you're an idiot

2/21/2010 4:32:05 PM

so is anyone who pays twice as much for half the phone

2/21/2010 5:11:12 PM

anyone know of a good project information keeping app?

I dont really need a scheduler really, more just a program that keeps track of project numbers, names, and any information I want to type in as far as notes.

2/21/2010 5:21:38 PM

I use Things for projects. It has a project tracker but its also good for keeping track of anything. It also syncs with its desktop client.

http://www.culturedcode.com

2/21/2010 5:22:45 PM

will check it out... desktop client for Mac only?

2/21/2010 5:29:43 PM

^I believe so but I'm not 100% sure...I never looked to see if there was a PC version

2/21/2010 5:37:42 PM

Any reason why Apple has a bur in their bum about not allowing adobe flash? I read a few days ago that Blackberries will soon likely have that ability which will be huge since a lot of sites these days are supported by flash and it would be nice to get the full utility of my web browsing functionality.

2/21/2010 6:35:52 PM

what? The iPhone lacks features that other phones have? GET OUT

2/21/2010 7:00:25 PM

Yeah, but other devices don't have Pocket Universe so it still wins for now.

2/21/2010 7:07:54 PM

http://gizmodo.com/5476641/adobe-flash-developer-says-ipads-flash-allergy-due-to-hovering-clicking-cursors

Just read a pretty interesting column about the Apple/Flash divide.

I don't know enough about Flash to comment on it.

2/21/2010 7:11:39 PM

after reading that would make sense... I hate flash ads

2/21/2010 9:23:43 PM

If that was the reason, Apple would've said that was the reason.

As one of the posters in the comments of that article says:

Quote :

"To be sure, there are some sites that would not function properly without the ability to hover a cursor. Of course, there are plenty of suggestions already in the comments for implementation. I'm all for holding a finger is hovering, tapping a second finger is clicking. And "finger gymnastics" as a counter argument falls flat. The second-finger-tap feels perfectly natural. Try it on your desk. Move one finger across the desk and tap with another finger. Feels fine, doesn't it? Sure fingers might get in the way of the screen, but isn't that what the iPad's supposed to bring? Screen real estate? Not impossible. But let's just say there's some flaw in the above argument, ok? Surely there could be and since I'm not a developer I don't really care to find it. But even if there is, that's not what we want Flash for. What's the primary example of something you could get with Flash? Hulu. What's the main competitor always brought up? HTML5 which has, as it's most developed feature, a video tag (interactive game design is still a longer ways off). Last I checked there was no hovering required to play clips from The Daily Show. Lala, similarly, could be run from a Flash-enabled web browser. No hovering required there. The hover issue is a legitimate problem. But the pros of bringing a half-capable mobile Flash to the iPhone far outweigh the cons. You could get ubiquitous media at the expense of some crappy ad games, or you can sit waiting, lusting for Hulu content because Apple and Adobe aren't satisfied until you can play toss the penguin. Maybe it is their reason. It's their job to think about all possible problems, after all. But it's still a crappy reason. And sniping at each other over it would be a childish front. Reply "

2/21/2010 9:36:48 PM

i need more apps. i feel like i under utilize my iphone

2/21/2010 9:39:56 PM

^^the response to that is flash isn't needed for playing videos in a browser EVEN when the site has a flash player.

And no, HTML5 isn't how you'd play the video. I've commented on this before but if video is the only concern for flash on the iPhone, developers need to embed things the right way and let the browser decide if its going to load the site's flash player or quicktime/other plugin.

This is something we did years ago at my old job, we were one of the first to have a 'youtube like' site with a flash player but also let you play the videos on the iPhone.

[Edited on February 21, 2010 at 9:44 PM. Reason : ,]

2/21/2010 9:44:12 PM

You can now watch youtube in html5 instead of flash. There is a switch you can toggle to make it so that any youtube video is rendered using html5.

2/21/2010 10:28:26 PM

Quote :

"^^the response to that is flash isn't needed for playing videos in a browser EVEN when the site has a flash player."

And shockingly, no one cares. Flash video is the standard. "Hey, you can get it to pop up Quicktime, WMP, VLC, etc" -- no one cares. If the iPhone is supposed to be a full featured web browsing application, web developers shouldn't have to jump through hoops in order to push a video out on it.

According to Adobe, Flash is currently sitting on "99% of Internet-enabled desktops in mature markets" (http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/) and developers are supposed to go "Obviously, we're doing our video wrong, we totally need to make it so that it can launch Quicktime as well".

