Tablet Musings

http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/tablet_musings

by barredo • 17 years ago

51 66 17 years ago

fohlin• 17 years ago

Check out this week's MacBreak Weekly for more Gruber tablet speculations: http://twit.tv/mbw174

jcnnghm• 17 years ago

Not including flash on a tablet seems like a mistake to me. It's one thing on a cell phone, but quite another on a device that will probably be positioned as a casual use computer.

axod5• 17 years ago

The future isn't flash (IMHO). I think leaving it out makes absolute perfect sense.

It also makes commercial sense - they don't want people playing flash games on the web, they want them buying games from the appstore.

brk• 17 years ago

The future isn't flash

Yeah, well the future also isn't here yet.

Flash still has much relevance for any web-surfing focused product shipping today.

SamAtt• 17 years ago

One of the things you have to consider is Apple's strategic goals beyond the Tablet or even the iPhone.

There's a larger strategic issue here. HTML 5 is going to reduce a lot of the need for Flash and Flash in turn is going to be forced back into it's traditional market of providing streaming media solutions. In that role they are Apple biggest competitor both in format (Quicktime) and content (streaming media competing with iTunes)

By keeping Flash off the iPhone and the tablet Apple is taking their very high income audience and telling web site developers "Support us or risk losses in advertising". In doing that they're using the iPhone and the tablet to further the company as a whole. Something that might be worth losing a few sales in the short run

tentonova2• 17 years ago

I don't think it's necessarily a mistake if your goal is to strong-arm the industry towards abandoning Flash.

wallflower• 17 years ago

"Were Flash Lite to gain momentum, it might make Adobe the Microsoft of mobiles, and Flash Lite the new Windows. That also makes it obvious why Apple wants to choke Flash to death before it falls into position as the new lowest common denominator in proprietary platforms on a new crop of mobile devices...

And you thought the iPhone was just Apple's way of muscling into the mobile business! No, it’s really a proactive battle against a wide swatch of proprietary platforms promising to plague a new wave of mobile devices."

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q2.07/879DD82D-559...

robertj2• 17 years ago

or if your goal is to get more people to get their content from the iTunes Store.

brianobush• 17 years ago

The problem with flash (and the upside) is that it lets designers tackle the whole problem of site design, fonts, look and feel, etc in their domain. I would love to see flash replaced by html5 and css, but I think momentum is not on my side.

rauljara• 17 years ago

The reason flash wasn't included on the cell phone was battery life: http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/post/231806385/adobe-gets-bitc...

Non-windows versions of flash have turned out to be incredibly inefficient: relatively simple flash banner ads make my otherwise near idle mac go wild. From what I've seen, it's even less efficient on Linux. Battery life is still going to be a huge concern for the apple tablet. If adobe gets its sh*t together, it may yet come to the tablet/iPhone OS. Until that time, it would be ridiculous for apple to allow that poorly designed of a virtual machine onto its otherwise energy efficient hardware.

chollida1• 17 years ago

I'm not so sure that's true. I have flash block installed on all my computers. I've never had a problem surfing the web.

netcan• 17 years ago

IMO, no flash is mostly a deal-breaker on media type stuff. Watching or listening to stuff. The application side of flash is smaller.

I imagine Apple has it's own ideas for how media on the tablet should work.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

I really hope he's wrong about several of these things (no flash, only apps from an app store, full Apple lockdown of everything). Why would I want another iPhone, just with a bigger screen? Especially when it's not clear when I'd use it over an iPhone or my Macbook? I can only handle so much of the Apple totalitarianism, especially if the damn thing costs $1500 or something.

csuper2• 17 years ago

Unfortunately - I bet a lot of this is dead on. I can't imagine the device being more open than any other Apple product is.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

But that's just it...Apple's products vary widely in their degree of openness, from the iPod / iPhone / Apple TV on the end to their computers on the other end. So is this thing more like a computer (you buy it, you own it, hack it to hell and put anything you want on it), or an iPhone (you're basically renting this device from us, and we're going to dictate exactly what you can do with it)?

roc2• 17 years ago

> "Why would I want another iPhone, just with a bigger screen?"

