hardware

The Flash Battle

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Since Apple unveiled the iPad last Wednesday a large focus has been centered on the lack of Flash support.

Sides were quickly formed; Pro-Flash or Anti-Flash.

The Pro-Flash side calling it absolutely unacceptable for a modern and powerful media device to not allow Flash content.

The Anti-Flash side points out the public lack of support on the iPhone along with major reasons to despise the technology.

The Pro-Flash camp pointed out sites like Hulu and YouTube for video, and the numerous games available only through a Flash interface. Adobe even chimed in with a blog post presenting their argument for Flash.

And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.

They have a valid (somewhat) point that the flash platform allows flexibility and a maturity that does not exist in other technologies such as HTML5.

The Flash Blog (An independent site evangelizing the Flash platform) was quick to point out how widespread the content is including pointing out very obviously the porn side of the web. They used a very effective tagline in the post that had twitter ablaze with arguments.

Millions of websites use Flash. Get used to the blue legos.

On the other side of the fence was the Anti-Flash camp, pointing out statements that Flash is the leading cause of crashes on Mac's. The fact that it is a huge CPU hog and that is just a bad format. I would generally count myself in this camp, my MacBook runs Flash content horribly. HTML5 is going to be great, especially when paired with the advances in AJAX.

The future is almost now

Tomorrow morning Apple will unveil something new and exciting, what it is exactly no one really knows. Everyone has an opinion and they all are confident in their assumptions.

I am excited, eager and I confess to know nothing. I won't even try to guess. This could be a new form factor altogether. I have an idea of what I'd like to see, but one of the reasons I love Apple is they produce products that are far beyond what I can envision.

The iPod Less than a decade ago Apple released the iPod, the device no one understood or really expected. The pre-iPod rumors existed, but not with this frenzy. I followed the rumors closely and was shocked by the final product. It was exactly what I didn't know I needed, but had to have. It filled an invisible niche that started a frenzy.

The iPhone Rumors of the iPhone started early and some were very close to what we saw from the raw specifications. What Apple delivered was a new paradigm in portable computing. It just fills that niche that nobody really thought existed, now we have a smartphone explosion, an app store explosion and an entirely new marketplace that has made millions for the most unexpected people.

Steve Jobs said yesterday during the Q1 2010 Financial call

“The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

Gizmodo had it right when they said, "Apple actually reveals a product, it's something that they're confident enough to support for years to come."

What they announce and release tomorrow will be compelling, polished and I expect, somewhat unexpected.

HP slate device is just a PC

Slate device is just a PC


Microsoft's CES keynote has been marked by disaster: first the power went out, knocking the PCs on stage into recovery mode, and now the PR for Ballmer's speech has posted early. The big news is no news -- that HP slate device is a Windows 7 PC, not the rumored Courier tablet.



Attribute to Engadget

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