Seriously dude, 99% of desktops. There's absolutely no reason there should be a failsafe anymore that is anything except "Install Flash". This one is on Adobe/Apple/Google and soon to be MS -- Flash needs to be on these devices. It is a part of the internet experience and is infinitely better than trying to offload video to a media player that someone may not have.

Quote :

"You can now watch youtube in html5 instead of flash. There is a switch you can toggle to make it so that any youtube video is rendered using html5."

HTML5 video also doesn't work on the iPhone. Seriously, it's cool that there's a slight beta push by YouTube to get the video tag out to the masses, but it's so far off and inconsistent in browser acceptance that it's really not even worth talking about.

[Edited on February 21, 2010 at 11:24 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2010 11:18:35 PM

Quote :

"And shockingly, no one cares. Flash video is the standard. "Hey, you can get it to pop up Quicktime, WMP, VLC, etc" -- no one cares. If the iPhone is supposed to be a full featured web browsing application, web developers shouldn't have to jump through hoops in order to push a video out on it. According to Adobe, Flash is currently sitting on "99% of Internet-enabled desktops in mature markets" (http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/) and developers are supposed to go "Obviously, we're doing our video wrong, we totally need to make it so that it can launch Quicktime as well". Seriously dude, 99% of desktops. There's absolutely no reason there should be a failsafe anymore that is anything except "Install Flash". This one is on Adobe/Apple/Google and soon to be MS -- Flash needs to be on these devices. It is a part of the internet experience and is infinitely better than trying to offload video to a media player that someone may not have. "

You can't be serious? lol. Usability > whatever you just said. I shouldn't have to install a plugin if I don't want to.

Quote :

"If the iPhone is supposed to be a full featured web browsing application, web developers shouldn't have to jump through hoops in order to push a video out on it."

Also, the less shitty web developers there are out there, the less this is considered 'jumping through hoops' because its the simplest thing to do. A developer should never say 'I don't want to jump through hoops to support my users' thats just retarded.

[Edited on February 21, 2010 at 11:38 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2010 11:27:37 PM

Quote :

"You can't be serious? lol. Usability > whatever you just said. I shouldn't have to install a plugin if I don't want to."

As big a headache as it's proving to be, there's a reason why there's a push towards a <video> tag and not dumping video to whatever application you hopefully have installed on your computer. So if someone doesn't have Flash, what format video do you push out? What's the cure all codec that every computer has? Maybe MPEG4 as Windows 7 becomes more popular? Or are you saying that in addition to the Flash version of my video, I should store an MPEG4 version for Macs and newer Win7 machines and then a WMV version for older Windows PCs?

Quote :

"Also, the less shitty web developers there are out there, the less this is considered 'jumping through hoops' because its the simplest thing to do."

So you would argue that YouTube, Hulu, and most major networks have shitty web developers because they don't push video in multiple formats to account for the 1% of computer users that don't have Flash installed?

2/21/2010 11:38:03 PM

First, you don't need 2 formats. You have 1 format. Flash/Quicktime/Whatever can play that one format. You are using the same Codec regardless of how the user is watching the video. This has worked long before Win 7.

YouTube already does this and has for some time now.

Quote :

"So you would argue that YouTube, Hulu, and most major networks have shitty web developers because they don't push video in multiple formats to account for the 1% of computer users that don't have Flash installed?"

Again, you aren't understanding how this works. You are serving the same video but you aren't embedding it in Flash, you are letting the flash player grab the vid from the page if flash exists otherwise your default player (quicktime) presents you with a little icon to click on and the video starts playing.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:06 AM. Reason : .]

2/21/2010 11:59:02 PM

Quote :

"First, you don't need 2 formats. You have 1 format. Flash/Quicktime/Whatever can play that one format. You are using the same Codec regardless of how the user is watching the video. This has worked long before Win 7."

What I'm saying is: what is that one codec?

Quote :

"Again, you aren't understanding how this works. You are serving the same video but you aren't embedding it in Flash, you are letting the flash player grab the vid from the page if flash exists otherwise your default player (quicktime) presents you with a little icon to click on and the video starts playing."

No, I fully understand that. And you can do that with Flash and Quicktime because both support MPEG4 natively. Windows (up until Windows 7) doesn't.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:09 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:07:37 AM

H.264 works just fine.

