NEWS: iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

John, you might enjoy this:

Subject: Remote tribe discovered worshipping iPad:

Jerry

Jerry Peters wrote in news:hln21b$1mc$3 @news.eternal-september.org:

I was both intrigued and replused at the same time with this article.....

Yep. I saw that last month. I think I've seen worse. Desktops and LCD displays that smell like cat piss. Desktops that act like a vacuum cleaner and suck up all the crud on the floor. Dog gooming shop with dog hair in everything. Garages and machine shops where everything is soaked in a layer of oil. Users that smoke, where the machine is coated with brown tar. Computers used on boats or in a marine environment with corrosion problems. Melted plastic from all manner of screwups, like putting the high intensity desk lamp next to the LCD display. I don't even count the keyboards full of crud, or the really filthy mice. Kids machines are especially bad.

I got tired of manually cleaning machines, so I bought an air compressor about 10 years ago. Best thing I ever did. I won't bring a filthy machine into the office. I take it outside, fire up the air compressor, and blow all the dust and crud out. Also saves on the huff and puff, as well as the office cleaning. If I have to hose down the machine, no problem as long as I blow off most of the water and let it dry in the sun.

Unfortunately, cell phones are not so easily cleaned. I just use 409 or other liquid cleaner on the ouside, and an anti-static paint brush or toothbrush on the insides.

Of course, this has nothing to do with wireless, cellular, or the iPad, but that's never stopped me from drifting off topic.

Someone in the parking lot made a full size cardboard iPad and was trying to see how it would look and fit on the dash of his car. Oh-oh.

On Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:53:23 -0800, John Navas wrote in :

Apple's Jobs Says Flash Crashes Macs; No Flash for iPad, iPhone Planned

I can understand a particular program that implements the Flash protocol might be buggy and crash, but that merely needs a better implementation.

John Navas wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@navasgroup.com:

snipped-for-privacy@acm.org wrote in news:hlun5j$c2t$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

Yes, but the article gave the real reasons.... $$$$$$$$$$$$$

That's easier said than done. The Flash protocol is not fully public (Adobe doesn't publish RTMPE specs, and has sent at least one DMCA letter to the author of a reverse engineered implementation) and the terms for doing an implementation of what they have published (allowing Adobe to violate your patents in any of their products) are a bit onerous for a lot of companies. It is very hard not to depend on the software Adobe writes if you want Flash support.

One can see why they'd want to find something more openly specified and freely implementable to replace Flash.

Dennis Ferguson

I'm rooting for Apple on this one. If the iPad becomes as popular as the iPhone, there will be a lot of pressure on web developers to detect the platform and serve up content with alternatives to Flash. Then there will be ways to spoof the browser so you can get Flash-free content served up to you even if your platform is able to do Flash.

[Cingular no longer exists. Please remove alt.cellular.cingular from follow-ups. The proper group to use is alt.cellular.attws]

Let's hope HTML5 gets some traction and eliminates the need for Flash, Silverlight, &c.

And Adobe is unable or unwilling to fix their buggy program? They prefer to just repeat "no it isn't buggy and doesn't crash" ? Or is Adobe right, their implementation of Flash truly isn't buggy and doesn't crash, and Jobs is just claiming what isn't true?

So you'd happily move to h264, which isn't free either? Flash isn't going away soon, just because iSteve doesn't like it.

Apparently Flash won't work properly on touchscreens.

[all on one line that url should be]

Flash won't go away, but with the market share of the iPhone/iPod Touch, and the expected success of the iPad, it would be rather foolish for web developers to not deploy sites that will use Flash alternatives.

Flash uses a lot of processing power, which affects performance and power consumption, something that you have to really be careful about on platforms like the iPhone and the iPad. There are good reasons why Apple is wary about Flash support on those devices.

Whatever you do, don't eat at iRestaurant near the Apple campus. It's terrible.

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there's a video of flash on the google nexus one, and you can see the battery level indicator drop from one-half to one-quarter in 6 minutes.

While I don't doubt flash can have a significant effect on battery life, just how damning is that anecdotal drop on a device with a course 4-segment battery display? For all you know, it only dropped 1 percentage point from whatever the display considers "one-half" to "one-quarter;" e.g. from 38% to

37% (assuming the display uses 100, 75, 50, and 25 percent as center points for the segments' range.)

true, it's not an exact guide, but it was nevertheless, fast.

judge for yourself. about 40 seconds into the video, the phone shows

3:59 pm and the battery level is at 1/2. it drops to 1/4 at 4:06 pm.

everything they showed could better be done as a native app, and wouldn't need the internet to play either.

Sure, but again, you don't know the underlying data. My phone's native battery meter only has four segments, each which seem to disappear, respectively, at 87%, 62%, 37% and 12%.

If 6 minutes of flash playing dropped my phone battery from 61% (two segments, or "half") to 37% (one segment, or "a quarter") I'd be very concerned. If it dropped from 38% (still two segments, or "half") to 37% I could care less.

Again, "1/2" and "1/4" are menngless on such a coure indicator- was that a 1% drop? 5%? 30%? We don't know.

True. Unfortunately you have to play the hand you're dealt. If I want to watch, say, the last episode of "Lost" on Hulu, I need flash, at least until Hulu decides to roll out an App For That(tm). I'm not a fan of flash- I just want content. If that content is wrapped in flash, I need flash, at least until that content is offered in an alternative form.

and they're reportedly doing just that

transitions sometimes are tough.