"Claim"? Yes, I suppose it would have been nice if I backed up asserting that title with some examples.
Anytime an anonymous coward makes a sweeping generalization about me because of a keyword of phrase was used in my post, I remember at one time I was a student who thought he was the shit and knew better than most people posting on Slashdot (well okay, BBSes) with 10+ years experience as a "professional" developer.
Personal issues aside...
Flash is sufficiently fast for many types of development, including iPhone apps, AAA game UI, web games, twitter clients, and much more. This is coming from the same "professional" whose been using a language that many consider "fast" (C++) over 15 years. Heck I even know 8088 assembly; you want to see "buggy" try writing even the simplest of games in pure assembler.
The biggest problem I see with Flash being "slow" is the same problem C, C++, and all other languages has; poorly educated developers. A fantastic development environment doesn't stop a programmer from throwing in logic that brings the (virtual) machine to a halt. There is no other language/environment that can offer such a rich, consistent environment across a variety of platforms. Many are striving to beat Flash (e.g., Unity, Silverlight, etc...) but none have yet to meet all the features Flash provides.
Could Flash be better?...sure.
But until a better cross-platform environment comes into existence, which can give me all of the features Flash / Actionscript 3 does, I'll stick to Flash. Many others in my industry feel the same way, and this is why it's sad Apple is playing hardball with Adobe; it puts the burden on Adobe to allocate developers for targeting Objective-C when they could instead be fixing bugs, optimizing the fvm, and adding new tools or features.
For more "funny" comments from industry experts, pick up the latest issue of "Game Developer" magazine which happens to have a great article on the issues of programming touch-screen devices. ( http://gdmag.com/ ) A few concrete examples are given regarding the iPhone.
This entire story is FUD; I took the bite though...
I'm a user interface lead at a game studio which is leveraging a Flash-based solution that could target consoles. I already did this once before on CnC3:Kane's Wrath (a title with PC and 360 SKUs), and have done contract work creating a Flash Lite application for the Sony Mylo 2 (touch screen.) Besides all this I also teach Introduction to Interactive Media at a local college which has a successful curriculum based around Flash, and yet touches on aspects of touch-devices and alternate input (non-browser) environments.
All that said about my qualifications I make this statement: Flash works in it's existing form on these devices.
Its my professional opinion that it would work fine on an iPad or iPhone and the non-technical agenda Apple has is what's preventing it from manifesting itself on those platforms.
It will be more realistic because my entire world is really made up of hexes and I can only move in one of six directions?
From the screen shots, the graphics look more realistic than previous versions.
As for real life; I tend to only move forward with an occasional 0.5 second strafe to avoid an obstacle. But seriously, (good) games are about mechanics that introduce "fun"; simulations are about modeling life.
If I was to teach beginning programming to a child or someone who does not know if they want to commit to the field, I would teach programming in Flash.
While the Flash IDE's debugging and scripting area is not suited for an experienced programmer, it does a great job of letting someone quickly wire up visual elements for that instant feedback & gratification. Core programming concepts such as variables, loops, and functions are quick to learn. For those who want to continue AS3 has a long road of concepts going into bit fields, OO, shaders, etc...
This is coming from someone who has created and taught curriculum in Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ back in the 90's for 11-15 year olds, and these days I am an adjunct professor teaching Flash & Actionscript3 to artists (non-programmers).
I work in the AAA game space... even though I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro, with an iMac to my left and an (old) MacMini hooked up to my TV in front of me, there is not a large enough market share for most AAA studios to support the time/effort for a native port. Those that do so, do it out of the goodness of their heart. (Thank you 2dBoy for "World Of Goo")
You are right, like any successful company, Microsoft doesn't boast its losses. Regardless of what PR they shout, Microsoft has a history of "winning" software battles with their profits, stocks, and assets providing substance behind this claim. Until recently Microsoft have had quite a good track record.
Good point, I didn't mention editors outside of the IDE as my gripe is that the editor in the Flash IDE has been neglected for years.