Maybe you wouldn't.

But I would. Because when I need mobile computing, I generally don't have a desk, or even a chair. Sometimes I'm actively walking around. And I don't need to use it for sessions of length or complexity that justify the overhead of the desktop computing model. And I don't need arbitrary pre-existing desktop apps.

I just need awesome core apps that I can get at in a couple seconds, use (literally) on the go and be able to get through a day without recharging or hassle (lock-ups). It doesn't have to replace my laptop. Just my dead-tree notebooks.

The iPhone has come far, far closer to working for me than conventional laptops, netbooks, or windows tablets. It just doesn't have quite enough screen real-estate for some tasks and the ergonomics aren't right for others.

spazmaster• 17 years ago

The browsing experience will be more of a core thing for the Tablet than for the iPhone. One reason for this is that I expect the Tablet will replace the low-end MacBooks and will need to offer great e-mail and browsing experience.

(Alas) too many sites currently rely on Flash to not include it in the Tablet OS.

csuper2• 17 years ago

Form and function wise I just don't get tablets. I don't seem them replacing MacBooks.

sophacles• 17 years ago

Laptops are kind of awkward when doing something besides sitting and using a laptop. So when cooking, or when gaming (bg more than vg), or fixing stuff around the house, or whatever, tablet form makes sense. It is an information lookup device, like puting documents on a clipboard, more than a laptop replacement.

GHFigs6• 17 years ago

I'm amazed that anybody is still expecting Flash. Has the iPhone not conclusively demonstrated that Flash is a legacy feature of dwindling relevance?

there• 17 years ago

no, it hasn't. for video, maybe, but there are still a lot of websites that are useless on mobile safari without flash just for stupid things like animated menus.

axod5• 17 years ago

There will always be crazys using silverlight/flash/java applets for ridiculous things. Best avoid them.

GHFigs6• 17 years ago

just for stupid things like animated menus

Like I said: dwindling relevance. Nobody in their right mind uses Flash for anything important. The one small exception is games, but the iPhone platform has no shortage of games that are faster, better looking, and better tailored to the platform than anything you can do in Flash.

thechangelog3• 17 years ago

Maybe on mobile, but certainly not the desktop. While I would certainly prefer to build everything in HTML/JS/CSS, if I want a media player or gallery that works predictably and consistently Flash is certainly the best way to go. Ditto online advertising.

Since Adobe rolled out AS3 I would say the Flash platform is as vibrant as ever.

josefresco4• 17 years ago

In what world is Flash 'dwindling in relevance'? Maybe the hyper progressive iphone-toting geek world but down here on planet earth, where we still browse the web with things called computers, Flash has massive leverage and I don't see it going anywhere for years.

GHFigs6• 17 years ago

And where do you see it going in some years? Do you see it becoming more important? Or is it a demonstrable fact that devices without Flash support have been highly successful in the market?

Apple sold 7 million iPhones last quarter, and a few million more iPod Touches. One of the primary features of these, for which they are often praised, is web browsing. None of them, not even jailbroken ones, support Flash. Many other devices in the market offer web browsing with Flash. They do not generally sell well, at least by comparison.

One conclusion you can draw from this is that there are 7 million more poor deluded fools out there who stupidly think it's possible to slink by on the web without the vital component of Flash. There will be much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments as these dreamers agonize over their diminished experience of the web, until that proud day in some distant future when they are finally blessed by their provider of their crippled devices with the privilege of Punching the Monkey any time they like. There will be load screens and gradients and tweening galore.

