Tag: apple

  • On Firefox 3.5, HTML 5, and The Third Great Format War…

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have noticed that Firefox 3.5 was released.

    With it, came the mainstream acceptance of HTML 5, the new web standard – and as a direct result of that, XHTML is effectively dead.

    What’s most interesting about HTML 5 is the new <video> tag, however – allowing web content people (what’s their name again?) to embed videos directly without using clunky <object> or <embed> tags.

    About time, too. Video is now more prevalent than ever on the internet, and the widespread usage of sites such as YouTube just goes to show just how popular such sites are. Even Flickr, a primarily still-photo based site, are now incorporating video features into their lineup.

    Now, about this format war…

    So the story goes a little like this…

    Right now, the common way to include video on the web is by use of Flash, a closed-source technology. The answer to this is the HTML5 video tag, which allows you to embed video into HTML pages without the use of Flash or any other non-HTML technology; combined with open video codecs, this could provide the perfect opportunity to further open up and standardize the web.

    via Slashdot.

    The problem lies in which codec they’re going to use for this video. Mozilla, along with the rest of the open-source community, think it should be something open-source, such as the Ogg Theora codec which is based on open-source standards. The issue is that not all parties in the browser war agrees – Apple and Microsoft, in particular are against the move to use an open-source codec. Being the large corporations that they are, they want to use their own patented codecs. As they’re not a small portion of the browser market, Mozilla can’t simply ignore them and implement Ogg as the primary codec for the <video> tag in HTML5 (paraphrased from Slashdot comments).

    So the question is: why don’t all the parties do what Chrome is doing and just support both proposed formats (H.264 and Ogg Theora) at the same time? In my opinion, this would undoubtedly be the way to go. The issue here is that “Safari won’t support Ogg Theora and Firefox and Opera won’t support H.264 — doesn’t mean you can’t support all three browsers. It just means that to support all three, you need to include at least two <source> elements within the <video> tag, one pointing to an H.264-encoded file, the other to an Ogg Theora file” (thanks to John Gruber for that one.)

    That having been said and done, pleas enjoy the video below, whichever browser you happen to be using 🙂

    Okay, scratch that idea. Either I just fail at using the <video> tag, or WordPress doesn’t like it, or something. I can play video just fine on the Firefox demo page, but Firefox itself doesn’t seem to want to play ogg video from any page that I create. I’ll just go now…

  • Copy and Paste

    That we had to wait two years for the iPhone’s text selection and pasteboard is a good example of one aspect of the Apple way: better nothing at all than something less than great. That’s not to say Apple never releases anything less than great, but they try not to.2 This is contrary to the philosophy of most other tech companies — and diametrically opposed to the philosophy of Microsoft. And it is very much what drives some people crazy about Apple — it’s simply incomprehensible to some people that it might be better to have no text selection/pasteboard implementation while waiting for a great one than to have a poor implementation in the interim.

    via Daring Fireball: Copy and Paste.

    Better late and completely awesome than early and epically retarded, right?

    Right?!

    I’d actually go so far as to say that Apple made the decision not to release copy and paste until now, iPhone haters be damned. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, and that applies to the iPhone just as it applies to any other mainstream consumer electronics device. And they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, eh Palm? 😉

    Even with all of 3.0’s numerous improvements, it’s hard to think that this shouldn’t have been the OS that shipped with the device back in 07. People have commented that iPhone OS 3.0 should have been there from the start – but look where we’ve come! That, ladies and gentlemen, is progress in it’s finest form.

    Nice work, Apple. Kudos.

  • iPhone: Which iPhone 3.0 software features does my iPhone support?

    iPhone 3.0 Features Matrix

    Notes:

    1. Peer-to-peer connectivity requires compatible applications, which can be downloaded from the App Store when available.
    2. The original iPhone does not support using Bluetooth for peer-to-peer connectivity. It can use Wi-Fi and cellular data networks for peer-to-peer connectivity.
    3. MMS is not available in all areas; fees may apply. See your carrier for availability.
    4. Internet tethering is not currently offered in the United States and some other countries. See your carrier for availability.

    via iPhone: Which iPhone 3.0 software features does my iPhone support?.

  • Trust, hostility, and the human side of Apple

    The last session of WWDC ‘09 yesterday was about publishing on the App Store. The content of sessions is under NDA, so I can’t tell you what it was about. So I’ll tell you what wasn’t in it: the audience Q&A session that succeeded nearly every other WWDC session and usually provided invaluable access to Apple employees and useful additional knowledge to attendees. The session itself blew through its lightweight examples quickly, ending 45 minutes early. The majority of the audience was clearly there for the Q&A. As people lined up at the microphones around the room, the presenter abruptly showed a simple slide with only “WWDC” in plain lettering, thanked us for coming, and bolted off the stage. The Apple engineers, usually staying around the stage for one-on-one questions, were gone. The lights came up instantly, and it was the only session that didn’t end in music. The audience was stunned.

    via Marco.org – Trust, hostility, and the human side of Apple.

  • Apple’s WWDC 2009 Keynote in 3 Minutes

    This video is no longer available on YouTube, but you can try a Google search for it.

    via YouTube – Apple’s WWDC 2009 Keynote in 3 Minutes.

    Rather than bore you with lots of text, iphilvideos on YouTube cut the WWDC 2009 Keynote down to 3 minutes.

    Originally seen on Gizmodo. Original video credit Mike Byhoff.

    Favourite quote? Faster. Faster. Faster. So fast. 🙂

  • Picking nits: why I’m skipping the Palm Pre

    Don’t get me wrong. In many respects, the Palm Pre is a groundbreaking smartphone that portends the obliteration of the line between phone and full size computer. It joins the iPhone and arguably the Android devices as the only computer some people would ever need.

    However, Palm missed a lot of the little things in this first release. It’s an admirable attempt, given what they’re shooting for, but the fact of the matter is that the devil is in the details, and Palm fumbled too many. Any one of the following items is easy enough to overlook in an otherwise stellar device. But the difference between, frankly, the Palms and the Apples of the world is that the Apples don’t miss over 20 of them. They add up to an annoying user experience more akin to Windows Mobile than the iPhone.

    via Picking nits: why I’m skipping the Palm Pre.

    An excellent, concise list about why the Palm Pre isn’t the next “iPhone killer” – instead, it’s just another chance for Apple to prove how awesome they actually are. XD

    My favourites are the no scroll bars (which genius thought of that one?), no way to jump to the top or bottom of a long list (oops, huge oversight there), non-universal “universal search” (if you’re going to do it, do it right, like iPhone OS 3.0), copy and paste only in “editable” text fields (no, you can’t copy that text from the web page, or an email unless you forward the email first (cmon, l-a-m-e), no Street View in Google Maps (lulzor).

    Favourite quote would have to be:

    22. Easy to run into “can’t open a new card until you close some existing cards.” Say what you will about the iPhone and multitasking, but memory management generally isn’t something the user has to think about.

    …and people wonder why the general public refer to “iPhone killers”. It’s really no surprise – in this day and age, there’s simply no way any company can catch up.

    However, kudos to Palm for trying. Thanks for helping Apple stay ahead of the curve. 🙂

Benny Ling's Bling

Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.