As much as I love Adobe I am quite confident that Apple will N-E-V-E-R enable Flash player on their devices. OK, maybe not never, but certainly not in the next 10 years.

Why? Read on.

There are two reasons why is that so, you decide which one is more important.

Reason one is that Flash player and capabilities Flash as technology offers are a direct threat to Apple App store. Majority of income through App store comes from retarded fart apps, silly games and simple Apps. The majority of those could be super-easily recreated in 5 minutes through Flash. This in turn means that pretty soon there would be websites that would start charging access to those applications, directly taking away money from App store. Would you pay $2,99 per month to have access to thousands of Flash games and apps, some of which are actually good? Yes, you would. Apple would never allow this sort of competition.

Reason two is Apple's position as market leader to change things. To force people and companies to innovate. By refusing to enable Flash, Apple is forcing everyone involved to think different. Ha? See what I did there? If Flash was enabled on iOS devices, people would always just take the easy way out and develop something complex in Flash. HTML 5 standard would be stagnant, and develop pretty slowly.

Apple's refusal to enable Flash gave you HTML 5 enabled YouTube. Do you think that YouTube would develop HTML 5 site if they could easily just serve it through Flash? No, they would not.

There are MANY projects already developed and under development in HTML 5 / CSS 3 just because Apple did not enable Flash. Lack of Flash is pushing the whole web-industry forward. In one or two years you will start seeing concrete results of that. Visit this crazy Pie Guy with iPhone and tell me would something like that even be considered outside of Flash, if Flash was iOS enabled? Play that game, see all the crazy features that are pure HTML/CSS. Screen shake, zooming, rotation, ...

All technical reasons, such as "Flash is too slow" "Flash drains battery" are just not valid. Adobe in partnership with Apple could easily branch Flash player into two versions: Desktop and iOS, and in few months of development deliver Flash player that is super-smooth, does not drain battery, etc. Technical problems can always be solved through smart code. But what we are dealing here with is not technical problem. It is pure politics, money, and parallel with it - Apple's desire to push things forward.

Flash has it's uses, no doubt. But enabling Flash on iOS would give everyone the "easy ticket out" for every even a little bit complex project. Screw that. Lets go forward. Lets advance the technology.

Respect to my friend phazze on this crazy peaceful commando action.

It also introduced an ability to have wallpaper behind your App icons as well. Neat feature, but what happens if you do not want to have wallpaper behind your icons? When you go to settings there is no option to disable wallpaper on your Homescreen! And speaking honestly, wallpaper behind icons just adds a layer of unnecessary visual clutter, and makes some icons look pretty bad because they were originally designed to be placed on black background.

What to do?

Simple. Start camera, put your finger over the lens completely covering it and take a black photo. Then set that black photo as a Homescreen wallpaper.

Ta-daaah! Black background for your Homescreen.

- If you haven't already, read about that incident.

Today, half a year later, let's see how are things doing:

OH, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT?

After initial overreaction, the market understood that GSM/3G based navigation is not all that super great. If you bought Garmin stock at the moment they fell, now you are 50% richer.

You're welcome. =)

An App that has a fullscreen browsing experience by integrating Safari (as many iPhone Apps do), and over that in two dragable and maybe resizable "windows" Twitter and Facebook client.

This would enable users to be on two of the most popular social networks at the same time, and clicking/touching any links from them would open those pages in Safari running behind them.

Charge this $2.99, and you are a millionaire in one week.

(Why $2.99? Because Tweetie, the best iPhone Twitter client costs $2.99, Facebook App is free, and Safari is integrated from OS).

Like this:

Conclusion? Opera, as it is in this first release, sucks donkey balls. Yes, it is fast. There the good things stop. It renders pages horribly. Does not support any rendering engines (webkit comes to mind). Zooming is horrid. Scrolling is pain. Interface was poorly thought of. Copy to clipboard is insane (by insane I mean: not there). It is just bad.

Furthermore, there is no way to integrate Opera deep into iPhone. When you click a link from Mail, it will open in Safari. Shortcuts to websites you have on your Homescreen open in Safari. It is just too timeconsuming to jump from Safari to Opera in order to faster surf there.

