Apple Opens Door to Hardware-Accelerated Decoding of H.264 Video in Flash

[Anuba]

Fitts Law. Menu on top is much larger mouse target. Less physical and mental effort.

And just what kind of measurable physical and mental effort is required to hit a menu in Windows?

Physical and mental effort occurs when you have two 30" monitors, the cursor is at the bottom right corner of the secondary monitor, you want to access the menu, and you have an Apple mouse which means that even if the speed/acceleration is set to max you still need a mouse pad the size of a football field to cover the distance.

*cough* Silverlight *cough*

And MS actually made quite a good implementation of Silverlight on OS X, and they publicly supported the Moonlight project to get silverlight working on Linux.

Yes, and Silverlight is a perfect illustration of why getting rid of Flash is about as easy as getting rid of Windows (Apple has been at it for 25 years and they're still only at 5% marketshare worldwide).

Another example is MP3 vs WMA/OGG/AAC. Or JPG/GIF vs PNG, XPS vs PDF, It doesn't matter how many alternatives there are and how superior they are, or if the dominant format is proprietary and the alternatives are open. People still stick with the old, established standard. When something has >90% penetration like Flash does, not even Microsoft can touch it. Silverlight has been around for a few years and it comes with Win7. Doesn't matter, you rarely see it outside microsoft.com and Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Paul Thurrott, Paul Thurrott, Paul Thurrott and Windows. Even MSN.com uses Flash.

Sure, the CD replaced vinyl and DVD replaced VHS. But those were major paradigm shifts in technology, where the advantages were so monumental you didn't hesitate for a split second. But that's not what Canvas is to Flash. That's more like trying to challenge VHS with Betamax after VHS has owned the market for 15 years. "I have 600 VHS tapes, why should we change?" "Because it's marginally better!"

 

[Slip Jigs]

And yet... I can use the audio and video tags already.

Already? How long has HTML5 been in development? Cmon.

The car sites are good examples of where Flash is useful and presents an application that HTML5, AJAX, whatever, can't do, or can't do as well.

You Flash haters are a weird bunch. you get so emotional over a technology. That's a bit overblown, isn't it? And this irrationalism didn't surface until Apple started its campaign against Flash. Doesn't take much to figure out what's going on.

Believe it or not, there are developers and technofiles that are objective and just want the right tool for the right job. There's no doubt that some Web 2.0 technologies have replaced Flash for certain situations because in those cases it IS better and more efficient - such as menus and navigation, tabbled panels, according panels, slide shows and galleries. Video is almost there, it's just not universal yet.

But other applications, like car configuration tools, games, 3D and more complex interactive applications, only Flash can do that, and does it well. HTML5 has a ways to go before getting to that point, if ever. The best it can do now is a simple animation that was basic in Flash 4 or even earlier.

Anyone who doesn't see this is either blinded or just plain stupid.

 

[cmaier]

It's a measurable and documented effect. Look it up. Menu on top = more efficiency. In windows you tend to overshoot, or you have to exert fine motor control to stop in time. You don't have to like it, but there is a scientific basis for it - this isn't just another case of apple being stubborn

And just what kind of measurable physical and mental effort is required to hit a menu in Windows?

Physical and mental effort occurs when you have two 30" monitors, the cursor is at the bottom right corner of the secondary monitor, you want to access the menu, and you have an Apple mouse which means that even if the speed/acceleration is set to max you still need a mouse pad the size of a football field to cover the distance.

Yes, and Silverlight is a perfect illustration of why getting rid of Flash is about as easy as getting rid of Windows (Apple has been at it for 25 years and they're still only at 5% marketshare worldwide).

Another example is MP3 vs WMA/OGG/AAC. Or JPG/GIF vs PNG, XPS vs PDF, It doesn't matter how many alternatives there are and how superior they are, or if the dominant format is proprietary and the alternatives are open. People still stick with the old, established standard. When something has >90% penetration like Flash does, not even Microsoft can touch it. Silverlight has been around for a few years and it comes with Win7. Doesn't matter, you rarely see it outside microsoft.com and Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Paul Thurrott, Paul Thurrott, Paul Thurrott and Windows. Even MSN.com uses Flash.

