Stephen Fry pipes in

Post #320,704 by SpiceWare 1/28/10 2:58:02 PM Reply	Stephen Fry pipes in He went to his first Apple product release and wrote about it in his blog There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: ÂHold your judgment until youÂve spent five minutes with itÂ. ... The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class. This is a different order of experience. The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, itÂs not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop Â it is a whole new kind of device. And it will change so much. http://www.stephenfr...01/28/ipad-about/
Post #320,709 by drook 1/28/10 4:29:44 PM Reply	Everyone keeps saying "No Flash" But it's got a YouTube app. Doesn't YouTube use flash for its movies? Does Apple have a back-door that lets their app grab the raw movie files? -- Drew
Post #320,712 by SpiceWare 1/28/10 5:29:36 PM Reply	YouTube switched to H.264 a while back The flash player plays it back on their web site while the H.264 file is played back directly by Apple TV and the YouTube App. http://newteevee.com...-thanks-to-apple/ The ClickToFlash flash-blocker for Safari has an option to play back the H.264 video via QuickTime instead of via Flash player. http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/ I had been using that option, but recently YouTube opened an HTML5 beta option and I've been using it instead. It plays back the H.264 video via the new <video> tag. I think Chrome and Safari are the only browsers that support it (Firefox does support the <video> tag, but only for ogg files) http://www.youtube.com/html5 https://developer.mo..._video_in_FireFox Gruber also has a rather insightful blog entry about why Flash won't be on the iPhone or iPad - the gist of which is that Flash is the #1 cause of crashes in OS X (per the crash reports submitted to Apple), but it's not something that Apple can do anything about. http://daringfirebal...apple_adobe_flash
Post #320,713 by Another Scott 1/28/10 6:28:36 PM Reply	Thanks for the pointers. Few things have given me as much trouble on Linux as Flash. Adobe has shown that it can write good code in the past, but much of their stuff has gotten incredibly bloated. Why on earth should a PDF viewer be as huge, slow, and fragile as Acrobat Reader 8 (a 217 MB tree on WinXP here)? That old saw has seemingly been updated to: "The Internet treats Adobe as damage and routes around it." I'm glad it's progressing reasonably well. Cheers, Scott.
Post #320,721 by SpiceWare 1/28/10 11:10:45 PM Reply	Looks like Vimeo is switching as well http://gizmodo.com/5...-kill-flash-video Vimeo's new HTML5 system is just like YouTube's, in both execution and technical details, in that it'll only work with a few browsersÂSafari and Chrome, for nowÂand that it's compatible with most, but not all, of the company's video libraries.
Post #320,716 by static 1/28/10 8:25:28 PM Reply	HTML 5 video and H.264. This is shaping up to be a big big issue. There are reasons for H.264 (it's the professional standard) and there are reasons against H.264 (it requires royalty payments). Firefox/Mozilla have said they can't support H.264 because of the latter and they don't want to devolve it to the OS. Meanwhile, Apple and Google have shown their hand, so it will be interesting to see which way Microsoft jumps. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #320,719 by folkert 1/28/10 10:50:37 PM Reply	Re: which way Microsoft jumps ... The wrong way. With both feet. Into quicksand and no "willing" lifeguard on duty.
Post #320,722 by static 1/28/10 11:15:34 PM Reply	... so you think they'll ignore the <video> tag? :-) That would be monumentally stupid. Which means that's probably what they'll do. Except I know the IE guys would try to fight against that... I actually meant whether they go for H.264 support, Ogg Theora or devolve it to the OS. I think when push comes to shove, they'll support the video tag by devolving codec support to the OS, which means they'll try to promote WMV. And they're already too late to try that... That would be the second fail. Could MS be so stupid? Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #320,726 by drook 1/29/10 1:36:42 AM Reply	Video playback should be done by the OS IMO Why should every app have its own code for playing video? The way it should work (and it may already) is whenever the browser sees a media file, it should check for a plugin that handles it, next see if it's built into the browser, next see if the OS handles it, then fail. Sort of like CSS: check the most specific first before bubbling up to the more generic. Then if someone has a new codec -- either a whole new format or a better way of handling an old one -- plug it in to the browser. Eventually that code (or something like it) makes it into the browser. Then into the OS. I guess the tricky part is when video cards arrive that support it in hardware before support has trickled down to the OS, which is where Apple says, "Your app doesn't get to access the hardware." -- Drew
Post #320,729 by pwhysall 1/29/10 1:50:03 AM Reply	For the reasons you mention... ...this may be a very, very bad decision on the Mozilla Foundation's part.
Post #320,733 by static 1/29/10 8:43:53 AM Reply	I wonder if they're trying to rope MPEG-LA into the fray. After all, the Mozilla Foundation could say that they want to support H.264 because that's what everyone is asking for, but the licencing rules make it difficult... I bet MPEG-LA probably don't want to be part of that discussion. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #320,727 by pwhysall 1/29/10 1:37:15 AM Reply	Re: Everyone keeps saying "No Flash" No Flash is a feature, not a bug.

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