Tony Fadell explains what, in part, made Steve Jobs so good at finding the right solution to a problem:

At the time, Fadell simply said “Steve had a way of scoping the problem bigger. He could just look at a problem and find the solution by thinking larger.”

Sometimes, obstacles we run into while designing something are because we have our eyes so close to the ground, the detail blinds us to a larger truth. It’s useful all of the time, but especially when you can’t seem to figure out a design issue, to consider the greater intent of what you’re designing. What is it meant to do for the user? What is it ultimately doing for them? Answering that question, and thinking through the design problem within that context, often will make the answer immediately obvious.

Matt Gemmell:

Design an experience. Make it as beautiful – and as emotionally resonant – as it can possibly be. Then adorn the core experience and content with only as much functionality as is absolutely necessary. Functionality – and software-based thinking in general – is like seasoning. A little is an enhancement; any more destroys the flavour, subsumes the artistry of the chef, and may well be bad for you.

The meteorite which killed the dinosaurs may have seeded the solar system—and even Gliese 581—with life-bearing earth material:

But perhaps most surprising is the amount that makes its way across interstellar space. Last year, we looked at calculations suggesting that more Earth ejecta must end up in interstellar space than all the other planets combined.

Hara and co go further and estimate how much ought to have made its way to Gliese 581, a red dwarf some 20 light years from here that is thought to have a super-Earth orbiting at the edge of the habitable zone.

They say about a thousand Earth-rocks from this event would have made the trip, taking about a million years to reach their destination.

The study concludes that Jupiter’s moon Europa would have picked up nearly as much as our own Moon, because Jupiter’s gravity sucks in so much material passing by.

Incredible to think about.

Fascinating look at the job Yellowstone’s bear management team does. Their job is both to protect the grizzly bear population from being wiped out, and to protect humans in the park from attack, too. Here’s an excerpt:

Finally they located the source of the delicious smell—a wheeled, 10-foot-long aluminum tunnel, open on one end, that had been deposited near the river just south of a campground. The mother bear stuck her snout in the tunnel and then climbed in toward the meat. It was roadkill, probably elk or bison. When she touched the bait, a trapdoor dropped behind her.

She spent a long, desperate evening in that trap. Her two cubs stayed close by, but she could only watch them and smell their scent through the ventilation holes at the front and back ends of the tube. At first she might have been agitated, clawing against the smooth metal insides of the trap. But as the hours slipped by, she may have settled into her prison, resigned to her fate.

I absolutely recommend reading it. We enjoy the wilderness because it is wild, and yet we try to prevent that very danger from ever hurting us.

(Via Richard Dunlop-Walters.)

Earlier this year, Instagram’s co-founder Kevin Systrom talked with Kevin Rose and explained their vision for the future of the service. Chris Tackett provided a transcript of it for the Atlantic. Systrom said:

I think you alluded to it earlier when you said you could explore the world. Imagine a service that collects all of the visual data that gets produced all around the world so you can tune in to anyplace on earth to see exactly what’s happening, whether that is a friend’s birthday party that you’re missing or a wedding happening that you didn’t go to or a riot breaking out overseas. Or something as personal as a baby’s first steps. 

These are all moments that are happening around the world and that we capture with our cameras, right, and that is visual  media that before was sitting on someone’s camera or phone and just sitting there. What happens in the world when you take all that data and combine it in a network?

It’s a great, exciting idea, something I hope we’ll still see from Instagram. But it should be obvious while that’s also exciting for Facebook, but for different reasons.

It’s absolutely worth watching the full discussion between Systrom and Rose, too. He talks a lot about what led to founding Instagram, the design decisions they made, and the mistakes they made, too. Fascinating discussion.

Kenneth Chamberlain, a 68 year-old man in New York, was killed in his home by police after his life-alert pendant was accidentally triggered while he slept during the night and the police were alerted. They reported to his apartment and, despite him yelling that he was okay and for them to go away, they broke down his door. The police claim that Chamberlain was holding a knife and advanced toward them, so they fired a taser and beanbag at him, neither of which stopped him. So they killed him.

His autopsy, though, seems to contradict those claims:

Cops say Chamberlain, 68, was advancing toward police with a butcher knife on Nov. 19 when White Plains Police Officer Anthony Carelli fired two shots to stop him.

Randolph McLaughlin, attorney for Chamberlain’s family, said the trajectory of the fatal bullet suggests Chamberlain was neither facing the police nor holding up a weapon.

Even if this isn’t the case, there never should have been a confrontation. Chamberlain’s pendant was accidentally triggered, he told them he was fine, and that should have been it—but the police insisted he open the door. Why? What purpose did that serve? What reason did they have?

The life-alert company even attempted to cancel the call for assistance, which was rejected.

The police claim they heard loud noises inside and insisted he open the door to verify everyone was OK.

Chamberlain, it should be noted, was a black man who had served in the Marines. This should be noted because of the police’s overreaction (a very kind characterization), and because audio of the entire standoff was recorded by the life-alert company’s box inside his apartment. And because one officer is heard on the tape saying “I don’t give a fuck, nigger, open the door!”

