iPad for the win
Monday, March 15, 2010 at 4:44AM Call me an Apple fanboy, Apple defender, Apple lover, or what have you. Actually, I think it's kind of funny how a post supporting the iPad is more likely to be linkbait than the usual Apple flaming blogs tend to be. At least, that's my perception on the issue since the announcement in late January. You'd think Apple had just gone and spit on everybody's shoes, the way they're frothing at the mouth. Everything about it is wrong, or so they say. The name, the "it's just a larger iPod touch", the lack of Flash...you name it, somebody's used it as their choice reason for hating on the iPad.
I like the iPad. I like what it stands for, I like the implementation, I like the name. Unlike the middle-school playground mentality that washed over the Internet and instantly jumped to make fun of the word pad, I do get the other 20 definitions of the word that have existed just as long as feminine hygiene and I see how a few of them fit. Nobody made fun of what they called notepads or launch pads or shoulder pads, did they? Well, you're definitely not going to wear it on your shoulders during a nice friendly game of football, but it quite easily fits the definition of a notepad or a launch pad, considering it is launching a new segment of the iPhone platform -- the consumption (and maybe creative) segment. Think of what you can do with a faster processor and a large touchscreen that you couldn't do with the smaller, slower devices that exist in this space now.
Where millions of people use the term "larger iPod touch" as a derisive moniker, this is one of the reasons why I think it will be fantastic. I look at the iPod touch and I think "you know, this would be great if the screen were bigger so you could put more content on it at once." The bigger screen directly translates to a new set of potential capabilities, not only for what you can display on the screen but what you can input on the screen. How easy is it to get four fingers on an iPhone or iPod touch? You can do it unless you have monstrous fingers, but good luck moving them around much. Enter: iPad. Now you have a lot more room to move, opening up the avenues for many more kinds of input and output. Will there be a multitasking gesture with the four finger swipe similar to the MacBook trackpad? Five finger gestures, even -- who knows? There are so many possibilities with a larger interface and I for one am glad that it is just a "larger iPod touch." This means the experience will be similar, the learning curve will be short and sweet, full of many pleasant surprises as soon as it comes out, and in the days and weeks ahead as more apps are released.
Flash... oh boy, there's a can of worms waiting to happen. Let's just get right to the point: who needs Flash? I mean, who needs it, absolutely cannot live without it, and must use it or they will die? Nobody. There are 75 million iPhones and iPod touches out there that have no Flash support and guess what? The world is still spinning. Imagine that, leaving a 14-year old technology out of a new class of personal devices. How dare they?! This stuff is as old as my car, folks, and anybody who knows me knows how much that damn thing costs to keep running year after year after year. The facts are simple: 1) Flash is a hog. 2) Flash is unnecessary. 3) Flash isn't designed for touchscreens.
Flash being a hog isn't hard to find out for yourself. Open up a site that uses Flash to deliver its design or content. Check your CPU usage. I bet more often than not, you'll find that CPU meter spiking up to the max, especially if the site is done poorly. Considering Flash is so easy to develop for, this is often the case, sadly enough. Where a video might only require 20% of your CPU time to play natively, putting Flash between your eyes and your video almost always cranks up the usage to 100%. Needlessly.
99% of the web's Flash-based content or services can be done better in modern technology like HTML5. If video is the only reason your site uses Flash, this upcoming modern standard provides a perfectly CPU-friendly solution, as good as running a native video player. If you use Flash for rollovers and transitions, then you've now got fantastic CSS3 and fast Javascript, both of which are supported in every modern browser already, not just the few that run HTML5.
This brings us to games and other web applications that run on Flash. Of course we all know that a little part of Apple wants to keep the gaming business to just the web apps and the App Store income that they skim off the top. That's just their business survival instincts and not a single person in the world wouldn't consider doing the exact same thing in their shoes. But let's go a little crazy here and assume the worst, that Steve Jobs has gone off the deep end and given it his blessing, that Adobe has worked out all the kinks and the bugs and made it CPU-friendly, and that pigs now fly. Great. So, we have Flash on the iPhone OS. How do we use it? Tap to click? Well, what if it's one of those odd Flash apps that wants to show a neat hover effect before you click? What if it's a Flash game that requires mouse hovering, or click-and-drag? You can't tap and drag, because that's a scrolling gesture. So, how do you translate all of the mouse-and-keyboard input that Flash is expecting from a touchscreen? Oh, I know...hold with one finger and tap or drag with another, right? Now that's starting to get pretty clunky. In the long run, there's no good standard translation for all of these mouse inputs that Flash expects, so you're going to run into Flash scripts that don't work right because they're expecting some dragging or hovering that you can't do the same way as you do on a mouse.
That, in fact, may be the truest reason yet for the iPhone OS not to support Flash, because it is next to impossible to glean a good, consistent user experience from Flash on a platform which was totally designed from the ground up with a certain consistent user experience in mind. And we all know the iPhone is all about the experience. Such as it will be with the iPad. As roomy as that bigger screen will be, there's no room for supporting a less-than-stellar experience.
Remember that Microsoft tablet project that was supposed to be the shit? This is that $500 tablet device that Microsoft wanted to come out with when they unveiled their ambitious Origami/UMPC project. The go anywhere, do anything portable computer, right? Only they couldn't make it do anything, because they had to use a weak x86 processor and not a lot of RAM or drive space. They couldn't really go anywhere with it, because you had to whip out a stylus to manipulate the Windows controls on the tiny screens, which eliminates a lot of spur-of-the-moment use cases that iPhone OS devices are legendary for. They never could quite get down to that magical $500 price point, either. You don't hear Kermit the Frog laughing, now, do you? This is the way Microsoft should have done it: a product designed from the ground up for touch, on-the-go computing, rid of the old hokey technologies that bog down conventional computers, leaving you with a simple, clean device that pretty much always just works and does what you need it to do.
Put your Flash fancy and other manufactured misgivings aside and put an iPad in your pocket. Take the red pill and let's find out how deep this rabbit hole goes. Or stay in your seat and continue throwing pebbles at it, content never to find out what you'll be missing.
Reader Comments (3)
Do you own an iPad?...
No, they're not out yet. I'm going to, though.
Do you like naked girls?