I’ve seen a number of folks excited about the possibility of getting Windows 7 on a tablet device, whether it be through Citrix on the iPad or natively on a PC tablet such as the ExoPC. I personally have no such desire. Windows 7 simply wasn’t designed for the sole purpose of touchscreen computing. The experience simply won’t be as good as the iPhone OS. Another issue with running Windows on a touchscreen tablet is that the majority of Microsoft technology developers have only ever programmed for a mouse/keyboard experience. This results in less than optimal touchscreen computing experience. The iPad has a huge advantage in that there are developers who have been programming solely for touchscreen devices for 3 years. The developers’ mentality has shifted already to a touchscreen environment, meaning better quality experiences. This is not to say that Windows developers can’t code for touch environments, but merely that there will be far fewer quality experiences on a Windows touchscreen device than on the iPad for the next little while. Continue Reading »
Wes Kroesbergen's Portfolio
my opinions, conjectures, and thoughts
Response to John Nack & The Flash Blog
I thought I’d write a quick post in response to the posts by John Nack, Product Manager at Adobe, and The Flash Blog regarding the lack of Flash on the iPad (and iPhone). You can find their respective posts here and here.
First, in response to John Nack, who makes the point that Flash has brought standardization to the web. Yes, it is did bring a standard to the web for a while, once Adobe purchased Macromedia, Flash itself started fragmenting into many different versions which supported different levels of features. This resulted in many users having to upgrade their Flash plugins depending on the site visited. How is this any better a ’standard’ than HTML5? Might as well force the user to upgrade their browser to a standards-compliant version.
So, Flash provides ubiquitous browser video playback? Who cares? YouTube and Vimeo are switching to HTML5, Hulu is committed to providing iPad compliant service, and everyone else doesn’t care what they use to play video in their browser. As Internet Explorer 8 begins mass penetration (via Windows 7) and Internet Explorer 6 support is dropped (as Google announced yesterday), Flash will become less & less important. Lets be honest here. The only reason Flash is really needed is IE6’s existence. Everything else can and should be implemented via HTML5 and standards-compliant services such as OpenType.
John Nack concludes with a point that the Flash team will likely be using the GPU to bring fast performance to the desktop plugin. Who cares? The iPad and iPhone are mobile devices. Utilizing a separate GPU to do the processing is irrelevant on a mobile device that uses System-on-a-Chip design.
He also makes the point that the download size for QuickTime is twice that of Flash. Irrelevant. Most of the Flash-haters he is targeting with this post (and most Adobe CS users) are running a Mac, with native support. And most people with iTunes installed (read: everyone with an iPod/iPhone) have QuickTime installed as part of Apple Software Update. So no, ubiquity is not dependent on the download size of your plugin. Continue Reading »
Apple iPad
As most of you are aware, Apple announced their new Apple iPad yesterday. There have been the usual set of reactions to the announcement. Shills like Paul Thurrott providing their heavily biased negative perspective, and Apple fanboys proclaiming that this device meets all their needs perfectly, and that the device is perfect. Both sides offer their ‘armchair architect’ perspective, proclaiming all the pros and cons and design ‘flaws’ that the Apple engineers obviously didn’t consider. This post shares my armchair perspective, and frankly is not based on any personal experience with the device. All my opinions have been formed from information on the Internet. Continue Reading »
Google Wave Robots
Recently I wrote a post summarizing my perspective on Google Wave. Shortly thereafter, I was contacted by a reader and asked why I had not mentioned Wave Robots. I errored in not including them previously, and this post contains my perspective.
One of the reasons I had not included robots previously is because I did not feel I understood them well enough. I make it a general practice to not speak about subjects I don’t feel I understand properly. Continue Reading »
Work Ethic of IT Contractors
Now that I’ve been working in a larger company where there are many more IT contractors than just myself, I’ve begun to see a pattern in the mentality of a typical contractor, and consequently, their work ethic. I find that the typical mindset of a contractor is that they feel they are only there for the life of the contract. Consequently, they take a much more laidback approach to work, attempting to drag out the contract. This irks me. The mentality I was raised with (thanks to my father) is that if you do your work well, and do it expediently, those above you will want to keep you. Doing your work well and expediently sets you in a position of value, rather than just a tool to complete a task. Continue Reading »
Extracting Exchange Contacts from iPhone
Last week I was helping an individual migrate information over from his old company to his new company. As he no longer had physical access to the company computers, but still had Exchange access until the end of the month, one would have thought it a relatively trivial task. Quite the contrary. Though he had access to his information via Outlook Web Access and his iPhone, he did not have a personal copy of Outlook, so using Outlook to export information was out of the question. OWA also does not allow you to export contact information, and instead presents them in an HTML page. After a number of attempts to extract the contact information via iTunes, I started looking at alternative means. At this point I discovered Air Contacts. Continue Reading »
VMWare ESXi as a Media Server
In the last little while, I’ve begun to work a lot more with VMware ESXi, in an attempt to understand virtualization better. Along with the benefits it brings to larger companies, I began to see some benefits that it would bring to my personal life. At home, I am constantly developing or experimenting with new technologies in an attempt to understand them and build my skills. The problem is that I tend to do a lot of my experimentation on our home server (an old Dell 5150, with lots of extra hard drives). Since we are using this as a media server, things tend to become difficult for those using the media or data when I need to reboot/install something new. This resulted in much of our data being scattered among our other machines (two MacBook Pro’s and an iMac). All in all, a very messy setup. Continue Reading »
The Cloud as a Load Balancer
Today is the day of a remarkable new entry into the Canadian wireless space, the launch of WIND Mobile. It is a launch I’m incredibly excited about, but that in itself shall be left to another post. The launch of WIND, just as with virtually any other major product/company launch, was not without problems. Mere minutes after I first visited the new online store portal http://shop.windmobile.ca, the connection was cut, and I was no longer able to access the online shop. It would seem that the problem was simply due to immense demand on the servers. It’s quite a common experience for hot new product/service launches. Just ask Microsoft or Apple. Continue Reading »
On Twitter Clients
I was discussing the merits of a few Twitter clients with a friend the other day, and I realized I wasn’t sure why I preferred my client (Twittelator) vs. most other Mac clients. I also realized I much prefer using Tweetie on the iPhone vs. Tweetie on the Mac. Why this preference?
