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iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

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Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#41
post #33

Sublime Text was already doing the same with the big animation of its home page: http://www.sublimetext.com/ (you can actually see three animations there, depending if you use Windows, Linux or Mac). What I'm really curious about is how those images are being generated. Is there a tool already available for that?

http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=816...

Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just about to comment asking whether Apple engineers actually did this. For sure this is some cool stuff, but I think it'd be a bummer to say "I work at Apple" and then in response to "oh cool, what do you work on?" say "I work on the iPhone -webpage-"

Why? I worked at Blizzard. On the Blizzard web pages.

Sorry Dude. Apparently you're just not cool ;-)

Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since they have an Apple Store App that works better than the website, why would they do that?

You're 100% right, of course, it is in apple's best interest to have you use their app. It's just that downloading a bulky app for something you'll use infrequently is a crappy way to to business.

The App does more than just let you buy product. You can reserve for pickup, use EasyPay, set appointments at the Genius bar, etc.

That said, perhaps they could integrate the two a bit better.

Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#44
post #32
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's weird. My web developer side is impressed by the technical detail that go behind it. But my other web developer side asks why the f*ck should achieving a simple video effect on a web page should be this hard in 2012? There is a whole pattern of similar things like this in web that is killing me a little bit every day. Want to center a div on the page? No worries just wrap it in these 5 divs and apply these…

What's difficult about centering a box? Was that just sarcasm? A couple of approaches: Margin Auto w/ a fixed width Absolute 50% w/ negative margins Text-align center parent w/ inline-block display on children If it was sarcasm, disregard my stupidity.

I think it was a hyperbole, but there really is a lot of dumb shit in web design.

Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#46
post #14

> Apple's website needs to work on all major browsers That doesn't seem true. The second-most-prominent links on the iPhone and iPad sites are to videos that only play in Quicktime. If they wanted the site to work everywhere, they'd use a format those browsers can natively play.

The videos linked to from the iPhone and iPad pages, then they're video tags these days. If you're talking about the movie trailers or whatnot, then Apple isn't trying to sell you Quicktime, but it's damn well trying to sell you an iPhone or iPad.

If you're talking about the movie trailers or whatnot, then Apple isn't trying to sell you Quicktime, but it's damn well trying to sell you an iPhone or iPad.

Using a technology you probably already have to own an iPad or an iPhone to have installed no less.

Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#47
post #11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried on my friend's iPod and the animation doesn't play there anyway (it just stays on the "lock" image). Maybe the iPod browser is different (my Android doesn't play the animation either) but I'd be surprised if the animation worked on an iPhone but not on an iPod...

It definitely works on iPhone (I've tried on my 4S and on Simulator). Apple's JS disables the animation for iOS 4.x and below, so maybe that's why it wasn't playing on your friend's iPod.

> Apple's JS disables the animation for iOS 4.x and below, so maybe that's why it wasn't playing on your friend's iPod.

I see Apple is really embracing the idea of "the one web" here, introducing web-fragmentation even among their own devices.

Apple has long stopped impressing me. Back in the days when they were the clear underdogs, they were for web-standards and a unified web, because they saw how that was good, and that was what allowed them to become what they are now.

Now it seems they don't really have so much ideological issues with how web-pages should be built anymore. Funny thing that.

Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#48
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just about to comment asking whether Apple engineers actually did this. For sure this is some cool stuff, but I think it'd be a bummer to say "I work at Apple" and then in response to "oh cool, what do you work on?" say "I work on the iPhone -webpage-"

Why? I worked at Blizzard. On the Blizzard web pages.

I've always been impressed with Blizzard's web pages. It's the type of style I typically don't like, but it is done really well and appropriately. I often used it as an example in my classes to show how to do very graphical websites the right way.

So, good work! I think you're cool :)

Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#49
post #32
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's weird. My web developer side is impressed by the technical detail that go behind it. But my other web developer side asks why the f*ck should achieving a simple video effect on a web page should be this hard in 2012? There is a whole pattern of similar things like this in web that is killing me a little bit every day. Want to center a div on the page? No worries just wrap it in these 5 divs and apply these…

What's difficult about centering a box? Was that just sarcasm? A couple of approaches: Margin Auto w/ a fixed width Absolute 50% w/ negative margins Text-align center parent w/ inline-block display on children If it was sarcasm, disregard my stupidity.

That's still non-intuitive. Just do a search about centering (or X problem in CSS) and see the thousands of threads and questions and corner cases, hacks and exceptions.

The whole thing feels like you are stretching something beyond what it was intended to be used for.

Things like element positioning should be so so simple that if you search about it, you get nothing back because no one had a problem to ask for solutions.

Although I must say I'm not mocking CSS in particular, most web technologies feel this way because they were designed many years ago for a web that was supposed to have simple 'documents' like an article, text and paragraphs and today each component of it is expected to do a lot more.

It's not getting all that much better either because each new version and improvement is building on top of the previous decisions, etc...

Re: iPhone 5 web teardown: How Apple compresses video using JPEG, JSON, and canvas

#50

Speaking of Apple website updates, I am surprised that they have never offered a responsive design for their apple.com site where you buy iPhones and iPads. Every app they make is designed differently for the phone or the iPad, but not the website.

Since they have an Apple Store App that works better than the website, why would they do that?

Because not everyone who wants to buy from the Apple store has a iWhatever...

It's ludicrously shortsighted, you'd actually think they'd want to make it easy for people with competitor products to buy from Apple not harder!

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