Sure, the CD replaced vinyl and DVD replaced VHS. But those were major paradigm shifts in technology, where the advantages were so monumental you didn't hesitate for a split second. But that's not what Canvas is to Flash. That's more like trying to challenge VHS with Betamax after VHS has owned the market for 15 years. "I have 600 VHS tapes, why should we change?" "Because it's marginally better!"

 

[Anuba]

It's a measurable and documented effect. Look it up.

I did look it up. After a dozen or so passionate defense speeches by Mac enthusiasts I actually found something that resembles a scientific approach:

TWO-DIMENSIONAL GENERALIZATION OF FITTS’ LAW: COMPARISON OF MENU BAR POSITION PARADIGMS

YANNIK T. H. SCHELSKE

http://yths.spacequadrat.de/schelske2009b.pdf

This Schelske person had a bunch of guys sit and click on OS X and Windows menus all day, measuring their performance. His conclusion was:

"Results show, that no saving of time for a pointing task is observed for both menu bar placements. The reason for this is a phase of the motion which does not comply to Fitts’ law, and outweigh the other phases which are consistent with the theoretical predictions of Fitts’ law."


After some 20 years working on both platforms on and off, I'm with Schelske on this one. I save absolutely no time and no physical or mental effort using the Mac menu, it remains a mere hassle. I have more training on Windows, granted, but Mac has been my main platform for years now and it's still like swimming in molasses, full of extra clicks, annoying little waits, simple operations that require pressing modifier keys (e.g. for moving files instead of copying) and other quirks that slow me down.

 

[cmaier]

20 years? piker.

I did look it up. After a dozen or so passionate defense speeches by Mac enthusiasts I actually found something that resembles a scientific approach:

TWO-DIMENSIONAL GENERALIZATION OF FITTS’ LAW: COMPARISON OF MENU BAR POSITION PARADIGMS

YANNIK T. H. SCHELSKE

http://yths.spacequadrat.de/schelske2009b.pdf

This Schelske person had a bunch of guys sit and click on OS X and Windows menus all day, measuring their performance. His conclusion was:

"Results show, that no saving of time for a pointing task is observed for both menu bar placements. The reason for this is a phase of the motion which does not comply to Fitts’ law, and outweigh the other phases which are consistent with the theoretical predictions of Fitts’ law."


After some 20 years working on both platforms on and off, I'm with Schelske on this one. I save absolutely no time and no physical or mental effort using the Mac menu, it remains a mere hassle. I have more training on Windows, granted, but Mac has been my main platform for years now and it's still like swimming in molasses, full of extra clicks, annoying little waits, simple operations that require pressing modifier keys (e.g. for moving files instead of copying) and other quirks that slow me down.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I have more training on Windows, granted, but Mac has been my main platform for years now and it's still like swimming in molasses, full of extra clicks, annoying little waits, simple operations that require pressing modifier keys (e.g. for moving files instead of copying) and other quirks that slow me down.

Just look at Cmaier's posts and you can see why he wants a "no thought or effort" approach to computing. He quotes the entire message to add one little sentence of comment (i.e. too lazy to edit the original message). That would get you banned on many message boards. You wouldn't want him to have to think after all these years of being used to one thing to adjust to something better/easier. I'm surprised some Mac fans even made it to OSX. Oh wait. There ARE still some that stubbornly hold onto old OS9 machines and complain about how much better it was than OSX and how much more work OSX has made for the user, etc. Others have purchased newer machines out of necessity, but still like to complain about OSX being inferior.

Back when the Mac first moved to color I'd imagine there were probably those that said color was a waste of time, unprofessional (something for the Apple II game players to want) and it wasn't needed. I had an Amiga back in the mid '80s, so I didn't worry about Macs or PCs. Both sucked by comparison back then and I didn't feel tempted to buy a PC until the mid to late '90s. I ended up buying my first PC in 1999. I got my first Mac in 2007 at a computer show out of curiosity (a 2001 PowerMac Digital Audio which I then upgraded to run my whole house audio/video system since the early Mac Mini was awful and I already had the machine. I'm typing on it right now since it's only 24/7). I now have three machines running OSX and two running Windows (one dedicated).

