Spotify Brings Back the Tab Bar on iOS →

Federico Viticci:

The good news today is that the classic tab bar is back in style at Spotify. Starting today, the company is rolling out a redesigned navigation experience on the iPhone (pictured above) with five tabs across the bottom – Home, Browse, Radio, Library, and Search in the middle.

This is a huge UI upgrade. I'm not as anti-hamburger as some folks, and I think that there are situations where it is the right high level navigation choice. But Spotify absolutely needs a tab bar.

In Praise of Swift →

Glad to see that Brent Simmons is getting on the Swift bandwagon:

I’m at the point where I get bugged if I have to write Objective-C code.

...

Writing Swift code feels like driving a hot rod. Sometimes it feels like driving a hot rod into a brick wall. But still: it’s a goddamn hot rod.

Objective-C was (is) great. Swift is greatER. I write both languages almost every day, and I greatly prefer Swift. As Brent points out, sometimes it feels like you get the rugged pulled out from under you, but on the whole writing in Swift feels fantastic and efficient.

Apple Marketing Chief Phil Schiller: 'Never Pluralize Apple Product Names' →

Apple executive Phil Schiller gave Apple users a grammar lesson on Twitter yesterday afternoon, explaining that it isn't necessary to pluralize Apple product names. 

Schiller's instructions came after a discussion on pluralizing "iPad Pro" between Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans and iMore analyst Michael Gartenberg. Evans referred to more than one iPad Pro as "iPads Pro," while Gartenberg said "iPad Pros." 

Schiller clarified that neither approach was correct. The proper way to refer to more than one iPad Pro is to call them "iPad Pro devices." 

Phil is usually such a smart guy, I have to wonder where this is coming from. It sounds so awkward that Phil himself didn't follow this rule in a tweet he posted less than a month ago. 

iPads. iPad Pros. iPad Airs. iPhones. Macbooks. Macbook Pros. Easy peasy.

Top Four #13: Bagel Flavors →

I didn't realize that bagels were so contentious. In my opinion, if you can buy a bagel in a certain flavor, it's a flavor. If you'd like to pass value judgements on whether or not that flavor is canonical, then that's up to you.

My list:

  1. Asiago Cheese
  2. Everything
  3. Jalapeno Cheddar
  4. Blueberry

The Average Webpage Is Now the Size of the Original Doom →

Wired:

Today the average webpage is about the same size, data-wise, as the classic computer game Doom, according to software engineer Ronan Cremin.

A compressed copy of the installer for the shareware version of Doom takes up about 2.39MB of space. Today’s average webpage, meanwhile, requires users to download about 2.3MB worth of data, according to HTTP Archive, a site that tracks website performance and the technologies they use.

Over the years, networks have increased in speed, computers have increased in performance, and web pages have ballooned in size to use these available resources. Like when meetings expand to fill the time allotted to them. Parkinson's Law and whatnot.

In a nutshell, this is why I'm happy that Apple isn't just "fixing" the "16 GB iPhone problem" by offering 32 GB iPhones in their base models. It would be an easy "solution" to the perceived "problem," but only temporarily. 20 years from now, we'd still feel these constraints, just with 10x the storage space.

The better solution is to step back and evaluate why 16 GB feels so constrained on a smartphone, and try to more efficiently use the available storage space. Even if it results in a whole lot of complaining from some your customers. The result is that we now have smaller OS update sizes, app thinning, and on demand resources. I wouldn't be surprised to see additional space-saving advancements announced at WWDC this year.

Fall in Love with a Problem, Not a Product →

Excellent advice for software developers, even if you're not looking to lure investors:

...it all comes down to motivation. What investors want is someone whose animating purpose is to solve a particular problem (especially one that people don’t realize yet that they even have!) or fix something they think is broken. The product is just a means to that end, not an end in itself. To put it another way, you want someone who is more in love with fixing a problem than with the product itself.

Telegraph Cars Reviews the Tesla Model S P90D →

No real new information here, but Telegraph is one of my favorite car review channels, and the Model S is one of my favorite cars. The two go together like chocolate and peanut butter.