Trying to visit Apple’s TGI Friday promo page here in the United States:

iPhone transition animations are cooler than meets the eye.

Take page transitions, for example. It’s common to navigate from one page to another by tapping an item from a list to see more detail: new pages slide in from the right, while tapping Back slides the old page back in from the left.

You might think that animating in a new page to replace the old would simply slide the two in lock-step, like two cafeteria trays on a serving rail, but it’s more subtle than that. To see that subtlety, let’s slow things down for a closer look.

The pages featured here are from Malt Whisky, my new iPhone app, but the animations are the same throughout iPhone. In this example, we’re transitioning from the Bunnahabhain Distillery page to the pronunciation page to hear boo·na·HAA·ven pronounced.

These 13 frames shown at right (links to larger version) reveal five different animations for five different page elements:

Interested, I rigged up a similar page transition but with a single animation of “new page pushing out old page”, including the navigation bar. The difference was profound: instead of something that felt alive and vibrant, it felt like a Keynote slide transition. A completely different feeling.

The different timing of all five animations coordinate to make the page transition whoosh. You can barely notice the animations individually and as for perceiving them all in combination, forget it. But you’re not supposed to notice them. You’re simply supposed to get a tiny thrill of seeing one page whoosh in to replace the other, of using a device that somehow seems alive.

And you do.

Freek Bijl describes how Apple will revolutionize the publishing business with the potent combination of iTunes+Store+Tablet to address the respective problems of distribution+businessmodel+usability, just as it already has the music and mobile businesses.

Sounds good to me.

In June, Businessweek published Tufte’s Invisible Yet Ubiquitous Influence, an article featuring an interesting slideshow of Edward Tufte’s work, including his sculptures. The sculptures mentioned are all quite large—and getting larger: his 2007 Rocket Science is 32 feet high and 72 feet long.

It’s unsurprising to learn that Tufte cites among his influences Richard Serra, whose Wake is arguably the finest piece here in Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park. Both men think big with strong, clean lines. But where Serra’s work flows organically and naturally as though it just happened, Tufte’s works are studiously composed and cerebral.

It’s inspiring to see Tufte still exploring and growing at 67. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and his other books should be considered required reading for all designers, including web designers.

And the term sparkline is almost as cool as the idea.

Wired reports that Snow Leopard 10.6.2 will not run on the Intel Atom processor, and calls this “a rather petty move from Apple which, if true, will break many netbooks which have been hacked to run as more than passable Macs.”

Petty?

Wait, let me get my violin…ah, there it is… [Music starts]

This should be already clear to any reporter, but Apple sells hardware to run Mac OS. Yes, Apple makes software, but the real profit is in hardware. You buy a non-Apple netbook and hack it to run Mac OS, you’re taking money out of Apple’s pocket. In fact, if you read the licensing agreement that comes with Mac OS, you’re violating that agreement.

Having acted irresponsibly by flouting Apple’s licensing agreement to run Mac OS on your non-Apple hardware, are you really surprised when Apple comes back like an adult and says, don’t do that?

You want to run Mac OS, dry the crocodile tears and get a Mac. It’s that simple.