You know, I agree with Eric...

I know people don't like how Apple is going about this, but in the end it should make the internet as a whole BETTER. Open standards = good. Closed standards ie Flash = bad.

Who do you develop for? It seems you have no idea how this industry works.

Our company has been discussing getting into the mobile platform, yet it requires developing for Apple (26% marketshare), Blackberry (42% marketshare) and soon Android (10% marketshare and rising rapidly).

Why as a company would we want to have 3 different development streams? I'd prefer one platform to develop on that would work on all 3 mobile platforms.

Take the gaming industry as the example. Games are typically made for the XBOX or PC first, then ported to the PS since it is easier to develop for the XBOX and it has a larger audience. The games suffer on the PS cause development does not take advantage of the specific APIs that perform better, cause they have decided to port instead.

Lets revisit one of Steve Jobs arguments against Flash - he wants developers to take advantage of the Apple specific APIs to run better, faster, ... meanwhile companies that develop for multiple mobile platforms could easily decide to develop for the BB and only port to the iPhone and not take advantage of these specific APIs in the interest of getting to market faster with less development cost.

They do this cause there is a market for it. If Android catches up to Apple in marketshare, expect this to start to change as Android does not force developers to use specific tools, charge a fee for a development kit, charge a fee to sell the app, or morally police the apps.

That is how the development industry works.

Sure it will not change for NASA systems, yet for platforms with choice it will change. Google has put a lot of marketing behind Droid and it is paying off with huge increases in marketshare and lots of quality apps to download.

Apple polices its appstore and has denied game publishers that have ported platforms to Apple. There is nothing open about Apple, they are pulling the same crap Microsoft did to Netscape, yet the fanboys are too blind to see it.

If HTML 5 does gain big support on the web it would be great because developers would not have to submit to the rules of Apples app store and would not have to develop for all the different platforms. The downside of HTML is that different browser display HTML in different ways.

Seems like anyone who will argue from Apple's point of view is going to be called a Fanboy, regardless of whether or not you are one. Its Apple's product - they can do what they want with it. Its not like there isn't another device out there that does what the ipad does. If it wasn't Apple that was involved, and was, say Nokia, no one would be making a big fuss out of it. At the end of the day, your wallet makes the decision - if it works for you, you buy it; if not, onto the next gadget.
And about the development streams: hey, if its a market that you want to get into, then you develop for it. No single tool to make your life easier to develop and release on 3 platforms, and test on them - tough sh!t. You do what you have to do to enter and succeed in that market. You don't complain and cry about not having a single tool that makes your life easier for you. If you don't want to do it, someone else is willing to do it - and take the developmental cost that comes with it.

I've been a software engineer since the 80's. I develop embedded applications for the automotive market and currently work with several different microcontroller families.

I would love to have a single development tool that would allow me to write for all families and have my software work perfectly on all of them. But they are competitors and the chance of that is zero. So I had to learn each system and I pick the family I need for a particular application depending on how suitable it is for that application.


In the end, Apple has been very successful with their App Store and iPhone/iPad/iPod products. They have garnered a significant share of the smartphone market in a very short period of time. The App Store has a lot of developers writing Apps and a huge selection to choose from (waiting for people to chime in about the thousands of useless Apps while ignoring the many truly excellent ones).

So it seems Apple's business model, whether you like it or not, has been highly successful. And with all things successful, there are always going to be haters.

way too much fan boy/non-sense talk in this thread...

so some actual talk about the product itself, i've heard that you cant listen to music from ipod and surf the web at the same time, is this true?

^ No it's not true.

Some sites have published that you can't, but they're very sneaky in saying this. They'll try to run a 3rd party music application and use it to listen to music while trying to run Safari to browse. Of course this won't work since you can't multitask a 3rd party app (not now, anyway) along with an Apple App. Then they claim "you can't listen to music while browsing".

Just like the iPhone, Apple's built-in apps multitask and you can listen to music while browsing the web or talk on the phone while checking for e-mail.

Ya that's what I thought, thanks for clearing that up.
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I take it back.

I don't understand why Apple has to be open with their hardware?

If people don't like it, there are alternatives out there. Vote with the wallet instead of complaining about it is the only way that Apple will get the hint.

Obviously the people who are buying these things don't give a shit about open platform.

What I was originally trying to say related to flash vs html 5 (closed vs open) specifically.

Hm....... Im using the pad now and it's fucking heavy and uncomfortable to use in bed, anyone replaced their laptops at school with this? Thinking if I should buy 1. Any ppt or PDF apps that I can edit with and take notes? Or word apps I can sync with ms word?

No one is going to replace their laptop with this. It's a fun toy...but it isn't a laptop replacement.

HTML5 FTL

Every toy has a certain purpose... when does someone play w/ the iPad.. what do you use it for mostly?

iPad-like devices from China are starting to make their way into the market:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.39459

They don't have to be, yet they open themselves to the same anti-competitive lawsuits Microsoft did, and to the criticism Microsoft has taken from consumers.

Apple's products are currently living on reputation. Other products have caught up in easy of use and style, while beating Apple's price point.

PFAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

I have had a 32GB 3G iPad for almost a week now, and I gotta say again, no flash support is fricking annoying!!! arhhhhhhhhh~~~

When I browse forum and ppl post a video, I have to go through a lot of hassle to see it. And had to cut my sim card to fit the micro sim. But not what bothers me the most, the typing is just horrid. If it wasn't my gf who demands it, I would have just sold it...

I can see it as something you leave on the coffee table/kitchen counter.. maybe pick up to quickly check an email or website, or show a quick youtube video or something.. not sure what you'd use it for other than that

the whole battle is about who can deliver the BEST mobile browsing experience
who doesn't agree that apple has brought the best...

The only shitty part about owning a mac is the flash support...even on the macbook, flash hogs resources like maddd, where as it doesnt kill resources lke it does on the pc...

Alot of the web is slowly trending towards ccs and that sorta crap..(i kno nothing of web development, but i like to read on it) flash will soon get dislodged simply because Apple, and now Microsoft and others who develop websites will stand by it.

Lame.

I installed Chrome just so I could fool around with HTML5 sites to see how they looked. I visited canvasdemos and tried the very same apps this idiot did.

First off, my machine specs: i7 920, 6GB RAM, 2 x 80GB Intel SSD's, 2 x 5870 Radeons, win7 Ultimate 64. Basically, my machine rips.


The first app in his demo with the 3D ran perhaps 4 times faster on my PC than his video. My computer should have ran this 20 times faster. At least.

Second app didn't even work properly and only 1 in 3 objects that I drew actually ended up staying on the screen.

Third app was about the same speed as the video and the mouse interaction sucked. I couldn't even play it properly.

I stopped after the first 3 since it's obvious what this guy is doing. He's demoing poorly written garbage programs that don't even run good on a PC and trying to run them on the iPad. Can you get anymore biased?


But hey, don't take my word for it. I suggest people here go visit the site canvasdemos and try out their browsers and PC's to see for yourself just how shitty his selections were.


Why didn't he just go and visit popular websites that everyone uses (like Youtube for example) instead of picking some arbitrary and useless demos? Simple, he's trying to make a "the iPad sucks at browsing" video.

How are the lineups today?

^ So that's what people were doing at Best Buy when I drove by on my way to work. Losers. No way I'd waste half my day standing in line for something.