Dustin's Blog

Apple announced yesterday that they will be streaming their September 1 event live. The catch? It’ll only work in Safari on Mac and on iOS devices. So in other words, only about 9/10′s of the internet will be able to view the live stream.

But that 9/10′s of the internet will be able to enjoy the exact same video stream no matter what device they are on, be it laptop or the tiny iPod touch. No need for a desktop optimized version and no need for a mobile optimized version. The same stream will play on any sized device.

Make no mistake, this is a giant stab at anyone who is arguing that flash is needed on Apple’s devices. If you need any further information about the state flash on Android you need only watch the video here and then read the comments. People love to rail on Apple while completely missing the point that having flash at all doesn’t mean flash works and a half-assed flash experience is not what Apple is willing to allow on their devices. Reading through the comments you’ll find a few people who argue that “at least it is there” and that “it doesn’t matter that flash sucks today because there are better phones coming out tomorrow.” That makes no sense.

Since Steve Jobs came back to Apple there has been one thing Apple has done that nobody can really argue. Innovation in the PC industry. While everyone, including Apple at the time, was producing boring looking beige computers Apple decided to completely rethink how a computer can look and introduced iMac. Love it or hate it, the iMac was completely different than anything else at the time and soon other manufacturers tried to add some amount of flair to their PC lineup.

Skip a head a few years later and Apple did it again. While everyone else was basically creating incrementally different smart phones in 2007, Apple simply destroyed how everyone assumed a smart phone should look and work by bringing to market iPhone. They made it far easier, intuitive and beautiful and from that moment on, they made it so that any phone on the market that didn’t have a touch screen or had a touch screen that required the use of a stylus was simply awkward and outdated.

Apple’s most recent market disruption was none other than iPad. During the summer prior to iPad’s release the netbook craze was in full swing. Just a year later there are reports that sales on netbooks have slowed considerably and some reports even show netbooks are losing out because of iPad.

At iPads reveal in January of 2010 Steve Jobs quipped that netbooks weren’t better at anything, they were simply cheaper laptops. Many people argued that netbooks were most useful for consumption and were never really meant for creating content. Yet netbooks looked and worked just like any other ordinary PC. Apple changed this by creating something that looked and worked nothing like a PC. Note too that iPad was the first tablet device on the market. Microsoft has been trying to get consumers using tablet PCs for years but I don’t think anyone could argue they’ve been anything near the run away success that Apple has seen basically over night.

The inspiration for my post comes from Marco Arment’s recent post. He also poses the interesting question of, “How do you think the subcompact, inexpensive computer category will look in three years?”

I just can’t get over some of the stuff on Microsoft’s PC vs Mac argument page. Some of it is true, like the lack of Blu-Ray support. This is something that really irritates me about the Mac platform. Some of the other stuff is just simply stretching it such as the following:

Working smoothly.

Things just don’t work the same way on Macs if you’re used to a PC. For example, the mouse works differently. And many of the shortcuts you’re familiar with don’t work the same way on a Mac.

This statement really makes me want to wipe OS X off my laptop and install Windows 7, it really does. Then again, it really is amazing how I managed to adapt to the mouse and keyboard shortcuts.

But in the end, the thing that really makes me scratch my head is why the page exists at all, or rather, why it’s just so thin on real reasons to use Windows 7. Yes, Apple has been running a negative ad campaign for years poking fun at Microsoft and most of the time I thought they really did hit some of the weak points in Windows. Despite all of that, Apple still openly advertises that you can run Windows on a Mac and they even go so far as to provide the tools to do so. Their tools resize the OS X partition, create a new one for Windows and provide all of the drivers needed to get Windows running. You can then dual boot your Mac system between OS X and Windows. Point is, they’re not afraid to admit that sometimes a person really might want or need to run Windows for whatever function and they provide the tools to do so. Microsoft should be playing on this and attempting to convince people that they need Windows for whatever reason and that a Mac’s can also be a great PC.

Instead we have Microsoft making some incredibly weak arguments on how Windows 7 is superior to the OS X. Some of them are valid and some of them are simply wrong. Either way, Microsoft is primarily a software company and they shouldn’t be pissing on a potential platform. Microsoft has had Office on OS X for years but lets face it, it lags behind the Windows version and has never felt like a proper Mac application. The current 2008 version is incredibly slow even on the latest Macs. While Office 2011 may be set to change that it’s just too early to tell.

Apple today released upgraded iMacs with discrete graphics in all models. Also released was the Magic Trackpad which is basically the trackpad from the current MacBooks in desktop form. New iMacs are at http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=MTAyNTQzNjA and the Magic Trackpad is at http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC380?mco=MTM3NDcxNzI.

Microsoft is already calling it quits with the Kin as reported by a number of places. I get this strange impression that Microsoft isn’t quite sure what its strategy is with anything these days.

It’s even being reported that the killing of the Kin could be the beginning of a number of shake ups at Microsoft. One can only hope they come out looking a lot more focused than they are right now. I can’t help but feel that Microsoft is doing as well as it is right now out of sheer momentum. Windows 7 is selling well, but it’s hard not to be when there is such a large user base to begin with. Then again, it really is a great OS. Windows Phone 7 sounds very promising but I don’t think anyone could say for sure where Microsoft is going from here.

