and a 320 GB 7200 rpm hard drive. With it I use the apple wireless keyboard, magic mouse and the Wacom Pen & Touch.

I’m pretty picky with my software. I like a clean UI and simplified functionality, less is more people. The apps that I love (and that put money in my pocket) are Photoshop / Illustrator CS4 for creating and editing, LittleSnapper for cataloging screenshots, Quicksilver for getting around, Adobe Bridge for dealing with the file server, Espresso for markup and development, CSSEdit for uh, CSS, I prefer Safari over other browsers for its speed and agility, Things for handling tasks, Cyberduck for SSH and FTP, Backblaze and SuperDuper! for backups and of course NetNewsWire and Tweetie for constant distraction.

On the analog side of things I use the Dot Grid Book for wireframing / planning and Sweet Leaf Tea for hydration.

We have been working non-stop to make this commercial happen. Anyway, you can watch the teaser here.

Once again, Apple has chosen a rather poor name for a new product. The idea of the name makes sense, but the real world perception has proven it a poor choice.

I can’t help but think that surely these brilliant minds-behind some of the most well designed and developed products-saw this coming?

the good

The overall look is nice, as it should be. The screen size is about right, it’s thin, light and seems fast. There is some really nice UI work espically in the iBooks app as well as in iTunes and Mail. I think the inclusion of the portrait and landscape mode was important and the new A4 chip looks promising.

the bad

The use of the flash drive is nice, but 64GB won’t last long. The iPhone(esque) home screen looks weak and undeveloped. And the big ones, no multitasking, locked app store. This means you can’t run two apps at the same time, and your limited to what gets approved by Apple. There is the lack of any USB ports and no camera?

the verdict

I think the idea is nice and hopefully round 2 will bring some improvement, but the iPad is a glorified iPod Touch. If you want to watch movies and play with your favorite iPhone/iPod Touch apps on little bit larger screen then I guess this is it, or you could just fork over another couple hundred bucks and get twice the storage and machine with a MackBook Pro.

Maybe next time Apple…

I’m a huge fan of Typekit and the functional quality that it brings to the web. The foundries that are lining up to get their fonts served is proof enough that even the type designers want their work seen. It’s elevating the quality of web design and pushing standards even further.

Recently one of my personal favorites was add to the list, Jos Buivenga of exljbris Font Foundry. His fonts Museo, Museo Sans and Calluna are available for all your viewing pleasure.

After reading all of the hype and hate and recouping from the move to Austin, I decided to try it for myself. You should first note that I hate wires and I have owned three of the wireless mighty mouse. My initial response: It is much lighter and feels nice in the hand. The momentum scrolling is I think my favorite part—when not using the magic mouse, scrolling seems weird. I also use the hot corners for exposé so the removed buttons make no difference. The verdict: I like it and recommend it.