Alex Knight

I just wanted to post an excellent article written by my girlfriend http://twitter.com/glamourkat and add some additional comments on this:

"My techie Mac addicted boyfriend has been talking up the iPad for some time now. When I mentioned my reticence related to the lack of Flash support he expressed disdain. And started saying things like, "It's going to take time to get everyone off Flash.",  "The web needs to be 'open' and not 'closed' with Adobe's broken software." He was looking forward to Flash being "dead".

I was aghast. I not only frequent many game sites that are flash based, including TinierMe and GaiaOnline(both Flash based MMORPGs) but I am also a Flash animator, by trade. My livelihood may hang in the balance.

I am told that HTML5 can allow those videos to play that were previously handled by Flash, and apparently, we are told, animation can be done via canvas, SVG, CSS animations, and JavaScript

This is a poor answer.

None of those can never truly replace flash for animating. Why? Because animators are not programmers. Oh, sure, some of us are. And some larger companies have a team to streamline and deal with putting animation on the web. Adding to the difficulty, in many of the articles I have read, people are viewing Flash as a "bad" menu option for ones site. I can even aknowledge this. But they are ignoring the web's ANIMATION and animators.

And while Microsoft may be adding HTML5 support to IE, that will not help any of the sites that currently exist in this state of limbo.

Take, for example, homestarrunner.com. This is a Flash based site that is INSANELY popular. Can I view it on my iPhone? No. it's almost entirely flash based. It was made in Flash, after all. And yes, there's some Javascript here and there, but the mere fact that it contains .swf files causes it to be booted off Apple's map. The map they hope to expand to other computers when Flash is pushed into the Recycle Bin.
Shall the creators of the site go back and tweak, re-upload, and convert every animation and menu? On a perfectly working and popular site? Many of the pages are interactive, where you can search for hidden easter eggs, in a much less intrusive way than video links on YouTube.

There are many successful and popular flash based sites online. That I cannot visit with an iPhone. That I will not be able to visit with an iPad. That Steve Jobs apparently doesn't give 2 shits about. Oh, I can hear it now! "Make the change to HTML5 menus!", "Convert the flash files to mp4s!"

Apple is pretty much shrugging it's shoulders and saying, "We don't care about Flash support." But Apple can't expect companies to retrain people and hire new staff to REMAKE working sites that are popular and graphically appealing, especially when you are also talking about sites made by 5 or less animators with no programming experience, or one animator who is really grateful that Flash is so versatile and is an easy way to get their animations and web content out there. They cannot expect animators to simply use non-intuitive program languages meant mostly for menu mouseovers and dropdown menus.

I have heard cries of "Oh well, there will be ways "around it'," usually followed by explanations of exporting and re writing and learning programming languages or hiring a personal programmer. I contend it shouldn't be up to the makers of quality flash content to make up a way "around it".

Apple is effectively KILLING independent animators online. Flash REMAINS one of the easiest, fastest, best ways to get your work out there.

Newgrounds is free hosting for Flash animation that allows a lot of exposure for up and coming animators.
http://www.newgrounds.com/

Many imageboards online have entirely Flash based sections, where .swf files can be uploaded and swapped and saved. Games, animations, you name it. From large companies and from independent artists who like to goof around.

There are over 80 thousand flash files archived on http://swfchan.com/, a site where .swfs can be shared or swapped.

One of my favourite artists is an animator named Dave Kelly also known online as "Shmorky". His irreverent Flash cartoons are still predominantly spread by people linking friends to the .swf's hosted on his site and SomethingAwful. His animations have been a valued and featured part of SomethingAwful since 2004!
http://shmorky.com/animation.html
http://www.purplepussy.net/
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/flash-tub/

It's always been a pipe dream of mine to one day have a site like homestarrunner.com, and so many other flash animation sites.
If Apple has it's way I WILL NEVER HAVE THAT, not without a team of programmers making workarounds for me, or with either slow to load or lossy formats that lose the sleek vector styling of Flash.
Is Flash a perfect animating tool? Goodness, no. Far from it, in fact.
Is it a cheap(compared to other animation programs, supplies and techniques) fast, easy way to promote your work? Yes.

Not even to mention the fact that the iPad could have found a huge demographic in animators and digital artists if they had made the iPad an affordable real alternative to the Cintiq that every artist drools over. What I would have paid to be able to use a pressure sensitive stylus ON THE SCREEN to animate and draw on a compact and portable tablet. The only styluses I've seen bandied about for the iPad were quite bulbous and unsuited for detail work and, really, with no flash support, how exactly would i make/watch my animation?
I feel almost let down that I can't. Artists wanted that. Macs have typically been the "go to" computer for graphics. This will hurt them for sure.

http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/cintiq-12wx.php
http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/cintiq-21ux.php

Most of the current animation softwares have the option to export into .swf files. ToonBoom, KoolMoves, Toufee, Anime Studio and Express Animator all have this ability.

