Motorola's Droid iPad

[Thalia]

http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-droid-ipad-launching-as-early-as-this-autumn-2010-8

So does that mean Flash devs can breathe easy now since Steve can't totally squishy them with his super pad bans?

I just started learning and it would suck if one single man can dictate the future of an entire programing language.

[Fridmarr]

http://www.businessinsider.com/motorolas-droid-ipad-launching-as-early-as-this-autumn-2010-8

So does that mean Flash devs can breathe easy now since Steve can't totally squishy them with his super pad bans?

I just started learning and it would suck if one single man can dictate the future of an entire programing language.

Pads are a pretty niche market, but Adobe and Google have been playing nice which works well for Adobe. Total Android installations will almost certainly outnumber IPhone OS installations, particularly since Android is making its way to other devices like Sony and Samsung TVs.

Of course Google still has Chrome OS as well, but again I suspect it will play nice with Adobe.

[hoho]

My cellphone is from last year and can run both random flash stuff and the HTML5 examples all over the net. As a bonus, it runs the HTML5 stuff way better than any apple device due to having a browser that has significantly better compatibility with it.

All that steve has said about flash is pure bullshit with only reason being trying to force people away from using non-apple tech on their HW. Apple is the new microsoft of the '90s, just far worse in their actions. They simply have much better brainwashing team so people actually like them and don't question their politics.


As for android vs iphone, android phones have been outselling iphones for past half a year or so.

[Fridmarr]

My cellphone is from last year and can run both random flash stuff and the HTML5 examples all over the net. As a bonus, it runs the HTML5 stuff way better than any apple device due to having a browser that has significantly better compatibility with it.

All that steve has said about flash is pure bullshit with only reason being trying to force people away from using non-apple tech on their HW. Apple is the new microsoft of the '90s, just far worse in their actions. They simply have much better brainwashing team so people actually like them and don't question their politics.


As for android vs iphone, android phones have been outselling iphones for past half a year or so.

Apple has always been that way, they just never were the dominant market force like they are now. I never understood how they got a free ride for so long.

[Melathys]

I hope its not quite ipad size.

http://www.mobilemag.com/2010/07/27/aug ... very-soon/

I picked this up last week, and I very much preferred the size over the ipad's. The gentouch fails out of the box though. I logged into the market, and it crashed, then boot loop. So yea, bricked it in 20 mins. The touchscreen on the gentouch was terrible (though I wasn't expecting much for 150 anyway). So yea, give me one that works with a capacitive screen, and I'm all over it...especially with Rockplayer on the market now.

[ulushnar]

I wants one, precious!

I like the Pad format since it seems to be the optimal size for reading digital comics. I don't especially want to be shackled to itunes again.

[Flex]

All that steve has said about flash is pure bullshit

Eh. Flash on a Mac is complete garbage. I enjoy 50% CPU usage to watch a 360p YouTube video!

And Flash for Android does have pretty major effect on Battery life.

[Invisusira]

As for android vs iphone, android phones have been outselling iphones for past half a year or so.

To be fair, that happened at the start of Q2. Which is not "half a year or so." Only took the Android a couple years to catch up!

[hoho]

Eh. Flash on a Mac is complete garbage. I enjoy 50% CPU usage to watch a 360p YouTube video!

Complain about implementation, not the technology. MSVC compiler is pretty awful in many ways but that doesn't mean C++ as a language/technology is bad. Linux that has generally got flash years behind any other platform runs things just fine, even when ran on my puny cellphone that's considerably weaker than latest iphone/ipad.

And Flash for Android does have pretty major effect on Battery life.

Show me any other way of streaming videos or showing full-screen animations on web without using external video player that puts lower load on CPU/GPU then.


Also, people that actually do own any later iThingy, try actually watching any of the HTML5 demos that are out there. You'll be surprised how awful support they have for the feature that is supposed to the way of the future.

If you don't have any device to test yourself feel free to browse youtube, just be sure to watch videos demonstrating other things besides the couple of weak demos apple has made themselves, e.g this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M5ZsG1n ... re=related
my n900 (not running android but another OS) with almost half the CPU power and considerably weaker GPU can run those things faster and several of the things that don't work on the video do work on mine. Wouldn't you say it's a rather rough start to claim you've got a killer technology and see it fail so badly?