In short, Apple approved Opera so people could quickly understand how sucky it is, and start talking words of praise for Safari and at the same time removed some of the Nazi attributes they gathered lately. They turned this while thing into superpositive spin for them. Hat down to you Apple, masters of marketing.

The need for Twitter to have an iPhone App named "Twitter" is more than obvious. New users, who do not fully understand Twitter and it's ecosystem do not instinctively know that there are other applications that connect to Twitter. Hence, many people after not finding App named "Twitter" simply quit.

It was a long intention for Twitter to make official iPhone App. Not buy one!

But, alas, they bought Tweetie, App that many call the best Twitter client for iPhone. You could argue is it, or is it not the best, but no matter what is the conclusion, it is really really good.

Twitter bought it, and will put it back to Appstore as a free App.

WAIT ... WHAT?

One of the best Apps will become free and under direct control of Twitter. Yes. Exactly.

With this move, Twitter, in my super humble opinion kinda shot them selves in the foot. Jumped the shark. Why?

1: Unfair competition
Looking just from the level of development, Twitter does not need to use it's API and all the limitations. Other clients have lots of API limitations, they cannot fully stream tweets, but instead need to pull them in batches. And many more limits that are set by the API. Twitter's own App does not need to be hindered by any limitations.

2: Pricing
Tweetie / Twitter will now be free. Why would ANYONE buy another Twitter App (Twitterific comes to mind) when this one is free. By making the best Twitter client free and super-powerful, they basically screwed all the developers making Twitter Apps. Good bye Twitterific, it was nice to know you. Good bye Tweetdeck, see ya!

3: Killing community that created Twitter
Desktop and Mobile applications are the only reason Twitter exploded like crazy. Being able to connect to Twitter from anywhere is the key to Twitter's success. And who made that possible? People who made applications. And why did they make applications? Because there was some money involved in that for them as well. Atebits, creators of Tweetie, were selling Tweetie at $2.99. Even after you remove Apple's part, there is still a lot of cash earned there on that App. And now all the new App creators are simply discouraged to make new, diverse, Apps. With diversity being the key. Different people will find different Apps that fit them, that's why diversity is good.

So basically, Twitter killed the community that made them popular.

And let's get real for a moment now. If Twitter had volume of people even remotely close to Facebook's, it would MAYBE be understandable. But Twitter at this moment has less accounts than Farmville on Facebook. Yes, one silly game on Facebook has more people farming digital vegetables than all Twitter accounts put together. And into that account count go even those funny accounts made by people just to screw with someone or have some fun (I got few funny accounts besides my main account).

It will be pretty cool to watch what will happen with Twitter in the next 6 months. I mean, Twitter will not cease to be, it will not vanish (even tho many would like that), but there will be bad backfire from this acquisition, I guarantee it.

By the way, you should follow me on Twitter @gpeuc

Many will try, but all will fail.

What everyone else is doing (as far as I know, maybe someone will surprise me) is try to replicate the hardware iPad has – sleek tablet-like touch screen device, and then on top of that they slap Windows / Linux / any other operating system.

And this just does not work.

Those operating systems are made to be used with mouse and keyboard as primary interface devices, and as such absolutely cannot function in a world of touch interface. How do you scroll a website in a normal browser? You use mouse scroll wheel. And if there is no mouse scroll wheel, then you click and drag a scrollbar. Now take your finger and place it close to the scrollbar of your monitor – it is at least double or triple the size of it!

How would you close tabs with touch interface? Trying to poke into that small [x] is just impossible and impractical.
Let’s say that you want to access some software that is running from your Windows system tray (for the new ones: that’s the little row of icons at the bottom right). Try tapping on that with your finger. There is no way you could do it without accidentally hitting two other icons.

Windows and similar systems are made to serve environment where keyboard and mouse are present, and that is OK, since they were thought of and developed to serve that purpose. iPad and iPhone was developed from zero to serve touch interface.

But besides these obvious interface problems that cannot be easily solved for Windows based tablets, there are more issues that users will just not like. First of all, if your tablet runs Windows, it will require constant maintenance. You will need to install antivirus software, run periodic hard drive defragmentation or at least registry clean up, and install all sorts of addons to keep the system alive. Whereas iPad OS requires basically no maintenance at all.
Furthermore, Windows based devices have boot up time. Even if you have put it into sleep mode instead of full shut down, it still requires some time to wake up. iPad – swipe unlock, and you are ready to go. In normal day to day use iPad is always on, so to speak.

