Apple/Mac/iPhone/iPad Ping!
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Posted on 05/27/2010 12:35:56 PM PDT by Thurston_Howell_III
Hollywood execs from several large entertainment media companies have reportedly told Apple that they’re not going to port their existing content from Flash to Apple’s iPad (iMaxi)format. The New York Post namechecks Time Warner and NBC Universal, and also implies that there are others.
The names dropped are critical. Time Warner is second only to Vivendi in size among entertainment conglomerates. NBC Universal, now jointly owned by GE and Comcast, is also an entertainment giant, as parodied weekly by NBC’s sitcom 30 Rock.
Flash is so ubiquitous, was my deciding factor against the ipad.
If they finally add support like sane individuals I’ll pick it up.
Why on Earth did anyone buy into Job’s nonsense regarding this in the first place?
I couldn’t believe how many news outlets just blindly backed him without seeing real tests showing that HTML5 didnt preform better, and in some cases did worse, than Flash.
I think the Apple marketing hype honestly convinced everyone that Apple iPads would be “so cool” that they would shift the market away from flash.
Flash is pretty good for the end user, but often a pain for developers. Apparently, the API is a moving target.
The iMaxi joke isn’t nearly good enough to actually insert into the body of the article when it isn’t there at the link.
If there is something in flash that I really, really want to see, I go to my computer.
There really isn’t much Flash content out there that gets me off the couch to the desk, however.
I love my iPad!
Well comedy isn’t easy, I do the best I can.
Don’t know how long this will last; Microsoft is supporting html5 in it’s latest version of Internet Explorer (9).
Android can do it.
Wow, am I supposed to read past this and think it's serious?
There is no such thing as the "iPad format" - it's HTML 5, it's a standard, and it's coming. Whether it'll do better than Flash is debatable, but claiming that it's "Apple's format" shows that this writer doesn't know what he's talking about.
And the "iMaxi" is just juvenile.
Hegemony is bad.
Let the struggle continue. I’ve had an iPod Touch for two years. Seldom is there a flash video I must see.
<Flash is so ubiquitous, was my deciding factor against the ipad.
I am finding that out the hard way. I got an iPad from my employer. Nice toy, but so many sites have flash, you have to wonder what Jobs was thinking. I’m glad 1) I didn’t pay for this mess out of my pocket and 2) for all my other computers, “I’m a PC.”
I still don’t want an ipad. Who wants a little laptop that won’t do everything a laptop can,, and which you can never close?
“There is no such thing as the “iPad format” - it’s HTML 5, it’s a standard, and it’s coming.”
I’ve read some back and forth on this issue, and I believe there are some good reasons why Apple doesn’t want to support Flash on their products, and why it would be good for mostly everyone to move away from a proprietary API like Flash to something more open-sourced.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything made by Apple, nor any sort of smartphone or PDA.
I may get one if it’s cheap enough, but I really don’t like Apple’s walled garden approach, and I hope it doesn’t succeed.
If it DOES succeed, and Apple turns more and more of their computers away from user file-management and user-chosen programs into “we will decide where your files go, and we’ll decide which programs we will allow you to buy” then I will move to a PC.
I use InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and many others and I need that control over my computer.
I do recognize the vast majority of folks would be perfectly happy with an iPad-like interface/computer but Jobs really messes people up with prohibiting Flash and all Flash-generated programs.
Ed
It may take a couple of years. When Apple was on the ropes, and came out with the original iMac, the unit only had USB, phone modem (rj-11), Net (RJ-45) ports, and a power connector. Apple NEVER bought into parallel ports, SCSI was expensive and unwieldy, and Mac Serial/Localtalk was slow and quite obsolete.
PCs had already been sporting USB ports for some time, and the original 1.1 Mb spec was good, but not great. Worse, Windows NT 4.0 offered NO support for it, Win 95’s was a joke, and Win 98 (first edition) had issues with it. Unplugging and replugging often required a reinstall of drivers. Worse still, except for some mice and keyboards, there were next to NO peripherals available. The iMac, with a sliver of the market (5% max) jump started the peripherals (including some oddball adapters) that finally allowed PC users to use those empty ports that were on their new motherboards for a year or two.
