'In Defence of the Floppy Disk Save Symbol'

Connor Tomas O'Brien, in a blog post:​

Those who believe that the floppy cannot represent saving a document because nobody uses real floppy disks anymore miss an important point: while symbols initially piggyback on the meaning we assigned to a material object in order to stand in for something more abstract, once a symbol is used often enough, the symbol itself is enough to carry meaning, and the material object is no longer important.

O'Brien has an interesting viewpoint on this topic, which has been on a lot of designers'  and developers' minds ever since we started debating things like skeuomorphism.

Sony Might Be Getting Its (Design) Groove Back

A few days ago I had a discussion with some friends about how strange it was that Sony had yet to make any sort of real impact on the mobile world. This lack of impact was particularly intriguing to me considering that Sony has such a rich design history. This design history is so rich, in fact, that one of Apple's industrial designers produced the often-shared 'Jony' phone design concept which was inspired by Sony's design aesthetics.

It was excellent timing (for my benefit, at least) to see that Sony has revealed its Xperia Tablet Z which looks to my eye to be a very pleasing design. At 6.9mm, it is slightly thinner than the famously-thin iPad Mini but in a 10.1-inch form factor. The fact that it runs Android Jelly Bean is the icing on the cake. (Quite attractive cake, by the way.)

I'm a bit concerned about battery life based on the small (6000mAh) battery, but all in all I'm starting to be convinced that Sony might be returning to its design roots.