And that is just the basics of operating system and primary logic behind it. If you look more into software you use in your normal day, you will see how Windows based touch devices are just not possible. Scrolling through that Start Menu with your finger? Outlook? Word? MSN messenger? Photoshop? Insane & impossible.

iPad's hardware, operating system and all applications are designed from scratch to be used through touch interface. Current competition just focuses to make hardware that is portable and has touch screen, completely ignoring software. What Microsoft and other should be doing is create competition starting from the operating system and usability logic, and the hardware part will easily come then.

MORE:
Check out this review of Slate PC from Stantum on Wired.

Their latest creation Google Buzz is so wrong on so many points that is is just hilarious. Google tried to improve Twitter by adding more features, and failed so horribly that this fail will be retold by the generations to come. "Hey grandpa, please tell us again about the epic fail that was Google Buzz back when you were young."

1. Integrating Google Buzz into Gmail is conceptually pretty bad idea. If you are a hard core Gmail user - having Gmail (or Gmail interface) as your main email - you will have your inbox flooded during the normal work day. So why add more pressure on the user by making a FOLDER named Buzz which contains more to read? On the other hand, if you are not a Gmail user, you will most likely not have must to Buzz about, or will just not be interested in this. If Google made Buzz a stand-alone service that users could perceive as a separated software, Buzz would have better chance.

2. Google obviously failed to realize why Twitter is so good. Hint: it's the 140 character limit. Through Twitter information flows quickly. There are no old threads to which you can reply, they just quickly go into the oblivion of the past. Buzz tried to "improve" Twitter by not limiting post characters, and by having Comments on each thread. Comments just force users to constantly return to the past to check if maybe someone commented something that was said 2 days ago.

3. Massive amounts of text and different media are just impossible to translate into mobile devices. Look at this screenshot, this is the first Buzz that appeared in my Buzz-inbox:

You will notice the comments. Expanded, it looks like this:

Does Google really expect me to follow this amount of text being pushed to me every 5 minutes? I can only imagine how Buzz-inbox looks like for hardcore Gmail users. It must be like the Matrix - letters and numbers scrolling down on screen at the speed of light. Maybe after some use you do not see the text any more, you just see a redhead chick here, and a lolcat there embeded in all that code, pardon, text.

On the other hand, this is a screenshot of Tweetie, a supreme Twitter iPhone client. Buzz will absolutely NEVER achieve this simplicity of communication.

Can you imagine Buzz App that is simple to use and simple to read? Neither can I.

4. Two days after Buzz appeared, the hottest topic on the net was how to turn it off. How to block people, how to remove all posts, etc.

The Google engineers live in their little Ivory Tower totally separated from the world. They think that everyone is like them - a techno crazy people who can visually parse tons and tons of code, pardon; text. Starting with Wave, now continuing to Buzz, they are just showing us that they have completely lost all grips of reality, and real user needs. We need simplification of processes, aggregation of existing services, and order in chaos. Google is pushing the ball the other way, and the users say: "No you don't."

Not to mention that their customer support is awesome. When I bitched about my mouse falling apart, they saw that on this blog, called Nivas office and offered to mail me new one ASAP. Amazing.

But what is really amazing is that Logitech really gets *it*. They really do, and they blew me away with their latest product. It is called Logitech TouchMouse, and it is not a hardware. It is an iPhone App that hooks to your computer via wireless network (and small Mouse Server software you need to download).

Then through your iPhone you can control mouse pointer and keyboard input. And it works like a charm, smooth and precise.

But what really shocked me (in a positive way) is the concept behind this. This free App just replaced my need for wireless input devices. Logitech wireless keyboard that people use to control computer from bed while watching a movie just became redundant, as well as many other devices that Logitech is selling.

Someone at Logitech actually had the balls to conclude the following:

Even if this means less sales for their main product line, they still released this software. What balls, eh?

Furthermore, this concept of iPhone controlling your computer could be taken to the next level. Take any driving game (Need for Speed, or whatever) - make it use iPhone as steering wheel input device. It's that simple. I bet you that in the next 6 months we will see games start using iPhone as input device, based on this proof of concept Logitech handed to us for free.

