Stephen Wolfram is definitely an amazing guy, but I find his writing so obnoxious. He's like Steve Jobs, but promoting himself, basically. It's really cool what he's done, but there's no discussion of the state of the art, or similar projects. Everything is being done for the first time ever, and it can only be done using Mathematica.
You're entirely right, I was mistaken about the author. It sounds similar to a Stephen Wolfram post though; these guys really, really love Mathematica (understandably), and every post goes to great lengths to explain how they've done something incredibly novel which was only possible because Mathematica is fast and versatile, etc. The end result was really impressive, and I know they got there using Mathematica (in some cases), but I was more interested in the techniques and the approach they took than the particular language they used. All of the puffery and going out of the way to talk about how terse the code was seems excessive.
The blog post is at Wolfram Research's web site. Of course it is going to promote Mathematica, which is actually great software, too.
When you look at a photo essay on Canon or Nikon's website, it promotes the features of their (very good) cameras as well as showcasing excellent photography. Don't dismiss the valuable content that these corporate-sponsored posts give you just because they have an agenda.
I wasn't saying Steve Jobs was self-promotional like Wolfram, but a lot of Apple reveals involved 'incredible, never-before-seen' sorts of language. Language like "as far as I know we're the first people to ever do this" seems like the kind of thing Steve would say about a product; these guys are just applying it to a project they worked on.
If I'm honest, I'm probably just very cynical about any sort of salesmanship.
Probably. People act like apple was the first company to perfect their marketing and message, maybe they were, but it's completely acceptable to me that a company would want to optimize how they present their products.
Most of us are just jealous of how successful they've become, which is also not unexpected. Wolfram, however, could work on sounding a bit more humble in selling himself.
It's a bit pricy compared to your standard $.99 iOS app, but next to a $9.99 ebook it seems pretty reasonable considering the quantity and quality of content and the unique interactive elements. Like other Touch Press releases I think of this as a sort of coffee table book for your iPad.
Clicked the link expecting a $10-20 price. Saw the screenshot, glanced up to the 4.5 star reviews, and bought it. Probably 15 seconds from landing to purchase.
I have bought $10-30 apps in the past (mostly for music production) and have been happy with all of them except one, which I returned for a refund.
It is a meme that movies have all settled on using a blue/teal and orange color palette nowadays, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. There is one prominent movie in the middle which is almost entirely orange and blue, which I believe to be Aladdin[1], but other than that and a couple around it, the color palettes seem pretty similar, although much darker, more saturated and perhaps somewhat choppier. This could be because they are animated films and thus don't need to create contrast with human skin tones, which are somewhere on the orangeish spectrum (according to TVTropes discussion of this phenomenon)[2].
Interesting points you bring up.... I've never consciously noticed a general color palette trend but it is interesting to look at this sample and see how Disney has many similarities across film periods.
I'm definitely keeping an eye open for Blue/Teal/Orange now
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That being said, Stephen Wolfram is surely at least a little pompous...
You guys are also being unfair: this is a good post with lots of useful content.
When you look at a photo essay on Canon or Nikon's website, it promotes the features of their (very good) cameras as well as showcasing excellent photography. Don't dismiss the valuable content that these corporate-sponsored posts give you just because they have an agenda.
If I'm honest, I'm probably just very cynical about any sort of salesmanship.
Most of us are just jealous of how successful they've become, which is also not unexpected. Wolfram, however, could work on sounding a bit more humble in selling himself.
says who?
And it will be an odd thing though when you have a coffee table with an ipad instead of books... I think that's where Surface will come in handy.
I have bought $10-30 apps in the past (mostly for music production) and have been happy with all of them except one, which I returned for a refund.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_...
2: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContras...
I'm definitely keeping an eye open for Blue/Teal/Orange now