Another possible conclusion, which is the one I have drawn, is that these people are by and large satisfied with their purchases and consider the lack of Flash support a mild disappointment, if they consider it at all, on the occasion that they are blocked from some task (watching a video, playing a game, viewing an ad) because the author has chosen to limit its accessibility to Flash-supporting clients. And that this is a sign, perhaps, that Flash is really not so very vital to the experience of the web as is often supposed, being not so much a technical necessity as an inertial holdover from an earlier time--from back when you could honestly say that 99% of Web users had Flash. And further, that the popularity of devices that omit Flash support is not going to wane on that basis; more likely the opposite: that Flash itself is likely to slide into irrelevance as more people browse the web without it.

Hence: Flash is a legacy feature of dwindling relevance.

As it happens, I don't own an iPhone. I have only even used one for maybe 30 minutes, total. You may want to paint me as "hyper progressive" or swayed by owning the device, but my argument is based on what I see going on around me, right now, here on planet Earth.

fragmede• 17 years ago

Take a traditional laptop and swap the position of the keyboard and the screen. Then, make the keyboard detachable and turn the screen into a touch screen. Voila, tablet PC.

With a good industrial design house, someone could give it sex appeal, and between the iMac and the Macbook Air, thats the something different I'm dreaming of from Apple.

ori_b• 17 years ago

So, useless as a tablet PC, in summary.

patrik• 17 years ago

What really amazes me is the fact that even on this site, the discussion barely touches the app store issue.

It might be true that the tablet will have a significant impact on tomorrow's computing platforms. But what really scares me is the prospect that it might become more and more accepted that the user will loose the freedom to decide what software he can install and thus what to do with the machine.

This is something that goes against anything we learned from the open web and, of course, from "hacking" (jailbreaking does not count here). It goes against the central things I value at computing.

By comparison, _I_ could not care less whether this thing comes with Flash or not.

josefresco4• 17 years ago

For some reason I was under the impression that web apps would replace the app store apps. However like you I'm concerned that Apple will try to squash this in favor of controlling the entire app 'chain'.

Our only hope is that web apps can be accepted before the idea of a 'pc app store' really takes hold.

orangecat• 17 years ago

Well said. The sort of control that Apple is trying to exert is terrible for both freedom and innovation; if Microsoft had it 15 years ago they never would have allowed the web to develop as it did. Yet Apple's fanboys are cheering them on as they position themselves to block any development that might interfere with their business model.

This is a major reason why I ordered a Nexus One today to replace "my" iPhone, which Steve has made clear is only mine in the sense that I paid for it.

jsz03• 17 years ago

15 years ago Microsoft held a monopoly on desktop operating systems. Apple is nowhere near a majority in the SmartPhone market today. I think there's very little chance they will ever hold that type of dominant position in the SmartPhone market so whatever they choose to do with the iPhone & App Store doesn't really impede the consumer's ability to choose an open platform. I think choice is a good thing. If someone wants an open platform they can get it. If someone wants a nicely packaged, but extremely functional and trouble free, platform Apple will sell it to them.

buckwilson• 17 years ago

The thought of Apple getting a 30% cut of all apps sold on all of their platforms makes me cringe.

tvon• 17 years ago

I think the iTunes LP API (not sure what it's actually called) will play a very big part in this thing.

jsz03• 17 years ago

My guess is Apple's tablet is primarily designed as a competitor to PC net books. People have speculated about it being a MacBook replacement but there's a huge difference in the type of consumer buying a $350 net book and a $999+ MacBook. I think Apple has insulated their computer business from being cannibalized from lower end devices. Lots of people say "if I already have an iPhone and a MacBook why would I want a tablet?" and the answer probably is you don't. This product is not aimed at you. It's for the people who don't want a $999+ MacBook and are currently buying PC net books instead. As such I think the price will be <$499 (maybe a bit higher on launch just to cover supply & demand)

_funkyboy• 16 years ago

Probably Steve and friends think something like: why have I to complicate my life (and the user experience ov my customers) with some 3rd party technology?

zer0ne• 16 years ago

How iPhone or iPad are going to be the best web browser devises if Apple restrict content format from the Internet?

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