The media is abuzz with news of Taylor Swift's adulatory plea to Apple supposedly succeeding in bringing the giant to its knees. The story is best recounted by Nilay Patel of The Verge:

Apple Music pays higher royalties than competitors like Spotify because there's no free option; you have to pay $9.99 a month to use it. But to entice consumers into signing up, Apple's offering a three-month free trial, and artists like Swift weren't going to see any money during those three months…Swift posted an open letter to her Tumblr saying she would withhold her album…17 hours later Apple's Eddy Cue apologized on Twitter and completely backtracked…Applause and retweets all around.

This year was my first being in San Francisco during WWDC week. There is never enough time to do everything on a trip like this, but this week was jam packed with WWDC itself, AltConf, Layers Conference and San Francisco Design Week, among other things. Nonetheless, I had some great conversations with a lot of people in the community—designers, developers, readers of the blog, old friends and more.

Art and design are somewhat incestuous, with practitioners remixing their peers and paying homage to their forefathers and the world around them through pastiche. Some of the time, it is hard to tell what may have influenced an aesthetic decision. Other times it is plainly obvious. Perhaps the designer latched on to a trend, or they may have overtly aped their competitor's aesthetic to try to secure the same brand recognition that had been built up. Often, it can simply be tough to create something that has an air of uniqueness, something seemingly new. In this roundup, I examine some striking similarities in modern design.