I went out drinking with Brent Simmons. Everything after that is kind of a blur.

About a year ago, I happened to be flying in to San Jose on business. As the plane touched down, I did what I always do: take my iPhone out of airplane mode. At some point over eastern California, my friend Alex sent an email to myself and Brent Simmons; he had noticed we were both going to be in the area and suggested we meet up. To be honest, I felt terrible that night. I just wanted to go to my hotel and get some sleep.

I had met Brent once before at Ignite Denver, but only briefly. The opportunity to buy the developer of one of my favorite applications a drink was too good to ignore. So I sucked it up and went out.

It just so happened that Brent was in town for 360|iDev, an event organized by a guy named John Wilker, who I sort of knew in passing and — again, by sheer coincidence — had just become my neighbor. Nobody could have said it better than Wilker himself when he walked up to me outside of the eBay Town Hall that night. “Dave? What the hell are you doing here?”

When Brent and I went out, we were joined by Dan Burcaw and Joe Pezzillo — iPhone developers and friends of Brent’s from, of all places, Denver. Jay and I had just launched Coathangr, the social network for fashion, and I asked Dan how much it would cost us to build an iPhone app for it.

He told me that the conversation couldn’t even start for less than twenty grand, and that we’d be better off doing it ourselves. So we did. And we fell in love with iPhone development. And a year later, Dan’s company acquired us. I guess he was right.

Of course, I’m leaving out an entire year’s worth of blood, sweat, education, experience, and perhaps most importantly, failure. I’ll save those for later posts. So part of it was luck, part of it was the truly awesome iPhone developer community, and a lot of it is owed to my generous and patient mentors. But if I had to trace it back to a single decision that changed everything, it would be going to grab that drink.

The lesson here is that when Brent Simmons invites you out, you say yes.

We’re thrilled.

(Via John Ellenich)

Monospaced fonts were invented to suit the mechanical limitations of the typewriter. They were not invented because anyone liked them. Monospaced fonts are hard to read and they waste space.

Take note: this site is a great template for your company’s style guide.

(Via Daniel Jalkut)

And yeah, it’s been a weird, crazy year. I look at the list of my fellow speakers and I feel both honored and humbled.

KeyGrinder isn’t the most visually attractive app you’ll ever see, but it doesn’t need to be pretty.

As the designer of the app, it would be easy for me to read this the wrong way. While I maintain that the UI is good-looking, Sande is right in that the app isn’t flashy or heavy on the visuals. Not only does it not need to be pretty, a core requirement is that the app not be overwhelming.

Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on my part, but I read his comment as a compliment. I designed KeyGrinder to be simple, easy to use, and most importantly, fast. There is nothing in there to distract the user from the task at hand: generating and using a secure password.

You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the mainstream on that[...]

Yes, users are clamoring for more pen interfaces.

I’ve always been a user advocate; what professionals consider to be “stupid” is really just a demonstration that not everyone knows what you know. If you make a living doing design work, you should be glad that people aren’t, by default, as knowledgeable as you. Their ignorance pays your bills. And don’t blindly assume that you would be good that their job.

That said, some of these are pretty stupid.

(Via Nick Harris)

No, I’m not trying to run Linux on the thing. It runs a perfectly acceptable *NIX operating system already, and in fact has a fantastic GUI (for almost every purpose) and software installation procedure (for almost every case) already. I just want to run my instant messenger /and/ Pages.

Craig Hockenberry offers an alternative philosophy:

What I find most interesting is the inclusion of the iWork applications. I suspect that we’ll all benefit from working in Pages, Numbers and Keynote without the distractions of the web, Twitter or chat. And in the long run, we’ll prefer it.

I think that the extreme focus of a single application is a pleasant side-effect of single-tasking, not an intended feature.

No camera.

This seemed like a strange omission at first glance, but really, what good would the camera be? The point of having a camera on the iPhone was to enable the user to take pictures quickly on-the-go. The iPad isn’t the same kind of device. I’ve heard the rumors about video conferencing, with some even claiming that the tablet would have two cameras, one in the front and one in the back. Assuming that wouldn’t be confusing, expensive, or harmful to industrial design, video conferencing on the iPad would still suck.

When we imagine iChat or other traditional web conferencing solutions, we imagine seeing a video window with the smiling face of a loved one. Now put the camera on a tablet.

I love my friends, but I don’t want to stare up their noses.

The alternative is uncomfortably holding the damned thing in front of you. Nothing about this experience sounds pleasant to me.

I’m reminded of copy/paste on the iPhone. It was considered to be a near-unforgivable sin that it wasn’t included in the first release. Yet the iPhone sold well into the millions without it. When 3.0 was announced, there was a collective cry of “finally” from the technical community, but neglected was the fact that it was — and still is — the single best implementation of copy and paste on a mobile device. Do you think this happened at the last minute? That Apple’s designers and engineers were sitting on their asses playing Trism for two years, then haphazardly stumbled upon a best-of-breed solution completely by accident?

I suspect that Apple had the exact same idea for video conferencing. After all, they did file for a patent on technology that would allow them to place a camera behind the screen of a device. But if a nice-to-have feature doesn’t work perfectly, you throw it away and ship without it.

You made a “product” to compete with their “product,” tastefully arranging your regiment, only to discover that they hadn’t made a product at all – they made a narrative. A statement about how technology should interface with a life.

See also: the associated comic.