Comments on: i can’t have a tablet for $500 (yet).

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:20:42 +0000

Reading that article really drove home that point. I had just thought of it in terms of games and stupid visual tricks that work off the distance between and object and the cursor (and therefore discounted it). Expandable menus and the like escaped my notice, even though they’re much more relevant. Pretty much a game-breaker. HOWEVER, I’m still and angsty terd about ol’ Steve’s flapping maw. I’m pretty sure that my next machine will be a Macbook Pro or iMac, but I still think he’s a terd!

By: daniel

daniel — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:17:08 +0000

"Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what."

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:36:13 +0000

I think the genie is out of the bottle in that sense, though. Annoying advertising and lousy design are unpleasant side effect of our culture. My personal opinion is that Flash is just the current conduit. Whatever standards-based solution that comes along will have the same capacity for abuse.

tl:dr – Shitty Youtube videos in h264 are still shitty youtube videos.

By: daniel

daniel — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:30:57 +0000

I was going to leave a long reply talking in greater detail about how websites misuse Flash in all sorts of ways…

But then I found http://www.cheetos.com/view/game/the-legend-of-cheetocorn/

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:08:05 +0000

Also: I’ve gotten used to life without multitasking on the iPhone, but damn the man for me having to reload the same webpage every time I switch to another application.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:06:44 +0000

I just have to be a whiner about Flash. We don’t have home service at the moment, so the iPhone is my link to the web (and my work PC, but that’s another story). The lack of Flash isn’t game-breaking the phone, but it is an absence that is very noticed. That added together with the emotional tumult that I get sucked into on the blogs about Adobe v. Apple just makes me pukey. Now that they are becoming so much more powerful in the market, Apple’s closed system bothers me much more than before. Mostly because as they become stronger, they gain the ability to force developers and content distributors to bend to their *proprietary* will, further marginalizing potential innovations from other manufacturers.

I kept asking myself why I wasn’t really that hyped about the upcoming tablet announcement, and I’m still asking. Maybe I’m just being short-sighted, but it seems so ultra-niche compared to the ubiquity and utility of the iPhone.

I have no idea why I just put all this crap on you blog.