Apple's ad copy states the iPad is "The best way to experience the web". They should add "... as long as you don't care about animation". The "best way" does not eliminate a wonderful artists' tool. It is not up to Adobe to "fix" anything that isn't broken. It is up to Apple to put on their big boy pants and start supporting Flash, because Flash is not going to go away, and it shouldn't be expected to."

-- As much as I am NOT a fan of Flash, I do agree with many people that HTML5 cannot solve all problems and that Adobe MUST fix Flash and make it a fast, stable, and reliable solution for some things things that need it.

Steve Jobs comment on the iPad that it is "the best way to experience the web" is a complete fallacy. Apple is segregating the web by not including an integral component which is Flash.

Why can't these two companies work together to make it reliable?

I think the title says it all :)

I am going to be first in line the moment the Apple store in Vancouver
gets it. I will probably end opting for the WiFi version since I
really do not want to end up paying for another data plan. Sorry
Rogers, you already get $75/month from me.

I can see myself doing a lot of reading in bed, on the couch, or at
the local coffee shop. I cannot see the need to lug my MacBook Pro to
most places after getting an iPad. This leads me to the question, do
most users need more than an iPad as a daily computer? Probably not in
most cases since the average consumer browses the web, reads email,
watches video, and manages photos.

As for me, I am a power user and will always need a desktop solution,
however, I would like to run an experiment after getting my iPad. I
would like to try using it as my sole computer for one month just to
see what the experience will be like.

There are lots of people clamouring on about how great Android is because it supports multi-tasking, meaning you can run multiple apps at the same time without worry. Right now this is one clear and indisputable disadvantage of the iPhone OS. Now I am not going to disagree with anyone on the fact that multi-tasking support should be added to the iPhone, however, Apple has many valid reasons why they have not done so yet.

If Apple really wanted to, they could have added multi-tasking support when the 3GS came out. It has more than enough processing power to handle running a few apps in the background. The real reason why you dd not want to do that right now is that you will end up draining your battery faster than it would take you to blink. And since Apple cares so greatly about providing the absolute smoothest and reliable end user experience, they are going to approach this feature very carefully.

In order for them to get this right, Apple is going to have to make some optimizations in the way idle memory and CPU usage is managed in the OS to ensure that battery life is not going to be heavily impacted by running multiple third party apps. Right now with the way Android handles multi-tasking, it's a bit of a mess and comes at a fairly heavy cost as far as battery life is concerned. This kind of experience is totally unacceptable to Apple and most Apple customers.

I think Apple OS 4.0 could easily bring multi-tasking support, however, I can't see them support it on the 3G or older due to lack of memory and processing power. I surmise that if 4.0 does have support for this, it will only be enabled on 3GS devices.

The next three months should be interesting as we hear more on the development of OS 4.0. I think they will probably have some big things to announce.

For a while now I have been trying to avoid paying attention to all of the Apple "tablet" rumours that have flying around. So far it has been all speculation and no one seems to have anything concrete on what exactly this device is supposed to be.

The one thing that is intriguing though is discussion on what type of Operating System it will be using. I think it would be completely silly for Apple to release something that will make us change our minds on what we think a tablet/eBook reader should be like, only to shackle it to Mac OSX. It makes way more sense that the OS will not be completely new but an iteration of the current iPhone OS, or perhaps better yet a branch off of what will soon be iPhone OS 4.0.

Currently we get the absolute best mobile OS experience on the iPhone with it's use of gestures and elegant UI. It only makes logical sense that Apple would not shack "tablet" users to a desktop OS that is certainly not optimized for smaller screens and touch interfaces. Basing the "tablet" OS on what we have now on the iPhone should provide developers with a very easy path to bring their current apps to the upcoming device. Current speculation that the "tablet" will have a 10" display means that current iPhone apps would also need to be modified to work with whatever the resolution is going to end up being. I am confident Apple is going to offer some very easy developer tools that will allow them to make their apps "tablet" friendly.