Video from a camera mounted in the hallway shows that after the police began to pry the door open, a metal object was slipped through the gap in the door and fell to the ground. Chamberlain’s son, who saw the video, says it is not clear what it is, but that it may be the knife the police claim Chamberlain had.

It may be a knife. Chamberlain may have come after them with a knife, too, after they forcibly entered his apartment and shot him with a taser, as the police claim. Analysis of the autopsy may be incorrect and the police’s account may be true.

But what’s also true is the police created a confrontation where there needn’t be one. They were there for his safety, and yet, they insisted on entering his home even after he told them he was OK. Who wouldn’t be agitated after being roused from bed by police at 5 AM, and then police with guns drawn? Who wouldn’t be scared?

And as a result, Chamberlain was shot to death. A 68 year-old man with a heart condition, a veteran and a father, was killed in his own home by the people who were supposed to be there for his protection.

I love Byword, and I’ve begun using it to write TightWind. In fact, last week’s article “Design For Purpose” was written entirely in Byword on the iPad. Byword is the perfect application for me to write in because it never feels like it’s in my way—there’s just me and my text, and that’s consistent across OS X and iOS. I can write a draft on my iPad and edit it on my Mac without emailing it to myself or dealing with two very different experiences on different devices. It’s just there, ready to go. If writing is important to you, you should absolutely give it a try, especially since the iOS version is only $2.99 right now.

Byword is a Mac and iOS app for modern writers.

Modern writers don’t just sit at a desk and write. Sometimes it’s great to be able to write, edit or proofread when and where inspiration strikes and not be restrained by a single device or location. Byword makes this kind of workflow easy by integrating iCloud and Dropbox synchronization.

The flexibility of Byword: An article idea came to your mind last night on the couch and you began working on it on your iPad. This morning, at the office, you picked up where you left off by opening Byword on you MacBook Air — and find the article was there just as you left it on the iPad. After lunch, on your way to the coffee shop, you pull out your iPhone to proofread and finish the draft.

Byword is available on the Mac App Store for $9.99, and for iOS on the App Store at the introductory price of $2.99. Check it out.

Andy Ihnatko explains why Instagram is worth $1 billion to Facebook:

That’s what the people want. Facebook could have kept trying to figure out how to make mobile photo sharing frictionless, fun, and engaging…or they could have simply bought a company that figured it out two years ago. As Steve Jobs used to put it when demonstrating a simple and effective answer: “Boom. Done.”

And it eliminates one of their most threatening competitors.

That all makes sense. Facebook now has a very good way of posting photos, something they never had before, and eliminated a competitor. What’s going to be difficult, though, is how you handle two networks. Mark Zuckerberg and Kevin Systrom have said that Instagram will remain an independent network, but is that really going to be their plan long-term? To manage and develop two services, with separate user accounts and followers?

Probably not. Perhaps the solution is to allow users to use their Facebook account for Instagram, and eventually Instagram-only accounts will decline as a percentage of total users until they are irrelevant. But at that point, keeping “Instagram” as a separate brand and service will be confusing for users and dilute its usefulness for Facebook users and impact for Facebook.

Jason Snell:

If Apple’s going to embrace the cloud wherever possible, it needs to change iTunes too. The program should be simpler. It might be better off being split into separate apps, one devoted to device syncing, one devoted to media playback.

Fixing app syncing alone would go a long way. I can’t always figure out what iTunes is going to do, and if I can’t figure it out, regular users certainly can’t.

Apple’s goals should be to make “syncing” with a computer as superfluous as possible.

Jonah Lehrer:

The constant need for insights has shaped the creative process. In fact, these radical breakthroughs are so valuable that we’ve invented traditions and rituals that increase the probability of an epiphany, making us more likely to hear those remote associations coming from the right hemisphere. Just look at poets, who often rely on literary forms with strict requirements, such as haikus and sonnets. At first glance, this writing method makes little sense, since the creative act then becomes much more difficult. Instead of composing freely, poets frustrate themselves with structural constraints. Unless poets are stumped by the form, unless they are forced to look beyond the obvious associations, they’ll never invent an original line. They’ll be stuck with clichés and conventions, with predictable adjectives and boring verbs. And this is why poetic forms are so important. When a poet needs to find a rhyming word with exactly three syllables or an adjective that fits the iambic scheme, he ends up uncovering all sorts of unexpected connections; the difficulty of the task accelerates the insight process.

Anyone who’s done any sort of creative work knows that constraints on the work are very, very useful. Lehrer argues it’s at least partly due to the structure of our brain.

(Via Chris Martucci.)

Facebook acquired Instagram today. Mark Zuckerberg explains why:

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

The price is $1 billion dollars in cash and stock. Let that sink in for a second.

Both Zuckerberg and Instagram say that Instagram will remain independent.