 

[cmaier]

I apologize for the long quotes. Hard to delete stuff from an iPhone on OS4 beta 1 due to bugs in the browser. By the way, I have two macs, two Windows machines (including an Opteron machine I built myself from a microprocessor I was given by AMD as a "bonus" on year), and two linux boxes in my house. I'm not a mac guy. All I'm saying is that, despite an earlier contention to the contrary, a top-of-window title bar is not a bit of pure stubbornness on apple's part - there is a reason for it beyond Steve Jobs unwillingness to be reasonable. I also pointed out that they need to do something about making it work with multiple monitors. But apparently by not purely hating Apple I'm some sort of fanboy.

And if you want to talk about bans, your personal attack is much more likely to earn one than my over-quoting.

Just look at Cmaier's posts and you can see why he wants a "no thought or effort" approach to computing. He quotes the entire message to add one little sentence of comment (i.e. too lazy to edit the original message). That would get you banned on many message boards. You wouldn't want him to have to think after all these years of being used to one thing to adjust to something better/easier. I'm surprised some Mac fans even made it to OSX. Oh wait. There ARE still some that stubbornly hold onto old OS9 machines and complain about how much better it was than OSX and how much more work OSX has made for the user, etc. Others have purchased newer machines out of necessity, but still like to complain about OSX being inferior.
.

 

[Zc456]

Oh wow, the audio and video tags work! Two down, two million to go.

That was an example. The point is, just because its not finished yet, doesn't mean you can't use it. Its like Gmail. Gmail was in beta for how long? And yet you were still able to make e-mails, ect; same thing with HTML5.

 

[Lord Vader]

I did look it up. After a dozen or so passionate defense speeches by Mac enthusiasts I actually found something that resembles a scientific approach:

TWO-DIMENSIONAL GENERALIZATION OF FITTS’ LAW: COMPARISON OF MENU BAR POSITION PARADIGMS

YANNIK T. H. SCHELSKE

http://yths.spacequadrat.de/schelske2009b.pdf

This Schelske person had a bunch of guys sit and click on OS X and Windows menus all day, measuring their performance. His conclusion was:

"Results show, that no saving of time for a pointing task is observed for both menu bar placements. The reason for this is a phase of the motion which does not comply to Fitts’ law, and outweigh the other phases which are consistent with the theoretical predictions of Fitts’ law."


After some 20 years working on both platforms on and off, I'm with Schelske on this one. I save absolutely no time and no physical or mental effort using the Mac menu, it remains a mere hassle. I have more training on Windows, granted, but Mac has been my main platform for years now and it's still like swimming in molasses, full of extra clicks, annoying little waits, simple operations that require pressing modifier keys (e.g. for moving files instead of copying) and other quirks that slow me down.

I'm Windows user from 3.1 days I only recently bought my first Mac and I love Menu on top. I guess it's just your opinion agains mine or some dude's.

 

[UniversalMind]

Wow, I registered only to be able to reply to this thread. It's amazing how many wrong things have been said on here, especially from the anti Flash camp. Thankfully, some things have been corrected by others already. Here are my 2 cents.

1) As was pointed out by one user already, Core Video doesn't decode video with hardware acceleration. So, saying Adobe could have used it for years is just plain wrong.

2) Adobe admitted the weak software decoding performance on the Mac side and promised to bring it en par to the windows version with 10.1. We will see if someone makes the effort and tries to verify that claim once 10.1 is final. Here is the original claim:

With Flash Player 10.1, we are optimizing video rendering further on the Mac and expect to reduce CPU usage by half, bringing Mac and Windows closer to parity for video.

3) Adobe can now support Core Animation for a lot of graphics related stuff, but only on 10.6 with a yet unreleased Safari, I think. That wasn't possible before, and they also say OpenGL wasn't a viable option (we have to give them the benefit of the doubt here). Look here:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html

According to Adobe, this should "further reduce CPU usage and we believe will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering."

4) A PlugIn will always have at least "a little" more overhead compared to a dedicated Application.

5)

Even Flash 10.1 (which is supposed to be the first version of Flash for mobile devices) requires an 800 MHz A8 - which is 30% faster than even the fastest iPhone.

