Dave Rupert wrote:

Lots has happened in the world of Responsive Images since I wrote Mo’ Pixels, Mo’ Problems. And by lots, I mean nothing at all.

Yep. I think the W3C folks are trying to make everyone happy, but this can’t happen due to the complicated nature of images on the web. There needs to be some solution, and Tim Kadlec’s recent article hints at why:

What is staggering is just how massive the savings could be if these sites served appropriately sized images. At 360px wide, these 402 sites combine to serve 171.62MB of unnecessary weight to their visitors . That’s a whopping 72.2% of image weight that could be ditched by using a responsive image technique.

Pretty ridiculous. If the internet is for readers first, then something must be done to improve their experience.

Merlin Mann, on Episode 117 of Back to Work (around 1:22:05):

…[S]ometimes I will go downtown…I’ll shut [my iPhone] all the way down sometimes, put my headphones in my backpack not my pocket…buy a notebook and a new pen…and I will go somewhere that I have never been before and I’ll sit down and work on the thing that I wanted to work on. And now there is, literally, no excuse in the entire world for me to not be able to do something.

If you can’t figure out what creative thing to do with the most basic tools of your trade you should not be in that trade and you don’t deserve the tools.

The ever articulate Noah Stokes was recently on The Gently Mad Podcast:

When Rdio first came out I didn’t use it that much because it’s like “People are gonna see that I’m playing Britney Spears.” And then some switch just clicked and I was like, “You know what? Futon that. I’m just gonna…be loud and proud.”

Yep. Futon that.

Ben Brooks recently wrote:

What I want is the iOS equivalent of a CMS: Massive power and expandability presented through a simplified, easy to understand interface.

Okay. Mr. Brooks listed off 20 features and concludes:

This should, and can, be easy to do — so where is it?

Here’s the thing about writing a CMS: it’s not easy. In a recent article about Microsoft’s Surface, John Gruber wrote:

The truth is, all design is about compromise.

This is all too apt to writing software. As with anything design – and writing software is Design – there’s always compromise. There’s always a tradeoff between ease-of-use and complexity, features and project duration, etc.

Apple’s iOS is a perfect example of this: it’s relatively easy to use, but it’s limited in what it allows users to do. You can’t always have all the features; you have to decide which compromises you’re okay with.