Made by Many
madebymany.com · Company blog · on HN since 2010
Made by Many, a London digital product agency, blogs on design, Apple, AI, Ruby and Go tooling, and internet-connected office projects.
What HN saysHN commenters link its posts on Apple's aesthetics, the Is the Toilet Free project, and Moltar; one finds its AI essay silly.
28HN people shared it
8linked it in comments
35stories submitted
880story points
5 years agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Apple's aesthetic dichotomy (2011)6 people · 71 points · first shared 2011 · 30 comments on HN
- 2What if AI is a failed dream?2 people · 119 points · first shared 2017 · 204 comments on HN
- 3Moltar: A tool for listing and interacting with EC2 instances2 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 4Is the Toilet Free?1 people · 229 points · first shared 2014 · 122 comments on HN
- 5Apple Watch – What can you do with it?1 people · 131 points · first shared 2015 · 120 comments on HN
- 6Replacing Ruby on Rails: Let's Go1 people · 125 points · first shared 2015 · 88 comments on HN
- 7Doing things the wrong way to get the right result1 people · 79 points · first shared 2017 · 37 comments on HN
- 8Bzzzt: Opening the door with Websockets and Raspberry Pi1 people · 45 points · first shared 2015 · 8 comments on HN
- 9React Native Styling Patterns1 people · 15 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Making sense of caching in Rails1 people · 10 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 11Replacing Ruby on Rails Part 2 – Amazing Tooling1 people · 7 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 12I love Systemd: Running an IoT Product Service with Python on Raspberry Pi1 people · 6 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 13Can a few well chosen words improve inclusivity?1 people · 6 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 14Make Good Choices1 people · 5 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 15What I talk about when I talk about prototyping1 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
sherwin · 2011-11-04
Related: http://madebymany.com/blog/apples-aesthetic-dichotomy. This writer brings up an excellent question: for whatever reason Apple seems to think having skeuomorphic interfaces is a good idea.... so why isn't this reflected in the hardware itself? Why is the macbook/ipad not designed to look like a notepad or briefcase?
revorad · 2011-06-29
A friend of mine works for MadeByMany and they sound pretty awesome - http://madebymany.com/
booleandilemma · 2017-07-15
It correctly identified my refrigerator and bookshelf. Color me impressed.
Things like this make articles like this one seem silly: https://www.madebymany.com/stories/what-if-ai-is-a-failed-dream
8draco8 · 2017-06-21
Have you heard about "Is the toilet free?" ?
https://madebymany.com/stories/is-the-toilet-free
dwb · 2015-12-06
This is my take on this: uses a tagging convention on your EC2 instances. Can also run commands in parallel over a set of instances.
https://github.com/madebymany/moltar
http://madebymany.com/blog/a-little-tooling-goes-a-long-way
Gregorein · 2012-05-22
ain't feedback a relic of all 'press-double-hard-to-be-sure' buttons? With handwriting recognition it shouldn't be that hard.
also, http://madebymany.com/blog/wizards-and-haptic-gestures
tipjoy · 2011-12-10
This is a better article about skeuomorphism for those interested: http://www.andymangold.com/skeuomorphism-the-opiate-of-the-people/
PS - Skeuomorphism definition: "Strictly speaking it means retaining design features from earlier designs when those features previously had a specific reason for being that way, but do not any longer." - http://madebymany.com/blog/apples-aesthetic-dichotomy
bane · 2011-12-12
"Apple set the bar for realistic textured apps. Developers followed."
IMHO, this was to be avoided. I think this move on Apple's part to move towards such literal skeuomorphism was a major step back. After decades of learning that literal analogies on computing devices simply doesn't work all that well, Apple decided to forget about all of that lesson learned stuff and just throw it all away.
Even Gruber can't manage to fake gushing over it
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/26/against-skeuomorphism
These themes aren’t lies. They’re not designed to help users understand how these apps work. They’re just decoration. They’re per-app branding. Apple no longer endorses system-wide visual uniformity. Special apps are supposed to look special. Why is Find My Friends wrapped in rich Corinthian leather? Because someone at Apple likes (and, sadly, if my guess is right, better said liked, past tense) how it looks.
I'd say in general the design gods are not happy with this move
http://www.andymangold.com/skeuomorphism-the-opiate-of-the-people/
http://madebymany.com/blog/apples-aesthetic-dichotomy
http://kensegall.com/blog/tag/ical-address-book/
http://cushley.net/2011/07/in-depth-os-x-lion-review-part-3-new-visual…
So in less than half a dozen links this design trend is called cheap "kitsch", "infantile", patronizing lies, "hideous" etc. These are not slight disagreements, these are fighting words.
I agree that Google's Android apps suffer from terrible UI…