Wrong. Flash Player 10.1 will run on the Palm Pre (Plus) which sports a 500 MHz Cortex A8. On Android, the 800 MHz requirement may be just a reasonable differentiation factor, don't know. It's like Apple who said Mac OS X 10.x (can't remember the exact release) doesn't run on Macs without FireWire. It wasn't because the OS needed FireWire, though...

In other words: Maybe there is no sub 800 MHz Android phone right now that has a decent graphics processor.

6) FP 10.1 for desktop is not a Beta anymore. So stop suggesting it's months and months away.

7) You may hate Flash, but it's existence is due to the lack of even very basic technologies in the browser, like animated images with proper transperency! There is APNG, but that never got anywhere. Animated GIF is a joke.

8) Just a quick note on Flash games taking so much CPU: Well, we have to talk about a different concept here. A game will ultimately try to render as many frames as it can, it doesn't stop at 24 frames or 30 frames per second like video. Of course that means that even brand new hardware may be maxed out by some flash game, like it or not.

9) Complete flash sites are crap most of the time. Adobe themselves suggest that you only use flash where HTML has nothing to offer. And really, there are many shortcomings in HTML. E.g., I wish they would finally make something like a <menu> element. This is such a basic thing and used so often, it should be important enough to get prime time treatment and it's own tag. (I'm not saying you can't do menues in HTML, of course you can! I did it myself. But I still feel it could be much easier if such a thing would be standardised)

10)

Windows Mobile 7 will not support Flash.

From what I've heard, it's not true. Flash will not be ready on release of WP7, though. And even if it were true, it's hardly because Flash sucks but because MS wants to push it's competing technology, Silverlight.

 

[gnasher729]

Admittedly being late the thread this question may have already been answered, but it's my understanding that most of Apple's GPU choices all the way back to the HD2400 offer H.264 decoding in hardware. Surely if the API is there OSX just needs an updated graphics driver from ATI or Nvidia and this is enabled?

Most cards don't support H.264 decoding in hardware. They have _some_ functionality that might help with _some_ aspects of h.264 decoding. And h.264 comes in several levels, where more functionality is added for better compression which requires more functionality in the decoder. If you have hardware that supports only the base level, and you have a video requiring more, then you can't use the hardware.

But when you say "OSX just needs an updated graphics driver": First they need to convince ATI and NVidia to update their driver. Drivers for graphics cards that have been sold long ago. When the developers are working hard on drivers for the next card that will make those companies actual money. Then the functionality in the driver has to be integrated into MacOS X. It can all be done, but it means other features that you might want will be gone, or the next version of MacOS X comes later.

You bought hardware, and you paid your money for the hardware that you bought and you thought it was worth it. Apple won't invest its developers' time to make your hardware better that you already paid for. These developers work to make the hardware better and more valuable that is not even in the stores yet, so that more people will buy them.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Just did a comparison last night while watching some netflix - Silverlight took up about 30% CPU (that's just the Silverlight "Safari internet plugin" in the activity monitor) and drove Safari up past 40% CPU.

Flash did the exact same thing, just slightly higher. 30-35% CPU on Flash (Safari Internet plugin), about 40% CPU for Safari while flash was playing video. The Flash plugin dropped to 20% while in full screen on youtube - I'm guessing because it wasn't running all the flash banner ads when you trigger it to full screen.

This was testing two large files - an entire 1 hour episode on Netflix, and a two and a half hour "documentary" on youtube. For me, watching video is a wash. I saw bad flash video performance on the Mac when the G5 and G4 were around, not so much on my Core 2 duo. No real complaints besides the stability of Safari when using any plugin.

Animated elements on screen still chug too hard on the mac, though. The same computer runs flash animations at a higher framerate and with less fan noise in windows/bootcamp.

 

[goosnarrggh]

3. Even if video acceleration were necessary, it's possible to do it without requiring hardware access as Adobe has demanded. Read up on OpenGL and Core Video.

CoreVideo does not address decoding compressed video.

Before any API calls to CoreVideo can be made, any compressed video file must have already been passed through a codec to yield raw frames of uncompressed video data.

OpenGL: CoreVideo is a layer that runs on top of OpenGL. OpenGL itself offers no additional capabilities in terms of converting compressed video into uncompressed video.