I will wrap with one thing, if Apple really is going to unveil something huge tomorrow that will end up being some iteration of a "tablet," then it means developers will not have much time to get apps ready for the device. I just cannot believe Apple would not provide an easy way for developers to get their apps ready to sell, the day this device goes on sale at your local Apple store.

http://busymac.com/busycal/releasenotes.html

BusyCal 1.2 (Jan. 25, 2010)

New global font size preference
New Calendar Groups feature
Fixed several crashes
Fixed several Google syncing bugs
Fixed row highlighting bug in List View
Fixed other miscellaneous bugs

The only shitty thing about this patch is that it doesn't address the issue of my MacBook Pro's logic board not working...

But that's another story.

I don't know how I didn't discover this earlier, but http://themes.posterous.com/ has a few really slick themes that you can easily install on your Posterous blog.

Now that I have a decent theme to work from, I can further customize it without spending the time in making a theme from scratch.

At this point I reset the PRAM, take the battery out and reset the SMC.

Nothing...

On the login screen I'm greeted by a kernel panic with purple vertical
lines down the display.

At this point a sinking feeling hits me. Like the moment you hear the
sirens behind you and realize your car Insurrance expired two days
ago. This has to be the dreaded Nvidia 8600m defect that is known to
result in a dead GPU over time.

I should disclose that my MacBook Pro is Santa Rosa based and by now
is 2.5 years old and out of warranty. No I did not have the sense to
buy Apple Care at the time...

So now I give Apple a call and explain my situation. The rep politely
explains I'm out of my free support period, buy if it's relatively
easy there will be no charge (how nice).

So he talks me through pretty much most of the things I tried, except
for booting into safe mode, which I didn't know was possible. The
flickering problem persisted and he said it did in fact sound like the
Nvidia defect. Luckily he said I qualified for an extension of
warranty "if" a technician could validate the problem. Sounded fair to
me so I drove down to the Apple store in Pacific Center, which is in
Vancouver.

When I arrived I was fortunate enough to snag a genius bar appointment
only 35 minutes after I got there. I waited patiently while I sat down
in front of a brand new lust worthy MacBook Pro just killing time.

6:30 pm...

My appointment is up!

The rep takes my case number and reads the notes on my account,
nodding in approval with my defective Nvidia hypothesis. He steps away
from the bar and dissapears into the back room for a minute only to
come out with some abstract square box that had a USB dongle attached
to it. He proceeded with the diagnostic and when complete, looked at
me and said "well I have some bad news and then some more bad news." I
tell him "give it to me straight Doc." " Well the bad news is the
diagnostic came back with error code one, which means it's not the
specific Nvidia problem, but it is the GPU. The really bad news is you
don't qualify for the warranty and the replacement part costs $1,430
(Canadian)." "Why surely you jest good sir," I say. "No I never jest"
he says quite curtly. Well I suppose there is nothing more you can
do... well good day. Feeling very depressed at this point, I head home.

***By the way, adding insult to injury I have about $300 left to pay
this laptop off and I'm not in a financial position to buy another
one.***

The next day...

Feeling uneasy about what I was told at he genius bar the othe night,
I decide to call Apple again and explain the situation. I get through
to someone and explain I had an appointment the prior night at my
local Apple store and the diagnostics that were required were done. I
explain to the person on the phone about how much I was quoted for the
price of a GPU ($1,430), and he said that is the price of a new logic
board and not the GPU. I was confused since I was told I would be
paying for just the GPU. The rep decided to have a "senior advisor"
call the Apple store to get the situation clarified, just to make sure
I was not given any incorrect information. I later received a call
back (promptly) and the "senior advisor" confirmed the problem was
indeed the logic board and thus my MacBook Pro wouldn't qualify for
warranty. He then explained that the logic board also contains the GPU
and that the rep at the genius bar should have been clear about that.
Of course there was nothing the good people at Apple could do so both
parties ended the call.

So how am I writing this blog post?? In Writeroom on my iPhone, which
sadly is going to have to be my primary computer for a while.

Moral of the story?

Buy Apple Care because dear gawd it's worth it!

Following up with a more recent post that I did on Magic Mouse reliability issues, MacRumors has posted a report that there are a fair number of users stating that they have had severe battery drainage issues when pairing the Magic Mouse and Apple wireless keyboard together. This doesn't seem to be an issue affected by everyone, however it leads me to believe there may be either some QA issues with the product or perhaps a combination of Bluetooth driver issues.

On another note, I've gone through several Bluetooth Mighty Mice and have had the same issue with sporadic losses in connection. I wonder if there is an issue with the BT hardware in the Santa Rosa chipset on my MacBook Pro. Someone suggested I try a third party dongle but I don't want to sacrifice a USB port just for that. I think I'll try cleaning the contacts with some Isopropyl alcohol to see if that makes a difference.