Previews are a very powerful feature, but only when they reflect the actual result.
In the settings window you can see the preview of conrol center, but it only shows one icon, when in reality there will be three.
Ordering is also messed up for no reason — 1, 2, 3 in the menu, 2, 3, 1 in the actual thing.
Simple rule: either build an honest preview, or don’t show it at all.
(P.S. because of lack of shadows, preview is more visually appealing than the actual thing—something to fix, Apple)
Hardest unsolved CS problems: determining download progress when downloading a song from Apple’s own servers.
Solution: make your progress indicator progress by 25% every second and restart from 0 after 4 seconds.
How bad is Twitter search?
First, it doesn’t prioritize exact match, the most obvious thing to do. Exact name matches are at 2nd, 7th and 11th positions. The rest are just random people matching only one part of the request. Exact username matches are at 2nd and 11th positions.
Second, it doesn’t sort by followers (the most useful way to break the tie). Jonathan Blow at 2nd place has 500 followers, the one at 7th has 100, finally, the one at 11th (and the one author was looking for) has 120,000!
Third, activity is not counted either. 2nd Jonathan Blow has last tweeted in July. 7th last tweeted in 2009. The 11th tweeted just 16 hours ago!
Thanks @tibfy for the picture
Virtualized lists are great, but they break search on a page. If you do this, make the list sorted or provide your own search for that list.
Thanks @zelark for the video