It's because of this I use FlashDevelop for all my Actionscript (both AS2 and AS3). I have a copy of Flex Builder and for non Flex based projects it is cumbersome. Perhaps it's just the integration with Eclipse but it doesn't have a snappy response to interaction like FlashDevelop. It does still have wins for debugging and SVN, although the FlashDevelop plug-in community is close to both of these.
I haven't wanted to try FDT after one of their salesmen spammed the e-mails of those on the FlashDevelop forums about trying their product.
These days I only pull open the Flash IDE if I need to work with my artist's assets.
Microsoft wins market share, not by innovating, but by making a product, and quickly iterating up-to and past the leader.
Adobe has more baggage to deal with (e.g., http://blogs.adobe.com/rgalvan/2009/06/feature_feedback.html ) which hurts the speed they can push ahead with new features. I've tried Silverlight 1 and 2; both show promise but neither seemed as mature as Flash CS3. Now CS4 is out as-is Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 compared to 2 offers many times newer features than what Flash CS4 offered over CS3.
For example, I'd love an integrated code editor in Flash with decent editing, syntax highlighting, and intellisense capabilities; I've been waiting for this since MX2004. Silverlight 3 now has a built-in code editor, I wonder how well it stacks up to what Adobe offers.
Overall I'm glad Silverlight exists as it will push Adobe to keep making Flash a better technology, but historically Microsoft has come out on top. It took Microsoft 6 years from IE1.0 to make this happen in the browser marked ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers ) With 3D it took Microsoft until 6 years, from DirectX 1.0 to DirectX 8.1, to overtake OpenGL in the AAA PC gaming market.
Unless there is a shake-up in Microsoft I predict it will happen with this RIA tech too.
While I don't agree with how the grandparent phrased it; I'd say it's spot on. Canvas tag or not, the editing tool has to allow artists, hobbiest, etc... to easilly create content and publish to the web for others to see.
Flash's biggest win over Silverlight is: 1) Install base 2) Defacto web animation tool
If enough browser pentration occurs for the install base then the editing tool is the last big hurdle.
My predictions (as a C++, Flash developer): 1. Silverlight takes a larger market share than Flash in 3 years (in 2013) 2. HTML5 overtakes both in 5 years (2015) if a "killer app" for editing comes into existance by 2012.
Every time I buy a used game I'm contributing to the problem, but as a consumer I think it's foolish to buy a new game if a used one is equally as entertaining but $5-$25 cheaper.
If everyone stopped buying used games, the prices would go down, and lifetimes of game studios would dramatically increase. But I know very few consumers (including myself) who would turn down a bargin on a matter of principal unless it crossed the line of legality (and many consumers cross that line.)
I'm hoping for a future with services like Valve's "Steam" for non-PCs. The ease of use (e.g., lack of cumbersome DRM) and convenience make it a win-win for publishers and consumers.
When coding for Flash, I've found FlashDevelop ( http://flashdevelop.org/ ) to be the best IDE out there for doing AS2 (Actionscript 2) or AS3 (Actionscript 3) based work. Our UI team used it on the last AAA title we shipped and my current UI team is using it in our pipeline for the current games we're tackling.
The fact it's free and open source is great. The fact I can make an entire game in it without Adobe's Flash IDE, bringing in raw assets (mp3, graphics, etc..) and tie into compiled Flash assets (swcs) make it indispensable. I'm hoping the community efforts to get it working on Linux and Mac OS succeed as it's the only reason I start up Parallels on my Mac (other than to play a game or two of "Plants vs. Zombies.").
Technically you are correct, publishing (for the web) means creating a SWF from the assets and linking to the SWF in HTML via the appropriate tags. What I meant though is that many Flash authors aren't aware of the HTML they are exporting; they generate art, and hand off the file to a web-master or coding team. To them the work in publishing is clicking a button.
