Last Friday night, just a stone’s throw away from where Frank Sinatra and The Rat Pack performed their legendary shows, James Dempsey and the Breakpoints made their Las Vegas debut. The jam featured songs from the upcoming album Backtrace.
Jean MacDonald makes her debut as a Conditional Breakpoint. Photo by Janie Clayton-Hasz
Matt Smollinger joins The Liki Song chorus. Photo by Solomon Klein
Josh Smith playing guitar on Modelin’ Man. Photo by Solomon Klein
James Dempsey, singing songs from the upcoming album Backtrace. Photo by Solomon Klein
Jonathan Penn flew into town to jam with minutes to spare. Photo by Janie Clayton-Hasz
Daniel Steinberg (right) plays slide-advance keyboard, an integral part of every Breakpoint Jam. Photo by @drwave
Coming this fall
This fall will see the first album release of James Dempsey and the Breakpoints and Breakpoint Jams from coast to coast. Sign up for updates to keep up with the fun!
Backtrace — The biggest album release in Cocoa history!
This week brought announcements of new iPhones, Apple Pay, and Apple Watch, as well as the quiet departure of the iPod classic, the last remaining click-wheel product in the iPod lineup. It also brought something that happens much less often than new product announcements—changes to the look and lineup of tabs at the top of the page at apple.com.
We can see a few different things by looking at how these have changed over the last fourteen years.
Click for the full-sized image
First, we see how the user interface has evolved. The tabs begin with the natty pinstripes and bubblicious tabs of the original Aqua interface, appearing on the home page immediately after Aqua was introduced in January 2000. This was the first production use of Aqua elements by Apple—the release of Mac OS X, 10.0 was over a year away. Through the next fourteen years, we see the designs become simpler as the candy look becomes more subtle before disappearing entirely. With the removal of dividing lines between items, the original tabs have finally morphed into a simple menu bar.
This week’s update also ended the reign of Lucida Grande as the font of choice—the honor now belongs to the Apple variant of Myriad.
The content of the tabs shows an interesting progression as well. The Apple logo, Store, and Support tabs are a common thread throughout with Search appearing surprisingly late in the game in 2007. These unchanging outer items are like bookends around the changing world of Apple over time.
For the first seven years, the inner tabs mainly focused on software (QuickTime, Mac OS X, iTunes) and different incarnations of online services (iReview, iCards, iTools which became .Mac). The first hardware to appear on a tab was iPod, but it had to share a tab with iTunes for almost seven years before getting a tab of its own.
With the release of the iPhone in 2007, the tabs became more hardware-centric, with Mac and iPhone getting their own tabs. With the introduction of the iPad in early 2010, the center of the tabs became all hardware lines, with the exception of iTunes (both software and a service).
And, of course, this week Watch joins the lineup. It seems a little odd not to use the full product name Apple Watch or Watch, especially since Watch is both a noun and a verb.
Although the appearance and focus of the tabs have changed over time, it is interesting to note that almost all tabs name something that has been an enduring part of the Apple ecosystem (the exceptions being iReview, iCards, and the Switch campaign). Details may have changed—iTools begat .Mac begat MobileMe begat iCloud, Mac OS X is now OS X—but there are some very consistent through lines. Here’s hoping the Apple Watch is one of those through lines for a long time to come.•
I’ve updated my iOS Device Summary to include the new iPhone 6 models.
Check out the iOS Device Summary page for the rationale behind the summary as well as PDF downloads—including optimized files for printing.
At $199, the 16 GB 5th generation iPod touch is still the most affordable compact iOS 8 device. It allows you to test on the slowest processor supported by iOS 8, with a screen resolution shared by the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, and iPhone 5s. There is, however, no iPod touch that provides a less expensive way of testing the new screen resolutions on a device.
Of the two new iPhone 6 models, the iPhone 6 Plus seems to be the more important device to have on hand for testing, with both a new scale factor and a greater likelihood of providing a modified user interface to take advantage of all that lovely screen real estate. •
Check out the iOS Device Summary page to learn more and download printable PDFs of the summary.
The 2014 Fall Tour kicked off at CocoaConf Columbus with the most eclectic collection of instruments ever assembled for a Breakpoint Jam.
Eric Knapp—the first Conditional Breakpoint to play Chapman Stick. Photo by Solomon Klein
James walks through the crowd singing about Model View Controller Photo by Solomon Klein
Daniel Steinberg, legend of slide-advance keyboard. Photo by Solomon Klein
Eric Knapp solos on the exotic Chapman Stick. Photo by Solomon Klein
It was a night for newcomers to the Breakpoint Jam.
Every breakpoint in the house was conditional except for veteran Breakpoint Daniel Steinberg (@dimsumthinking) of Dim Sum Thinking. Daniel, fresh from the latest revision of his new book, A Swift Kickstart, delivered a fantastic keynote before working his slide-advance magic.
Eric Knapp (@ejknapp) of Madison College introduced the crowd to the Chapman Stick playing a solo song before giving familiar James Dempsey and the Breakpoints songs a new twist.
Have you tried the Breakpoint Jam?
CocoaConf mainstay Will LaFrance (@wjlafrance) made his debut as a Conditional Breakpoint on classical guitar.
Reprising his initial performance in Washington DC last March, Mark Dalrymple (@borkware) of Big Nerd Ranch showcased his talents on trombone on Modelin’ Man and vocals on The Liki Song.
Josh Smith (@kognate), co-author of the recently-released Build iOS Games with SpriteKit, arrived at the conference in the midst of transporting a xylophone across state lines, giving Josh a chance to join in the jam as well.
Thanks to everyone in Columbus, we had a great time and hope you did as well!
The Fall Tour continues in at CocoaConf Las Vegas in September, where James Dempsey and the Breakpoints will make their Vegas debut! •
Taking the stage for the first time as Conditional Breakpoints were Jean MacDonald (@macgenie) founder at App Camp for Girls, on guitar for Goto Fail; and Matt Smollinger (@mattsmollinger) of Skaffl on backing vocals for The Liki Song. Josh Smith (@kognate) of AllTrails made a switch from blues xylophone last month to guitar. Adding to the excitement, Jonathan Penn (@jonathanpenn), recent hire at everyone’s favorite fruit factory, flew in just in time to don his trademark sunglasses, tune up and jam. Finally, Daniel Steinberg (@dimsumthinking) of Dim Sum Thinking delivered his excellent keynote before jumping in on slide-advance keyboard.
