This is incredible technology. BBC News:

The maglev trains are even faster than Japan's famous bullet trains, which currently travel at about 320km/h (200mph).

The nose of the old bullet trains had to be redesigned to stop sonic booms happening when they exited tunnels. Imagine the design challenges when designing an even faster >300mph train.

Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.

And it’s that process that is the magic.

On the topic of website design, here’s a redesigned Wired. Gorgeous.

Follow these when you’re creating something (pretty much anything) and you’ll be set. My favourite is the fifth.

Speaking of interface design, it’s pretty neat that Canonical (the folks behind Ubuntu) are taking public input on the design of the core applications for Ubuntu for phones:

Canonical is taking community input on what the core applications (e-mail, calendar, clock/alarm, weather, file manager, document viewer, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) should look like.

Designers looking to make a name for themselves certainly have an opportunity here. Check out the gallery for some interesting interface ideas. My two cents? Designers should stay away from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter apps. I wonder how “community input” will go down when Canonical shows Twitter the suggestions for their client. Probably not well.

Louie Mantia rarely vents his thoughts on design in a way other than via twitter. This recent essay of his is a refreshing change. He discusses “The S Word”, visual design and app interfaces. It’s a good read. This struck me:

More importantly, a visually distinctive app such as Game Center, Find My Friends, Podcasts, or iBooks helps you to remember which app you’re in. The colors, textures, and environment paint that picture instantly. (When I look at an Android phone, it’s often hard to remember which app I’m in because most default apps look the same and use the same colors and theme.)

I couldn’t agree more. The most memorable apps tend to be the ones with the most personality. I’m reminded of Dustin Curtis’ recent blog post:

I've settled pretty firmly in the camp of thinking that interfaces should mimic social creatures, that they should have personalities, and that I should be communicating with the interface[.]

Apps which are the most fun to use tend to be opinionated.

Jessica Moon writes a solid and interesting piece for The Industry, in which she reveals some ways to create emotional design elements — parts of websites or apps which make us feel something. Number three is my favourite.

Andrew Cunningham writes a great review of the new 21” iMac over at Ars. To summarise, the new 21” iMac is better than the previous 21” iMac in almost every way. But it’s not all roses:

In a desktop computer, though, the pursuit of thinness at the cost of features makes less sense. The vast majority of the time, it’s going to be sitting on your desk, and users will be interacting with a separate keyboard and mouse, pausing only occasionally to plug something in or adjust the screen’s angle. Giving up desirable features like user-upgradeable RAM just to make a thinner desktop seems like the wrong move, even if it’s one that only IT people and power users will notice or care about.

Marco links to the same Ars review, and adds:

The thinness also made the speakers worse and didn’t leave enough room for a 3.5” (“desktop”-sized) hard drive in the 21.5” model. (The 27” model still uses 3.5” drives.) Even though the gap is narrowing, 3.5” drives are still significantly faster and larger-capacity than 2.5” (“laptop”) drives from the same generation. With 1 TB laptop drives standard and Fusion Drives only available at $1,749 and up, there’s even less of an advantage than usual of choosing the iMac over a MacBook.

Marco notes how the thinness of the computer negatively impacts performance compared to the previous generation: the speakers have poorer bass response (because they’re crammed in a much smaller space) and the spinning hard drives have changed from the regular, desktop-class 3.5” flavour to the slower, laptop-sized 2.5” models. Further, user-upgradeable RAM has disappeared from the 21” iMac.

Apple compromised performance in order to slim down the computer. Was this the right move?

Putting form over function in a desktop computer initially sounds nuts: why would the thinness matter if performance suffers? There’s plenty of space on a desk, and desks don’t complain about weight.

I’d argue that the move, although unfortunate for some users, was the right thing to do. This becomes clearer after examining the 21” iMac’s bigger sibling, the 27” model.

The 27” iMac received the same thinness treatment as the 21” did, but it didn’t suffer the same performance hit: the spinning hard drives in the larger iMac are still 3.5” desktop drives and RAM is user-replaceable. The only hiccups in the new 27” iMac compared to the previous 27” model are the thinner, less bass-intensive speakers. However, speakers are not vital to the actual performance of a computer: they’re merely a nice addition.

Anyone who cares enough about audio equipment to notice the poor bass response in the newer iMac speakers is likely to already have a great set of external speakers. Dedicated speakers have always been significantly better than any integrated computer speakers. This will likely remain the case.

Apple places value in unity within product lines and between product themselves. Anyone who has seen one Apple laptop will almost certainly recognise another. The same goes for all their products: from iOS devices to iMacs.

The 21” iMac and the 27” iMac are almost identical in form: one just houses a larger display. The rest of the product is scaled up or down appropriately. The 21” and 27” iMacs are two peas in a pod.

In order for both iMac sizes to look equally elegant, the space within the iMac’s chassis for components had to be proportionally scaled. The 21” iMac has much less internal component space than the 27” model.

If Apple shipped the same, larger-size hard drives in both iMacs, the 21” model would look disproportionally thick and ugly. It wouldn’t be a unified design: the 21” model would look like the 27” iMac’s ugly sister.

This is a logical reason why the 21” iMac has a laptop-sized hard drive—and quite possibly the reason it doesn’t have user-upgradeable RAM. With much less space to play with, perhaps the RAM couldn’t be positioned in such a way to allow end users to access it. With the reduction of internal fans, from three in last year’s iMac down to just one, compromises in component layout would have had to be made.

The iMac is in a weird transition stage: no Retina display and not yet fully SSD-based¹. The 27” iMac is a more solid machine: faster internals and more storage and RAM options. If you’re considering an iMac, I’d recommend a 27” model, perhaps with some upgrades.

That’s what I’m ordering for myself.

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1: No stock configuration iMac includes all-SSD storage.

Some great thoughts about design from my pal and fellow writer at The Industry, Gannon Burgett:

Design is human. Design is what connects individuals with the items they interact with on a daily basis.

To riff on another Steve Jobs speech; look around you and realise that all the items making up your life were designed by someone, somewhere. There's no reason why you can't design something else which will change everyone's life, too.

Not everyone will get good design. It's too subjective. Taste plays a huge part in understanding when something is truly great.

I find it more important to be sure of your design taste than to be sure of your skills: it's possible to increase your design skills over time, so long as you have a goal. Taste provides the direction to that goal.