The Master Branch

In our last in-person episode, Ash discusses his move to Amsterdam, the practice of app flipping, the ethics of in-app purchases,  the 37signals rename, The GIMP, HAML, and finally, work-life balance.

This time, the gang talks about rate-my-app-dialogues, Adam’s switch to a Nexus 5, and whether or not podcasting should be difficult.

This time, we’re talking about celebrity apps (looking at you, Daring Gruber!), Snapchat’s would-be acquisition, and The Magazine’s Kickstarter project. We follow up by fumbling through womens’ issues in tech – we’d love to hear your thoughts.

With Adam out sick, Tom and Ash talk professionalism and the things we’re not talking about (re: XOXO), Tom says ‘you know’ about a million times, on stretching your comfort zone, Startup Leagues, and estimates.

In this literally action-packed premier double-digit episode of TMB, we dig at Blackberry and their current woes (get it together Thorsten Heins), the difficulty of quote-unquote hardware programming, camera-phones vs. phone-cameras, some new hotness via Layervault, how the creative industry is on fire but it’s still hard to find a job, ‘tiers’ of creative thinking, and how angry Tom is that the web lacks mouthfeel.

Oh hi! This time around, we chat about unplanned obsolescence, pricing your product, job titles, what your second job is and why it’s so important, how to argue with someone when you have a fundamental brain mismatch, give-and-take, and sandboxing.

This time we get in-depth and talk shop about WWDC, iOS 7 and its redesign, and Microsoft’s gaming strategy.

This week we’re discussing Google I/O, the building analogy of operating systems, jetpack timelines, and WWDC predictions. We explore the idea of a purely digital interface – what is a button, after all? Finally, we riff on just how exceptionally bad Apple seems to be at online services.

Let’s talk “No to NoUI“, Ash’s new podcast, the implicit aspects of design, Geoff Teehan’s Medium post, Flipboard’s lack of social login, Amazon Prime in Canada, and the LayerVault DMCA takedown notice (hopefully they don’t take down this podcast).

We start out with an in-depth discussion of App.net’s new freemium model and File API and branch out to a broader conversation about social networks. What does buying software entitle a user to? We segue into to grand debate over the moral imperative software creators have to consider how their creations change society. Finally, Adam waxes sociological on paying for quality.

We kick it off with a discussion about Ubuntu for Phones and gestural-based mobile operating systems. Taking a look at BB10 and Windows 8, we contemplate Apple’s first-mover advantage in the app market. We swing back to Twitter and their dickish API token limits before swerving around to talk about Instagram’s ToS clustermess. We talk about the designer spider sense that some developers never seem to understand. Finally, we end with a discussion about swearing on the Internet and Apple’s plan to move manufacturing back to the US.

We start out with a discussion of the new iPad and go on to skewer Windows 8, and why Microsoft had no other choice. Adam, the only one of us with a cable subscription, details what ails television. We discuss Ash’s new book on Objective-C and then circle back to accessibility of web software and our plans for a Media Empire. Finally, is it in the nature of developers to be mopey and of designers to be optimistic? Or do the two professions simply attract certain kinds of personality?

We start off with some follow-up on Kickstarter, discuss The Magazine, ponder whether Dribbble is really for designers and branch into the idea of online reputation systems. Had you heard of the Porn Moguls’ excitement over Google Glass? Finally, we discuss the differences between how developers and designers get their hearts broken and how you can use it to hack your own psychology.

What’s this? Yes, it’s The Master Branch, a new monthly podcast rising phoenix-like from the ashes of --force. In this episode, we ask the hard questions. How do constraints breed creativity? Will a more creative experience yield a better product? How far can we push this metaphor? Where does Kickstarter fit within an economy based primarily on software? Why is Twitter acting like such a dick? Why are we discussing iPhone 5 rumours after it is announced? Finally, we discuss personal branding online.

In this episode, Ash discusses WWDC; Adam questions the  wisdom of Carl Sagan’s Pioneer Plaque; how future generations will look back at, and judge, the iPhone; dropping iOS 5 support like it’s hot; the furor over the dropped support of older IE versions by jQuery; browsers as appliances; Apple’s effects on Google’s product announcement; logistical problems with turbolifts; and Adam explains sports metaphors.

In the big two-three (with our guest host!) we touch on the Retina Macbook, resolution interpolation, high-DPI steganography, microfiche and atomic resolution, dedicated design tools and physical interfaces, gestural skeuomorphism, keyboards in the sky, the democratization of hardware, and the UI of the SHIELD helicarrier.

What’s up? Well: follow-up on how to improve the App Store, how nerds are atypical users, Tom’s aversion to phone conversations, missed marketing opportunities in release notes, Ash’s new iPhone App and adventures in Photoshop, why money is boring, problems with educating designers and developers, and of course WWDC predictions.

Welcome to the official unofficial Season 2. We talk designing for the most average common denominator, fair trade doorknobs, the opinionated nature of design and software development, Ash’s experiments with Photoshop and problems with users leaving app store reviews.

We discuss some feedback we received about expertise, the idea of purposeful practice, the shame you feel about anything you made 6 months ago, timelessness of design, The Dark Side (of skeuomorphism), how the post-PC era is changing users’ expectations of computers, extending the concept of “the cloud” to a home appliance, levels of abstraction in computing, the Halting Problem, running a small business on the side, and Stealth Startups. Also mentioned: CHUDs.

Oh hi - please, come in. We’re talking about Victorian elegance, why having less user interface doesn’t make designing interfaces easier and how it will affect Metro apps, retiring products, information hoarding, design in the medical industry, implications of poor design of medical assistive devices, LinkedIn’s acquisition of Slideshare, and unconstructive positive comments on the Internet.