Apple has a problem with animation. In the past, I’ve written about how OS X’s full-screen animations and transitions gave me motion-sickness, leaving dizziness and nausea in their wake. ReSpaceApp/TotalSpaces was a partial solution, but only overrides full-screen slide transitions, and not other OS-level animation. I wrote directly to Apple execs and accessibility@apple.com; having (unsurprisingly) had no response from anyone, I then penned an open letter about motion sickness triggers in OS X Mavericks and iOS 7.

Within the last of those, I was at the time concerned about iOS 7. My fears weren’t unfounded. I’ve now updated my devices and have the same feeling I got on using OS X Lion’s full-screen for the first time. Right now, the iPhone is bearable, but aspects of the iPad are unusable. The app switcher in particular has such aggressive animation and zooming that a single use is enough to trigger dizziness.

I’m not alone. I found vestibular support organisations were hugely concerned about iOS 7. I’ve had many people email and tweet me about these issues, in some cases practically begging for a solution. There isn’t one. I’ve been told about 50 times now to activate ‘Reduce Motion’ in iOS 7, but all that does is remove the home screen parallax—it doesn’t stop the zooming and sliding elsewhere. Obviously, it also doesn’t ‘fix’ OS X for me and others either.

Worse, there’s some major ignorance within the market regarding vestibular conditions. On Friday, I wrote a news piece for Stuff.tv on iOS 7 triggering vertigo and nausea symptoms. This was well received by those suffering, but not by others. I’ve been called a “bullshitter” and a “pansy”; some people helpfully argued that I should “just fuck off and use Android then”, while others said I was “just another idiot finding something else Apple’s done to complain about”.

As someone who’s regularly accused of being an Apple shill, it’s curious I’m now considered the opposite. Also, there appears to be a misunderstanding regarding what people like me actually want. We don’t want to destroy your precious operating systems. We don’t even want to remove those dynamic zooms and swipes you love so much. We merely want a setting that will optionally enable you to do so. That’s it.

I’d like nothing more from Apple than to be able to go to the accessibility settings in OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 and see ‘disable animation effects’. For most people, this option existing won’t affect them. But for many people currently suffering various motion symptoms through standard device use, it will offer a level of delight like no other Apple update. For them, devices will suddenly become truly magical.

Further reading: Why Is Apple Ignoring People with Vision and Balance Problems? (Kirk McElhearn)

By me, over at Stuff.TV:

Trained to expect Microsoft’s level of market dominance during the height of the Windows era, every company now seemingly has to lose for one to win. So it goes with the iPhone 5C, set to launch on 10 September. The budget iPhone apparently spells doom for Android (because if Apple has a cheap phone, everyone will of course buy it at the exclusion of everything else) or possibly for Apple (because it’ll be a massive failure).

I explore how Apple thinks, the red-herring of market-share, profits, what the iPad mini means for the iPhone line, and the inevitability of what will happen after Apple reveals its new device on the 10th.

What the fuck? That was my initial reaction on being told earlier today about an article featuring ‘hot female web designers’. Amazingly, it gets worse. The full article title (no link, because) is “20 Hot Female Web Designers That Will Take Your Breath Away” and is either knowingly trawling the web as link bait or has a disconnect the size of the moon.

It begins:

Sizzling hot designs from hot female web designers will prove that, though web design industry has always been viewed as a world fully packed with men, the best stuff doesn’t always come from them!

Or how about: “Great work from women in the web industry proves that although the industry has long been seen as male-dominated, men definitely don’t create all the best work”?

Female web designers constantly battle to acquire the top spot in web design industry.

And then stupid blog posts screw them over by mentioning them for their physical characteristics rather than their work. Great!

though females are considered extinct in web designing

Extinct? Certainly not. But if they were, it would probably be through being killed off my an avalanche of stupid set off by a volcano of idiocy.

But first let me ask you to hold your breath.

OK. Holding.

To escape from the wrath of the male hot web designers and being accused of being a sexist,

No longer holding. Instead thinking of just how many things can be so wrong in so few words.

let me remind you that this article is made to uplift the spirits of young female web designers.

Nothing is more uplifting than being told you’re hot rather than, say, a great designer!

This is to show the little girls out there that web designing is not just a man’s world. To prove that [site name redacted] is equal in promoting both sexes in web design, feel free to read this post: 15 Most Influential People in Web Design.

Because men are influential but women are merely hot. Got it. (And, no, before you ask, not a single woman is on the influential list—after all, they’re just too hot and, apparently, not influential enough.)

Again: what the fuck?