This new API allows the compressed video stream to be passed through a hardware codec, and the result is raw, uncompressed video frames. It does this through a controlled set of system calls -- it does not give any developer carte-blanche to start directly writing to any arbitrary hardware registers inside the GPU. It performs a completely different task than CoreVideo. But it certainly can (and indeed should) be used in concert with CoreVideo as part of a pipelined approach of taking compressed video as an input, then decompressing it into a stream of raw frames, and then sending the frames to a display device.

 

[hayesk]

I did look it up. After a dozen or so passionate defense speeches by Mac enthusiasts I actually found something that resembles a scientific approach:
http://yths.spacequadrat.de/schelske2009b.pdf

This Schelske person had a bunch of guys sit and click on OS X and Windows menus all day, measuring their performance. His conclusion was:

"Results show, that no saving of time for a pointing task is observed for both menu bar placements. The reason for this is a phase of the motion which does not comply to Fitts’ law, and outweigh the other phases which are consistent with the theoretical predictions of Fitts’ law."

I had to stop reading that study after finding some fatal flaws:
1. Small, non random sample size, and didn't accurately determine if they were literate or not. Everyone is familiar with a desktop interface these days, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are experts.
2. Mouse acceleration was turned off. Why? I don't turn it off on my Mac? Mouse acceleration, especially on larger screens, helps you take advantage of the infinite height menus.
3. The test they use fails to mimic real work - it's more like a clicking game.

I've observed the advantage of infinite height menus myself; this study is just an unsupported opinion with some math inserted to make it appear legitimate. I think they need a better (and bigger) selection of test subjects, and they need a better test.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Most cards don't support H.264 decoding in hardware. They have _some_ functionality that might help with _some_ aspects of h.264 decoding. And h.264 comes in several levels, where more functionality is added for better compression which requires more functionality in the decoder. If you have hardware that supports only the base level, and you have a video requiring more, then you can't use the hardware.

Amazing how Flash for Windows supports even bare basic sets like the GMA 500 to accelerate H264 and you're here telling me that's impossible.

But when you say "OSX just needs an updated graphics driver": First they need to convince ATI and NVidia to update their driver. Drivers for graphics cards that have been sold long ago. When the developers are working hard

ATI and NVidia do **NOT** (I cannot emphasize that enough) write the drivers for OSX. *Apple* does! I don't know how many times this has to be repeated on here, but I'm guessing a lot since it never seems to sink in. If Apple uses anything from ATI or Nvidia, it's the 1st generation example driver for the card. Nvidia in particular maintains universal drivers for Windows and Linux. This means that improvements made along the way for newer cards may also becomes available for older cards that can support the feature. Thus this notion that ATI or NVidia never update their drivers for older cards is PURE NONSENSE. They regularly update and optimize their drivers. But they cannot do it for OSX if Apple will not provide them with the underlying low-level information to make the drivers for OSX. Apple makes their own drivers specifically because they do not want ANYONE to know ANYTHING about their "top secret" OS beyond the underlining open BSD code. Nvidia and ATI simply supply the basic driver information to Apple so they can write their own drivers for OSX. If NVIDIA and ATI were maintaining the drivers, you would be seeing all kinds of optimization and updates just like you do for Windows and even Linux (the latter is a much smaller base than OSX so it makes no sense that Nvidia wouldn't maintain the OSX drivers if Apple would let them).

...on drivers for the next card that will make those companies actual money.

You bought hardware, and you paid your money for the hardware that you bought and you thought it was worth it. Apple won't invest its developers' time to make your hardware better that you already paid for.

A company that wants return customers *WILL* provide good support for their existing customers or those customers will not return. Your logic about only providing features for new paying customers is beyond flawed. It's a potentially fatal flaw to any company that chooses to ignore it. Lately, Apple has been screwing over their customers ever closer to the date they purchased it (Apple Care or not). The 8600M GT MBP I bought about 1.5 years ago has full H264 hardware capability, but Apple refuses to support the driver. Why in the world should I EVER buy another computer from Apple when that's the level of support I can expect from them? If I want OSX, I will build a Hackintosh in the future (already did it once with my new netbook which is half the price of an iPad with full OSX, USB ports, Flash and a 160GB hard drive). Screw Apple if they're going to be greedmongers and not support their customer base! Look at the new iPhone OS4. Apparently, the artificial cut-off lines for supporting hardware is getting shorter and shorter every year.