Only took the Android a couple years to catch up!

iphones have been on sale for roughly 3y1m vs android's 1y9m, add a few years for ipods that in a way painted the way for iphone. Now compare the amount of advertising and general hype iphones have got and how awful the first android OS versions and phones were. That 1.9 years seems to be rather short time to overcome someone that big imho and as it seems it's not really slowing down.


Disclaimer:
Yes, as-is flash is not the greatest thing out there but still it's the only thing that actually works. I too would like if html5 could replace it but as it stands now it isn't good enough yet. What I find somewhat disgusting is how apple has hyped it up to be something godlike while providing ridiculously awful support for it themselves.



For a little laughing/thinking material here's another video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg

[Fridmarr]

I could care less if flash was horrendous. I just don't think the logic against code generation and non native language tool kits stands up at all.

IPhone sat, currently sets, and will continue to set the standard for consumer based smart phones for some time. The IPhone is an amazing device, and the IPhone OS is still a more refined and polished product than Android 2.2. I suspect Apple will keep an edge in stability for a long time, given the complete control over the hardware that Apple has. But just as it did for Apple in the PC world, that complete control also creates limits in market penetration, and it seems like it's only a matter of time before Android pushes to the front in that regard.

Fortunately for Apple, the openness of Android creates plenty of opportunity for the devices to play nice with each other, so hopefully the segregation that we had in the PC world won't be as drastic on these devices.

[hoho]

I just don't think the logic against code generation and non native language tool kits stands up at all.

Not sure if it's my exhaustion or simply problems with English but I can't figure out what you mean by that.

IPhone sat, currently sets, and will continue to set the standard for consumer based smart phones for some time.

Loads of the "new" features of iphone4 were implemented on many other phones long ago. Iphone just made them sound really awesome, video chat being probably the most laughable of the hyped features.

[Fridmarr]

I just don't think the logic against code generation and non native language tool kits stands up at all.

Not sure if it's my exhaustion or simply problems with English but I can't figure out what you mean by that.

The newish Apple License agreement forbids using tools like Adobe's and some others to write apps for the IPhone.

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

The war with Adobe isn't just over videos, it's also over this new requirement in the license agreement.

IPhone sat, currently sets, and will continue to set the standard for consumer based smart phones for some time.

Loads of the "new" features of iphone4 were implemented on many other phones long ago. Iphone just made them sound really awesome, video chat being probably the most laughable of the hyped features.

Yes, I'm aware, and given that Apple probably won't be able to keep pace with all the different hardware manufacturers out there with how fast new devices are produced, that will continue to happen. That said, I've made no claims about features (not that you could given the rate that they change) only that the IPhone set the standard in the consumer market. At the time of the first IPhone, BlackBerrys and most Linux derivatives were not as consumer oriented, they were aimed and corporate and power users.

[Flex]

Fortunately for Apple, the openness of Android creates plenty of opportunity for the devices to play nice with each other, so hopefully the segregation that we had in the PC world won't be as drastic on these devices.

Openness of Android means nothing when shit is tied to carriers.

The Developer Agreement was loosened a bit to allow LUA and similar interpreters for games.

The reasoning behind it is simple. In the past Apple never had the muscle to prevent some other company from hijacking their system, wether it was Microsoft and Office or Adobe and Photoshop. With the iPhone it is an end consumer device and Apple doesn't want stuff being built that can hold the future of the device back and what other companies can hold over them.

Plus if you need to do something and not tie it to the App store or Apple's policies that's what HTML5 is for.

Loads of the "new" features of iphone4 were implemented on many other phones long ago. Iphone just made them sound really awesome, video chat being probably the most laughable of the hyped features.

Eh. What Apple tries to do in the consumer market is make the really cool features simply work. If AT&T ever gives the go ahead for video chat over 3G every iPhone 4 is a simply one button push away from a video phone.

[Fridmarr]

Fortunately for Apple, the openness of Android creates plenty of opportunity for the devices to play nice with each other, so hopefully the segregation that we had in the PC world won't be as drastic on these devices.

Openness of Android means nothing when shit is tied to carriers.

Nonsense, Android is not tied to carriers or even phones, and any carrier can modify any aspect of the source code they want. More to the point though, as Android becomes ubiquitous ending up on TVs and other devices, it's going to be nice for Apple (or more likely IPhone app developers) to have access to that source code so they can integrate with it when it is appropriate.