2/22/2010 12:09:13 AM

It requires a separate codec install on every version of Windows prior to Windows 7, man.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:11 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:11:16 AM

No, H.264 isn't free of licensing fees. You can't have a widely adopted format on the internet that isn't free to use.

^And that.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:12 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:11:46 AM

^^If they're on a computer pre-Win7 will they not be able to watch the video one way or another?

Is the entire purpose to allow your users to watch their video or no?

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:14 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:12:07 AM

Quote :

"^^If they're on a computer pre-Win7 will they not be able to watch the video one way or another?"

They'll have to install a plugin to do so, just like they would if it were Flash.

And as you said:

Quote :

"I shouldn't have to install a plugin if I don't want to"

The only way to have video on a website that any user can access without any plugins, additional codecs, etc. is to have multiple forms of that video.

2/22/2010 12:21:12 AM

Are you proposing windows users should drag H264 support into their applications folder?

LOL

2/22/2010 12:22:12 AM

Quote :

"They'll have to install a plugin to do so, just like they would if it were Flash."

If I'm on a PC I probably have flash...as you said earlier.

If i'm on my phone I can still watch the same video through Quicktime/whatever.

That is the point. The user gets their content one way or another.

Quote :

"The only way to have video on a website that any user can access without any plugins, additional codecs, etc. is to have multiple forms of that video."

If I watch any video of any kind on my PC, I have a plugin/codec of sorts. This is not necessary.

As I said...Flash isn't necessary.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:24 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:22:55 AM

Quote :

"If I'm on a PC I probably have flash...as you said earlier. If i'm on my phone I can still watch the same video through Quicktime/whatever. That is the point. The user gets their content one way or another."

But what if I don't want to install the plugin?! You're the web developer and I'm on Windows XP. I can't watch your video if I don't have Flash or Quicktime installed? That's bullshit.

2/22/2010 12:28:12 AM

So you want to watch the video without a video player? hmm..I'll have to think about this one...i'll get back to you.

2/22/2010 12:29:24 AM

Quote :

"So you want to watch the video without a video player? hmm..I'll have to think about this one...i'll get back to you."

I have a video player. I have Windows Media Player. What I don't have (from you) is a file it'll play.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:32 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:32:04 AM

this is just embarrassing

2/22/2010 12:41:58 AM

Do you have an internet connection?

Does your OS support flash/quicktime/xvid/etc?

2/22/2010 12:42:48 AM

^Yeah, seriously. And I'm playing into the troll...you're changing a 'I can't...' to a 'I choose not to...'

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:45 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:45:06 AM

I'm just going off your line of reasoning when you said

Quote :

"I shouldn't have to install a plugin if I don't want to."

---------------------------------

I'll agree, we got way off topic though. My point is that the issue isn't as cut and dry as you want to make it. Yes, it's possible to downgrade Flash to Quicktime for mobile devices, but at the end of the day if Apple/other cellphone OS companies are going to say that these are full featured web browsing devices, they should have Flash.

There's also the issue of how the Quicktime video comes down to you. Are Quicktime h264 streams even playable from within Flash or do they have to be straight downloaded? If the latter, you'll never see many TV content providing sites do the downgrade.

I honestly know nothing about true Quicktime streams other than that I'd rather drive a spike through my skull than to deal with them.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 12:54 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:52:13 AM

Quote :

"I shouldn't have to install a plugin if I don't want to."

Which was taken out of context. We were discussing flash on the iPhone and I said its not needed to play videos if thats all your concern for flash support entails. Hence my comment that I don't need to use flash if I don't want to. The point is users can access the video with or without flash. nothing more nothing less.

Quote :

"There's also the issue of how the Quicktime video comes down to you. Are Quicktime h264 streams even playable from within Flash or do they have to be straight downloaded? If the latter, you'll never see many TV content providing sites do the downgrade."

Like I said, we've done it before. Straight stream. You can click any where in the time line and start streaming from there without having to download the entire video.

The only thing you missed out on on our site was Highlight...which was a flash player feature we patented.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 1:02 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 12:56:10 AM

Quote :

"According to Adobe, Flash is currently sitting on "99% of Internet-enabled desktops in mature markets" (http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/) and developers are supposed to go "Obviously, we're doing our video wrong, we totally need to make it so that it can launch Quicktime as well". Seriously dude, 99% of desktops. "

All that means is that *some* version of flash on their desktops. The vast majority of web content today will not play or display on the version of Flash that shipped with either XP or Vista. Which means the average consumer STILL has to install/update/reinstall their flash player before they can watch anything.

