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How the iPad Is Already Reshaping the Internet (Sans Flash)
The Internet's already starting to look different, says Gizmodo, in a piece of interest not only to everyone with an iPad floating around the UPS system, but also those of us thinking about some other kind of tablet in the medium-term future. As they put it, "The iPad doesn't run Flash. If your website uses Flash, it won't play well on the iPad. Turns out, a lot of people want their sites to look pretty on the iPad."
And an anonymous reader adds this snippet from Webmonkey: "In anticipation of Saturday's release of the iPad — which doesn't run Flash — Apple has published a list of 'iPad Ready' websites. The sites are all big league sluggers like CNN, The New York Times, People Magazine and MLB.com. Surprisingly, there are also a few video-heavy sites in the mix (Vimeo, Flickr, and TED) which would traditionally rely on Flash Player for video playback."
Not all of us lay back and spread our legs for Apple, timothy.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It's stupid to do this just for the iPad, but if it helps to move more towards web standards then I don't care about the means to the end..
which is totally what she said
If the iPad does actually kill off Flash, Steve Jobs will finally have given something worthwhile to the world of computing.
... reshaping the ipad.
Let's face it, aside from the hype this device is merely another tablet. So far none have made any sort of impression on the internet and I would fully expect that in a few months time, when all the buzz has died back all these ipads will be languishing in desk drawers and cupboards somewhere - when people discover that their old laptops are much more capable and less of a pain to use.
*Looks closer* Oh yeah! Some of the pixels.... no wait that's just a bit of dust.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
The first thing I did to make my site more iPad-friendly was to use nothing but different shades of pink. The green I used before is gone, along with the black. It's all pink.
The second thing I did was put penises all over the place. My site is actually about mobile homes, but erect penises are what really attract the iPad crowd.
The third thing I did was use words like "fabulous" and "super duper" all over the place.
The fourth thing I did was replace all 's's with 'th'. So now my site has text like, "This is the motht fabuloth mobile home you'll thee on the market today!"
The fifth thing I did was made my site navigable with nothing more than a flick of the wrist.
I'm sure with these changes that my site will become the premiere site for iPad-using mobile home enthusiasts.
This has nothing to do with the iPad. Once again, Apple is getting the credit for something that was already happening in the industry.
Flash started to get dropped when ad blocking systems became so popular which meant more people were blocking it by default. Also AJAX became the next big buzzword, which meant that a lot of things that people (necessarily) used Flash for could be done using standard Javascript. There just isn't the need for it anymore.
I'm not saying that having more systems that don't support Flash will not be a factor in the decision regarding what technology will be used on a website. But the writing has been on the wall for Flash for quite some time, at least for general website interfaces. Obviously it will still have a use for games (which is why Apple will never support Flash - it bypasses their strict controls).
yeah. The only video site in the list is vimeo. The rest are news sites.
For the smart people, you can read all the other websites via RSS. I'm amazed that a site that would be just fine being read via RSS is touted as special for being "ipad ready".
The opposite will happen. They'll find their laptops and computer languishing in disuse, and their iPads carried with them around the house all the time. The era of the heavy, stationary computer needing a desk for hours-long use (whether you mean desktop or laptop) is over.
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If that's what it takes to ban Flash from the net forever, I'd buy one, just to sponsor that effort.
On the other hand, I'd be buying from the evil lords of quicktime, so now I have to decide which is worse: Apple or Adobe.
Can't we just put them in an arena, let them slug it out, and then cut the victor's throat and get rid of both evils and have some fun?
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
It is yet again a marketing ploy by Apple to make it look like the iPad is much bigger "player" than it is, while presenting its weakness as a strength.
Websites on the list are not bending over backwards to appease the mighty iPad.
They are either offering a "alternative solution" for portable devices that don't run Flash, while still keeping the Flash version running - OR simply trying to move away from Flash on their own.
It is not like they got together and said: "Hey, this new_thingyTM is coming out - we better change everything so that those couple of thousand users can use our site so that the new_thingyTM sells better and doesn't flop. Quick! To the HTML5-mobile!".
It is simply a list of "compatible sites" that will actually work with the new bigger iPod - unlike every other video site on the internets.
You know... It is not a bug that it doesn't run Flash. It is a feature. See - here is the list of sites that work just fine on it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
if it helps to move more towards web standards then I don't care about the means to the end..
So what will replace Flash on sites like Newgrounds, which use Flash for vector animation? Will it be canvas or animated SVG? Let me know when badgers can dance on iPad; only then can Flash be obsolete.
Slashdot's record on understanding technology and society is embarrassingly bad and getting worse.
Linux is going to storm the desktop and Dean Kamen is a genius so Segway will revolutionize society, just wait, but the iPod is a lame device that nobody will buy, the iPhone is an undesirable, locked down, me-too phone with no important features and a lousy touchscreen, and iPad is just another crappy tablet that nobody will buy.
Forgive me for thinking that all of this iPad hate on Slashdot ought to be heard as "BUY APPLE STOCK."
