How Plane Bae Revealed the Dark Side of Social Media

Actress Rosey Blair and her husband were on a plane recently, and they live tweeted a “love story” between passengers sitting in front of them. It was rife with photos and details to her followers, and many saw it as an invasion of privacy where the people didn’t consent.

Of course, the sexual implication is something [the man is] praised for, while the woman is attacked…There’s another unfortunate dimension to this whole saga that mimics the coercive effect of public marriage proposals: everyone innocently cheers on the romance because it tells a good story, but it places the woman in the invidious position of being the “bad guy” if she says no.

How the App Store Changed our Lives

Leif Johnson writes how the App Store changed his life.

All the recent talk about the App Store’s 10th anniversary makes me wonder if I’d have finished it if I had access to the same apps I now enjoy on my iPhone and my iPad. That sometimes makes the frustrations feels almost fun. Discussions of the App Store’s impact tend to focus on how it gave thousands of small-time developers a good way to make money or how it changed our social lives; we give relatively little attention to how it simplified our routines. I don’t think I’d be the same person I am today without it. Heck, I’ll bet the same could be said about you.

Apple, It's Time to Paint With Your Six Colors

Writing for Macworld, Dan Moren wants Apple products to be colorful again. Apple products like the iPhone and IPad come in metallic colors like silver, gray, and gold, but they aren’t as colorful as the products of old with the six colors of the old Apple logo.

The recent chromatic identity of Apple has clearly been one of simplicity and elegance. From the featureless white room in which Jony Ive seems to give all his product spiels to the non-illuminating Apple logo on the latest notebook computers, the company’s design over the past decade and change has often seemed to treat colors as frivolous and silly. Even that six-color Apple logo, long the distinctive badge of the company, was retired in 1998; for the last 15 years or so, it’s merely been a monochromatic silhouette.