The "maybe I don't want to install a plugin" argument is pedantic as hell. That's the entire point of plugins. BTW, for some reference, Silverlight is now on 40%+ of desktops. Not bad going from 0-40 in a little under two years (and two releases).

I actually think it was the right choice to keep Flash off the iPhone, and now the iPad. I can only hope Microsoft see's the same light and keeps that garbage off WinPho7. Flash is the worst fucking multimedia platform in the marketplace today. It is unstable, buggy, power hungry and not fit for mobile devices in any way.

2/22/2010 2:47:18 AM

Quote :

"I actually think it was the right choice to keep Flash off the iPhone, and now the iPad. I can only hope Microsoft see's the same light and keeps that garbage off WinPho7. Flash is the worst fucking multimedia platform in the marketplace today. It is unstable, buggy, power hungry and not fit for mobile devices in any way."

This.

2/22/2010 7:46:46 AM

^^As i said previously, my comment is in reference to the Flash plugin. If I don't have flash I should still be able to view the video.

Another reason why sites like Hulu/network sites don't do this is because they can't serve their ads as they do in Flash if the user is allowed to use another plugin.

2/22/2010 11:12:31 AM

okay, besides the whole flash/quicktime video thing on iphones...what about websites that use flash for menus and stuff? you can't use quicktime to make those work.

2/22/2010 11:24:13 AM

^Sites that are done in flash are sites not worth my time flash plugin or no flash plugin.

You also miss out on all the awesome flash intros! How am I supposed to browse the web if I can't watch their minute long intro about their site.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 11:30 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 11:29:47 AM

the real reason behind no flash:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=17738

Quote :

"However, Mr. Jobs found the folks at the WSJ were asking him the same question, a question that had infuriated him time after time -- "Why doesn't the i<device> have Flash?" Jobs' mobile devices boycott of Flash, one of the most widely used internet formats, is close to extraordinary. Even Microsoft, who has its own competitive format (Silverlight) has cooperated with Adobe in ensuring Flash runs smoothly on Windows PCs and is ported to Windows smartphones. Apple, meanwhile, has been almost the only major player to play the role of Flash obstructionist. Apple has its reasons. Flash on a base level provides a very real threat to Apple's lucrative App Store, one of the key things that it uses to differentiate the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad from its competitors. If Apple adopted Flash, many of its developers could move to Flash which would free them of the restrictions of Apple's App Store approval process. And that would ultimately ruin the exclusivity of Apple's app catalog and make Apple vulnerable to handsets with superior hardware. Also, with Flash customers could simply view TV episodes from Hulu for free, rather than buy them from Apple's iTunes store. To try to obscure this fact, Mr. Jobs has stepped up his attacks on the format. At the WSJ meeting, he reportedly called Flash a "CPU hog" and a source of "security holes." And he smartly jabbed, "We don't spend a lot of energy on old technology." He then claimed that Apple was responsible for getting people to abandon a host of technologies including floppy drives (by lack of inclusion in the iMac), old data ports (including its own), CCFL-backlit LCD screens (Apple now uses LED backlighting), and, most questionably, CDs (he says CDs are dying due to Apple's iPod, iTunes Store, CD-ripping software and the "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign). The reality distortion field seems particularly in full blast with the last claim, as there were 300 million CDs sold last year (that's 80 percent of all album sales industry-wide). He followed those dubious claims with another. Apple will get people to abandon Flash. Flash, he argues is simply no good. It crashes Macs (granted, Macs have had plenty of problems recently with nary a Flash app in sight) and runs too slow for his tastes. He also claims that Flash would reduce the iPad's battery life from 10 hours to 1.5 hours. He says it would be "trivial" for online content providers to bow to Apple's will and replace Flash content with H.264 video codecs. To an extent he may be right on this point -- the H.264+HTML5 movement is gaining momentum. However, even here Apple is trying to control what is and isn't allowed. HTML 5 can also be made to support the free Ogg Theora codecs, but Apple has tried to block that, in favor of the expensive, proprietary H.264 format, a source of a growing squabble. Ultimately, regardless of which format is embraced HTML5, though, seems unlikely to be able to offer as deep user input and particularly the graphics-generation libraries as Flash."

