MDR 04 discusses interface design.

Although already out for a solid four days, I just got around to listening to the lastest episode of the Mac Developer Roundtable, in which Scotty, Andy Matuschak, Dave Symonds, Dave Nanian, Rich Siegel and Marcus Zarra discuss interfaces and interface design. Some interesting related experiences and opinions are also thrown over the table.

A listening recommendation for any developer. Grab it here, or subscribe to iTunes while you’re at it.

Visualising malware.

Fortunately, not the Mac kind, but these prints for a security company by digital artist Alex Dragulescu are interesting generated visualisations of software that wreaks havoc on Windows systems.

Via Information Aesthetics.

Apple updates Human Interface Guidelines.

It’s nice to see Apple finally updating the canon of Mac inteface design - the HIG, or Human Interface Guidelines - that you can read or download in PDF form here. I particularly liked the revamped section on icons, including a ‘Creating Icons‘ (albeit very basic, gives a good idea of the process of adding realism to icons) and the ‘Designing Toolbar Icons‘ section. A good read either way, as it’s very low on jargon and very high on interesting gotchas.

The Wait is over.

I had a MacWorld countdown on my Mac because of this, but now it can go.

The new Mac Pro. If only the store would go back up - I am getting one of these puppies.

the Xerox equation.

I’m not sure how I missed this, but it’s… unique.

Brand New has a nice writeup, but there’s an equally nice equation to the logotype in the article you simply cannot miss. x + x + x (III) = ?

Cabel and Gedeon on Macthemes.

An interesting interview covering all sorts of topics like customization, icons, and bits about Panic and the Iconfactory on Macthemes. Very nice read, and one of the best articles on Macthemes I read so far.

Skype for Mac 2.7 beta drops the gloss.

In icon-related news, the latest Skype beta, with address book integration and other goodies, has ditched gloss in its (also 512 pixel) icon. A welcome change, in my opinion, although they could have actually made resources for 128 pixels; the downscaled version looks a bit weird.

Get the new beta here.

Jon Hicks redesigns Rissington Podcast website.

And it’s gorgeous.

Via Flickr.

Not particularly amused.

The buzz about Mac-websites being hacked (which didn’t even amount to that much buzz after all) was just yet another staged event by MacHeist. Honestly, I’ve never participated in MacHeist, as their ‘mission to support indie developers’ seems a bit off; it amounts to selling ‘promo bundles’ of which most of the revenue goes to the MH guys themselves. I find hype-machines fun if the end product doens’t turn out to be hot air, and if it actually supports people I like.

Gus has pointed it out before, but this really put the nail in the coffin for me. MacHeist is absolutely dead to me. That really left me with a very foul taste in my mouth. The websites that were ‘hacked’ weren’t in my feed-reader, and I now know why.

Candybar 3.0 released with Dock support and much more.

The revamped icon manager, now the old Pixadex and Candybar-in-one! I helped Cabel and the Panic dudes test this a bit, and it’s truly beyond what I could have imagined in an icon application. It’s simply a must.

Expect a new mystery freeware set in December with a custom dock to make full use of this gorgeous app! You can download the trial and explore its features over at Panic.