I don’t begrudge Instagram’s founders for selling their company. There’s nothing inherently wrong with acquiring businesses or selling one. What I think this shows, though, is what Silicon Valley’s venture capital-fueled motto—”build now, get big, and figure out how to make money later”—does to companies. It ends up meaning that getting acquired is the only viable means of continuing the business, or ending it. It means that the business isn’t long for this world.

Perhaps Instagram will remain more or less the same in the future. I don’t know. But what’s sad is that a company that created the best way to share photos, a unique network where what people are doing is communicated entirely through photos, and has 30 million very loyal and very active customers, couldn’t figure out a way to make enough money to sustain the business and grow it into what they wanted it to be.

Thanks to the One More Thing iOS Conference for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed. Look at that line-up—if you’re interested at all in iOS development and can attend, this conference looks spectacular.

Interested in the design, development and business of iOS apps? At One More Thing, our goal is to get developers confident, psyched, and ready to move from dreaming of making apps to just doing it. Learn from awesome developers & designers such as:

• Loren Brichter (Tweetie/ex-Twitter)
• Neven Mrgan (designer at Panic)
• Karl von Randow (lead developer on Camera+)
• Raphael Schaad (engineer at Flipboard)
• Matt Rix (Trainyard)
• Shaun Inman (Last Rocket)

and many more…

They’ll be in Melbourne, Australia on the 25th & 26th of May, 2012. Register before April 12th for discounted early-bird pricing.

President Obama called Paul Ryan’s budget plan “thinly veiled social darwinism”:

“Disguised as deficit-reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism. It’s antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it — a place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training; research and development — it’s a prescription for decline.”

Marc Eisner comments:

Ryan hopes to achieve federal spending reductions to 20 percent GDP by 2015. By way of comparison, average spending during the George W. Bush presidency was 19.6 percent GDP. During the Clinton presidency, average spending was 19.8 percent GDP.

If Ryan’s goal of reducing government spending to 20 percent GDP is radical, the empirical record seems to argue otherwise.

Wow, I never thought that President Obama would lay down the gauntlet and call President Clinton’s policies social darwinism. You have to admire his willingness to call a spade a spade, even when it’s one of his party’s greatest heroes. Bravo.

President Obama believes it would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to overturn his healthcare reform:

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.  Well, this is a good example.  And I’m pretty confident that this – this court will recognize that and not take that step.

One of the Constitution’s central purposes is to make sure that a majority of citizens, acting through their “democratically elected Congress,” cannot trample over people’s rights. The purpose is to restrain both the government from intrusive actions and to prevent a majority of citizens from using government to do so.

Being passed by a majority in Congress does not make a law sacrosanct.¹ Democracy—rule by the majority—is not an ideal or end. It is a means of achieving a goal, which is a more just government and society, one that protects the people’s rights. It’s absurd to argue that the Supreme Court should let a law stand that violates the Constitution because Congress voted for it or even that a majority of citizens support it.

The “unelected group of people” ad hominem is troubling, too. Obama knows well that the Supreme Court justices are not subject to elections and term limits for good reason: to separate them from the political passions of the day and to allow them to make cool, informed decisions. You could argue that the current court is heavily partisan and so this safeguard has been short-circuited. I disagree, but that’s a different argument, and it’s not the argument the president is making. If we take Obama at his word—that he finds it troubling that an “unelected group of people” can overturn a law passed by a majority of Congress, then he’s arguing the Supreme Court should be subject to elections. He’s arguing that an arrangement that’s functioned remarkably well since the beginning of the country should be overturned and replaced, because—because why? Because his healthcare reform may be overturned? Because suddenly it’s unacceptable for the Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by majorities in the legislative branch?

I don’t think that’s what he’s arguing, though. I think he decided to take a cheap-shot at the Supreme Court as a part of the opening shots of his campaign. And that—that he is making the Supreme Court a target for his campaign—may be a worrying foreshadow of what we’ll see during the summer and fall.

1. If that were the case, I’m curious why the administration would seek to eliminate Bush’s tax cuts. After all, they were passed by a majority of Congress. [↩]

Interesting new iOS app called Pop for iOS from Colin McFarland and Patrick Rhone. Here’s the idea:

A place to capture and idea as quickly as possible and worry about what to do with it later.

I bought it, and for 99¢, there shouldn’t be any hesitation. It isn’t going to be the most beautiful app on your iPhone. It isn’t going to blow your friends away because it’s so advanced. It’s not going to make your work better.

But here’s what it does: it launches fast so you can get your thought down immediately. No need to move through an interface, create a new document and think of a title. Just launch and start typing.

I love that. Currently, that’s all it does. You write in Pop, copy the text and put it somewhere else. I’m glad that’s all it does for now, though, because it works very well for its intended purpose, and now they can deliberately think through its future.

I’m not sure where they’re planning on taking it, but one place I could see this going is a sort of quick-entry for SimpleNote: you launch Pop, get your idea down, and then when you have time, you can send it to SimpleNote. Or perhaps it uses SimpleNote’s API and does so silently in the background, all on its own.