Posts tagged apple

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

When iPhone OS 4 comes out this summer one of the new features that is coming is GameKit, which in short is sort of like Xbox Live for iPhone/iPad games. If you have ever used Xbox Live or Steam on the PC you will realize exactly how huge of a feature this could be. Centralized friends lists, achievements etc. are great.

If Apple allowed games made with the Flash CS5 compiler in the app store, none of them, not one, could use GameKit.

This is exactly what Steve Jobs is talking about in the quote above.

Engaget reports Google is going to attempt to defragment the Android platform by separating their apps from the core OS and distributing OS updates via the Android Marketplace.

This is a good goal for Google (sorry for the alteration). Hopefully, for Android handsets going forward, it solves the problem. But as John Gruber notes:

Google has been iterating quickly, but the problem is that carriers aren’t interested in any updates at all for phones they’ve already sold. The carriers have learned nothing from the iPhone, or, maybe they just don’t care about Android as a platform.

So, in the end, OS version fragmentation may be less of a problem for Android users — two years from now. Current Android users, except for Nexus One owners, are shit out of luck. Hope you like Android 1.6 if that’s what your phone shipped with.

Google has a vested interest in keeping people on the Android platform. The carriers and handset makes have a vested interest in selling phones. Google wants to keep Android attractive and current for all Android users, even those with older phones. Carriers just want to sell new phones. Perhaps they don’t care if the software a phone ships with ever gets upgraded. To the carriers it doesn’t really matter if they sell a Blackberry, a Palm pre, an Android or a Windows Mobile phone.

Apple has interest in the OS and the hardware. They want to keep iPhone OS users on the iPhone OS platform and they want to sell iPhones. For Apple, this is really one goal.

Google has the Android Marketplace, Apple has the App Store, HTC has… to keep selling phones. It’s not that what is good for Google and Android is bad for T-Mobile or HTC, it just isn’t as important to them.

I’ll try to keep this short. I wasn’t really going to weigh in on this here because, frankly, who cares what I think? I have been closely following the Flash vs. HTML5 debate that the Apple iPad announcement seems to have highlighted and people missing what I feel is the fundamental reason that HTML should be favored over Flash.

To me, Flash shows a fundamental disrespect for the user. Arguments about Flash being open aside, Flash sites are closed. This is not Flash vs. HTML5. The argument is Flash vs. HTML. I would rather visit a less capable Web site written in HTML than a rich site served up in Flash for the simple fact that when it comes to the HTML page, I can control the experience.

With HTML, the author sets a baseline for the experience and I can adjust that experience to my preferences. I can disable scripting. I can inject my own scripting (via bookmarklets or via the console in an add-on like Firebug).

Can something like Readability even exist for Flash?

With Flash, the author demands how the site will behave and there is nothing I can do about it other than not use it. I may not like the performance of Flash, but that can be fixed. The problem is not a technical, it is philosophical.

Today, Apple released Aperture 3, a new version of its photo management software for professional photographers and enthusiasts. I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet but many of the new features look promising. My initial reaction was, “there is enough here to make me consider switching from Adobe Lightroom”.

I first tried Aperture back when version one was out and this was basically a new category of software. Lightroom did not even exist yet. I suppose Adobe’s solution at the time was a combination of Bridge and Photoshop. I am not an avid Photoshop user and I don’t do much to manipulate my photos beyond cropping and adjustments to things like exposure and color that I can make with the Camera Raw plug-in for Photoshop.

When Aperture first came out it was the perfect solution for me. Software to manage my library of photos and to do the type of editing that I like to do in one package. The problem was the early on, Aperture was slow. So when Adobe released Lightroom, it did basically everything I would have used Aperture for and it was faster. When later versions of Aperture came out I didn’t see any features that made me think about giving it another try. Not that the software looked lacking, just nothing powerful enough to convince me to put forth the effort to switch. Aperture 3 may change that, well see after I give it a solid trial. 

While I prefer the photo management and editing capabilities of a professional package like Lightroom or Aperture, I really like some of the consumer oriented features of iPhoto. I like the photo books (Aperture has had these, but I always though the books in iPhoto were more fun.) I like the faces and places feature. I love the maps (if only my camera had GPS). What I don’t love is keeping separate libraries, one for iPhoto and one for Lightroom.

If Aperture 3 is as good as it looks at first glance, Apple may have just solved that problem for me. Now if only I could import all of my edits to Aperture…