iPad - No Flash!

[Mad_Man_Moon]

Seriously, this is bad news:
http://gizmodo.com/5518260/the-true-...flashless-ipad

[alfanzo]

The iPad-Flash disconnect first came to light by way of Apple blog //AppleInsider.com//. The gang at AI noticed that promotional images posted on Apple's Web site appear to depict the iPad displaying Flash-based content from NYTimes.com.

[Mad_Man_Moon]

The whole thing is ridiculous.

Jon Stewart summed it up best by saying that up is down, black is white, Applis is THE MAN, and Bill Gates is tending wounding children in Rwanda (or something like that).

PS - Welcome to the forum!

[Nicholas Smith]

The iPad-Flash disconnect first came to light by way of Apple blog //AppleInsider.com//. The gang at AI noticed that promotional images posted on Apple's Web site appear to depict the iPad displaying Flash-based content from NYTimes.com.

Marketing mock-up fail I'd say. Image copy pasta gone wrong.

Apple is The Man, but I still don't mind that. They make significantly nicer products than most hardware manufacturers and pair it with really pleasing to use software.

I'd rather have a tyrant progressing the field, than to be stuck in the past. Lets make no mistakes, Job's is a tyrant but he's pushing what can be done at a reasonable (of sorts) cost.

And Flash sucks too. This morning I had to kill the plugin *4* times in an hour in Chrome. That's exactly 4 more than I should. Add on the fact that when they did the Flash/Android demo it crashed repeatedly then I'm grateful it's not on my iPhone

[Mad_Man_Moon]

They are beautiful, but you lead a blessed life if you think those prices are reasonable ... even "of sorts".

[Nicholas Smith]

I generally view things as a cost per life situation. Case in point I've had my Macbook for 2 and a half years, I bought it off eBay and it was already a year old. It's now my girlfriends machine and it's still going strong, I'll upgrade the RAM later this year and get another year out of it, maybe a wee bit more.

That's 3.5 years of ownership at £550, so about £150 a year vs the last Windows machine I bought which I ended up getting 2 years of life before it desperately called for upgrades.

(Maybe I'm just incredibly hard on machines!)

[Mad_Man_Moon]

Heh, possibly.

[Fysh]

I generally view things as a cost per life situation. Case in point I've had my Macbook for 2 and a half years, I bought it off eBay and it was already a year old. It's now my girlfriends machine and it's still going strong, I'll upgrade the RAM later this year and get another year out of it, maybe a wee bit more.

That's 3.5 years of ownership at £550, so about £150 a year vs the last Windows machine I bought which I ended up getting 2 years of life before it desperately called for upgrades.

(Maybe I'm just incredibly hard on machines!)

Ah, but you're not doing that the way Apple want you to so you're not really a good example. A Macbook right now, with access to Higher Education pricing, is at least £700 inc VAT.

You'll get a decent machine, but not one you can ever tinker with - and not necessarily the best value for money given the hardware you'll get. For example, they're moving towards non-user-replaceable batteries. They claim they get better efficiency out of it (and it may even be true) but on the other hand you end up with a portable computer whose battery you can't replace without going through a repair centre/authorised reseller. At which point, if you're lucky, you only have to wait a week or so for them to get the work done. Or for another example, take the hard drives in Apple's portables - if you're buying a Macbook, you only get the choice of 5400rpm drives - not the 7200rpm drives that have been available for years for that range of machines. If you want a faster disk, you have to go for the pro range and stump up for an SSD - there's no middle ground.

Don't get me wrong, Apple are very good at what they do - but what they do is make and sell "Magic box" computers. Their equipment is fundamentally unsuitable for anyone who wants to have a significant say in what goes into their machine, or to have full access to it or control over it.

Back on topic re: the flash thing, it's part of the wider Apple/Adobe spat that's ongoing. Claims about Flash being a resource hog on the iPhone are a bit silly, given the roughly-equivalent performance of H264 video without a Flash wrapper (see here). Apple's response to this? To offer hardware acceleration for H264 video playback - ie loading the decks. (See here).

Flash isn't really suitable for a lot of the areas in which it's used, but it's also important to bear in mind that Apple are presenting a very skewed version of the truth in their dismissal of it.

[Nicholas Smith]

I suppose it's because I'm a software developer, but my interests lay with the high level stuff and not the hardware. FWIW you *can* bump to a 7200 on the 15+" MBP's, the low end one's get a bit screwed over there. The non-user replaceable battery thing doesn't faze me too much, as even after 2+ years of use on my work Macbook I'm still getting healthy life (and I'm a bit of a bugger and leave it on charge a lot).

They're definitely not the best machines, but for me they're the best package.

[Fysh]

I suppose it's because I'm a software developer, but my interests lay with the high level stuff and not the hardware. FWIW you *can* bump to a 7200 on the 15+" MBP's, the low end one's get a bit screwed over there. The non-user replaceable battery thing doesn't faze me too much, as even after 2+ years of use on my work Macbook I'm still getting healthy life (and I'm a bit of a bugger and leave it on charge a lot).

They're definitely not the best machines, but for me they're the best package.

Ah, don't get me wrong - as work machines they're pretty damn good, and Apple deserve at least recognition for not having any clunkers in their range. Though I have to say, working in IT support, my biggest Apple bugbear is that they've got great phone-based support and then completely fumble it by not offering any kind of next-day on-site support. Our head of department has about 3 macbooks of various flavours (including one bought on his personal credit card) because he knows that if his main machine breaks, it'll be the best part of a fortnight before Apple get the issue fixed.

Part of that "package" issue is that Apple is pretty unique in not bundling crapware along with their OS - if Sony, IBM-Lenovo, Toshiba or Dell would stop selling under-spec'd machines and stop taking kickbacks for installing crapware demo software, users would pay more money but also get a far better "package" than they do at the moment. I'm kind of surprised none of the vendors have gone for this approach, and have instead opted for the "let's make the same machines, only with prettier cases" route.