First the iPad, and now a debate on the relevance of Flash. Apple continues to ignore it and touts HTML5 as the future. Google is also pushing HTML5 on YouTube, with other video sites starting to follow suit. Even Mozilla is disabling it in its new mobile browser, Maemo. Clearly, the death knell for Adobe’s most controversial product is getting louder than ever.
But it’s still all talk, all noise. How about some real action? Thankfully, over at Binary Bonsai, Michael Heilemann has taken it upon himself to drop Flash for the whole month of February as a response to this tweeted challenge:
All those who think no flash on ipad is A-OK please uninstall flash from your current browser, use that for a month then get back to me.
Installing a Flash blocker isn’t really a groundbreaking exercise and is tamer than uninstalling Flash completely, but now is the best time to figure out how dependent we are on it.
So can you survive sans Flash? I won’t go out of my way to defend it nor suffer from withdrawal without it, but the status of HTML5 video alone seems troubling enough.
More importantly, most discussions cover only the question of replacing Flash video, not other applications like games. That would be an even tougher nut to crack, even with the dawn of purely Javascript-based games.
One thing that struck me in Information Architects’ review of the iPad is how they noticed the UI guideline to make applications look like real-world objects:
Whenever possible, add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. The more true to life your application looks and behaves, the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it.
It’s a small detail, but it certainly reinforces the type of computing environment the iPad has: more abstracted than the usual PC/Mac/Unix operating systems and its desktop metaphor.
iA is none too pleased with this guideline, however, as the eyecandy enter kitsch territory and fails to solve interaction problems.
Using a book shelf for choosing a book is a consistent metaphor, but does it help you understanding the interface? Does it help in any way? Do you still like the hard to scan bookshelf with after looking at it for the 200th time? What if you have 200 books?
Note: I’m not saying that using quirky metaphors and plastering your app with special effects will kill the perspective to sell your app. Unfortunately the audience for kitsch is a bigger audience than the elitist UID guild. But usually phony design doesn’t have a long life span.
Metaphors should not distract or confuse, they must clarify. Apple and those that design for it love their beautiful interfaces and the metaphors that inspired it, and while attention to detail is highly admired, design abuse via mainstream device iPad, will become rampant. It’s tempting to pull out all the stops, but as with many things in life, exercise restraint.
As much as I wish we’d move on and get Apple off our radar, its decisions have a rippling effect in the industry and the future of various technologies. The next issue on the list? The Web versus App debate. This can be framed more specifically as a Mobile Web vs. Objective-C Web debate in the context of Apple’s mobile landscape, but as early discussions arise, it’s transforming into an interoperability vs. superior user experience debate. Cameron Moll, author of Mobile Web Design, writes:
At one point in time, J2ME (now Java ME) and WAP were the starting points for a discussion on mobile strategy and the web. Then, for a brief period of time, you talked about HTML/CSS. Now, for a growing majority of mobile strategies that don’t require a global presence on widely varying devices, the discussion begins with iPhone. Smart client is now iPhone app, and in many cases, the app is primary to the experience, not secondary to the browser. And iPad app may soon replace iPhone app as the starting point.
Frankly, as the adoption rate of iPhone increases and if iPad follows suit, it will become increasingly difficult to argue in favor of a starting point other than iPhone OS. The NPR iPad app, for one, provides a much more pleasant user experience than NPR.org.
Peter-Paul Koch steps in and plants himself firmly on the interoperability front, maintaining allegiance to the Web:
This is a total no-brainer when we’re talking about games and other entertainment apps. When it comes to complex, graphic games, vendors will opt for superior UX, and once you’ve done that, starting on iPhone OS makes excellent sense.
But if you build an integrated social media client, is superior UX still so important that you can afford to ignore non-iPhones? I don’t think so. I think creators of such apps would do better to create one in web standards so that it runs on all (well, many) devices. There’s stiff competition out there, and the wider your reach, the better chance you have of prevailing.
Meanwhile, Faruk Ates goes the complete opposite: rooting for UX, lamenting the existence of multiple browsers, and emphasizing the need to make a buck. The debate expands further and we see clashing ideologies of democracy vs. walled gardens, free vs. paid business models, and so on. All these further reinforce how Apple’s philosophies go against those of the Web.
With all its new moves, Apple has been targeting all sorts of corporate entities for its own gain: Adobe, Google, the whole porn industry…but now is it also hurting developers? consumers? the Web? itself?
Hostility towards competitors is, I suppose, all part of the game. But this action is also hugely hostile towards developers themselves. The banned development environments offer things that Apple’s Xcode doesn’t. Sometimes it’s just a different choice of language, one that a particular deveoper might feel more comfortable in. But often the advantage is simplification—the use of higher-level programming languages (like Lua, or JavaScript, or C#) and frameworks that take out a lot of the grunt-work of software development (like writing a 3D engine). In turn, developers get quicker development cycles, easier development, fewer bugs, and overall, superior applications. Banning these tools doesn’t just hurt competitors. It hurts developers on Apple’s platform, and in turn hurts the platform itself.