So far, none of the internet theory-crafters did not manage to hit the nail on the has as to why does Apple hate Flash so much. People are talking about CPU/battery consumption, they are talking about Flash being too slow to run on iPhone, and all sorts of different technical reasons.

Technical reasons are the least of Apple's worry.

Let me put this simple: enabling Flash on iPad/iPhone would seriously harm App Store. That's right. Think about it - the majority of games and Apps can easily be replicated in Flash. OK, I must admit, games using 3D engine, and Apps using camera could not be replicated to Flash (at least to my humble knowledge), but the major volume of income for Appstore comes from retarded small fart-apps, and from simple easy to play games. Games like Bejeweled, Lexic, apps like Tweetie, TweetDeck and Things could all be available via Flash applications as well.

Not to mention that Flash could enable even better UX than iPhone native apps due to effects such as blurs that would enable motion-blurring of items that move in and out of the screen, perspective blur for items that are in the "distance", etc.

All that would remain then is to create a central marketplace and viable business model (flat rate Apps?) that would allow users to create account and leave credit card number and purchase Flash based Apps. Hell, why one, why not many! Competition is always good!

No, this would not kill Appstore outright because there are some things only native iPad/iPhone App can do, but it would be a huge chunk in it's revenue. Just check your iPhone, and see how many of Apps you have could be easily recreated in Flash, and see for your self what Flash would do to Apple.

But, what people do, and that's wrong, is compare it to iPhone or Notebook. The iPad is none of that. It is new product targeted at specific market. That market is not you and me, since you are here reading this blog located on web developer company. iPad target are people who are casual users that use electronics and gadgets in a casual mode, focusing on one thing at a time - view little YouTube, read few pages of a book, check what's new on their favourite website, and just turn the damned thing off. iPad is an awesome thing if you were your father/mother. It's like an out-of-the-box computer that our parents can actually use!

Looking from that perspective, if you can downshift into this mindset - iPad is AWESOME. Of course, there are some things that it misses to make it supreme consumer toy (such as camera to take photos, true GPS) but remember iPhone - all that will come in second or third generation. Apple wants your cash too, they are not here just to make the world a better place.

For us, the powerusers that chill out from time to time, one thing is missing. This:

Give us ONE "window" to run native iPhone apps that floats above iPad. Just one. I do not ask for more. This way I could check Tweetie, or Things to-do list, or use the bloody calculator without the need to exit main app I am using. Just one!!!

But, I got some bad news with this as well, from the developers point of view.

iPad has a resolution of 1024x768. This resolution is here to stay, they will not increase it in second generation. The Apps developers will build in this year will fit this resolution, and as with iPhone, once Apps are massively developed for this resolution, it would just be bad to introduce bigger/different resolution.

And what that means for us, website developers? We are back to square one with our wishes for increased monitor resolutions. All of the developers were looking into Google Analytics for the past 3 years, and watching the 1024x768 resolution go down, as 1280 increased. We were just waiting for the point to start thinking bigger. And now, BAM on the head, we cannot any more. For the next 5 years, if iPad explodes into general population, all of our sites will have to be created to be optimized for 1024 resolution. Even if desktop monitors go to million by million, we will need to deploy our websites onto iPad.

Have a nice future, you silly web designers.

////
Worship

Or, if you have some troubles downloading, here are the direct links:
Nivas White
Worship

For the sake of argument, let's pretend that the new product will in fact be called "iSlate" and that it will in fact be a tablet-kind of a easily transportable computer.

Entire internet is trying to guess how will it look like, and (almost) entire internet thinks it will be an oversized iPhone. Now listen up, you ignorant fools! Do you all have attention span of a goldfish in a bowl aquarium? Do you not remember how your last predictions ended up?

Rewind time few years back ... and we are here with the almighty iPod, and Apple announced iPhone. Everyone, thought iPhone will be a glorified version of iPod, just with an capability to call someone. There is even an archive of your ridiculous attempts, check it here at http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/.

What can you first notice in those concepts? They are all based on iPod (or are completely nonsense). And do you know why is it like so? It is because people in mass are not product designers. People, in general, cannot create NEW things, but can just recycle what they have seen and add on to it something that they think. If you could create NEW things out of thin air and your own imagination, you would probably be working for Apple or some other hard hitting techno company. But you cannot. So you think that iPhone will look like iPod on steroids.

