Subjective-C: Studying Beautiful Design →

Thanks to ProductHunt.co I've been made aware of a site that embodies the passion for incredible design. Subjective-C, a wonderful word play on the software language that iOS apps are written in -- Objective-C, is a site that finds little details of apps where the designers spent a tremendous amount of time to perfect a small detail.

These types of details enhance the user experience, though many people will never even explicitly notice them. The site is new, but hopefully will grow quickly. There are many apps that deserve the recognition and designers/developers that deserve the recognition for the time and passion they spent sweating the details.

I highly recommend taking a look at Subjective-C by Sam Page.

Some Things Cannot Be Faked (Hint: Samsung)

Samsung isn't exactly know for their design prowess or their honesty. They've been caught paying people to leave fake negative reviews on competitor's products, they've been caught rigging their devices to perform better on benchmarks than they do in real life, and they've been caught stealing design cues from Apple (though rarely nicely implemented).

Side note: everyone in tech steals things from everyone else. There are a limited number of layouts, gestures, and features. There will be overlap. Don't read into that one too much, I couldn't resist posting a link to that Tumblr page.

What does this all add up to? The first thing that comes to mind is desperation. It is a shame, they're doing some decent things. Their phones are selling in record numbers and they're the only Android device maker that's actually making any money. Then they go and do things like fake leather with fake stitching on their products and paying a boat load of money for celebrity endorsements who promptly return to their iPhones when the camera turns off.

Loyalty cannot be faked; it can be purchased in the short term, but it won't last. The simplest description I can come up with is that this is the difference between being passionate about products and being passionate about your reputation at all costs. They'll keep doing these things until the market votes for a company that doesn't, for example by buying a Moto X instead of an S5.