A Bit Eclectic

Except they tend to converge on a few similar points.

I have a love hate relationship with the Apple rumor mill, and the past couple weeks have been as good/bad as any.  We hear all this talk about the Apple tablet, but if you look close all the talk is the same.  It starts off with a few pieces of, typically false, information that then gets repeated over and over.  Sometimes a twist is added/made up, but for the most part it is the same.  Look around at the tablet rumors, I bet most of them claim it will have a 10″ screen.  This may or may not be false, but as a community (yes I am referring to the Apple community) we have very little information or imagination. Yet everyone want’s to regurgitate the same hardware specs and not so innovative UIs.  The hardware means very little.

I don’t care how big the screen is or how many ports it has. Features don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things (I had a Verizon phone that surfed the web and played music). I care about how I will interact with the device and what hole it will fill in my digital life.

Think back to the pre-iPhone rumors, most of them were guessing that it would have a click wheel slapped onto a regular old phone.  Those rumors were regurgitated so many times it began to feel real.  In the end, the actual iPhone is so far away from the rumors that we should be happy those people aren’t employed by Apple.  Granted, hindsight is a little misleading.  If these rumors had been spot on and predicted everything, nobody would believe they were true.

This article really hits the nail on the head and sums up a lot of my feelings.  What I want to know can’t be made up by the kind folks on the internet; Apple (and other companies) needs to be the one that opens my eyes and shows me what I’m missing. (Neven’s post also parallels my feelings)

I’ve been working for 13 hours so this post might not make much sense. Good night all and enjoy the festivities tomorrow.

Just stop it : clusterflock.

/by clusterflock

Internet Vices

These are dead on and hilarious.

This is by far the best beard I have ever seen.

(via Beau Colburn and coudal.com)

It frustrates me when people complain about Apple’s stance on Flash support and the iPhone.  Overall, I agree with Apple and think it would be a terrible idea.  The iPhone is very powerful but we must remember that it isn’t a desktop or notebook computer.

The fact that many websites still use and rely on Flash is not a reason that the iPhone should support it.  You can argue that it makes a great UI, but it won’t likely transfer over to the mobile world.  The iPhone is navigated with touch alone and this can introduce problems.  Some sites that use flash require you to hover over items to see all the options.  With the iPhone there is no ability to hover over.  There are probably many other elements that wouldn’t transfer over to the iPhones method of input.  How do you reconcile these differences for the end-user?

The advocates of Flash point to flash games as a reason for the iPhone to support Flash.  This creates the same problem with controls.  How do you perform a right-click if a game requires it? What about keyboard controls.  There isn’t enough room on the screen for the game and the onscreen keyboard.  These flash games also have their own aspect ratios and dimensions, some of which may not fit nicely on the iPhone screen.  This will create more headaches than if Flash remains disabled.  Although it isn’t an ideal solution, these game developers can create native games running on the iPhone (see Canabalt for example).

The biggest issue is with battery life.  Reviews already point to the battery as one of the iPhone’s weaknesses.  With Flash running, we will only see a hit in performance.  Think of the web sites you visit and the number of flash ads they display.  These flash ads will come at the cost of battery life.  Each page will use up more processing power just to run these ads.  I would rather have a longer battery life than gain any type of Flash support.

I can’t remember any time that I’ve been inconvenienced by the lack of Flash support on the iPhone in the past two years that I’ve owned one.  I’m not saying that it never happens, but that it wasn’t a big deal or a game changer.