The Developer Agreement was loosened a bit to allow LUA and similar interpreters for games.

The reasoning behind it is simple. In the past Apple never had the muscle to prevent some other company from hijacking their system, wether it was Microsoft and Office or Adobe and Photoshop. With the iPhone it is an end consumer device and Apple doesn't want stuff being built that can hold the future of the device back and what other companies can hold over them.

Plus if you need to do something and not tie it to the App store or Apple's policies that's what HTML5 is for.

The reasoning behind it is dumb, nothing short of astoundingly dumb. The explanation you just gave really makes no sense, how could any software that Microsoft produced hold back the Mac platform? Besides, even the official explanation Jobs gave doesn't hold up (assuming he's not just pissed at Adobe). People can write shitty Objective-C every bit as effectively as a tool can generate it. These types of tool sets have existed forever, for pretty much every platform, and contrary to being a handicap they leverage the strength of the languages to produce applications efficiently. All Apple has done is create an artificial road block for no gain, except maybe spite.

The IPhone is already not developer friendly from the language to the licensing to the deployment. This forces the hands of developers to pick and choose platforms or do twice the work without a compatibility layer. Tools like Phone Gap and HTML5 can certainly help, but they have limitations, and Phone Gap suffers from every single supposed limitation that Jobs claims is the reason for change to begin with. Hell right after they made this change Jobs got caught demoing some snazzy software product that he didn't realize was no longer in compliance.

If an application is good, then it's good, who really cares what it was written with?

[hoho]

The newish Apple License agreement forbids using tools like Adobe's and some others to write apps for the IPhone.

Ah, right. Yes, this is one of the reasons why I said Apple is becoming the new MS.

the IPhone set the standard in the consumer market. At the time of the first IPhone, BlackBerrys and most Linux derivatives were not as consumer oriented, they were aimed and corporate and power users.

This is true. Though technically they didn't do much besides adding a bit of bling, sparkles and hype the feature set wasn't really that much different to previous high-end cellphones. For many ipod owners this was just a logical progression

In the past Apple never had the muscle to prevent some other company from hijacking their system, wether it was Microsoft and Office or Adobe and Photoshop. With the iPhone it is an end consumer device and Apple doesn't want stuff being built that can hold the future of the device back and what other companies can hold over them

So instead of allowing for an open platform free for innovation they box in and want to be the only ones that do anything for it. Just look at how anything remotely similar to built-in Apple software gets removed from the marketplace. How would you like if blizzard would e.g block all unit frame addons because they are competing with theirs? If people are making alternatives to the official stuff it shows the official stuff is inferior. Blocking them only does bad for the consumers. But hey, most of the idrones just swallow the stuff told by jobs with no questioning and cheer when he says it's for "their own protection".

Plus if you need to do something and not tie it to the App store or Apple's policies that's what HTML5 is for.

Sucks that their HTML5 support is that horrible. Also, it can't do a whole lot of things that flash can and most things done in HTML5 consume a LOT more power than flash equivalents. HTML5 is no where near good enough to be a drop-in replacement for it.

If AT&T ever gives the go ahead for video chat over 3G every iPhone 4 is a simply one button push away from a video phone.

Does Skype work on iphone? I know I can do video calls over anything that allows internet using skype, jabber/gtalk or even the actual standard 3G video thingy that was introduced years ago and with the first two it won't matter what's on the other end. Iphone4 on the other hand has rather stupid limitations in that regard that have no technological reason to exist. I'm pretty certain it has nothing to do with carrier limits. If anything they'd be happy to gather the money people spend on the data traffic they use while chatting. Also, AT&T is just one of the carriers servicing iphone, there are a whole lot more out there who don't have as crappy network.
[edit]

If an application is good, then it's good, who really cares what it was written with?

Exactly. Only thing to consider is at the moment apple is forbidding the use of a superior tool and asks people to use inferior alternatives. To make things worse they actually expect developers to make an app for everything instead of making a nice web page that would run on any phone with minimal fuss. Why does there have to be an app for armory/facebook/twitter etc while you could instead make a proper web page and have anyone using it? It's far easier to make and maintain-update one web page that works on N+1 phones than it is to make N+1 apps for those phones.