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OK, so I just watched that Badger-Dance thing, and have decided that if the presence of the iPad in the world will conclusively cause fewer of those... toons, animations, jumpy-things, whatever it was... to be created, I'll buy two iPads and a couple of shares of Apple stock, just on principle.
Flash is the white powdered wig of the Internet. Don't ask, "But what will replace it?" Just stop using it altogether.
What I've noticed with the iPhone is that there are a number of sites that won't work well on the iPhone (usually due to flash content), and rather than making a general mobile version (or just a site based on HTML+Javascript) the company will release an iPhone-specific app. Case in point: Chipotle. Their site is entirely flash-based. There is also an app for the iPhone. But if you're on any other device that doesn't have flash you're SOL if you want to order a burrito online to carry out.
In the case of Chipotle, this hardly a tragedy, but it seems totally inane that they coded an iPhone-specific app rather than just, say, making a mobile site that every device would be able to use. It seems like it would be more work and worse for their business. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other website that have an iPhone-specific app that duplicates their site functionality rather than just making a website what it ought to be, a nearly universal interface.
As irrational as this seems (to me, at least), it looks like more popular Apple mobile devices could lead to an even less accessible and standards-compliant web.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
NOBODY does "serious content creation."
Literally nobody. A statistically insignificant portion of the global internet-using public.
I completely agree that people doing development, rendering, engineering, physics, authoring, or whatever other kind of creation you want to talk about will not do it on an iPad or other similar device. They will continue to have heavy, cumbersome, hot, unfriendly, complex devices somewhere in their office/workplace/house for accomplishing these tasks.
I concede that point.
And it absolutely nothing to do with mine.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
...for the competitors.
iPad is an awesome idea poorly executed. The OS is poor. The hardware limitations are severe. The price is silly. The lockdown is a showstopper. But the idea of a small wireless touchscreen as a form factor for a computer is awesome.
First netbooks, with 8" screens, 2GB of flash and 512MB RAM were useless too. But I don't imagine myself without my eee900 now - it reached a very usable and perfectly adequate parameters for an attractive price, while retaining the basic form factor.
It will be the same with "pads", computers that look just like iPad, but can be used for photoshop (wireless, affordable Cintiq anyone?), can run any software you like (factory floor control or storage hall management anyone?), can be had for the same price as a netbook, can use 3G, can be used in bright daylight without backlight, have built-in SD reader, a camera and so on.
And just like the web only -somwehat- adapted to netbooks (they are what keeps 32bit software alive), but few sites care about the earliest of them, iPad influence on the net won't be very deep either.
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nope. They will release iPad nano, which will be a rebranded re-release of iPod Touch.
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the strength of Flash is that it's like Java. you write once and the content will play anywhere with a flash plugin, which is almost every OS and soon to be device. Apple doesn't care about videos, they care about the flash apps and games. if they can lock people into the iTunes system to code for the iphone/ipod/ipad then developers won't code for another platform unless there is money to be made to recoup the investment. Flash makes it easier for a start up device maker to displace Apple's market dominance since it cuts the development time and cost.
There are still too many sites out there that use a fixed-width table layout - on todays wide-screen monitors, all the content is in the left third of the browser.
Then split your monitor into two windows, showing one web site on the left and another on the right. The eye is best at reading 60- to 70-column layouts anyway; otherwise, you're spending half your time hunting for the start of the next line. Why do you think newspapers are printed in five or six columns, not one wide column across the page?
technical criteria. But what is passing over geek sites in waves the last six months is not:
"I really want different features. I wouldn't buy this."
But rather:
"Nobody will want this device. Apple is off base. The iPad will flop."
My point is to suggest that geeks stick to the former, which is justified (certainly it's easy to see how this device might not satisfy the desire for a general-purpose tinker-and-project machine), and steer away from the latter, which tends to increase the all too common marginalization and mockery of said geeks.
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I meant to suggest precisely that hours-long use will now happen on the iPad.
And you're wrong about the desk; it's not a better choice. People want to integrate networks into their regular and social lives (carry it with them into the living room, sit on the sofa, etc.), not sequester themselves away so that they can connect.
The latter is the geek dream, but for most people, sitting at a desk for hours is the LAST thing they want to do when they get home. Right now they use the 'net in spite of the desk, not because of it.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
What geeks call "sexiness" and "slick gloss" are for regular users actually "basic intelligibility" and "the possibility of use."
Geeks routinely dismiss the user interface as epiphenomenal to the computing experience. The computer is real, the user is real, and the user interface is this accidental/interchangeable quantity that may be more or less cumbersome, but that is at the end of the day just a minor detail. No user interface actively prevents or determines use for a geek.
NOT SO for the general public. For the general public, the user interface is the computer, full stop. There are no "features" apart from those they can immediately understand and use. There are no "capabilities" apart from those that they can see how to access.
Contrary to Slashdotian opinion, the user interface is the thing of greatest substance in computing for most people, and that is why Apple has been a wild success since Steve Jobs came back, much to Slashdotters' chagrin.