Apple’s done a lot of things to stir the pot, and while such stringent practices have been known to yield revolutionary results, its actions continue to seem awfully ruthless. Choosing a more favorable approach to mobile development could very well be tainted by the company’s values.
In celebration of the iPad retail launch, Apple has created a gallery of iPad-ready websites that are said to embrace “the latest web standards—including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript”. That is, no Flash. You can even add your site to the gallery (scroll to the bottom).
Is Apple really opening up?
Let’s get the snark out of the way: a gallery, really? How novel. Right now there’s a vertical list (no Cover Flow?) of 20 top-tier websites. Will Apple really painstakingly update this list and add every possible HTML5/CSS3/JS-ready site submitted?
It’s a rare thing for Apple to lead a user-generated campaign like this but its best intentions are a thin veil over their real agenda—eliminating the competition and expanding further in the multimedia business. Does it really care about anything other than the big fish? What are the odds that the most humble of websites will even get into the gallery? Apple markets its products by partnering with the largest corporations that fit into its plans; I can’t imagine caring for the little guy in all of this.
This isn’t even in the same league as the iTunes app store—whose contents number in the hundreds of thousands—but could easily apply the profit-based and biased policies anyway. Not what I would call open or little guy friendly.
Is Apple a true web standards crusader?
Speaking of the app store: you can also develop specifically for the iPhone/iPod/iPad family using the SDK, but those apps don’t work in other devices. The mobile web is booming because of both the “web standards way” and the “mobile app” way, but how are device-specific apps any better than Flash apps (which happen to be cross-platform outside of Apple’s products)? Flipping off Flash when HTML5 and CSS3 aren’t ready isn’t a very responsible thing to do.
If Apple really wants to promote web standards, it should be doing a lot more with its resources to convert and educate people. The gallery is one thing, this documentation is another good step, but where are the resources for developing in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript? Partnerships with web standards groups like WaSP? Zeldman or one of the Super Friends speaking at the keynote?
If Apple really wants to promote web standards, see how it practically equates HTML5 with Flash-free media and nothing more. No oohs and ahs over CSS3′s text shadows and rounded corners or HTML5′s geolocation and <canvas>. This is the perfect opportunity to introduce the mainstream crowd to the wonders of these new technologies, yet all it’s pushing is anti-Flash propaganda.
One more thing…
Dear Apple, you’ve done a lot of groundbreaking things, but if you’re going to use web standards as a selling point for your most adjective-ridden product ever, you can do a hell of a lot better than an an anti-Flash gallery.
The Apple iPad has polarized the tech industry in the past week. I’m amused by this development, not in the context of product innovation or what it could mean for web design and development, but for the culture of tech opinions.
There’s the half that believes the iPad is not the revolutionary new step in computing people having been waiting for, and then there’s the other half that thinks those critics are not the iPad’s target market. Considering how Steve Jobs began with his keynote about the iPhone is now dominating the mobile phone industry over veterans Nokia and Samsung, it certainly takes a lot to accept that the iPad might not enjoy the same fate. This short and sweet (which is rare) post by Jeff Lamarche puts things in perspective:
I’m sure somebody has told you all this before, but let me point it out again: it’s not always about you. Products can be successful even if they aren’t right for you.
[...] I’m a techie, but I don’t need to be able to program on every electronic device I own. I don’t hate my dishwasher because I can’t get to the command line. I don’t hate my DVD player because it runs a proprietary operating system. Sheesh.
But my beef with this is: hardly ever does that argument surface when not so popular, not so geek-worthy products surface. From what I’ve seen in tech culture, it’s so much easier to reject, even hate a product than even entertain the notion that it could succeed. In general, in a certain demographic, in a certain geographic region.
At times the word easier gets replaced by cooler. It’s cooler to hate stuff; that’s what techies are supposed do.
See how all the Apple or tech pundits are squeezing out the possibilities where the iPad could work wonders. Will it kill e-book readers? Will it revitalize the newspaper industry? Will it shake up processes in education, art, medicine, and business? Which function was it born to do?—as though it hasn’t been discovered only because Steve Jobs didn’t whisper the answer in their ears.
Is it because of passion for the brand? I would think other products may not deserve the same passion, but they do deserve a fair chance. Don’t hate a product just because it isn’t right for you.
Perhaps now there’s half of a crowd deciding people shouldn’t be so quick to judge, the tradition could change. Or it could not, because Apple is the exception to the rule.
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