Mona Simpson provides, in daring yet delicate prose, the most beautiful and intimate portrait of Steve Jobs we will likely ever see.
This brought up such a wealth of emotion for me I had to pause several times to get through it. It may likely be the same for you.
If you do nothing else today, grab a box of tissues and read this.
There’s an old story that people like telling, untrue as it may be, about writing implements in space.The American space program discovered that normal ink pens didn’t work on missions (no gravity in orbit to pull down the ink), so they spent millions to research and develop a pen that could write upside down. The Russians, the story goes, brought a pack of pencils.
A great lesson. Sometimes, our lizard brain searches for the complex solution all the while ignoring a simple and seemingly obvious one.
A keyboard shortcut of Command-n is applied to each of your favorite mailboxes in sequence, with n being a number starting at 1. You can trigger the shortcut to open the corresponding mailbox (i.e. to select it in the mailboxes list, displaying its contents).
This is a good tip. Also, for those that don’t know, this works in the favorites bar of Safari as well. Been using it for years.
As a young seeker in the ’70s, Jobs didn’t just dabble in Zen, appropriating its elliptical aesthetic as a kind of exotic cologne. He turns out to have been a serious, diligent practitioner who undertook lengthy meditation retreats at Tassajara — the first Zen monastery in America, located at the end of a twisting dirt road in the mountains above Carmel — spending weeks on end “facing the wall,” as Zen students say, to observe the activity of his own mind.
Personally my mind is filled with the complexities this world throws at me all the time. I don’t need to make it even more complicated by having to start searching for what a product does because it is not clear from its name.
Great post by Uri. This should be required reading for anyone who makes anything.
In Safari for iOS 5, just press and hold on the “new tab” plus sign on the right, and you’ll see a menu of your recently closed tabs. Nifty!
This is a really good tip.
What’s it like for a guy who worked at Apple to start making thermostats? A lot like this:
“So what are you working on lately?” a friend asks over lunch.
“I started a new company. We make thermostats.”
They chuckle, take a bite of their salad, “No, seriously. What are you doing?”
“I’m serious. Thermostats.” They put down their fork, look concerned.
That is Tony Fadell, who’s name you may remember as one of leading forces behind the iPod at Apple. Well, he has started a new company and introduced Nest, a smart thermostat that learns your heating a cooling preferences and adjusts accordingly. Plus, it is wi-fi enabled and you can control it with your iPhone. Looks really slick and has the added side benefit of saving you money on your energy bill.
The latest version of Quicksilver has landed, with Lion support, a bevy of new features—including automatic plugin updates—and a tasteful new icon.
Via the Love Quicksilver weblog, which has a rundown of features and fixes.
“Finally!”
According to lore, they have to be invited in. Within the sacred space of your home, they can not harm you. They can not suck one drop of your precious life-giving blood unless you open the door and invite them past your threshold.
If your time, your attention, and your purpose are not the very essence of what life is, then what is? If where you commit your time, attention, and purpose is not sacred space, then why isn’t it? And if those items that seek to take from those things are not vampires, then what are they?
Most importantly, why are you inviting them in?
Watch the special event, filmed live at the Apple campus in Cupertino, California.
This is the video of the special event Apple held in celebration of Steve last Wednesday. This is required watching.
Boy, I’m really filling up your homework list for the week, huh?
Minimal Mac just past 20,000 followers in Tumblr.
What a ride.
Also, a trip.
Thanks to each and every one of you smart, sexy, beautiful, crazy, Mac nerds.
Lao Tzu (translation by Stephen Mitchell. Sourced via mnmal)
Do your work. Step back.
Love this.
Update: This quote actually from Lao Tzu. Stephen Mitchell is doing the translation. Updated attribution to reflect this.Good interface design is as transparent as possible, because I don’t want to have to think about it. I just want to write, or do whatever else I’m doing, and not have to think about whatever I’m doing it on.
The above is why, so far, the entirety of my second book has been written on the iPad (with the exception of one essay that I wrote on the iPhone). This is such a great, quick interview in several respects but, as a writer, it really resonates with me deeply.
