My Thoughts On the iPad
I'm sure by now, you've read enough about the iPad to think, "oh, come on, not another article about that thing." Granted, the hype and rumors got completely out of hand. Contrary to the Windows zealots around me, they weren't all fed by Apple. I can't blame them too much, though. They don't know the history of Apple and the community-fed rumor mill that precedes any and all product announcements. This time, however, it was so bad that even mainstream tech press and blogs got into the act. The rumors got so out of hand that the general consensus was that it would completely change computing, end hunger, cure cancer, and bring about world peace.
The "Vision" Thing
Predictably, the tech press and blogs (I'll just file them under "pundits") followed up the official announcement by nearly unanimously criticizing the iPad as a complete and utter disappointment. Granted, the expectations that this device was held up to were ones that no product could ever hope to satisfy. However, it's not as simple as that. The punditry and typical commenters on sites such as C|Net and TechCrunch exhibited a severe lack of technological vision. It was like watching the Windows crowd (I was one of them at the time) getting all wrapped around the axle and hysterical when Apple released their original iMacs without legacy ports and ditching the floppy altogether.
I'm not saying that the silliness is going unanswered. For a thoughtful commentary, check out Sam Kington's piece.
An Analogy
One of the loudest complaints about the iPad (and iPhone) is that it doesn't support Flash. I was told by someone last Thursday that he wouldn't buy it because it doesn't have Flash. Well, to be honest, he wouldn't buy it because it's from Apple. Anyway, what a lot of people don't understand is that on OS X, Flash is garbage. If OS X or Safari crashes, you can easily bet your lunch money that the cause was Flash. Apple even called out Adobe on this issue when they were demoing Snow Leopard and Safari 4's plugin-level sandboxing. They were saying, "Adobe, we all know Flash is a steaming pile and this is what we're doing to protect our customers." A rogue Flash plugin would suck the iPhone (or iPad) battery dry in no time at all and crashes at the hands of Flash would wreck the user experience, leading to greater frustrations and customer revolts than they would have from not supporting Flash at all.
Since the release of the iPhone, Apple has been supporting the use of open standards in place of Flash. With greater effort nowadays being put into the development of HTML 5 and CSS 3, these standards are being given the blessing as the purest way to code for the web. The pundits and many in the IT world either don't know about the issues of OS X and Flash or they don't care. They don't get it because they're so far removed from the world of the average consumer. When told that HTML 5 is the way to go moving forward (especially for video), all they give you are blank stares followed with "but 'everything's' in Flash!" The problem is, they don't get the obvious analogy.
Flash is to the iPhone/iPad as the legacy ports were to the original iMac
In both cases, IT "pros" complained loudly that the dated and obsolete technology they've attached themselves to was given the executioner's axe by Apple. Apple was the first manufacturer to ditch the legacy serial ports (they never supported parallel ports in Macs) for USB and they were the first to ditch the floppy.
When the HTML 5 spec is completed, Flash itself will no longer have any reason to exist as it does now. With AJAX, there's no need to require a plugin to deliver interactivity. With H.264 and the <video> tag, there's no need to require Flash for true cross-platform video support. I'm sure I'll catch heat from Firefox fans (Firefox does not support H.264, but rather Theora), so here's my reasoning:
- Of the participants in the development of the HTML standards, the Mozilla Foundation is joined by Apple and Google, among others. Microsoft just recently decided to start participating in the development of HTML 5. More on them in a bit.
- Apple and Google both use WebKit, an open source project managed by Apple. WebKit supports only H.264 with the <video> tag. Neither Apple, nor Google are doing anything to drop it by any means.
- Google reencoded all of the YouTube videos to H.264.
- H.264 is increasingly accepted as the standard of choice for mobile devices, spearheaded by Apple's iPhone.
- YouTube and Vimeo, perhaps the two largest sources of user-created videos are now offering beta versions of their sites where H.264 video is provided without Flash.
- Though Microsoft owns VC-1, adoption has been scant, save for the few uses of Silverlight.
- Microsoft owns H.264-related patents and thus has stake in its success.
- Though Theora isn't bad, per se, H.264 is more efficient.
The future of video does not look favorable for Flash, especially when there'll be a choice between playback in the browser without a resource-hogging plugin and said plugin. For interactivity, it would be smart of Adobe to start positioning the product as a development tool of interactivity using HTML 5, CSS 3, and SVG. If they don't somebody else will.
This is a stance that Apple is not budging from. Take the intra-Apple town hall meeting where Jobs said of Adobe, effectively:
They are lazy. They have all this potential to do interesting things, but they just refuse to do it. They don't do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.