I agree HTML5 produces cleaner, smaller amount of tags than Flash's HTML, but most of my students (in an intro media arts course) would just import the video onto the stage in the Flash IDE and publish the SWF.
HTML5 has a lot of potential, but adoption above and beyond Flash (or Silverlight, etc...) will depend on 2 factors: 1. Implementation Penetration 2. Authoring Tools
Flash's strength is in the tools more than the language(s), Actionscript and MXML. For every 1 Flash "programmer" I meet, I know about 10 people who know Flash well enough to make graphics and simple script work on the time line.
If a majority of the browser users have HTML5 support, and a killer app exists for editing content; I would then put weight towards the possibility of HTML5 trumping Flash.
Personal preference: 1) TNG 2) Voyager 3) TOS 4) DS9
As far as I'm concerned, Enterprise never happened.
Before watching the first episode I told my room mates, "As long as their is no time travel involved in this; it will have potential."...there was time travel. Overall the potential was lost not just due to time travel but the decisions made to F'up the consistency with the ST timeline. I can only guess it was done for the hopes of bringing in higher ratings. Instead it turned me off to the show 3 episodes in.
"Sure have the Borg in Enterprise even though they weren't first discovered until TNG. Change what happened for the first contact with Klingons, we aren't anal geeks who'll lose disbelief in the ST Univserse by introducing huge consistencies. Oh wait, most* of us are." [* SOURCE: Shore Leave Star Trek convention; just attend for a day and get a feel for the fans.]
So if a "reboot" is what's coming, it sounds like a fine plan as long as it returns to the roots of ST (roots meaning Gene Roddenberry's ST).
The site http://riastats.com/ gives general statistics on Flash, Silverlight, and Java installs. Much like Google Analytics, it also allows a site-specific tracker to be installed.
From the general stats, looks like Flash isn't at 99% but is the most widely installed 3rd party tech (that it tracks.) And with almost 1.5 million users, I'd give it more weight for accuracy than Adobe's survey of a few thousand users.
I agree with you that bedroom coding has never been dead; with companies like "Introversion" showing that it's also possible to do it full time.
So all in all, I agree with your last sentence: that consoles aren't the home of the indies, but throw caution as wanting to differentiate "True" indie vs the rest of indie games.
Within the indepent game community, I'd say there are a variety of definitions as to what consitutes someone as "indie", but the vast majority (at least from what I've heard at the round tables at GDC) do not feel you lose an "indie" status just because you need approval for a distribution channel.
"World of Goo" is considered an indie game, as the guys who made it bootstrapped themselves: no publisher funding; no ties to a particular publisher. They've released on PC (via Steam) and Wii, but their approval to release on the Wii by Nintendo in no way diminishes the hardships they had to endure to make the game happen.
Disclaimer: I both work for a "non-indie" game company, and have my own "indie" game company. When I'm not making games for work, I'm making them for fun;)
My background is someone who has taught Applesoft Basic, Turbo Pascal, and C++ to middle schoolers at a computer camp; I'll be teaching Flash (and potentially Processing) to artists in college with little to no prior programming experience.
I recommend using Flash with Actionscript 3 (AS3) based projects for teaching 11-14 year olds. It supports most all OO concepts, and because of its graphical nature there is instant feedback for a beginner. (e.g., mySprite.x += 5 );
If price of tools is a factor, a free development environment (such as http://www.flashdevelop.org/ ) can always be used.
I agree with you they handed him "what was handy". With neither of us knowing how he obtained the Zune, it is a plausable assumption an aid obtained it for him. Unless there is some special feature the President elect requested, it is most likely the aid obtained an MP3 player that would most easilly integrate into his daily routine. It is unlikely an aid would buy a device that would require much time investiment. The Zune was "handy".
And I wasn't aware becoming an informed consumer, on a product line I previously knew little about, equated to having "no life".;)
"An MP3 player is an MP3 player" I would argue that this mentality is why we have so many poor interfaces (software and hardware). While an MP3 player's primary function is to play MP3s there are several hundred nuances that can lead to a good or horrible User Interface Design (UID).
