First, forget about it unless you are willing to invest significantly and heavily to establish a culture of innovation like Apple’s. Because it’s not just about copying Apple’s approach and procedures. The vast majority of executives who say, “I want to be just like Apple,” have no idea what it really takes to achieve that level of success. What they’re saying is they want to be adored by their customers, they want to launch sexy products that cause the press to fall all over themselves, and they want to experience incredible financial growth. But they generally want to do it on the cheap.

via You Can’t Innovate Like Apple

To never follow a dream because you don’t think you’re good enough or don’t have the skills, or knowledge, or experience is a waste. In fact, these projects where there is doubt are the ones to pursue. They offer the greatest challenge and the greatest rewards. Why bother doing something you already have done a hundred times, where there is nothing left to learn?

via The first step is to start – (37signals).

Customer feature requests are closely tied to Customer Acquisition. Every product should have a clear roadmap and a clear understanding of what the product does and does not do. If your team does not have this in place, you will find yourself in an endless cycle of catering to customer requests instead of building out the roadmap you had outlined. This reminds me of my favorite quote from Henry Ford, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”

via UX Won’t Save You – 52 Weeks of UX.

A few months ago Dmitry Chestnykh, the founder of Coding Robots and copyright holder of Mémoires, discovered that his program – like many others – was being shared via The Pirate Bay. Out of curiosity he decided to download the torrent to find out how it was cracked, and he didn’t like what he saw.

In a passionate “Notice of Ridiculous Activity” the company’s founder decided to notify The Pirate Bay crew about his findings, shocked as he was at the crappy work of the person who cracked his application.

via Pirate Bay Receives Notice To Keep a Torrent | TorrentFreak.

The average respiratory rate for adults is 12-20 breathes per minute, which is the rate that the sleep-indicator light fades in and out on most Apple laptops. Older models such as the Macintosh PowerBook, however, use a blinking LED indicator, with discrete pulses in one-second intervals.

The other day, I noticed that my friend’s Dell laptop had a similar feature but with a shorter fade-in-fade-out period. Its rate was around 40 blinks per second, or the average respiratory rate for adults during strenuous exercise—not very indicative of something in sleep-mode.

via Flood Lite – Apple’s Attention to Detail.

Apple first launches a private API for internal use. The API is iterated until there are no more internal questions. It then goes public. Feedback is critical to further refine the service so it has longevity over the span of several generations.

via A View Into How Apple Develops APIs – ReadWriteCloud.

OpenHatch is a place for developers who want to be involved in open source but don’t know where to start. You can go to the site and search for a way to contribute based on a language you know or a project you like. You can even search for “bite-size bugs,” the bugs that have been tagged by a project as being specifically good for new contributors.

via Ready to be an open source contributor but don’t know where to start?

Your beautiful eyes on the Behance Network.

In short, ownership dampens your happiness and burdens you psychologically. Being able to leave your home and not worry about a pet adds to your happiness. Keeping your housing costs low and not accidentally accumulating stuff allows you to spend time and money on things that matter more. Riding the bus frees you from mechanic’s fees and being worried about “that squeaking sound the car makes when starting up.” And avoiding very nice things allows you to avoid the “good china” problem where you don’t want to use something for fear of damaging it.

When you are young and don’t have a family, the extra freedom you can derive from not owning tons of stuff enables you to go to Europe for 3 weeks on a whim, quit your job and pursue your passion, invest all your energy into learning a skill, or build/strengthen relationships. Surely these things are worth an extra few hundred a month for a few years.

via Be Happier: Rent Everything

Marketing your open source project doesn’t have to be hard, or expensive. It just takes a bit of resourcefulness and passion. Most importantly, be patient. It will take time to build up your developer audience. Keep at it and they will come.

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