Also note the time (13:04) in the demo when Steve Jobs visited the New York Times web site and had a "missing plugin" icon where a Flash movie was supposed to be was no accident. This was quintessential Jobs. He was sending a message to Adobe. "Your steaming pile (Flash) isn't going to be allowed on this device." The usual pundits and IT "pros" thought this was a funny gaffe exposing a fundamental flaw in the device. They apparently haven't bothered to understand how Jobs works. Let's take for example the announcement of the publishers that Apple partnered with in bringing the written word to the device. Jobs listed 5 major publishers. However, the one publisher (McGraw Hill) whose CEO announced on MSNBC the night before the reveal that they were working with Apple on the iPad was missing from that slide. This was no accident.
It's Not Just A Bigger iPod Touch
Those who are claiming the iPad is nothing more than an oversized iPod Touch are just exposing themselves as unimaginative. How so? Well, let's look at one announcement that commanded a good deal of time in the event: iWork. The Microsoft-devotees predictably laughed-off this portion of the event because they will not, under any circumstances, give iWork the amount of credit it deserves. It's not Office, you know. However, what these "professionals" missed was the underlying message: Not only can you upsize iPhone apps for the iPad, you can write full-featured applications originally found only on the desktop for the iPad. In fact, I look forward to Bento for the iPad. Not only is iWork for the iPad a (seemingly) fully functional full-featured application, but it's a technology demonstrator for those other development shops, large and small. Those developers and/or companies that realized this first will reap the earliest benefits. The pundits will be left scratching their heads, asking, "whoa, how did that happen?" when it comes to pass.
One common complaint, especially among the Windows fanbois was that they were disappointed that this device used the iPhone OS instead of the full version of OS X. A couple points here:
- iPhone OS is OS X
- The desktop OS is designed around precision pointing devices, not fingers
That second point is worth repeating. Desktop versions of OS X and Windows are not designed for use with fingers. Sure, Windows 7 has multitouch baked in. However, as was seen when Steve Ballmer fumbled with HP's Slate, he had a difficult time using the smaller UI elements in Windows 7 with his finger. This is the reason why Apple went with the iPhone OS. You get the ability to write full-featured applications with a UI designed from the ground-up for use with fingers.
eBook Poseurs?
One all-to-common comment from the iPad-haters is that the iPad is not a "real" ebook device. Those who would read books on the iPad are just poseurs and wannabes. For books that are only text, I'm quite sure the Kindle is just fine and probably handles the task with aplomb. However, many of the books I read and have read include color illustrations: Edward Tufte's books, Garr Reynolds' books, and Nancy Duarte's book come to mind immediately. This is a task that the Kindle fails at miserably because eInk does not support color. The developers of eInk are working on color, but so far, the quality is nowhere near where you would want it to be to view movies or play games, tasks that apple's iPhone OS handles quite well.
What these wannabe elitists need to realize that their specific use case isn't the one and only true and pure use case. In fact, to truly determine the worthiness of the iPad, you need to look at how this device could fit into your lifestyle, assuming it does at all. For my wife and myself, it's a perfect fit. I get a color eBook reader that gives me the more powerful computing capabilities that only a more powerful device with a screen larger than the iPhone's can give me. Netbooks lack the form factor that would ever be of any use to me.
The Scourge of Arial
Can you tell which is which?
I was reading this article by Mark Simonson where he writes a brief history of Helvetica and its Frankenstein-like relative, Arial. It's, in my opinion, a very interesting read, covering areas like font studios, companies' different strategies dealing with font licenses, and how a simple desire not to license the already well established Helvetica font led to Arial. If you've ever used a Microsoft product, it's a guarantee you've seen text in that font. While Apple licensed Helvetica (Apple's core pro customer base needs it), Microsoft decided to go with the cheaper knock-off. Arial has always looked a little odd to me and I could tell the difference between the two. I just never figured out why until I read this article.
Monotype, the creator of Arial, took the high road, and instead of copying Haas Foundry's Helvetica like many others were doing, they took a similar font that they owned and tweaked the proportions and weight to bring it in line with their competitor's font. What you have, then, with Arial is a font that has the same dimensions and weight to Helvetica, but is just different enough to not be an absolute rip-off to those knowledgeable enough to tell the difference.
Arial appears to be a loose adaptation of Monotype’s venerable Grotesque series, redrawn to match the proportions and weight of Helvetica. At a glance, it looks like Helvetica, but up close it’s different in dozens of seemingly arbitrary ways. Because it matched Helvetica’s proportions, it was possible to automatically substitute Arial when Helvetica was specified in a document printed on a PostScript clone output device. To the untrained eye, the difference was hard to spot. (See “How to Spot Arial”) After all, most people would have trouble telling the difference between a serif and a sans serif typeface. But to an experienced designer, it was like asking for Jimmy Stewart and getting Rich Little.