The UID becomes paramount when answering the questions: Does the player support shuffle, playlists, seamless play? How does it handle grouping of songs and artists?
And to be competitive, adding ancillary functionality not directly tied to playing an MP3 bumps the nuances up to the thousands: Does it display album art work? Can it hook up to an internet store and directly download music, or share music from device to device? Etc...
A few years ago I shopped around for 3 months for a car-based MP3/CD/radio player. The one I settled on was lesser of the evils. If the iPod (or Zune) teams made a car head unit with the same features of my current one, but charged twice the price, I'd buy it in an instant. Adding a good UID adds value beyond the feature set.
The iPod and Zune have sold well, but not because of a superior feature set they offer over competition players. It surely wasn't because of their price either. But compared to the Rio I had, and a more recent Creative sold MP3 player that a friend had, I can see a clear difference in the UID, one that "made sense" for even the most complex operations without having to go to an instruction manual.
All that being set, I think it's interesting Obama chose a Zune; but from the demos at BaltoMSDN meetings I could understand why. It's my #2 pick now, as Microsoft has done a great job of making it interface easilly with both Window PCs and the XBOX 360. If Microsoft offers that easy of connecting to a MacOS based system, I could see myself considering one during my next upgrade cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
"Claim"? Yes, I suppose it would have been nice if I backed up asserting that title with some examples.
Anytime an anonymous coward makes a sweeping generalization about me because of a keyword of phrase was used in my post, I remember at one time I was a student who thought he was the shit and knew better than most people posting on Slashdot (well okay, BBSes) with 10+ years experience as a "professional" developer.
Personal issues aside...
Flash is sufficiently fast for many types of development, including iPhone apps, AAA game UI, web games, twitter clients, and much more. This is coming from the same "professional" whose been using a language that many consider "fast" (C++) over 15 years. Heck I even know 8088 assembly; you want to see "buggy" try writing even the simplest of games in pure assembler.
The biggest problem I see with Flash being "slow" is the same problem C, C++, and all other languages has; poorly educated developers. A fantastic development environment doesn't stop a programmer from throwing in logic that brings the (virtual) machine to a halt. There is no other language/environment that can offer such a rich, consistent environment across a variety of platforms. Many are striving to beat Flash (e.g., Unity, Silverlight, etc...) but none have yet to meet all the features Flash provides.
Could Flash be better? ...sure.
But until a better cross-platform environment comes into existence, which can give me all of the features Flash / Actionscript 3 does, I'll stick to Flash. Many others in my industry feel the same way, and this is why it's sad Apple is playing hardball with Adobe; it puts the burden on Adobe to allocate developers for targeting Objective-C when they could instead be fixing bugs, optimizing the fvm, and adding new tools or features.
For more "funny" comments from industry experts, pick up the latest issue of "Game Developer" magazine which happens to have a great article on the issues of programming touch-screen devices. ( http://gdmag.com/ ) A few concrete examples are given regarding the iPhone.
This entire story is FUD; I took the bite though...
I'm a user interface lead at a game studio which is leveraging a Flash-based solution that could target consoles. I already did this once before on CnC3:Kane's Wrath (a title with PC and 360 SKUs), and have done contract work creating a Flash Lite application for the Sony Mylo 2 (touch screen.) Besides all this I also teach Introduction to Interactive Media at a local college which has a successful curriculum based around Flash, and yet touches on aspects of touch-devices and alternate input (non-browser) environments.
All that said about my qualifications I make this statement:
Flash works in it's existing form on these devices.
Its my professional opinion that it would work fine on an iPad or iPhone and the non-technical agenda Apple has is what's preventing it from manifesting itself on those platforms.
It will be more realistic because my entire world is really made up of hexes and I can only move in one of six directions?
From the screen shots, the graphics look more realistic than previous versions.
