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ExtraBITS for 21 October 2013

This week, celebrated Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts announced that she’s joining Apple, David Pogue is moving from the New York Times to Yahoo, and the Nielsen Norman Group has published a damning critique of iOS 7’s interface.

David Pogue Leaves the New York Times for Yahoo — After 13 years of writing about technology for the New York Times, David Pogue is moving on to Yahoo, where he’ll be building and writing for a new consumer-technology site. He’s keeping his Missing Manual books, his NOVA specials on PBS, his stories on CBS Sunday Morning, and his column with Scientific American. Sleep is clearly not involved, but we’re actually not surprised — in recent years, a number of our generation of technology writers have moved into higher level publishing work, as we did with Take Control.

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Why Angela Ahrendts Is a Perfect Fit for Apple — Apple has snagged Angela Ahrendts, the lauded CEO of luxury retailer Burberry, to be its Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores — a new position created to replace the vacant SVP of Retail position, last occupied by John Browett in October 2012. At Burberry, Ahrendts became the highest-paid CEO in the UK, increasing annual revenue by 250 percent and driving up the stock price by 300 percent. Ahrendts also spearheaded new technology at Burberry, lining stores with video screens broadcasting runway shows and installing RFID
tags in clothing that customers can scan for information. Ahrendts is the second fashion CEO to join Apple’s current executive team, following Yves St Laurent CEO Paul Deneve’s hire in July 2013.

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Nielsen Norman Group Slams iOS 7 — The Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g), a user experience firm founded by usability gurus Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman, has appraised iOS 7, and the verdict isn’t great. “Early experience with applications redesigned for iOS 7 is fairly negative: several have worse usability than their iOS 6 versions.” In particular, NN/g cites action labels that are indistinguishable from content, the confusing date picker, confusing swipe actions (for example, activating Notification Center when you wanted Spotlight), and the redesign of many icons, of which NN/g said, “Apple has demolished
millions of hours of user learning by changing the icons.” However, NN/g said that iOS 7’s design isn’t fatally flawed, and praised how controls are hidden in Safari, global font size controls, and the streamlined Settings app.

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