Tablet Musings • Hacker News Board

Re: Tablet Musings

#21

Post by steveklabnik » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:14 PM UTC

thechangelog wrote: post #16

GHFigs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just for stupid things like animated menus Like I said: dwindling relevance. Nobody in their right mind uses Flash for anything important. The one small exception is games, but the iPhone platform has no shortage of games that are faster, better looking, and better tailored to the platform than anything you can do in Flash.

cough cough YouTube? (also, the majority of online display advertising, Facebook and countless other uploaders, etc...)

HTML5 video element means FLV is short lived.

Or at least, _could be_. I expect IE's lack of support will prop it up for quite a while.

Also, you make it sound like YouTube isn't on the iPhone.

Re: Tablet Musings

#22

Post by tomsaffell » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:15 PM UTC

GHFigs wrote: post #15

there wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, it hasn't. for video, maybe, but there are still a lot of websites that are useless on mobile safari without flash just for stupid things like animated menus.

just for stupid things like animated menus Like I said: dwindling relevance. Nobody in their right mind uses Flash for anything important. The one small exception is games, but the iPhone platform has no shortage of games that are faster, better looking, and better tailored to the platform than anything you can do in Flash.

Nobody in their right mind uses Flash for anything important

I used teamapart.com a few days ago - it's a very impressive product, built with Flash (and Flex). I've never seen anything like it that doesnt use Flash.

Just because some uses of Flash are questionable, doesn't mean that Flash has no place. Its performance issues are, of course, a consideration.

Google's uses of Flash (OFTTOMH): Gmail's GChat, Street View, Charting for Public Data, Marketing for Nexus One..

Re: Tablet Musings

#23

Post by axod » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:17 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #19

simonw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is, it's just not yet evenly distributed.

So that would mean that the 'evenly distributed' future isn't here yet? Wouldn't that still make it the future? Oh wait my head asploded.

The point is sites are already using HTML video, websockets, canvas, etc etc etc.

The future is now for websites and browsers that support it.

Re: Tablet Musings

#24

Post by fragmede » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:18 PM UTC

Take a traditional laptop and swap the position of the keyboard and the screen. Then, make the keyboard detachable and turn the screen into a touch screen. Voila, tablet PC.

With a good industrial design house, someone could give it sex appeal, and between the iMac and the Macbook Air, thats the something different I'm dreaming of from Apple.

Re: Tablet Musings

#25

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:18 PM UTC

thechangelog wrote: post #16

GHFigs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just for stupid things like animated menus Like I said: dwindling relevance. Nobody in their right mind uses Flash for anything important. The one small exception is games, but the iPhone platform has no shortage of games that are faster, better looking, and better tailored to the platform than anything you can do in Flash.

cough cough YouTube? (also, the majority of online display advertising, Facebook and countless other uploaders, etc...)

iPhone/iPod touch already have a YouTube client which works fine. And I'm not really going to complain too much if my browser suddenly can't show me annoying animated full-screen ads with sound...

Re: Tablet Musings

#26

Post by m_eiman » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:19 PM UTC

thechangelog wrote: post #16

GHFigs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just for stupid things like animated menus Like I said: dwindling relevance. Nobody in their right mind uses Flash for anything important. The one small exception is games, but the iPhone platform has no shortage of games that are faster, better looking, and better tailored to the platform than anything you can do in Flash.

cough cough YouTube? (also, the majority of online display advertising, Facebook and countless other uploaders, etc...)

Youtube: has a native app

Online ads: I don't think the majority of users find that to be a problem

Uploaders: What are you going to upload that can't be done just as well with a normal file picker? I'd guess the thing is a big iPhone, not a small computer.

Re: Tablet Musings

#27

Post by GHFigs » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:22 PM UTC

thechangelog wrote: post #16

GHFigs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just for stupid things like animated menus Like I said: dwindling relevance. Nobody in their right mind uses Flash for anything important. The one small exception is games, but the iPhone platform has no shortage of games that are faster, better looking, and better tailored to the platform than anything you can do in Flash.

cough cough YouTube? (also, the majority of online display advertising, Facebook and countless other uploaders, etc...)

The iPhone has supported YouTube through a native application since it launched. It does this by streaming the MPEG-4 video directly instead of using Flash as a player. Every other video site does this as well, and they don't even need a native app or any server-side weirdness. The only reason we don't do this on the desktop is inertia.

the majority of online display advertising

Which no consumer gives a flying fuck about and many actively oppose. It isn't "important". Nobody would desire Flash just so they could get Flash advertising.

Facebook and countless other uploaders

The iPhone has no user-visible filesystem for these to interface with. Even if it did, it isn't as though Flash is the only way to upload files: it just happens to be a way that skirts around browser limitations. A native application (even on the desktop, like Flickr Uploadr or iPhoto's Facebook integration) does the same thing.

I'm not trying to say that Flash is dead. Obviously it is in use all over the place. I'm just saying it's not a vital thing to have in anything new, and can cite the iPhone's success in the past few years as an example.

Re: Tablet Musings

#28

Post by boucher » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:24 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #17

brk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future isn't flash Yeah, well the future also isn't here yet. Flash still has much relevance for any web-surfing focused product shipping today.

Yes it is, it's just not yet evenly distributed.

It really isn't. Mainstream sites still play video with Flash, and I doubt that is going to change in 2010. But, we'll see.

Re: Tablet Musings

#29

Post by eli » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:25 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #8

csuper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately - I bet a lot of this is dead on. I can't imagine the device being more open than any other Apple product is.

But that's just it...Apple's products vary widely in their degree of openness, from the iPod / iPhone / Apple TV on the end to their computers on the other end. So is this thing more like a computer (you buy it, you own it, hack it to hell and put anything you want on it), or an iPhone (you're basically renting this device from us, and we're going to dictate exactly what you can do with it)?

I think we're just lucky that the paradigm for a desktop computer is already settled.

Imagine if Apple started out as a company that distributes music and designs handheld devices before creating a computer. It's not hard to see a Mac OS that only lets you buy apps from an app store.

Re: Tablet Musings

#30

Post by boucher » Thu, Jan 07, 2010, 6:26 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #13

there wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, it hasn't. for video, maybe, but there are still a lot of websites that are useless on mobile safari without flash just for stupid things like animated menus.

There will always be crazys using silverlight/flash/java applets for ridiculous things. Best avoid them.

As a developer, that is sound advice. As a user, it's silly. I don't get to decide which websites use flash and which don't, and technical limitations don't dictate which sites I want to visit.