As Windows Phone 7 gets closer to release we keep hearing more and more about what Microsoft’s Phone operating system will and will not do. For the first time that I can remember, Microsoft appears to be incredibly focused on released a product that simply works and if that means not releasing features that everyone else has in 1.0 then so be it. And I applaud them for doing so.

Not everyone feels the same way however, pointing out some of the features Windows Phone 7 will initially lack such as copy and paste as well as multitasking. Although both are important features, neither are required for Microsoft to release a successful product.

It’s hard to argue that when the iPhone was introduced back in 2007 it destroyed everything else on the smart phone market, despite not having copy and paste or multitasking. It also didn’t have any way for developing native applications and developers were expected to build web applications to be run on the iPhone’s web browser. Speaking of the web browser, the iPhone still doesn’t have the ability to run flash which so many people claim is simply required for a proper web experience.

Apple’s iPhone of course has been a run away success, despite missing all of these “required” features. What the iPhone lacked in features it made up for with an as yet unseen level of polish, responsiveness and thoughtfulness in the smart phone market. With just two physical buttons it was incredibly easy to use and understand compared to other smart phones available at the time.

Unlike Google’s Android, which was already in development when the iPhone was released, Microsoft’s mobile phone OS was in no condition to compete with either and for Microsoft to compete properly in the smart phone market they really had to start from scratch. Windows Phone 7 is that from scratch effort and it makes sense that they’re going to have to cut some features in order to release a solid mobile OS in a timely fashion. Microsoft is always accused of simply buying or copy features from someone else and this time it is no different. Microsoft is clearly running the same plays from Apple’s play book and I don’t see anything wrong with that. When Microsoft releases Windows Phone 7 they’ll have a product that is neatly situated right between what iPhone OS, now known as iOS, offered initially and what it can do today. It should also be able to more quickly adapt and even out do its competitors in future releases. My only remaining concern for Microsoft is whether or not hardware makers can create new devices that can match or even rival that of Apple. That I think, will be the key to it’s success.

Last week I helped someone rescue their computer. The striped disk set had gone wonky and would only occasionally boot properly. If it booted at all it would run fine, but getting it to boot was the tricky part. They wanted me to fix the issue and as long as I was doing so, upgrade the system to Windows 7.

After some effort, I got the computer to boot and promptly created an image of it using my favorite disk imaging software. I then broke the raid set and used the one drive that was still good to install Windows 7. Once installed I copied the appropriate data from the old Vista system on to the new Windows 7 system. All seemed well until I got an email claiming the computer wouldn’t download files or play flash videos.

While attempting to download a file they’d get the following error.

Internet Explorer cannot download from
Internet Explorer was not able to open the Internet site. The requested site
is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later.

After much trial and error I found the solution. Rename the Temp directory located at %userprofile%\AppData\Local. Once this was done IE was able to download files and play flash videos once again. I’m not sure what the real issue was but this fixed it.

The killer quote

HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a tablet operating system

I’ve said it before. You can’t use a full desktop OS on a tablet, it isn’t going to work.

Read more: Source

According to Kaspersky, the iPhone will be niche player in the smartphone market by 2015.

http://www.macworld.com/article/150904/2010/04/iphone_prediction.html

I don’t think even the biggest Apple haters of the world could agree with this guy.

Apple throws Adobe a bone — on the Mac: “

Filed under: Software

Adobe’s Flash Player has never performed as well in Mac OS X as it does on Windows-running PCs. The traditionally poor performance of Adobe’s plugin on the Mac has led many iPhone and iPad users to support Apple’s decision to keep Flash off of its mobile devices. While the upcoming Flash 10.1 does boast some significant performance improvements over its predecessors, the performance is still pretty terrible compared to h.264, which has access to hardware-accelerated video decoding via the GPUs in Macs.

Adobe’s stance has long been to blame Apple for the poor performance of Flash on the Mac, citing Apple’s unwillingness to allow third-party developers access to APIs necessary for hardware-accelerated video. Adobe no longer has that excuse to fall back upon: Apple posted a technical note back in late March that removes this restriction and allows third-party developers access to hardware-acceleration APIs for h.264 decoding in compatible GPUs. The technical note describes ‘a C programming interface providing low-level access to the H.264 decoding capabilities of compatible GPUs’ — meaning only the latest Mac GPUs, the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M and GeForce GT 330M. ‘It is intended for use by advanced developers who specifically need hardware accelerated decode of video frames,’ the note continues.

So there you have it, Adobe. The one thing that’s supposedly been holding you back from getting decent Flash performance on the Mac is now gone. Now that Apple has removed this ‘stumbling block’ and you’re unfettered by Apple’s restrictions, the onus is on you to prove that you can deliver a well-crafted Flash plugin for the Mac — preferably one that doesn’t crash constantly or send my fans into a cyclone any time I try to watch full-screen Flash videos.

It will be interesting to see how Adobe responds to this. If Adobe takes advantage of the hardware-acceleration APIs, how much improvement Flash’s performance sees as a result will settle the debate once and for all over who’s been at fault for Flash’s subpar performance on the Mac. Even if Flash sees substantial performance on the Mac as a result of this move, though, there’s probably no chance that Apple will relent on its stance regarding Flash on iPhone OS.

[Via MacRumors]

TUAWApple throws Adobe a bone — on the Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

“

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)