As for real life; I tend to only move forward with an occasional 0.5 second strafe to avoid an obstacle. But seriously, (good) games are about mechanics that introduce "fun"; simulations are about modeling life.
If I was to teach beginning programming to a child or someone who does not know if they want to commit to the field, I would teach programming in Flash.
While the Flash IDE's debugging and scripting area is not suited for an experienced programmer, it does a great job of letting someone quickly wire up visual elements for that instant feedback & gratification. Core programming concepts such as variables, loops, and functions are quick to learn. For those who want to continue AS3 has a long road of concepts going into bit fields, OO, shaders, etc...
There is a tremendous amount of books on programming in Flash / Actionscript 3; as well as great web sources in the forms of blogs and communities such as:
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=6
http://wonderfl.net/
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/
This is coming from someone who has created and taught curriculum in Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ back in the 90's for 11-15 year olds, and these days I am an adjunct professor teaching Flash & Actionscript3 to artists (non-programmers).
I work in the AAA game space... even though I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro, with an iMac to my left and an (old) MacMini hooked up to my TV in front of me, there is not a large enough market share for most AAA studios to support the time/effort for a native port. Those that do so, do it out of the goodness of their heart. (Thank you 2dBoy for "World Of Goo")
I didn't believe this myself until someone told me to look up the #s and a few short Googles later showed the sad truth. I could have sworn they were wrong, as half of the computers used by attendees at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) the past 2 years have been Mac based, but 3.36% is small ( SOURCE http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/22/mac-market-share-in-q1-2009-3-36-percent-apple-earnings-strong.aspx )
I am aware of these tools outside of the Flash IDE; please see my response to AppleOSuX for details.
You are right, like any successful company, Microsoft doesn't boast its losses. Regardless of what PR they shout, Microsoft has a history of "winning" software battles with their profits, stocks, and assets providing substance behind this claim. Until recently Microsoft have had quite a good track record.
Good point, I didn't mention editors outside of the IDE as my gripe is that the editor in the Flash IDE has been neglected for years.
It's because of this I use FlashDevelop for all my Actionscript (both AS2 and AS3). I have a copy of Flex Builder and for non Flex based projects it is cumbersome. Perhaps it's just the integration with Eclipse but it doesn't have a snappy response to interaction like FlashDevelop. It does still have wins for debugging and SVN, although the FlashDevelop plug-in community is close to both of these.
I haven't wanted to try FDT after one of their salesmen spammed the e-mails of those on the FlashDevelop forums about trying their product.
These days I only pull open the Flash IDE if I need to work with my artist's assets.
Microsoft wins market share, not by innovating, but by making a product, and quickly iterating up-to and past the leader.
Adobe has more baggage to deal with (e.g., http://blogs.adobe.com/rgalvan/2009/06/feature_feedback.html ) which hurts the speed they can push ahead with new features. I've tried Silverlight 1 and 2; both show promise but neither seemed as mature as Flash CS3. Now CS4 is out as-is Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 compared to 2 offers many times newer features than what Flash CS4 offered over CS3.
For example, I'd love an integrated code editor in Flash with decent editing, syntax highlighting, and intellisense capabilities; I've been waiting for this since MX2004. Silverlight 3 now has a built-in code editor, I wonder how well it stacks up to what Adobe offers.
Overall I'm glad Silverlight exists as it will push Adobe to keep making Flash a better technology, but historically Microsoft has come out on top. It took Microsoft 6 years from IE1.0 to make this happen in the browser marked ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers ) With 3D it took Microsoft until 6 years, from DirectX 1.0 to DirectX 8.1, to overtake OpenGL in the AAA PC gaming market.
Unless there is a shake-up in Microsoft I predict it will happen with this RIA tech too.
While I don't agree with how the grandparent phrased it; I'd say it's spot on. Canvas tag or not, the editing tool has to allow artists, hobbiest, etc... to easilly create content and publish to the web for others to see.
