the Facebook give-us-your-login-temporarily style stuff is unacceptable
Agreed. IMO, asking for your password when there are API's readily available is alone enough to disqualify a company from being "trustworthy". Just the idea of keeping a bunch of GMail passwords in some decryptable database is quite a bit scary.
But there are a ton of them around I don't know by name. Usually smaller places frown on non-customers using it, or using it on busy nights (Friday/Saturday after 9pm or so), but I haven't had an issue readily finding wifi to work during the day.
The topic was Flash running in a mobile browser. Like Android, which Adobe originally said would ship Flash for over a year ago. I think Adobe's utter engineering incompetence is one of the obvious points everyone seems too polite to make.
Why? There's no qualitative computational difference between a smartphone and a desktop computer; further, the quantitative difference between today's smartphones and older Flash-capable machines of a decade ago is probably not that huge.
Absolutely not true that there's no difference. The speed of your desktop comes from using POWER. Today's desktop CPUs alone pull up to 130 WATTS. My desktop CPU bought in 2000 used 30 W. Now even notebook CPUs use more when they're not idle!
Now I can come to a lot of web pages where only Flash ads use 100% of a modern CPU! That translates in 60-70 Watts.
Then compare all this with the goals for device which should work with battery for hours.
Running flash content on a PC bought around 2003 is actually pretty choppy. I installed Windows 7 on an old Athlon 1.6 ghz machine a month ago and tried to watch youtube with it -- the videos looked like they were going around 8 fps. I can watch old divx movies on it, but I can't watch youtube full screen... it's pretty sad.
This machine was fast enough to play Quake 3 and a dozen other gaming titles, but is too slow to play youtube videos. I just don't get it, is the flash vm really that processor intensive?
I can't see how flash could run well on the upcoming android devices if it runs so poorly on the Athlon 1.6ghz.
Newer Flash Videos codecs like H.264 probably are that intensive. Codecs have changed over the years, giving us better quality, but also requiring hardware support or lots of go juice to run well.
I don't mean to suggest that it should run smoothly on any of today's smartphones (though some N900 users commented that it runs well for them). I just take issue with the "nearly impossible" in the parent of my original comment. But I suppose I may have interpreted that to mean more than was intended.
Let's keep in mind, however, that there is not really one monolithic "market". Just as McDonalds co-exists with Jean Georges, the legions of Android clones running Flash, etc. will peacefully coexist with iPhones, except without the responsive UX, battery life, or even a fundamental sense of taste. (edit: would the downvoters like to justify themselves? have they seen a Android device with a responsive UI? I haven't...)
Yeah, my guess is you're being downvoted for implying that anybody who doesn't agree with you is showing a fundamental inability to perceive taste. That implicit value judgment really weakens your argument.
the nexus one is totally responsive. have you seen it?
i didn't downvote you, but i would guess it's for "fundamental sense of taste". that's just ranting.
plus i am not aware of any evidence that the iphone has a better battery life than a comparable android device (like the nexus one). do you? or are you just reciting the talking points?
Err, he didn't admit it. An anonymous employee of Facebook alleged it, "off the record". Most people I know treat Facebook as if it were a public-facing website, anyway, and should be more upset that Facebook isn't making people's information readily available to the public.
Canceling the launch would be utterly insane. Steve is not going to throw away millions of dollars because somebody exposed the "secrets" of a slightly modified exterior and front-facing camera.
Yes, that's the problem. We just switched over to serving the static stuff off this server while we investigate. The extra load may make things here a bit slower but the site seems usable.
>> When people start realizing how to easily pirate their Android apps, I predict Apple will be the clear winner here.
> You could've said the same thing about Windows apps.
Precisely! Except the easier it is to pirate Windows software, the more valuable Windows becomes (at no loss to Microsoft). Handset manufacturers, on the other hand, are trying to make a profit by taking a cut of the app sales. The more iPhone apps are sold, the more money Apple makes. Their bottom line is negatively affected every time someone opts to pirate instead of buying. Not so with Microsoft.
I don't think you have dueling anecdotes, just observation of the existence of red weasels and blue weasels. Until someone starts claiming that most weasels are some color, or that certain colored weasels tend to occur in certain kinds of environments, there's no need to fund extensive studies ;)
