Update: Here is a fantastic example of someone who has completely gone off the rails with respect to Flash…
Wow…nothing generates conversation in the tech industry like Adobe Flash. In just the past couple of days I’ve read articles about how HTML5 might be a ‘Flash killer’ along with articles on the release of Flash on the major mobile platforms, aside from iPhone. Along with those articles comes a lot commentary ranging from the people complaining about the lack of Flash on the iPhone to those with a strangely visceral hate for Flash who think that the lack of Flash on the iPhone is a bonus of the platform.
HTML 5 as Flash Killer
With all due respect to John Gruber over at Daring Fireball Adobe doesn’t view HTML 5 as a threat to Flash not because of anything to do with Internet Explorer but because of the history of HTML and CSS themselves. HTML 5 has a lot of great features and sounds like a real winner paired with CSS3 but modern browsers still can’t get the older standards right. There are still many workarounds required to get things rendering the same way on different browsers. Granted the situation is better than it used to be but these things simply aren’t an issue on a Flash-based user interface. While the browsers continue to play catch-up in the compatibility space Adobe will keep adding compelling features to Flash. I just don’t see HTML 5 being a serious challenger to Flash anytime soon.
Flash on Mobile Devices
I’d love Flash to be available on the iPhone. I really don’t get the reaction people have to Flash in general but when people go as far as saying that no Flash on the iPhone is a feature….please. Get a grip already. The iPhone experience would be that much richer with Flash available on the phone. HTML 5/CSS3 support on mobile Safari could be 100% compliant but until people start adopting those features on a mass scale it won’t be an alternative to having Flash available on the phone (see above).
I’m just not getting the dust-up over this stuff. Flash is a tool like anything else. Wider support of both HTML 5/CSS3 and Flash makes the web better, not worse. To those who would rather not have Flash exist at all: I think the web is a richer place with You Tube, Pandora, etc. than without them and they exist because of the ubiquitous nature of Flash. You seriously don’t? Because they wouldn’t exist right now if it weren’t for Flash.
Happy to say that with minimal fuss I was able to get the newest release of Ubuntu Desktop, 9.04, running on VMWare Fusion on my Mac. Five easy steps:
- Follow this blog post for the install (he also links to the bits I am here) – but don’t worry about his suggestion for the mouse driver since the VMWare tools install takes care of it.
- Once the install is completed uninstall VMWare tools (they were installed as part of step 1 but not all of it was done..vmhgfs isn’t set up). You might have to remount the install “CD” by selecting “Install VMWare Tools” from the Virtual Machine menu. In any case untar the tools tarball and run the uninstaller. The uninstaller is in the bin directory of the vmware-tools-distrib directory you created.
- Follow the directions here for getting vmhgfs to work.
- Rerun the vmware tools installer in the distribution directory you created in step 2.
- Bask in the glow of a job well done
AT&T 2nd level support really came through for me. After writing here about having my connectivity problems return and getting in touch with AT&T tech support I can happily report that I am now routinely getting 900kbps (on average) at my office. There was a problem with a tower in the area and it was fixed. I’m a seriously happy camper. Pandora here we come (again)….
Update: Problem solved!
Awhile back I wrote about having found a solution for the data connectivity issues that were plauging my iPhone in 3G mode. At the time a call to AT&T Tech Support made my reset my network settings which appeared to clear up the issues, and it did help….for about a day.
Since then I’ve been having the same problems and I contacted support again. The agent I spoke with was very helpful. I didn’t get the run-around and after some questions he told me that he was going to refer the case to a higher level of technical support. Despite the higher level of tech support not honoring my request for email contact I was able to get in touch with them to get the ball rolling on what I hope will be a resolution.
It certainly is odd though. More testing indicated that I was actually getting worse transfer speeds in 3G mode than if I switched the phone into EDGE mode. 3G was netting me about 50kbits/s while in EDGE I was averaging about 140kbits/s. Those are not the results I would have expected. Of course this is still only happening at my office. At home I routinely get 1400kbits/s download and about 400 up.
It certainly has been an aggravating experience but I have to say that my interactions with AT&T’s tech support have been very good so far. I hope that continues
The MacHeist 3 bundle looks fantastic but I think they’re unlock priorities are off. Why was BoinxTV the first unlock level instead of The Hit List and Espresso? Those two applications certainly would have a wider audience than BoinxTV. Hopefully MacHeist 3 will sell enough copies to unlock those two applications. I’ll be buying my copy later to help the process along
Update: I’m still having these issues….
Several weeks ago, after upgrading to release 2.2.1 of the iPhone OS, and also installing the AT&T network update that came right after, I started having issues with data connectivity problems on the 3G network. My phone, which normally gets a very fast and very stable 3G connection at my office, started having problems maintaining a 3G connection even while the phone would be sitting on my desk. Consistently I would have a 3G indicator with 5 bars for the signal strength but as soon as I started accessing the Internet, whether via Safari, Pandora, or any other application, the phone would drop to EDGE mode. As soon as the network activity stopped the indicator would switch back to indicating 3G. This happened consistently every time I attemped to access the Internet.
