Saddened to hear the news about Steve Jobs today, but inspired all over again by his wise words. Rather than a load of overblown sentimentality or sub-par FastCompany-esque analysis, here are three of my favourite clips of Steve’s amazing thoughtful clarity.

What an inspiration. Rest in peace Steve…

Title image via Jonathan Mak, clever bugger.

I absolutely love Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I must have watched it hundreds of times over the years, so I’m amazed I didn’t spot this iPad similarity in one of the scenes. I guess as it’s such a sci-fi staple device, I wasn’t really looking to make the connection. But someone was.

That someone is Samsung, who are currently in a court battle with Apple over the design of their respective tablet computers, and are citing 2001′s ‘iPad’ as an example of ‘prior art’, basically a way of invalidating Apple’s patent on it. Wow, they must be desperate…

Of course 2001 also shows us all sorts of glimpses into the future, some of which have appeared (10 years late mind you) such as video calling, and the imaginatively titled TV channel BBC12, which presumably means BBC Four will be saved after all. Although if that food they’re eating ever makes it to the supermarket shelves I’ll probably pass.

And of course, as every Apple and design geek knows, old Jonathan Ive has always found a lot of his inspiration in the sixties, so this is nothing new…

…so let’s all be friends shall we? I’m putting the whole thing down as simply another example of Stanley Kubrick’s genius, which is not in dispute.

Spotted via @MatDolphin

If you’re curious about how websites work, you’ve ever selected ‘view source’ to see the guts of the HTML, or you have wondered about the ominous ‘back-end’, then wonder no longer. Back of a webpage reveals the inner workings of your favourite websites and gives new meaning to pressing the browser’s ‘back’ button.

The photographic paper detail on the Flickr one is genius. Send you own submissions to backofawebpage@gmail.com Found via davidthedesigner – Made me smile too…

As it is now after noon, I can reveal this to be an April Fool.

Shame.

Well they say the iPad is the future of publishing, so it was only a matter of time before it colonised the past too. John Bonadies’s new project on Kickstarter aims to purchase a shedload of lovely old letterpress type to be digitised, and allow iPad users to make their own virtual letterpress compositions.

These can be used to generate images on the iPad itself for emailing and such, but the really interesting part is that it sounds like the system might eventually let you order an actual letterpress print of your design, and it is planned to hit other platforms such as the Mac soon afterwards.

They’ve got 25% of their $15,000 funding as I write this, and you can join in for as little as $1. Buying a guy on the internet a lovely letterpress collection is a bit like giving somebody else a load of money to go to Disneyland and send you the pictures, but they seem to have some nice open plans for sharing the type as a resource in the future, which hopefully means everyone will see some benefit.

Still, if I could persuade the internet to buy me a DeLorean that would be fantastic.

Letterpress is so specialist now that it has moved beyond the reach of most people who might be casually interested, or only modestly financed, so this is a nice way to open it up a bit. It could also be a great educational tool to teach classes about the history of type and let them get their virtual hands inky.

Head over to Kickstarter and donate some capital. Capital, geddit?

I was asked to talk about significant brand this week at work. I chose Apple.

Yes, I know, I know, it’s all painfully predictable. But it’s only a predictable choice because it’s an obvious example, and it’s only obvious because it’s true. I showed the above clip which I stumbled across online. It’s Steve Jobs explaining what Apple is about. And in just over one minute, he renders flip charts and cryptic diagrams useless. Get ready to squirm if ‘dynamic’ is one of your brand values.

A little bit of me dies inside every time I see Apple used on a mood board or held up in a branding meeting, not because I don’t love it, but because it’s become a lazy cop out for people who aren’t thinking hard enough. I actually think a lot of people have entirely forgotten what really makes Apple different. It isn’t just because they have sold a lot of iPods, made computers transparent or managed to get people to spend twice as much on a laptop, it’s smaller and more straightforward than that.

Apple isn’t perfect, but a lot of what I admire about them comes down to clarity, and Steve Jobs is clearly behind that. He reinvented the company since rejoining it in 1997. He’s an inspirational guy. If you’re curious about what makes him tick, watch the speech below. He starts talking about 7 and a half minutes in.

Not every brand has a Steve Jobs, but that’s no excuse for not having vision, appetite and clarity.

Not as excited as I was about the iPhone though…

Those images above are genuine Apple prototypes from 1983, the image below however is real, ladies and gentlemen, the first ever Apple Computer from 1976…

Whatever is announced in a couple of hours, it’s sure to be impressive. Steve Jobs has been allegedly quoted as saying it’s the “most important thing I’ve ever done” With rumours ranging from the reinvention of newspapers, to fingerprint identification and impressive gaming capabilities, the idea is that you really DO need another shiny Apple product in your life.

We’ll see.

Last weekend my wife and I went to the London Apple Store because she needed to buy a new computer. While she was sealing the deal, I went along and watched Adam Buxton interview Spike Jonze as part of the ‘Meet The Film Maker’ series and to promote Spike’s new film Where The Wild Things Are.

Adam took an unconventional approach and read Spike the YouTube comments from the film’s trailer, which weren’t all particularly positive (or coherent)…

Spike took it in good humour, in Adam’s words: “YouTube is like a large toilet wall”. Here’s a rubbish bit of video I managed to record:

You can read more about it on Adam’s blog. The entire interview as a podcast is on iTunes, which is sadly audio only, so we’ll never know what picture Spike shocked Adam with on his conspicuously produced iPhone…

If you missed last weeks’ exciting Apple media event where the new iPods and iTunes were launched, here’s everything you need to know.

Awesome.

Please forgive me while I indulge my geek and nostalgia genes simultaneously – it is Friday after all.

Monkey Island has made it to the iPhone ::iTunes Link:: and not just any old Monkey Island, the new Special Edition which landed on PC and xBox360(shudder) last weekend. The game contains the original VGA-tastic version as well as a new improved graphic incarnation (HD on the other formats, slightly less impressive on the iPhone). The new version has a new voiceover track and you can flip between past and present with a swipe gesture at any time. Here’s to many more LucasArts titles on the App Store and to a graphic adventure renaissance!

If you haven’t ever played Monkey Island, it’s an offbeat adventure of piratey proportions. A genuine classic game from the early 90′s with excellent writing and atmospheric gameplay. They really don’t make them like this anymore and now it’s had a new lick of pixelly paint…

If you don’t have an iPhone, you can get the new Special Edition on your dirty PC via Steam or your filthy xBox through XBLA. If you don’t have an iPhone, PC or xBox, check out ScummVM, which lets you play all the old LucasArts adventures on almost any platform. And don’t forget Telltale Games’ new episodic Monkey Island series Tales of Monkey Island…

The iPhone is really starting to come into its own as a bona fide gaming platform, notable recent additions to the App Store with a retro flavour also include Peggle, Worms and Wolfenstein 3D. Doom can’t be far away.

All highly recommended to take the edge of travel on the London Underground network…