Reading The Information Design Handbook has gotten me thinking quite a bit lately about fonts and how to use them. This article, though, just spurred that interest on even further. The two have me constantly evaluating the one or two fonts per slide deck that I use and putting a lot more thought into my font choices. Issues such as whether it's a decorative font (e.g. Arial Narrow) or not, its x-height, its weight, and the size of counterforms are all things I think about now when I consider which font to use since each of those factor into the legibility of the text.
Those font characteristics are all things to take into consideration when you consider your audience. How far away are the Bob Uecker seats? How old is your audience? What's the lighting likely to be?
I won't get into the nitty gritty about all these characteristics. There's just not enough space and I'll leave it to the pros. However, I do think that Jenn & Ken Visocky O'Grady's The Information Design Handbook
By the way, the one on top is Helvetica. 
Mac Consumer Market Share Breaks 20%
Well, this ought to give the Microsoft cultists seizures. According to Piper Jaffray's chief Apple analyst, the Mac's market share in the consumer space is now at 21% in the US and 10% world-wide. Almost every day, I'm surrounded by people who consider using any non-Microsoft product is heresy. Much to their chagrin, I was able to get Safari to our list of supported browsers. If they had their way, we would support only Internet Explorer and leave any Mac or Linux user to basically screw themselves. Such closed minds are a wonderful thing to waste and have no place in our line of work.
Switchin’ Back
I've been doing a fair bit of thinking lately, and perhaps my previous post about Windows users was a bit hasty. You see, Windows does have 90% of the market. That must mean they're doing something right. There's no way they would have gotten that market share without being the best platform.
Well, the point is, I'm switching back to Windows and to make sure the switch back is done right, I'm promising not to install any non-Microsoft software if there's a Microsoft product in that space. In fact, here's what I'll be replacing my Apple, Adobe, RealMac software library with:
- Windows Vista Ultimate (If you think about it, $400 is a steal)
- Office 2007 Ultimate
- the Expression Suite
- Internet Explorer
- Windows Media Player
- Zune (yes, screw the iPod)
Market share doesn't lie. Open standards don't mean jack. Let Microsoft define the standard. Interoperability doesn't matter either. Think about it. If you're not using Windows, you're probably just some heretical zealot trying to brainwash other people into using something twice as expensive and proprietary with no software options.
Safari/WebKit The First To 100/100
Well, well, well.... Good ol' "proprietary" Apple will have the first production browser with a perfect score on the Acid3 test, it seems. Such devotion to supporting open standards is exactly what the market needs. One thing to note is the score of the IE8 beta, which Microsoft is claiming will be standards-compliant. Situation normal there.
I forwarded this info and in return, a Microsoft zombie sent me three links with snapshots in time reports of browser market share. Only someone so hopelessly closed-minded could think that an appropriate reply, suggesting that sheer numbers makes open standards support or being the first to nail it is unimportant. The thing is, besides offering better standards support, Gecko (Firefox, etc.) and WebKit (Safari) are taking marketshare away from Internet Explorer. Given Microsoft's history of sitting on IE and doing nothing to benefit the Web-using community through improved interfaces or standards support until Firefox started taking market share from them, IE losing share is good for ALL of us, even those who can't function outside of an all-Microsoft environment, much less comprehend how anyone can not devote themselves fully to Microsoft's ecosystem, as polluted as it is.
Windows Users Dominate Closed-Mindedness
I can't name names either directly or indirectly, but experiences today have solidified in my mind the fact that Windows also has a monopoly on closed-minded people. They just can't comprehend an OS that doesn't behave just like Windows. They can't open their minds to other ways of doing things. If you sit anything in front of them that is not Windows, they get confused, frustrated and angry because you dared to threaten their sheltered little existence.
Why Apple Won’t Dominate
I found this nice little nugget suggesting why Apple won't take over the industry the way Microsoft did. He's not suggesting that Apple's success won't continue or that it won't continue gaining market share at the expense of Microsoft, but that Apple won't be the next Microsoft.
He makes the excellent point that the secret to Apple's success has been the total experience, which is only possible by controlling the hardware, software, and product design. To be the next Microsoft, they would have to make their hardware ubiquitous or license their platform to other hardware manufacturers.
We know neither will happen because they undermine the business model that has made them successful and earned them the legions of rabidly loyal fans.
Personally, I don't want Apple to become the next Microsoft, an arrogant and corrupt behemoth. What burns me is how the tech press focuses so intently on what's going to be the "xxxx killer." To suggest that having one option and no competition is somehow good for the consumer is lunacy. Who knows, maybe the press' infatuation with this is the fewer the products, the less they have to learn or know.