These developers work to make the hardware better and more valuable that is not even in the stores yet, so that more people will buy them.

That is hind-end backwards logic. You don't force people to buy new hardware by not supporting existing hardware. You entice people to buy new hardware with better/faster hardware and new features. The 8600M GT was capable of H264 hardware decoding the day I bought it, but Apple didn't support it. Why should I get screwed now by Apple when they were the ones that failed to deliver the goods on day 1? Those developers clearly weren't working hard enough! Apple has $40+ BILLION in cash reserves. I think they can afford to hire some more programmers to keep drivers up-to-date. Why should OSX get delayed due to things like the iPhone? Hire more programmers Apple! I'm so sick of hearing fanboy BS excuses as to why they cannot manage to provide up-to-date video card drivers and OS features like hardware acceleration that Windows had years and years ago (for goodness sake why isn't hardware acceleration used in Core Video???? There's NO EXCUSE for it not to be there in 2010!) What about those buying Mac Pros with better GPUs? They don't get hardware rendering either even on a brand new machine. Again, it's not the hardware that's lacking. It's Apple's software that is the problem. But the fanboys will blame it all on everyone but Apple.

 

[aiqw9182]

I just installed Flash 10.1 RC 2 on boot camp and after installation I opened FireFox and played a YouTube video. As soon as it started playing it crashed the entire ATI Catalyst Driver and froze the entire OS forcing me to hold the power button just to turn it off. What a joke.

 

[Mad Mac]

Fitts Law. Menu on top is much larger mouse target. Less physical and mental effort.

I keep seeing Fitts Law thrown around and zero studies to back it up relating to OS X. Some joker in another thread a few months ago kept going on about how great the OS X menu bar is and emphatically stated that decades of testing proved it. Yet he couldn't produce a single test showing it. Please show me a recent test done on multiple, high resolution monitors.

Infinite height is great if your goal is to just "throw" the pointer randomly to the menu bar. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. You still have to ensure fine control to select File, View, etc. Try doing that across two, three, four or more monitors repeatedly and see how ergonomic that is.

 

[Eidorian]

I just installed Flash 10.1 RC 2 on boot camp and after installation I opened FireFox and played a YouTube video. As soon as it started playing it crashed the entire ATI Catalyst Driver and froze the entire OS forcing me to hold the power button just to turn it off. What a joke.

Which version of the driver and on what GPU?

 

[aiqw9182]

Which version of the driver and on what GPU?

4850 in early 2009 iMac, it was the latest catalyst driver from here:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/note...-hd-4000/hd-4850-4870/Pages/hd-4850-4870.aspx

 

[cmaier]

I keep seeing Fitts Law thrown around and zero studies to back it up relating to OS X. Some joker in another thread a few months ago kept going on about how great the OS X menu bar is and emphatically stated that decades of testing proved it. Yet he couldn't produce a single test showing it. Please show me a recent test done on multiple, high resolution monitors.

No. It's not my job. You either believe it or not. Again, all I was responding to was the contention that the menubar on top was some bit of arbitrary Apple stubbornness. It's not.

I, for one, greatly enjoy not having to exercise fine motor control to use menus, but that's because I have RSI in both wrists and fingers.

 

[Max(IT)]

Really? That must explain then why Adobe has a so much bigger software portfolio than Apple - and that on more platforms than Apple.

I think this is just another stupid Steve Jobs marketing statement being parroted everywhere.

We all might not like the fact that Adobe's products are expensive, but strangely enough, the same people that hate Adobe for that still buy expensive, over-priced Apple products.

You might not like to pay the upgrade prices for small evolutionary improvements, but at the same time, people are paying for a new version of iLife, iWork and OS X every 18 months. And Apple's software also only has small evolutionary improvements and no quantum leaps.

What were the great new features of Snow Leopard again? Dropping PowerPC support? Oh. That's actually LOSING a feature. Oh, they increased the performance. Wow. At least they broke almost every application ever written for OS X with Snow Leopard - including most of their own software.

