The magic is about to happen

Well, I hope so! Lately time has been tight. It's always tight, but the holidays, with kids, and Macworld looming... let's just say my Nike iPod doohickey is very lonely.

But I managed to get a cheap "coming soon" page up on superpixel.com, and I've set a website launch date of January 1. I won't have an app on the store by then, but I'll have enough to be ready for when it hits.

Speaking of hits, I found a couple of great posts today by a few really smart guys talking about iPhone design and how to make great apps. Gruber discusses what makes an iPhone app as good as what Apple, the "gold standard," comes up with. Hockenberry discusses his journey in making a Twitter app for the iPhone, and wind up teaching great design and interaction lessons along the way.

Meanwhile, all of this is a validation of what I've been preaching all along: apps need love. Apps should be magic. I love Gruber's rather obvious analogy of iPhone to 80's-era Macintosh. Innovative tools need love because they are engineered to push the boundaries, and in doing so they push new conventions and practices. Not to mention they are kinda hacked into existence. Just like the Apple II...

Anyway, it's too late to focus on math and logic, so I had to put into writing my superpixel slogan: "magic in every box"

What that means is that on top of great design, logical operation and lean code I want our apps to have a little magic inside. In practice, that means hidden features (and other goodies). There's a lot of great things that come out of putting magic in your applications (our virtual "box"), and in the coming months I'll talk about that. Just gotta get that first app out the door!