In short, until Apple forced the issue, there was no one to make parallel port computers (and worse yet, scanners) go away. When Apple gets it wrong, they really blow it (Quickdraw GX, Copland, Mac IIfx). Sometimes, when she gets it right, she forces the whole indutry to also get it right. Forcing USB on users was getting it right.
This is not the first tussle Apple has had with Adobe. Apple had developed TrueType, and LICENSED it to Microsoft to put pressure on the cost of PostScript licensing, and to reduce the necessity of using Adobe Type Manager.
ie9 supports flash, too...
They believe the same thing about the Macs too. My collegue just bought his daughter a Dell Studio 15 laptop for a little over $1000 ... he said the compariable Mac was almost $2500 ...
One does have to admire Apple’s “big” approach, they make it very gray, rarely do they do ok with a product, they either go down in flames or knock it out of the park.
I don’t like their walled garden approach either. Plug and play works for me.
<and which you can never close?
Oh yeah, that’s another thing. I’m still waiting on my case. I don’t know how fragile the glass is, but I feel uncomfortable carrying it outside of the house until I get the case. With my mini, I just close it up and go (tho I did get a little sleeve for it).
I was with Jobs and Apple for a while on the Flash issue, but now I’m with Schmidt and Google.
Looking forward to getting an Android Froyo tablet when they become available.
Interestingly enough, the USB issue was what sent me to Apple from MS. I was just getting started in photography, and was using a USB port and a card reader. NT was very stable, but did not support USB ports. Soooooo... I had to “upgrade” to Windows ME. Holy smokes. Every time I’d eject a card (yes, I used the eject button, etc.) the computer would lose the connection to the USB ports, so I’d have to delete them and then reinstall them. Sometimes I had to reboot to get them to install. It would also, for some reason, just lose the video driver every so often and revert to 320X200 in 16 colors. ME was THEE OS that got me to swear off Microsoft.
Sticking with Flash is just fine — until you want to have a touchscreen-based device...
And he would be Lying. Apple doesn't even sell a standard 17" MacBook Pro for $2500.
The low end MacPro 15" is a far faster computer than his daughter's $1000 Dell Studio 15. By the time that Dell is upgraded to match the lowest offered Apple MacPro, which retails for $1799, the Dell is $1492.99 and still doesn't offer the 1440x900 dpi 179º view angle LED backlit screen of the MacBook pro, nor does it touch the 8 to 9 hour, 5 year battery the Apple has standard. The Dell also does not come with the integrated suite of software the MacBook Pro come with standard. Adding those items would probably get it much closer in price.
That MacBook Pro 15", could be had for his daughter, if she is a student, for just $1699 and she would get a free IPod touch as well. In addition, she could have gotten a MacBook Pro 13" for only $1099 and gotten the iPod touch... and that has a 10 hour battery.
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Myself I hate touch screens. I don't like looking at stuff through smudgy fingerprints.
Jobs was thinking what most of us who work in the industry have known for years: Flash is a buggy bloated resource hog. And further more: just how in the Hell are you supposed to do “mouse overs” with your finger? Have it hover over the screen.
Flash had it’s place back before web standards came up with HTML5, and touch screen devices began appearing on the scene in great numbers. It also sucks the life out of my laptop battery, I could see my 10 hours of heavy usage on the pad being cut down considerably if flash was on it, even if it could work properly with a touch device, which it can’t.
$700 bucks is $700 bucks. There is nothing about the Mac that justifies the added brand premium.
C’mon Swordmaker, you know you can’t fight this Mac vs. PC battle using facts.
Especially when the facts are against you.
Maybe the anti-trust probe against Apple scared them off, possible government action against your content distributor doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in Apple’s closed platform. Looks like the real “paradigm shift” is the content producers turning the tables on Apple’s business model.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177460/Apple_vulnerable_in_iTunes_antitrust_probe
???
WTH are you talking about?
Okay, I’ll play... what facts did he get wrong?
Because as it is now, Flash sucks on mobile devices in many different ways.
Jobs is against it for two main reasons, both of which affect consumer perception of the iPhone. One is the UI. A good thing about the iPhone is the consistent UI, and the SDK forces developers into that consistent UI. Flash can break that.