Apple obviously was too lazy to run its software through some serious QA testing.

We have a saying in Germany: "Wer im Glashaus sitzt, sollte nicht mit Steinen werfen." (Who sits in a glass house shouldn't throw stones.)

But I keep forgetting that Apple is more like a sect than a company. Facts are not welcome here.

Facts? Highlighted by the "King of the trolls" of this forum ?
Your post about Snow Leopard and Apple's Software upgrade policy is ridiculous and biased ...

 

[Max(IT)]

It is a problem for touch devices, but not an insurmountable problem for a touch-based player. Basic HTML- the stuff that runs fine on iDevice Safari now- also features functions like "hover over" and similar (functions designed to do something with interactions other than an explicit mouse click). In iDevices, the finger touch is a variation of the mouse click. A similar function has to occur: get over an actionable link or button and tell the computer that you want it to execute what is supposed to happen when you click/tap.

Flash also offers lots of this subordinate interactive functionality like "hover over." But a lot of the interactive functionality of Flash is still about clicking a spot on the screen to trigger an event. In the interactive presentation I shared as an example a few pages back, the sole bit of interactivity is clicking something on screen when it appears. Recognizing a tap as the equivalent of click is not an overwhelming challenge... just like it is not an overwhelming challenge to do the same in iDevice Safari "as is". It's all about a variation of how the player interprets actions- be they a mouse click or a finger tap.

BS!!! I don't know if you are lying on pourpose to makes things up, or you are ignorant in that matter, but to use Flash-based apps on a multitouch device you have to make changes on most of the apps out there.

 

[Max(IT)]

The workplace thing is a much more insignificant factor than price. Most people "who would rather use Macs" dismiss Macs because they've seen the pricetags, and the further away from the US you come, the more this is true. Macs are disproportionately expensive in some countries, and in yet more countries the average budget for a computer purchase is way below the average in the US. And it's not necessarily because they can't afford Macs, it's often because they don't think of computers as something so valuable. To them, a $1500 computer is like a $1500 vacuum cleaner, why blow that amount of money on a lowly household appliance?

Companies like Dell, HP and Acer are also much more 'omnipresent' internationally than Apple is. If you live in the US you're probably under the impression that Apple is as well represented abroad as they are at home. That they have Apple Stores everywhere, that they're running TV ads and so forth. I live in Sweden, and Dell + HP are as present here as they are in the US, if not moreso. Massive sales, massive advertising campaigns, TV ads, the works. But I've never seen a TV ad from Apple, and we have no Apple Stores, only Apple Premium Resellers. iPhones/iPods are popular but Macs have little penetration outside the world of creative professionals.

Also, their support sucks over here. Dell and others offer next business day on-site support for peanuts, even if you live in some tiny village in a remote part of Sweden, while Apple wants a fortune for AppleCare, i.e. the permission to pack up your computer and drive it 60 miles to the nearest Premium Reseller, who will then take weeks to fix the machine. Their organization here is like some damn banana republic.

And if that's the Mac situation in Sweden, one of the richer countries in the world, imagine how it is in places like Poland, Ukraine, The Philippines, Albania...

Mac is simply not on the map for most people in the world, for completely different reasons than "help, my employer crammed a PC down my throat".

Sweden may be' one of the richer counties in the World, but do you realize that your market share is simply ridiculous ? There are 9 million people in Sweden ....

I like your country very much, and Norway too, but we are 60 million in Italy, and we have 4 Apple Stores (in the main cities) and hundreds of Premium Resellers. Sad but true, Apple is a business company that needs revenues

 

[Eidorian]

**** just got real.

 

[MorphingDragon]

I have RSI in both wrists and fingers.

Have you considered using a Logitech Trackman and/or an ergonomic keyboard?

http://www.logitech.com/en-gb/mice_pointers/trackballs/devices/4751

My sister and I got a Trackman and the Microsoft Comfort Keyboard for my granddad who has arthritis in his finger joints, it has helped him significantly.

(If you want a truly ergonomic keyboard have a look at this novelty http://www.keybowl.com/whatis.html)

**** just got real.

So Flash was previously imaginary or stuck in a time paradox?