The recently released app, Flipboard, is by far one of the best apps designed for the iPad. It is an app designed to pull from various feeds and display the feeds in a visually striking book (i.e. flip) context. I use NetNewsWire to read blogs I’m subscribed to… not the most visually stimulating experience, but I consume blog information quickly and easily. However, with social media feeds like Twitter and Facebook, I found it tedious and a bit boring to scroll through the lastest updates. Flipboard has changed that experience completely. Essentially, Flipboard displays individual tweets, links, photos, and articles linked to status updates in a newspaper-type fashion. I simply scan over each page consuming information, enjoying images, and even commenting, re-tweeting, replying, and forwarding.

I’m not saying you want an iPad or need one (or any of the upcoming tablets) — I don’t get commission. I’m just saying, what’s the big deal? It’s a computer and television and radio and newspaper and book and magazine and game console and Internet the size of a piece of paper and the width of a Mitch Albom book. It’s freaking amazing, that’s the big deal. – Joe Posnanski

Fun read from Joe Posnanski’s blog.

OK, so we all know the iPad is smaller than a Sports Illustrated magazine and thinner than the Swimsuit Issue. And here are some of the things I did with it yesterday:

1. Watch innings of several baseball games on television.

2. Listen to innings of several baseball games on radio.

3. Watch NBA playoff highlights.

4. Read a section of Bill James’ Historical Abstract and part of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography.

5. Listen to the latest weather reports as wind howled outside.

6. Scan the Internet for news about Stephen Strasburg.

7. Play pinball.

8. Sample the new Keane album.

9. Update and check my calendar.

10. Respond to several emails.

11. Put together a couple of outline charts for upcoming stories.

12. Write sections of upcoming stories.

13. Shop at Amazon.

14. Play a Justin Bieber video for daughters.

15. Read an interactive Toy Story book to youngest daughter.

16. Play this addictive diner game.

17. Score the first couple of innings of the Royals-Indians game.

18. Watch snippets of a couple of ABC shows.

19. Instant message a friend who was gone.

20. Look up Tina Louise on the amazing IMDB app.

21. Scan the New York Times and Kansas City Star.

22. Instantly look up words I wasn’t entirely sure about.

23. Make a list of story ideas I’d like to do in the next couple of months.

24. Do some soccer study for the upcoming World Cup.

25. Check to see if there were any new fun apps. Download this silly app that allows me to make Zen Gardens out of sand and stone.

26. Make several Zen Gardens out of sand and stone.

27. Check out Entertainment Weekly’s Ten Things to Watch.

That’s a pretty typical day, honestly.

Posted on Apple’s Site today:

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

I’ve had my iPad for over two weeks. I use it primarily for web surfing, quick e-mails, social media, and blog/book reading. My morning routine typically includes all of those activities while I enjoy a couple of cups of coffee at my local Starbucks. I could do all of this with a laptop (in fact, I used to do the same thing with my laptop).

So how could I justify over $500 for another gadget that does the same thing as my laptop? Simple – people show interest in me when I have an iPad! No – I’m not a narcissist! They’re not looking at me, they’re looking at this sleek gadget I’m sitting comfortably with. I have had dozens of people come to me and ask me how I like the iPad. My simple answer is, “I love it – worth every penny!” Then, I show them what I love most about it – the ability to hand my portfolio wedding photography images to them.

I’m not directly telling them I’m a wedding photographer, I just open the photo app and hand them my portfolio on this little amazing gadget. The iPad can hold hundreds of weddings worth of images. I show them, for example, my favorite images from a wedding I shot a week ago and their jaws drop. They hold the iPad and intuitively swipe through the images. They love the display on the iPad and can’t believe the images are so vibrant, clean, crisp, and most importantly – fresh. “Worth every penny!”

(Conversations, at times, lead towards additional information about my wedding photography. I open Safari on the iPad and show them my iPad ready site, jason-g.com, and let them navigate as we chat – “Worth every penny!“)

Wired Magazine Demo on the iPad.

Developing your website or blog using WordPress is a no-brainer. WordPress is an industry standard blogging platform. While every WordPress theme is unique, my preference leans towards simplicity and speed. These themes are not only simple and fast, they are fully customizeable and ready to be implemented for an iPad ready website or blog.

Does it really matter how your site renders on an iPad? You should strongly consider these figures.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced yesterday at the iPhone OS 4.0 event that 450,00 iPads have been sold thus far.
Additionally, Steve Jobs noted 50 million iPhones and 35 million iPod Touches have been sold up until now around the world.

Nearly 100,000,000 devices used to browse the web – and they do not render Flash content.

Jquery is a lightweight JavaScript library. Utilizing the many features and plugins available, Jquery is a fantastic and reliable replacement for flash slideshows on your website. Fast and concise, Jquery simplifies the creation of slideshow animation.

Here is a couple of quick reviews by tech gurus. Will the iPad change everything? Probably. Should you care? Yes… especially if you have a website that shows up poorly on an iPad.

The iPad is here to stay and according to Walter Mossberg, with the Wall Street Journal, the “iPad Is a ‘Game Changer’ That Makes Browsing and Video a Pleasure; Challenge to the Mouse.”

Mr. Mossberg’s verdict states, “While it has compromises and drawbacks, the iPad can indeed replace a laptop for most data communication, content consumption and even limited content creation, a lot of the time.” With this in mind, individuals, start-ups, small and large business must make changes to their websites to ensure that their websites and blogs render beautifully on an iPad.

First, the iPad does not support flash. According to gizmoto.com, “The main arguments against Flash running on the iPad are that it’s a resource hog and a security risk.” Apple states, with regards to iPad ready sites, “iPad features Safari, a mobile web browser that supports the latest web standards — including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.”

The first step towards making your website or blog iPad ready is to contact us for a free consultation.