Flash's biggest win over Silverlight is:
1) Install base
2) Defacto web animation tool
If enough browser pentration occurs for the install base then the editing tool is the last big hurdle.
My predictions (as a C++, Flash developer):
1. Silverlight takes a larger market share than Flash in 3 years (in 2013)
2. HTML5 overtakes both in 5 years (2015) if a "killer app" for editing comes into existance by 2012.
Every time I buy a used game I'm contributing to the problem, but as a consumer I think it's foolish to buy a new game if a used one is equally as entertaining but $5-$25 cheaper.
If everyone stopped buying used games, the prices would go down, and lifetimes of game studios would dramatically increase. But I know very few consumers (including myself) who would turn down a bargin on a matter of principal unless it crossed the line of legality (and many consumers cross that line.)
I'm hoping for a future with services like Valve's "Steam" for non-PCs. The ease of use (e.g., lack of cumbersome DRM) and convenience make it a win-win for publishers and consumers.
When coding for Flash, I've found FlashDevelop ( http://flashdevelop.org/ ) to be the best IDE out there for doing AS2 (Actionscript 2) or AS3 (Actionscript 3) based work. Our UI team used it on the last AAA title we shipped and my current UI team is using it in our pipeline for the current games we're tackling.
The fact it's free and open source is great. The fact I can make an entire game in it without Adobe's Flash IDE, bringing in raw assets (mp3, graphics, etc..) and tie into compiled Flash assets (swcs) make it indispensable. I'm hoping the community efforts to get it working on Linux and Mac OS succeed as it's the only reason I start up Parallels on my Mac (other than to play a game or two of "Plants vs. Zombies.").
Technically you are correct, publishing (for the web) means creating a SWF from the assets and linking to the SWF in HTML via the appropriate tags. What I meant though is that many Flash authors aren't aware of the HTML they are exporting; they generate art, and hand off the file to a web-master or coding team. To them the work in publishing is clicking a button.
I agree HTML5 produces cleaner, smaller amount of tags than Flash's HTML, but most of my students (in an intro media arts course) would just import the video onto the stage in the Flash IDE and publish the SWF.
This doesn't sound mature; provoking is not helping.
Be honest, and confront him about his addiction and your concern for him.
HTML5 has a lot of potential, but adoption above and beyond Flash (or Silverlight, etc...) will depend on 2 factors:
1. Implementation Penetration
2. Authoring Tools
Flash's strength is in the tools more than the language(s), Actionscript and MXML. For every 1 Flash "programmer" I meet, I know about 10 people who know Flash well enough to make graphics and simple script work on the time line.
If a majority of the browser users have HTML5 support, and a killer app exists for editing content; I would then put weight towards the possibility of HTML5 trumping Flash.
Personal preference:
1) TNG
2) Voyager
3) TOS
4) DS9
As far as I'm concerned, Enterprise never happened.
Before watching the first episode I told my room mates, "As long as their is no time travel involved in this; it will have potential." ...there was time travel. Overall the potential was lost not just due to time travel but the decisions made to F'up the consistency with the ST timeline. I can only guess it was done for the hopes of bringing in higher ratings. Instead it turned me off to the show 3 episodes in.
"Sure have the Borg in Enterprise even though they weren't first discovered until TNG. Change what happened for the first contact with Klingons, we aren't anal geeks who'll lose disbelief in the ST Univserse by introducing huge consistencies. Oh wait, most* of us are."
[* SOURCE: Shore Leave Star Trek convention; just attend for a day and get a feel for the fans.]
So if a "reboot" is what's coming, it sounds like a fine plan as long as it returns to the roots of ST (roots meaning Gene Roddenberry's ST).
I went to that site, but all I saw was:
Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe Flash Player. Get Flash
So based on that sample, I have to assume that 100% of people on the Internet do not have Flash installed.
That would be an incorrect assumption.
The site http://riastats.com/ gives general statistics on Flash, Silverlight, and Java installs. Much like Google Analytics, it also allows a site-specific tracker to be installed.