I believe it to be more a psychological reason for my preferences, and I believe many clients fall short in this particular area. Twitter is designed to convey short bursts of thought, and enable feedback from the general public on thoughs individual thoughts. Hence, when accessing Twitter, I want the client I’m using to be as ‘fleeting’ as the thought itself. I don’t want a solid background… I want the thoughts/suggestions to disturb my current work as little as someone talking to me while I’m working. A glance perhaps, then back to work. No mouse clicks, no physical effort other than listening or seeing. Continue Reading »
Google Wave
There’s been a lot of hype lately about Google Wave. If you’ve heard anything from Google, you’ve heard that it’s supposed to replace E-mail as the next form of communication. A number of prominent bloggers however, including Robert Scoble, have done their reviews, and felt that it is overhyped.
This post will not be another review. If you’ve read other reviews, I’m sure you’re aware of the complaints with the noisy nature of the service, and the general usage of it. Rather, I’d like to discuss how Google Wave impacts communications, and whether or not it truly is the replacement for E-mail. Continue Reading »
Windows 7 – Worth IT?
As you might recall, last year I wrote a piece on Windows Vista, and the benefits it offered to the organization that I was working for at the time. With the advent of Windows 7, I felt it would be worth my time to do another piece on Windows 7. Many of the benefits of Windows Vista still apply to Windows 7, as Windows 7 is built on the OS re-architecture that Windows Vista introduced, particularly on the administrative end. With that in mind, I’ve only highlighted the notable changes (from my view) that would affect the way I work. Continue Reading »
Apple’s New Products
As you’re probably aware, Apple released a slew of product updates this past week. There were a few notable surprises, and a few subtle ones as well.
Surprisingly enough, the most interesting change was the change to the iMac lineup, not the Magic Mouse. The shift to a 16×9 aspect resolution instead of the past 16×10 aspect signals that Apple is targeting the livingroom. (16×9 is the standard aspect for movies. Typically you see two black bars above and below the movie playing.) To date, I believe there is only one 16×9 dedicated TV display, a Philips. If these take off and do well, I’d guess that Apple will bring the change over to their cinema displays. They could then concievably bundle an Apple TV into the display, providing the ultimate home entertainment unit. TV manufacturers would do well to keep an eye on Apple. Continue Reading »
Windows 8 Won’t be 128 bit
There have been a number of ‘unconfirmed’ rumours floating around in the last few days about Windows 8 being 128 bit. While certainly an exciting thought, the likelihood of it being true is almost nil. Windows 8 being 128 compatible is like Windows XP Professional x64 being 64 bit. While it ‘worked’ to an extent, there was almost no market at the time, and the implementation was extremely buggy, to say the least. It was a half-assed attempt to say that Windows XP was 64 bit compatible. Continue Reading »
Chrome Frame
Update: One of the arguments surfacing from people, notably Mitchell Baker (the former CEO of the Mozilla Foundation), is that Chrome Frame segregates the browser from the engine. They claim that this will result in the rendering engine storing information in one location, while the browser stores it in another. I’ve been using Chrome Frame of late in IE6, and quite frankly, it appears to me that locally stored information (passwords, security settings, etc) are all managed from the browser. The rendering engine is just that… a rendering engine. A powerhouse that the browser hooks into and does things with. The browser rendering engine merely renders the output of what is given. If there are stored credentials, it pulls them from the browser framework. I think Mitchell Baker’s quotes are misleading. Continue Reading »
iTunes 9
Thought I’d post my thoughts on the new iTunes version posted today.
- TERRIBLE shell on the Mac. The gradient ‘light’ effect on clashes with the grey on the rest of the Snow Leopard native apps.
- BEAUTIFUL store. The buy buttons are hidden till you hover over them. Lovely use of WebKit.
- AWESOME app organization for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
- AWESOME sync options for music.
- GREAT home sharing. I’ll be using it to keep my apps up-to-date on all of my machines, in case I need to sync my iPhone with the laptop when away from home.
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