Second is battery life. Apple has a specific scheme for multitasking while saving battery life that requires developers to hook into specific iPhone OS APIs. Flash doesn't do that. Of course an answer for that would be to not allow Flash apps to multitask. But then of course Flash developers would bitch about that. But Flash sucks for battery life outside of that anyway, especially in video.
Jobs knows that even if it's Flash causing problems on the iPhone, people will blame the iPhone. "Apple lied, I only get two hours of battery life." That user doesn't want an explanation of how Flash is the cause of the problem. To him the phone didn't deliver the promised battery life.
Jobs does not want that. Negative perception, even false, is reality. It negatively affects sales. Jobs prefers how iPad users have been saying they're getting more than the advertised 10 hour battery life. That makes for more sales.
Closed is closed, whatever the reasoning, trying to remove market liberty and openness by claiming we’re being “protected” is really just their spin on maintaining the profitability of their Application store. If Flash exists and developers can program in it for the iMaxi then folks can run all their programs from the web, instead of having to download and potentially pay for “Apps” purchased from Apple. Lets call this what it is instead of calling it “consumer protection.”
No issues with my own Dell Studio
performance
I7 processor in my laptop ... please, yer making me chuckle.
build quality
My kids iPod didnt last a year ... my buddy has sent 2 Apple displays back in a year ... The SE30 I wrote my dissertation on long ago was toast shortly after I finished it.
security
Using only free antivirus, I have never had an issue with Windows. Do stupid things and stupid stuff happens. I guarantee there are lots of freepers out there without Windows issues that use free AV.
reliability
Never had a Windows machine I built with my own hands go down. I still have a Win95 machine working without issues, more than 15 years old.
a built-in backup solution
Not very impressive these days ...
in-person support at the Apple Store
I'm guessing here in So MD its at least 50 miles away in Annapolis or Baltimore
no need for performance-sapping antivirus
Agree, I don't use Norton. There are other choices much better that dont sap performance. But since I'm running quad cores that really wouldnt be an issue anyway.
not worth a penny.
Now youre getting it ...
I love owning Apple stock but dont own any of their products. When "cool" is out of fashion, Ill sell it all.
Under the hood, SWF is a tag-based format too. It relies on ActionScript to manipulate things. That is a form of EMCAScript, the most popular implementation of which is known as JavaScript. It also relies on a dictionary that defines objects and shapes, kind of like what CSS does with HTML5. Video is embedded in an SWF with special video tags, too.
I know it doesn't seem like that, but most of the nitty-gritty is shielded from developers by the tools. This is the same as how HTML tools shield developers. The Flash tools are just more geared to what you're used to seeing in Flash (or the other way around, you mostly see what the tools provide).
I7 processor in my laptop ... please, yer making me chuckle.
Not all performance is processor based. OS X and many of the apps built for it make heavy use of the GPU to accelerate various actions. For example, something as simple as doing a sepia tone on an image is easily handed off to the GPU using the Core Image library, and it happens pretty much instantly. The same applies to video, so changes show in real-time. The screen animations and effects you see in programs are handled by the Core Animation library, automatically on the GPU, automatically multithreaded. Apple makes this brain-dead easy for developers, so most developers do leverage it.
Then there's the issue of multithreading. It is needed to take advantage of the multi-core processors. Unfortunately, it's not easy for developers to implement. Apple has also made that brain-dead easy for the most part, meaning more and more Apple apps are and will be taking advantage of those multiple cores.
Apple also pays close attention to user-perceived performance rather than relying on benchmark numbers, so the OS is tuned for that. Thus people like me who hate waiting on computers are a bit happier.
Not very impressive these days ...
Time Machine is very impressive when you use it. The restore metaphor is far more intuitive than Shadow Copy, and of course far better than a regular backup solution. It's also very impressive way under the hood, how it leverages the UNIX file system and Spotlight to get it all done with as little storage space and processor power as possible.
The only way it could get better is if Apple started to use something like ZFS to do block-level backups. Right now I have to exclude my virtual machine images from Time Machine, or I'd have 100+ GB getting backed up every hour just by using the VMs. ZFS would allow backing up of just those blocks in the file that have changed.
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