From the general stats, looks like Flash isn't at 99% but is the most widely installed 3rd party tech (that it tracks.) And with almost 1.5 million users, I'd give it more weight for accuracy than Adobe's survey of a few thousand users.
I agree with you that bedroom coding has never been dead; with companies like "Introversion" showing that it's also possible to do it full time.
So all in all, I agree with your last sentence: that consoles aren't the home of the indies, but throw caution as wanting to differentiate "True" indie vs the rest of indie games.
Within the indepent game community, I'd say there are a variety of definitions as to what consitutes someone as "indie", but the vast majority (at least from what I've heard at the round tables at GDC) do not feel you lose an "indie" status just because you need approval for a distribution channel.
"World of Goo" is considered an indie game, as the guys who made it bootstrapped themselves: no publisher funding; no ties to a particular publisher. They've released on PC (via Steam) and Wii, but their approval to release on the Wii by Nintendo in no way diminishes the hardships they had to endure to make the game happen.
Disclaimer: I both work for a "non-indie" game company, and have my own "indie" game company. When I'm not making games for work, I'm making them for fun ;)
My background is someone who has taught Applesoft Basic, Turbo Pascal, and C++ to middle schoolers at a computer camp; I'll be teaching Flash (and potentially Processing) to artists in college with little to no prior programming experience.
I recommend using Flash with Actionscript 3 (AS3) based projects for teaching 11-14 year olds. It supports most all OO concepts, and because of its graphical nature there is instant feedback for a beginner. (e.g., mySprite.x += 5 );
If price of tools is a factor, a free development environment (such as http://www.flashdevelop.org/ ) can always be used.
An example of just some of the (visually) amazing programs you can pull off in 25 lines or less: http://www.25lines.com/?page_id=139
I'll bite...
I agree with you they handed him "what was handy". With neither of us knowing how he obtained the Zune, it is a plausable assumption an aid obtained it for him. Unless there is some special feature the President elect requested, it is most likely the aid obtained an MP3 player that would most easilly integrate into his daily routine. It is unlikely an aid would buy a device that would require much time investiment. The Zune was "handy".
And I wasn't aware becoming an informed consumer, on a product line I previously knew little about, equated to having "no life". ;)
"An MP3 player is an MP3 player"
I would argue that this mentality is why we have so many poor interfaces (software and hardware). While an MP3 player's primary function is to play MP3s there are several hundred nuances that can lead to a good or horrible User Interface Design (UID).
The UID becomes paramount when answering the questions:
Does the player support shuffle, playlists, seamless play?
How does it handle grouping of songs and artists?
And to be competitive, adding ancillary functionality not directly tied to playing an MP3 bumps the nuances up to the thousands:
Does it display album art work?
Can it hook up to an internet store and directly download music, or share music from device to device?
Etc...
A few years ago I shopped around for 3 months for a car-based MP3/CD/radio player. The one I settled on was lesser of the evils. If the iPod (or Zune) teams made a car head unit with the same features of my current one, but charged twice the price, I'd buy it in an instant. Adding a good UID adds value beyond the feature set.
The iPod and Zune have sold well, but not because of a superior feature set they offer over competition players. It surely wasn't because of their price either. But compared to the Rio I had, and a more recent Creative sold MP3 player that a friend had, I can see a clear difference in the UID, one that "made sense" for even the most complex operations without having to go to an instruction manual.
All that being set, I think it's interesting Obama chose a Zune; but from the demos at BaltoMSDN meetings I could understand why. It's my #2 pick now, as Microsoft has done a great job of making it interface easilly with both Window PCs and the XBOX 360. If Microsoft offers that easy of connecting to a MacOS based system, I could see myself considering one during my next upgrade cycle.
My bad, you are correct, Nintendo is the #1 publisher with EA being #2 for 2007-2008.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3800/game_developer_magazines_top_20_.php