And the same thing is now happening with iSlate. People, yes you, cannot create new things, so in lack of imagination everyone is taking iPhone as a relevant starting point, and just build up from there.
Let me tell you something really short: I will be bloody surprised, shocked and somewhat disgusted if iSlate turns out to be oversized iPhone. That would mean that Apple did not try hard enough to make new and original product, and has instead gone "The Porsche way". You know - every car looks the same since 1963, only a bit tweaked. The laziest designers in the world.

And there ends my theory on the looks of iSlate.

What is more important is what will iSlate do. What has become a norm, a MUST, is that the slate line of products from any company needs to be able to connect to the internet. If the slate is not connected, it is useless. The ergonomic nature of that shape prevents some normal work activity, slate is not laptop. There is no keyboard, and perpendicular to it - a screen. Rather, it is just one surface with onscreen keyboard. And that layout makes it basically impossible for anyone to do some serious work on it. You cannot type text easily, you cannot do a quick Photoshop action, you cannot create presentations, etc. The only thing you can easily do is what you now do with iPhone: use applications that have simple touch interfaces to do things that are in the cloud. Twitter, Facebook, read blogs, read news through their aplications, watch video, listen to music, play some games, but all that through, I repeat, simpe touch interface.

And for all that to happen, iSlate needs to be connected to the internet, and needs to do it on the move (not just wireless in your home/office)! Who needs iSlate in closed desktop environment - I have my own computer in such environment.

And this opens up a Pandora's Box of problems.

How will iSlate connect to the web on the move? You cannot just insert SIM card into it. And even if you could, would you want to? SIM card means that you could basically perform phone calls with it as well, and I seriously doubt that iSlate will be oversized iPhone. SIM card would mean one more thing: contracts with operators. Meaning iSlate would not be out in the open market, rather, it would be bound to operators. And that is bad. And let’s face it, iSlate without internet connection is only good to use as a plate holder for your lunch.

So what then?

One word: iPhone. The iSlate will be, I am 99% sure, heavily bound to iPhone. It will use Bluetooth, or Wireless, to connect to iPhone, and through it tether to the internet. Knowing Apple, this bond will be seriously tough. Like, superglue that NASA uses tough. That bond would also enable limitless options. For example, Apps for iSlate could be bought on the move via iPhone, and when you pair them up, iPhone could transfer it to iSlate. They could share movies and music. iPhone will act as a remote control for iSlate as well. Hell, they could even share battery power, why not? I could think of millions of other ways iPhone and iSlate could be connected, but I will leave that to Apple to figure out.

But this also means that iSlate will be in offer at mobile operators as well. You would have it in bundle with iPhone, subsidized.

And now tell me that does not make you all sparkly inside: iPhone, iSlate, good internet connection, subsidized price, let’s say: $500. Yes, there is a monthly charge, but monthly-schmontly.

I admit it. I do not see the purpose of Gowalla for me as a user. I have been using it for 3 weeks, and I just do not see what is the end game.

Just in case you have been living under the rock in the last months, Gowalla is new game-social-attentiondeficitdisorder internet thingie with an edge for locations. As you walk through the city, you can check-in into a location, like your favourite pub or restaurant. If that place is not yet Gowalled, you can easily add it right there, and neatly categorize it. The base platform for Gowalla is iPhone, preferably 3GS so Gowalla can pick up the fine GPS coordinates. The website is here just for the registration and some tweaking of location (for example, if iPhone missed your location).

With all this comes the game element of collecting items and pins. When you first create an account you get a few random digital items, like boots, pizza slice, toy robot. You can drop those items on locations, or swap them for items someone else dropped there. Basically, you can collect some digital items.

By doing some combo check-ins, you get pins like awards. I collected a couple of pins, I am "Wanderer" and "Explorer" and got some pins for creating 10 spots, and all that. That is neat.

However
I am not sure what the end game benefit for me as a user is. Why would I use Gowalla? Twitter has uses - it keeps me informed about stuff happening in my city, in my country, in the world, and on the internet. Facebook also has uses, there is a benefit for me as a user in it. But I just do not see benefit for me as a user in Gowalla.