There has not yet been a tablet PC with this user interface. Despite Slashdotters assertions that the identity of a device is all about "features," the fact is that this is a substantively new device by virtue of its user interface, a user interface that has already been proven to be one of the most successful and highly regarded in all of technology and that will likely be the determining factor in the iPad's success... all while Slashdotters dance around saying "the stoopid public, they've been fooled by teh glossiness!"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
In hard economic times, the best way to make money is to cater to the wealthy. Often, the easiest way to do that is to simply A) make it pretty, B) jack up the price, and C) build the perception of exclusivity. This fits the Apple model pretty well. In fact, by not including Flash they are actually enhancing that perception of exclusivity. Soon, the web sites will be jumping on the same bandwagon. By promoting themselves as catering to the special needs and desires of those who can afford an iPad they will, as you suggest, attract the visitors who have money to burn. And the funny thing is that so many people who think they are smarter than everyone just because they have money are taking the bait, hook line and sinker.
All of these news sites also happen to provide video to go with their news. This video is now offered in HTML5 when browsed to by an iPad.
Advertising to THOSE people would be preaching to the choir for certain advertisers and meaningless to most others.
So they are actually a waste of advertising money.
Sure, you will be able to sell them every single shiny thingamajig by Apple or a lot of Starbucks lattes - but also only about zero items that are not "hip".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
almost every complaint about the iPad is exactly the same complaint people had about the iPod.
For me, there are two deal killers:
1: No built in video camera
2: http://wepad.mobi/en
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You might have a point if it wasn't for the fact that a lot of sites are doing just that.
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Let me rephrase, since I was clearly unclear before.
Geeks posit that user interfaces are useful, but at the same time they routinely assume that user interfaces are essentially (in the philosophical sense) aesthetic quantities.
When the public finds a user interface to be useful, Geeks therefore assume that users' preferences are aesthetic ones. "The public has been fooled by teh sexxy!" In fact, the public is often responding to the user interfaces usefulness with respect to their desired ends and the knowledge and ability that they possess.
So what geeks take to be an aesthetic judgment about a useful tool (the user interface), is for the public a matter of utility maximization with respect to that useful tool.
This stems from the fact that geeks equally grok all user interfaces, so it's true that the primary mode of differentiation between them is often aesthetic. The public, on the other hand, does not equally grok all user interfaces, so the primary mode of differentiation between them for the public is inherently a matter of utility: can I use it or not?
Apple excels in making user interfaces that non-geeks are able to use. Geeks mistake the preferences of non-geeks to be aesthetic decisions because they see the user interface as inherently aesthetic in nature with respect to computing tasks.
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with the potential someday either to totally suck (if Apple becomes the dominant player in a DRM universe of internet users and producers) or to suck much less (if Apple takes a more iTunes-like path and opens things up eventually).
One of the most interesting possible effects of iPhone/iPad to my eye is its discursive effects on computing. Users develop their understandings of the computationally possible based on what they understand of the user interface ("what it lets me do"). That which it doesn't offer they often don't imagine.
So there is a way in which Apple is indeed shaping the future of computing by shaping users' understandings of what computing is for and can and can't do, and this of course affects the structure of the internet and its content since the primary purpose of computing amongst the planet's population right now is as a mediator for the network.
Right now like so many other things iPhonePadPod is indeed a closed garden, and that sucks. At the same time, it enables a whole universe of tasks achievable with computing that hadn't really existed before (most of the ways in which I use my iPhone that tie social media/participation to location tracking to the characteristics of urban space). People can say "this existed before" or "this would have happened without Apple," but it didn't, not in ways that people actually wanted to use. It happened through the iPhone and at the moment nobody else is doing it nearly as well. Some of this success may inhere in closedness and its relationship to order, predictability, and the ability to realize a strong, focused vision that actually represents a field of practice that people want to engage in (a task where Microsoft fails but apple routinely succeeds).
So, on balance, mixed bag. Closedness sucks. On the other hand, this may be an instance in which closedness made possible an interesting kind of progress. Even if you don't buy that, it's an instance in which closedness right now embodies a certain kind of progress that many (myself included) like and are willing to pay for. Others are trying to shift this progress onto more open "tracks" (i.e. Android) but are meeting with limited success, largely because the devices and ecosystems are proving not equivalent for the task (largely as a matter of the user interface issues that are so controversial here, including in this story).
In the meantime, we have handset hacking and we can DeDRM every known eBook and music format, so I don't feel as though I'm living in a totalitarian information state yet.
So that's my comment on the subject. ;-)
P.S. You're no doubt right, too, that many Slashdotters are being unfairly characterized by my use of "Slashdotters" in my posts. So, those of you that aren't busy engaging in irrational Apple-hatred and regular-user-hatred, my apologies to you.
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... are variations on the theme of "less capable than my netbook. No flash. Lame."
Dude, the raw quantity of bits moved over the internet by these things is not the most important measure of their influence. Book publishers, game designers, newspaper publishers, etc, etc, are falling all over themselves trying to get their products into the iPad. I'm sort of lukewarm toward the device myself... but I can still see that it's going to be a huge deal.