“For the next version, please could you stop adding features.” “Why does Photoshop cost as much as a pre-owned small car?” Exactly! Join the whiners.

Via Photoshelter.

The impossibility to disable iPhone auto-correction for text input in unsupported languages is a royal, royal pain. It’s like trying to swear every other word while the Predictive Text Swearing team is hard at work.

Via DF.

Akzo, Saffron and “Bruce”—watch, learn and quit bitching about how hard is your life as a designer.

Via Brand New.

“Apple (AAPL) has eclipsed Google (GOOG) in market value. Apple’s current market cap: $159.37 billion. Google’s: $157.56 billion.” Digital Daily.

Via DF.

“A commercial company’s ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products.” Kontra’s law.

Shame, shame, shame!

“The most significant building of the century so far.” “The second largest office building in the world, second only to the Pentagon.” “It might transform the very landscape of China, and of the West.”

Times reviews CCTV.

Classic masterpieces of photography reenacted with Lego.

Via Oskar.

Orange Romania takes iPhone pre-orders as from this morning for the August 22nd launch.

Relax, there are no strings attached.

How come NYTimes always has some beautiful infographics to show?

Speaking of the un-demonized devil, here’s an ode for the perusal of that “designer end of the espresso coffee market”.

You know how — with the best intentions, sure — friends oppress a caffeinated fella like you and me. Now here’s your riposte for the next time: “Want a drug that could lower your risk of diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and colon cancer? That could lift your mood and treat headaches? That could lower your risk of cavities?”

Coffee is the new health food, baby!

“One of the most influential books I read when I first started marketing was entitled, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by the heralded Jack Trout. […] Law after law seemed to crumble as I explored the reality of the business world, and I came to understand that Trout took a very narrow look at marketing, a shortsighted approach that continues this day.” Russell Fisher.

Read Captain Jack Trout and the Old Guard.

“Do typographers exert some extraordinary control of the pen that laypersons don’t? Does a typographer’s handwriting influence the typefaces they produce?”

Have a look.

House of Cards: an experimental music video shot without cameras.

There are subjects and subjects for films. And then there are the subjects for Oliver Stone films. W. Ain’t too early for this?

“This is Steve Jobs, you think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” Steve Jobs in a telephone call to Joe Nocera. He’s fine, though.

Via DF.

“Open mailbox,” haha! See the movie.

Via DF.

Dan Iavorszky of Laptop Gear announces the availability of Redmaloo (Germany) and Booq (USA) premium products (links in Romanian).

Not too shabby!

“Good designers are a dime a dozen, he said. Coming up with a great design solution is the easy part. The hard part, he said, is getting the client to accept the solution.” Mad Men.

Wondered about the strange illustrations on Adobe’s CS2 Suite packaging? They’re x-rays. Easy. But a plane?!?

Between 12 (tomorrow) and 15 July I’ll be in Cluj Napoca—problem is, I ran out of photo film. Any idea whether I can find some 35mm Fuji Velvia—I really like that film—to buy in Cluj? Thank you.

It’s a good time today to remember Al, Laura Ries and the gems of their wisdom.

The marketing consultants predicted [1, 2, 3, 4] a year ago:

• “The iPhone will do a lot of things but it will do nothing well. And that is why it is destined for failure” and
• “If the iPod is the biggest success of the 21st century then iPhone is likely to be the biggest flop of the 21st century.”

Disqualifying.

Bumbuț uses public transportation.

25 new classic book covers from the past 25 years.

And the wonderful 25books.com Bildschöne Bücher was based on.

Adobe Reader 9 is out and people [1, 2, 3, 4] think it triumphantly sucks.

And, sice we’re here, take a look at UnexpectedlyQuit, a blog of Adobe-related error messages.

Here we go again—only this time it’s a logo for Bucharest.

So—who’s responsible for this one? Who commissioned, approved and paid and who delivered the horror?

Journalists might want to look into this.

“Perhaps, but I don’t know if it has the intestinal fortitude.” Apple’s Avie Tevanian answers to the question whether Microsoft can re-architect Windows from the ground-up.

Via DF.

“Everybody becomes so completely cynical about the election process that voter turnout drops to 2 percent (families and relatives of prospective politicians) until finally the “democratic process” is abandoned in favour of a lottery system. Everything immediately improves.” Brian Eno

See the rest of the list of unthinkable futures.

The dead art of book cover is so not dead: have a look at the winners and shortlist of the 2008 Penguin Design Award.

Via Kottke.

Our chewing gum-collecting guys running around disguised into dust devils on the surface of Mars.

Kit·blog reported about this long ago, people.

I’ll be in Prague for the day — any great spots I should not miss?