2/22/2010 11:45:52 AM

http://www.examiner.com/x-16806-Long-Island-iPhone-Games-Examiner~y2010m2d21-Apple-removes-over-5000-apps-from-iPhone-app-store

enraging. on so many levels

2/22/2010 1:15:51 PM

yeah, Things wasnt what I was looking for... any other ideas?

2/22/2010 1:34:24 PM

Quote :

"^Sites that are done in flash are sites not worth my time flash plugin or no flash plugin."

i don't give a shit what your opinion on a particular site is, and i'm not talking about intros. as i previously stated, i'm talking about flash MENUS that are required for the site to work. i'm pretty sure my previous statement wasn't worded very complicated. i'm not sure why you're missing it...

don't come back with the "i'm too good to go to those websites" shit again. it's not a valid answer to the question.

2/22/2010 1:47:19 PM

Funny Apple is talking trash about flash, when iTunes has been a hunking piece of shit for years. It took me purchasing a quad core laptop with 8 gigs of RAM where it actually runs like it is suppose to on a PC. They want everyone else to clean up their shit for their platform, but they are their own worst offenders.

2/22/2010 2:16:25 PM

Quote :

"i don't give a shit what your opinion on a particular site is, and i'm not talking about intros. as i previously stated, i'm talking about flash MENUS that are required for the site to work. i'm pretty sure my previous statement wasn't worded very complicated. i'm not sure why you're missing it... don't come back with the "i'm too good to go to those websites" shit again. it's not a valid answer to the question."

I, too, was talking about navigation. The intros was just a bonus.

So like I said no respectable site uses flash for navigation.

Examples plz?

and before you get carried away in this rabbit trail...Flash Navigation makes for very poor usability and design.

Flash has its uses but site design and navigation is not one of them.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 2:33 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2010 2:21:56 PM

Quote :

"Funny Apple is talking trash about flash, when iTunes has been a hunking piece of shit for years. It took me purchasing a quad core laptop with 8 gigs of RAM where it actually runs like it is suppose to on a PC. They want everyone else to clean up their shit for their platform, but they are their own worst offenders."

Not to mention the clusterfuck that is Quicktime.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 2:45 PM. Reason : Lucky us though, they come packaged!]

2/22/2010 2:44:11 PM

I wouldn't say Quicktime is a cluster fuck at all, why do you think that?

Not saying its the greatest thing out there either by any means.

Its certainly not iTunes.

2/22/2010 2:47:36 PM

It somehow decided to take over my IE so that now any time I click a link to a PNG, it tries to open the Quicktime browser plugin, locks up the browser and has about a 50/50 shot of outright crashing it.

Of course, there's nowhere to actually remove this association anywhere.

Then there's the fact that probably about 70% of menu options are grayed out.

If you have a video full screened, then pause it, about half the time you just lose the slider on the bar. Or if you quit full screen you lose the actual chrome of the player window.

You can't drag a video into an open Quicktime instance. You have to launch it completely as new or from an open prompt (since "New Player" is a Quicktime PRO feature)

Oh and there's the handy "Previous Video"/"Next Video" buttons on a player that doesn't seem to have any playlist functionality. Though, maybe they're just supposed to be "Beginning of Movie"/"End of Movie" buttons, in which case why in the world would you want a button that took you to the very last frame of a video?

2/22/2010 3:07:50 PM

quicktime is a needless addition of a player with a godawful UI that breaks OS conventions.

The could simply add directshow filters and have .mov and all their other gay formats play in windows media player as well as every other player anyone wanted to write for windows, but they have to be faglords and make their own player instead. By comparision, it would be like getting realplayer for OSX in order to play realplayer files.

Theres no point to it and its a turd. itunes has the same problems, but to worse degrees. Add to it the fact that itunes runs like shit (on purpose) and its just amazing anyone uses it. Without the device/store lockin itunes store would disapear.

Flash isn't as bad, but its still not good. The youtube player is a massive piece of shit that uses an inefficient codec. Silverlight is a better platform in every single way, save established base.

html5 video tag will never take off because no browser maker will agree on what codecs they want to use. The fact that someone thought they would, despite the fact that no one has agreed on a codec for the last 10 years is a pretty good sign that those pushing html5 just have no idea what the fuck.

The world would be better if everyone just started using silverlight.

[Edited on February 22, 2010 at 3:10 PM. Reason : a]

2/22/2010 3:09:16 PM