After about two weeks of this I was going crazy and downgraded my phone to the 2.2 OS revision (this was an adventure in and of itself) because the phone had worked perfectly with that release. And according to the various forums, etc. I searched the network update was only simple changes to icons, etc. that AT&T sent. Well, 2.2 worked perfectly, no more network problems. But I found out one of my applications, which had just been updated recently (Ambiance) required version 2.2.1 of the OS so eventually I reupgraded the phone. This time however I didn’t apply the network update from AT&T when I was nagged about it.
The phone worked perfectly with 2.2.1. Again no network/data connectivity problems. I then decided just a few days ago to reapply the network update and lo and behold I started having connectivity problems again.. After a few days of this I hopped on to the AT&T website and chatted with a customer support person. There were no indications of problems with any towers in my area and the only thing the agent could do was suggest to me to reset my network settings. I didn’t know that option was even there before so I figured I’d give it a shot.
I was completely surprised to find that my network connectivity problems had disappeared! I lost my WiFi settings but I can deal with that if I can get a solid 3G setup again. So far so good. I’ve been getting consistent, fast, 3G performance as I was before. I’m not quite sure what the network reset does aside from removing WiFi settings but it seems to have worked.
Here is the document from AT&T: Reset Network Settings
I have had absolutely awful 3G performance lately on my iPhone. The stability has just been unreliable. The phone keeps switching from 3G to EDGE at random. Sometimes it’s even switching down to GPRS when things get really bad.
I thought it was the 2.2.1 OS update as these things seemed to start happening after I did that update. That being said I downgraded my OS to version 2.2 because I never had these issues with that version of the OS. I thought for awhile that it worked because it seemed to be more stable. But after a bit of use it seems to be in the same boat as with 2.2.1 which just stinks. I’m paying for 3G and not getting 3G. It’s totally ridiculous.
Doing some searching it appears many others in the Chicago area are having the same problems. I’d really love to know what is going on over at AT&T. 3G hasn’t ever been great but it’s certainly been a lot better than this. Very frustrating.
Yesterday on his blog John Gruber wrote:
Rob Enderle will not be ignored in the race to say the stupidest possible thing regarding the Steve Jobs medical leave hoopla:
“Steve Jobs is the Ronald McDonald of Apple, he is the face,” said Rob Enderle of Silicon Valley research company Enderle Group. “They either need to redefine the company so his role is divided among different people or they need to find somebody that can clone Steve Jobs.”
So Enderle either (a) believes that McDonald’s was founded by a man named Ronald McDonald; or (b) believes that Jobs’s role at Apple is equivalent to that of a fictional clown.
Now, I have to say that Enderle does say some incredibly stupid things, even when it isn’t about Steve Jobs. However I really hope that Gruber isn’t serious when he postulates (a) and (b) in the quote. Clearly Jobs is the face of Apple. He’s the one guy everyone associates with Apple. I think it’s pretty clear that if Jobs leaves it will have some effect, even if temporary, on the company. It certainly will certainly affect the stock price.
Come on John. Get real here.
I’ve been using Evernote for awhile now. The Windows client is pretty good. The editor supports ordered/unordered lists, font types, color, etc. All of the expected things in a rich text editor are there.
At the same time the Mac client is really awful. The latest update has some new icons, etc. but they haven’t improved the editor functionality. There is no ability to create lists as in the Windows client. Given that the Mac development environment, which comes with the OS, has the source code to the TextEdit application I’m not sure why the Evernote folks can’t duplicate that functionality in their client.
To make things worse the Web client now has more editor functionality than the Mac client. Guys, if you’re not going to at least have parity between the clients why are you bothering with the Mac client at all?
Update: OK. So apparently the Mac client does support lists….just not directly. I found out that creating a note with a list in the web client results in the list being maintained in the Mac client. When you add more items to the list numbers/bullets (I assume…I didn’t try bullets but numbers do work) increment automatically (and decrement if you remove items). There just is no way to create these directly in the Mac client as of yet. Very weird.
Update 2: Ok. According to this forum posting the Evernote folks are going to address this in the next Mac client release. Great to read this as it might mean not having to run Windows in VMWare Fusion to get the better desktop client.
I’ve been mucking around with adding my Remember the Milk lists as iCal event feeds to my Google Calendar account. The idea of having tasks with due dates show up like “local” GCal events is great but it doesn’t work as I’d hoped.
Apparently I’m not the only one noticing this either based on this post on the GCal Google group. That post notes that it takes hours for the feed to refresh and that there is no way to manually refresh it (you can in with a 30boxes.com calendar but that one leaves a lot to be desired). Quite frankly it’s ridiculous that it takes hours. At that point I can’t be sure that anything I entered actually shows up in GCal. It would appear this behavior just isn’t an RTM issue as I see the same behavior with a feed from iWantSandy.com.
RTM does have two other options available, one for GCal, and if you’re using Firefox, one for GMail. The GMail Firefox plugin is quite nice but I don’t want my tasks there…I want them in my calendar. The option for GCal itself is OK but I’m picky and don’t want to have to click that checkmark to see what I have for the day.
I suppose that GCal is like so many other pieces of software, it gets you most of the way there but then dumps you off about a mile away from your intended destination. This is a real disappointment. I know GCal is free but adding a manual refresh link for the external feeds can’t be that difficult. The Google Group link above notes that “they’re looking into it”. I hope it happens sometime soon.
Not surprisingly this works flawlessly on iCal on the Mac. I can even see tasks with no due date set in the To-Do list part of iCal. But I can’t use my Mac at work anymore where I really need to see these lists 