First of all, it requires work from my side, but let's say we got that covered. I, as well as many of my friends, are early adopters, but more than that, we are willing to help for a good cause. It is not a problem for me to walk around my usual routes and just mark all the locations so that later generations of users can see them.

But what after that?

Checking into locations becomes just a boring task that I need to do, with no real benefit for me. I check in Nivas every day. I check in restaurants and apparel store. So what? I sometimes find digital items there. So?

One good thing that I have managed to find in Gowalla is that it could force me to visit some locations that maybe I would not visit on my own. But walking around the city just to get some digital pins; I do not see it happening.

The more I use Gowalla, the more I fail the see the point in it. Can you enlighten me? Tell me why is it good?

First, a little introduction to the subject of tooltips:

The tooltip is a common graphical user interface element. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a mouse pointer. The user hovers the cursor over an item, without clicking it, and a tooltip may appear — a small "hover box" with information about the item being hovered over. (Wikipedia)

In your regular computer usage, you see tooltips every day (all day) and chances are that you don't even notice them anymore. All browsers display the title attribute of an HTML element as a tooltip when a user hovers the mouse cursor over that element. Some browsers will also display the alt attribute of an image as a tooltip in the same manner (if a title attribute is also specified, it will override the alt attribute for tooltip content).

On the wide spaces of world wide web you can also find custom generated tooltips (eg. in javascript or Flash or just by absolutely positioning of elements via css), but they are not the subject of this post. I did my fair share of tooltips in different Flash projects I was working on, and each time we did a new tooltip type, we tried to make tooltips an integral part of visual part of design having in mind usability.

From user stand point - I never paid too much attention to browser tooltips. Probably because I got used to them. If website I am visiting is done well, if I hover something (probably an image) - a default browser tooltip will appear over that element. That usual and expected behavior was enough for me to put browser tooltips somewhere in back of mi mind. But, recently something about tooltips started to bother me and I couldn't pinpoint it.

Just around the time when we were working on release of Globus portal, I finally did figure out what was wrong with tooltips - tooltips in Firefox to be exact.

Firefox (tested on 3.5.5) has a nasty bug which causes hovered element to fire up onmouseout event when you rollover a default browser tooltip which that element invoked. When you rollout of the tooltip (because tooltip disappears), the browser element fires onmouseover event again, and that can cause some really nasty behavior.

Firefox 3 tooltip bug

(i've recorded this behaviour. you'll need flash player to see the video. if you can't - try MOV or AVI file.

On Globus that bug caused so much problem in elements which change layout when you hover them - that we had to remove title tags completely. And that from SEO standpoint is a BIG inconvenience. I've tested tooltips in all browsers, and AFAIK only Firefox 3.5 (Win) tooltips are "working" that way. I've submitted this bug to Bugzilla so will see what they'll say about it.

While doing tests in browsers I had around (Firefox, Safari, Chrome and IE8), I've noticed another inconvenience. Not a single browser did not displaying the tooltip the same way.

I've put up a little html demo for you to test by your self (ignore my css 'skills'). The 'demo' contains one div with image inside it with a link. If you hover the image, the link's title will show up in a default browser tooltip. Take notice how tooltip:

1. appears when you roll over element
2. disappears when you roll out
3. behaves when you move around element
4. behaves when you try to rollover the tooltip it self

You will notice that not a single respected browser currently available on Windows is not displaying tooltip the same way.

Chrome 3 toolip
- lazy (shows and dissapears with an delay), you can rollover it with your mouse without any side effects. The fact that you can rollover tooltip in combination with rather long hide delay can be inconvenience.

(MOV | AVI)

Internet Explorer 8 toolip
- pretty standard windows based tooltip behaviour. if you hover a tooltip - it will disappear which I think it's best behavior.
- has a nasty habbit of blinking two times when you hover an element. it doesn't produce other nasty effects to dom events

(MOV | AVI)

Safari 4 toolip
- has a nasty habit of disappearing and reappearing while you are still hovering the element. it doesn't produce other nasty effects to dom events

(MOV | AVI)

I haven't tested Opera on purpose. It's market share is just too low.

I have no idea why not a single web browser doesn't have tooltip behavior configuration setting like follow mouse, delay in ms, different show/hide effects etc. I think that would be cool.

Feedback is welcome!