I'll always wonder what the balance was between him being dishonest for the purpose of getting elected, and his views actually having shifted once he got into office and learned about how it all actually works (like how entrenched the surveillance program is, the limits of the president's power, etc.)
Apple had certainly gone too far in some cases (the Podcasts app is my personal favorite with a reel-to-reel acting as UI), but many apps were finally striking a good balance. The Google Search iOS app, for example, uses dimension and light beautifully to represent what's part of the chrome, what's active, what's tappable, etc. Facebook is also finding a decent rhythm.
I was hoping this would be an announcement about self-hosting, but alas... That's still the barrier-to-entry for the company I work for; can't use any "cloud" products. JIRA is just so painfully bloated.
An over-reliance on a hover state leaves tablet users in the dust, though. I see no reason for completely flat buttons, as it's eminently possible to design ones with subtle depth that play well within the bounds of "distinctly digital". The principle that your users need to touch everything in order to learn their boundaries is a dangerous gamble, and may very well be leaving conversions on the table due to risk-aversion.
The new Blackberry OS is like this with gestures. Sure, you can spend 20 minutes moving your finger(s) in every way imaginable to learn how to use it because there's no chrome (or hardware buttons), but it certainly doesn't instill confidence on the first use. Instead, it presents itself as a challenge: "learn how to use me, I dare you."
If I didn't have to answer email or deal with any middle management, this could work. But the paradox is that the only scenario in which legitimate optimal efficiency can be attained is in a small-group, highly-communicative environment (like a startup); in that kind of environment, you're putting in 80-hour weeks so you can get profitable as quickly as possible, so there's no way anyone is saying "I've put in my 25 hours, see you guys next week!"
How many months ago was it that Fox was calling Teachers overpaid, lazy, and incompetent? Definitely within the past year, right? Yet now it makes perfect sense to arm those same incompetent slackers who co-parent their children for the school year? This level of hypocrisy and short-sightedness hurts my brain.
In gaming terms, this amounts to an egregious level of power-creep; the crutch of overwhelmed and inexperienced game balancers.
I didn't read it as such, but can understand how it could have come off that way. The author seemed to be speaking with enough generality that each example was just a pit stop along the much broader thread of the post.
Interesting that they would make such a sweeping change to just add this "Character picker" functionality. Reading that description on the Apple site, I never thought it would mean anything for the non-accented characters. So - KINDA ninja, right? :-)