Daring Fireball responds to Garrett Murray’s thoughts on the 2DS:

The biggest WTF aspect is the price — it’s only $40 cheaper than the regular 3DS.

Yeah, WTF? No other company would create very obvious upsell positioning for its products!

A pity Daring Fireball and various others seem to have decided balance is a bad thing regarding Nintendo, given Lukas Mathis’s Nintendo piece continuing to grow with more insight and facts. If you missed it, I also chimed in yesterday on why Nintendo should not start making iOS games—yet.

Update: For anyone arguing that the gap is bigger—the iPod touch upsell is $70, not $40—do bear in mind the iPod touch costs almost twice as much as Nintendo’s console.

Nintendo has unveiled the 2DS. The console is essentially a cheap version of the 3DS, lacking the 3D capabilities and the hinge. From a design perspective, it’s not the prettiest device in the world (the screen alignment is particularly grim), and the clamshell was one of the best things about the DS hardware, protecting the screen and also making it more portable. By contrast, the 2DS looks unwieldy.

That said, I find it curious people are using the 2DS as some kind of proof Nintendo is doomed. Apple pundit John Gruber said on his blog:

It’s $129. I say they should just give in and start making iOS games. They’re not going to win this battle.

This is a nonsensical argument, especially from someone who has a habit of publicly slamming people who’d say anything remotely similar about Apple. I might think the 2DS is ugly and might not be that nice to hold, but that doesn’t make it a dumb idea. It’s cheap and very obviously positioned for holiday sales. It’s $100 cheaper than the cheapest iPod touch (i.e. about half the price), which immediately places it in a totally different market. And it’s pretty clearly a stop-gap—Nintendo doing its usual thing of wringing out the last drops of income from a hardware line before a refresh. We saw the same thing with the Game Boy Advance—although I’d argue the Micro was a smarter-looking device than the 2DS.

After presumably getting some stick online, Gruber elaborated further:

“Isn’t this like telling Apple to give up on hardware and license Mac OS to other PC makers?” numerous readers have asked. Maybe a little, but it’s a bad comparison. The main thing is it never seemed to me — never — that Apple was incapable of producing excellent industry-leading hardware. They just needed focus and better execution. Nintendo, to me, looks incapable of producing handheld hardware that can compete with the iPhone or iPod Touch.

The question is whether Nintendo wants to compete and whether it needs to. Anecdotally, I hear an awful lot of people telling me their kids no longer bother with Nintendo hardware, and instead use iOS devices; similarly, many teen and adult gamers have ditched Nintendo handhelds for smartphones and tablets. Also, Nintendo’s financials of late haven’t looked nearly as rosy as in the past. Still, I also hear from various parties that the 3DS line has sold very well, and that Nintendo is starting to get the message regarding working with indies and pricing games more sensibly. Last year, I figured that rather than leap to iOS, Nintendo really needed to place more emphasis on digital, embrace more devs, and link with the wider world; I still believe that.

Gruber instead made a more common argument for what Nintendo should do:

I think they’re out of the game and might never get back into it. If they can do it, great — where by “do it” I mean produce a device that’s a better buy for $250 or so than an iPod Touch. But I don’t think they can do it. And if they can’t do it, their next best bet is is to expand to making iOS games. I’m not saying drop the DS line and jump to iOS in one fell swoop. But a couple of $9.99 iPhone/iPad games to test the water wouldn’t hurt.

There’s certainly a possibility that with the new iOS games controller APIs, Nintendo could create a custom controller for iOS, giving relevant iOS Nintendo titles the precision that they’d need to not end up being somewhat unplayable on the platform. I still question this as anything but an absolute last resort. For some reason, Gruber either ignores or dismisses that Nintendo is the Apple of the gaming world—it has succeeded through controlling everything, not just through the games it creates. To say Nintendo should create games for iOS is little different from suggesting a less fortunate Apple should rapidly get iLife and iWork on to other platforms. Even testing the water would be an admission of failure, which would damage the brand.

Perhaps Nintendo’s long-term future is as another Sega, crafting games for hardware that it doesn’t make itself. But the 2DS certainly doesn’t make the case this should happen now. Really, it’s what happens next that will seal Nintendo’s fate. What follows the DS line and the Wii U will be critical for the company, and although plenty (including, at times, me) have largely written off the company, Nintendo has also shown in the past how it has the ability to create something new and innovative seemingly from nowhere, thereby securing its survival and success. This sounds rather like a certain other tech company, and is why certain pundits should know better than to entirely dismiss Nintendo’s future chances.

Further reading: Nintendo, by Lukas Mathis.