La classe non è Aqua

320px-Macosxpb.png

13 anni fa Mac OS X Public Beta: cursori caramellosi e strisce di sfondo ci fecero prima stupire poi stufare. Con l’evoluzione di OS X l’interfaccia migliorò moltissimo. Oggi le nuove icone piatte di IOS 7 fanno lo stesso effetto e promettono un futuro analogo.

Il punto di vista di uno sviluppatore. Via DF.

But with major user interface changes such as Aqua or iOS 7, Apple has another tendency: they overshoot the mark. Their incremental approach then becomes one where unnecessary items are removed (such as Aqua’s stripes) or improved (excessive shadows and transparency are toned down.)

There’s a good reason for this: it’s much easier to take away elements from a design than it is to add them. Simplicity is achieved by removing that which is not really needed.

One parallel with iOS 7 and Aqua that I don’t expect to see: an evolution that takes over a decade. There are a couple of reasons for this.

(Via furbo.org · Been There, Done That.)

Gli uomini sono tra noi

life.gif

This tree is from an analysis of small subunit rRNA sequences sampled
from about 3,000 species from throughout the Tree of Life. The species were chosen based
on their availability, but we attempted to include most of the major groups, sampled
very roughly in proportion to the number of known species in each group (although many
groups remain over- or under-represented). The number of species
represented is approximately the square-root of the number of species thought to exist on Earth
(i.e., three thousand out of an estimated nine million species), or about 0.18% of the 1.7 million
species that have been formally described and named. (Tree of Life pdf, 368 KB)

(via David M. Hillis, Derrick Zwickl, and Robin Gutell, University of Texas),

Grazie a Massimo Morelli che legge il New York Times:

If biologists do ever succeed in drawing the tree of life, it will look profoundly different from Darwin’s sketch. Lineages do branch as they evolve, but sometimes the branches join back together. […] When biologists draw the relationships of some groups of plant species, their pictures look more like webs than trees.

In other cases, genes don’t have to wait for two species to come together — they simply leap from one branch of life to another.

[…]

“Each gene has its own evolution. It’s not inherited from mother to daughter; it’s inherited from a neighbor,” said Peer Bork of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

(via Scientists Crunch Data to Build an Evolutionary Tree of Life – NYTimes.com)

Vedi anche: Homo homini loop.

%d bloggers like this: