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I’ve been slowly making my way through Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs for a couple of weeks now and am currently on the section where Jobs brings in Susan Kare to create the font and icons that would make the Mac what it is today — a computer not just for “figure-it-out-yourself” geeks, but for creative people looking to express themselves. As Isaacson notes, the addition of Kare to Jobs’s Mac team not only made computers accessible to all, it made desktop publishing accessible to all. Over time, anyone who had a Mac began to know and care about fonts, icons and page design. Eventually, the Mac, paired with the laser printer, took users away from the mimeograph and into the realm of self publishing. My father, for instance, owned a restaurant for a time and used the family Mac to create a monthly newsletter for his best customers — a differentiator that kept them coming back.

Kare’s icons — and particular the bomb icon above — are what I think of when I think of the Mac. To this day, the bomb conjures up mixed feelings of dread, hope and challenge. The bomb only appeared when the worst of the worst happened. When I backed the Mac into a corner that it just couldn’t get out of, it would throw up the bomb warning and let me know it was time to start over. After a reboot, I would stare are the watch tick, tick, ticking by and hope to see the happy Mac icon. When I did, I knew all was right with the world. If I saw the bomb again, I knew it as time to dig in for a challenge — fix the bugger, or take it to the shop.

Kare’s icons didn’t just make the Mac more useable, they brought real emotion to computing. They created visceral feelings of joy, suspense and even fear. In turn, these feelings helped users form a tight, emotional bond with their computers and their work that made them want to keep working — and keep buying. A lot of non-Mac users like to slag Mac users as “Fanboys” or members of a cult because of their devotion to the Mac. What they don’t get is that the obsessive, smart and devoted work put in by people like Kare is why we love our Macs. We love them because they are designed with love and devotion in mind. We love them because of their happy little danger bombs.

For more on Kare, including excerpts from her sketchbook from the first Mac icon designs, read Steve Silberman’s excellent post at NeuroTribes. Also, be sure to check out Kare’s own site, where she is selling a book of her work as well as signed prints.

Image: Bomb on  Red, by Susan Kare.

(Found Via Uncrate: PlugBug.)

The PlugBug from Apple accessory shop TwelveSouth is simple, yet ingenious. It snaps onto the standard MaBook power adaptor and gives you an extra USB port to charge up your iPad or iPhone leaving the USBs on the MacBook free for external drives or other devices. Simple genius.

During my morning surf, these three apps popped up as something I might want to consider:

Week Calendar: A strange name, because this iPhone app seems anything but weak (get it? That’s a pun). It seems to provide a better iCal-like UI than the default calendar app on the iPhone and integrates with Google Calendar, where I keep all of my personal scheduling. Speaking of calendar apps, I’m looking forward to testing out Fantastical and/or Today for the Mac. I’m currently using calendar bar, but that doesn’t give you the option to add events to your calendar.

Shine looks like a weather app that actually has a useful interface. The default weather app on the iPhone doesn’t give me enough information and the Weather Channel App takes too damn long to load. Here’s hoping that Shine will be a weather app worth checking every morning.

UpdateBar: Because I definitely need another way to update my Twitter and Facebook accounts. UpdateBar gives me that right from the ever-popular menu bar.

Arcade: The Last Night at Chinatown Fair Trailer from Kurt Vincent on Vimeo.

To paraphrase Heart of Darkness, “The printed page, he dead.” Yesterday, Amazon announced that kindle books are now the most popular book format on Amazon.com. “Today,” the obit reads, “less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books – hardcover and paperback – combined.”

Also dead: The arcade in New York City. Above is the trailer for Arcade, a documentary that explores Chinatown Fair during its last week in operation. The arcade closed after being in operation for over 50 years. The director is running a Kickstarter campaign to get funding and has already exceeded his goal. But I’m sure he’d appreciate the extra investment.

It seems we are all staring into screens a lone right now.

In the world of sport — and signs of the Apocalypse — Italian soccer giants AS Roma, are apparently sniffing around all sorts of American players with EU passports. No Short Corners has all the speculation a man could want on this subject. Current rumored targets include defenders Timothy Chandler or Eric Lichaj. Also, he quotes Yoda, so that’s pretty bad-ass.

In political news, John Huntsman, the only sane Republican candidate for President that I’ve run across, is getting raked over the coals by his increasingly bat-shit crazy party for saying that scientists might know what they’re talking about. Huntsman’s crime? Telling Time that we should listen to the overwhelming majority of scientists who tell us that climate change is real and happening now.

Need something to do on a rainy Saturday? Try Pitch, the board game of graphic design — or, Pictionary for people with dark-rimmed glasses and Apple fetishes.

Speaking of Apple fetishes, liking Apple products apparently triggers the same parts of the brain in Macheads as Dieties do for the devout. No surprise there.

Finally today, Puma has taken a big step forward in thinking on corporate sustainability, announcing it will put a value on the environmental services it uses to produce its shoes. This sounds super wonky, and in many ways it is, but basically means that Puma will now account for environmental degradation when it tallies up the bottom line. From The Guardian: “Puma has published an economic valuation of the environmental impacts caused by greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and water consumption along its entire supply chain and has committed to the more difficult task of integrating both its social and economic impacts.”