Liquid glass.
My day at the Apple campus.
Good morning everyone. I’m writing this from San Francisco. I’m looking for crunchy health food stores and wellness-related suggestions.
I just finished reading this story about the dismal job market that college grads are entering. I’m giving out complimentary 3-month subscriptions to 100 college students here. If you are not a college student, this is not for you. If you know a college student who would appreciate a free subscription to Feed Me, forward this email to them.
Today’s letter includes: my trip to the Apple headquarters, a new Soho restaurant opening (from the Feed Me tip line), why Puck is hiring a new social media manager, Barstool is re-making Jersey Shore, and why my favorite new newsletter chose to build on Beehiiv over Substack.
It’s hard not to think about the importance of beauty in technology when Substack looks like a CMS from 2010, and Apple’s headquarters was engineered with some of the largest single panes of glass on Earth.
Apple invited me to Cupertino this week for the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The first thing I noticed: this no longer looks like your 2010s developer crowd. We’re talking Marine Serre sneakers, Japanese chore coats galore, Salomons in shades of neon and creamsicle, loose Auralee denim, and generally fun clothes. I didn’t see any vests, I did see some Allbirds. Will Welch might’ve been the only man there in a tie, but not the only one in a Rolex. There were still t-shirts, still New Balances (RIP Steve), but the broader impression was of a cohort that’s finally having a little fun, in the closet as well as at the keyboard. I sat among them as the lights dimmed and the keynote began.
The focus of the presentation was a new design language called Liquid Glass.
, who I spent the day with, compared this new translucent style to the water globules that bugs turn into telescopes in A Bug’s Life.In a smaller interview that followed, Alan Dye, Apple’s VP of Design, answered a question about Apple’s enduring fascination with glass. The building we were in was glass. Our devices are glass. Your hometown Apple store? Probably glass. The company itself gleams and reflects light. Dye’s response: “We’ve always been fairly obsessed with blurring the lines between hardware and software.” During demos of the new interface, several journalists asked whether Liquid Glass was a physical material which was funny. It looks and feels touchable, but it’s just an illusion, a cool vibe. Something beautiful, which is what sets Apple apart from every other tech company.
I’ve had an iPhone since 2008, when I made a bet with my dad that if I got an 100 on the algebra Regents exam, he’d buy me one. I did. He did. One of my first downloads was iZen, a minimalist app that let you rake virtual sand into meditative swirls, and assemble rocks across your small screen (which felt so, so big at the time). I consider liquid glass a return to skeuomorphism (which Steve Jobs loved, and Jony Ive hated). And to answer my newsletter headline — I think technology should be beautiful, and some of us are okay with not always knowing why. I have the same delight opening my iPhone today as I did when I was 13 years old. Then, I sat on the edge of my bed, stretching toward the wall to check the screen while it charged across the room. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that I could just move the charger closer.
