Loren Brichter

http://www.atebits.com/

Loren is the founder of atebits, makers of the popular Twitter client Tweetie.  He founded atebits after leaving Apple, having worked on the original iPhone.

I loathe most 3rd party app icons, and wouldn’t be able to tolerate staring at them most of the time. Apple’s default icon layout has a really stunning visual balance that I didn’t want to spoil (well, OS 1.x and 2.x did at least).  3.0 ruined it all for me, the amateurish stripes behind Phone, Messages and iPod were unnecessary.  3.0 also introduced two new apps: Compass and Voice Memos.  I think Voice Memos has a particularly egregious icon, the microphone graphic (mirrored in the app UI as well) should have been done by someone with 3D experience, not by someone who thinks they can pull it off with Photoshop’s Warp tool.  (It’s not even symmetrical, who the hell approved that??)

Anyway, back on track. I took my 3.0 layout and reverted to the 2.x layout, pushing Voice Memos and Compass to the second screen.  The only two third party apps on my home screen are Tweetie and Byline. When I made Tweetie, one of my goals was to have an icon that “belonged” on the home screen.  Standing out is a bad thing, it just makes everything look cluttered.  Byline is one of my favorite apps, and the icon is well done (if slightly too complicated).  On my second screen: the icon for Things is perfect, and I’d be happy to have it on my home screen, but I don’t use it as often as I should. Instapaper is one of my top 3 favorite apps, but the icon doesn’t really do it for me.

I guess you could say that I’m anal about icons.

As for apps: Rolando 2 is my favorite new game.  Love it, and I suppose the icon is appropriate.  Flight Control is my all-time-favorite iPhone game.  But the icon is terrible and cartoony. Borange I helped write, but the icon design wasn’t up to me and I never liked it.  Mobile Fotos is an awesome app, but the icon is far too Mac-like to make it to my home screen.  Amazon is a poorly designed app with a dinky icon but makes up for it with incredible functionality (WTF Amazon, you couldn’t drop a Default.png into the Resources directory?).  iPhlix I’m still torn about, I’m trying out a few Netflix apps, and it’s the best I’ve found so far but I still would have done some stuff differently.  I give them credit for having the most original icon of all the NetFlix apps though.