RIM unveils 7-inch 'PlayBook' tablet set to launch in early 2011 - Page 10

As of now, my understanding is that it will only be Web apps + Flash. Whether they will later add native apps hasn't been addressed, I don't think. Obviously, they went this direction because, with a new OS, they have no time to put a native SDK together.

The content for these devices are still called books and when you read a book and this may come in a nice leather case that folds over giving it a book-like appearance. In any event, I think the usage of book will change to match this change in our culture as these "e-readers" become more popular.



As I and others (probably you, too) have stated in this thread, even though we are calling it vaporware, we fully expect RiM to have a final product shipping next year. The HW is the easy part, what remains to be seen is how the SW works. I'll be surprised if it's as slick as the protohyping ad suggests.

PS: I think it's cool how this has a built-in pico projector that can work on pretty much any surface, as seen in the video. That part was real, right?¡

Mmm.... maybe onto something. It looked more like watching a TV than watching a video on a computer screen -- don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. One of the Dual CEOs clutches a PlayBook with what looks a color printout pasted on the surface (it never changes). He walks around for a few minutes with this "ClutchBook" and never once raises it to look at or show the screen... Odd.

But he made a big deal that you could play a video to an attached TV while showing something else on the device's screen -- According to him, it was because of the Dual cores and the "1 GigaHertz of RAM".

Actually, that's a nice feature I'd like to see in the iPad for AirPlay.



I think you've hit on what bothers me most -- At this stage, the should be able to show some hardware doing something other than displaying a fixed image or a video. After all, they are only 3-4 months from their initial rollout.... and the (analysts) expected sales of 6-300 million units in 2011.




Ha! That is one fancy-shmancy pico projector, all right -- rear projection on any moving 3D surface that intelligently mirrors the content and masks the display area to the surface.

Mmm... the phrase "rear-projection" creates an unusual mental image-- kinda' like: "a titter ran through the crowd".

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What if Apple never invented the iPhone or iPad, where would all these companies be today?

Good question.

I think the natural evolution of technology would take care of part of it -- eventually.

But it takes someone with Steve Jobs' prescience, audacity (and the stones) to make it happen -- it's kinda' magical!

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What if he was never put up for adoption, would his drive had been the same?
What if he had never met Woz, would he not had seen the potential of consumer focused computing so early on or at all?

These cant be answered but I do wonder how much of greatness and tragedy is dumb luck. In Jobs case, there are too many successes for him to have Forrest Gumped his path in computer history, and lets assume that the first opportunity was luck, he still would have had to have seen the opportunity and decided to focus on it. Jobs wasnt the only one who knew Woz and know what he was capable of.

I know Ive seen an opportunity and then quickly dismissed it with that would be too much work or this is so obvious that if it hasnt been by now I must be missing something. Really the opposite end of the megalomaniac entrepreneur personality though I like to play one on internet forums.

PS: I blame my lack of drive and focus on my good upbringing. Damn you mom and dad!¡

I put a timeline of the AppleTV announcement to release earlier in the thread as an example of how long this could take to come to market. In that example I noted that Apple had a shoe in with every part of that product being something they were very familiar with, and it still took 6 months despite the working demo and was still delayed.

And how is development of Flash 10.1 for this OS?

That's the big question, isn't it?! As I understand the announcement material, It appears that Flash is the UI and Presentation Services (Cocoa Touch for iOS fans) for the Tablet, with QNX as the underpinning (analogous to the common lower levels of iOS and OS X).

It is quite possible that the reason RIM had nothing to show is the Flash-QNX hybridization was not up to snuff.

Given that QNX has some history and Flash 10.1 mobile does not -- I suspect that the Flash components were incomplete (or performed poorly.

And, if you can't show the UI and Presentation components -- ya' got nothin' to show!


EDIT: To be fair here, combining Flash with an OS is different than adding a browser plug in or developing a Flash app... likely, it is much more complex and requires different skills.

I have had past (web) dealings with a couple of the Adobe people working on this: Mike Chambers and Christian Cantrell -- both are top-notch and probably are the "experts" in the Flash side of things. If anyone can make it happen, it's these guys.

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Thank you.

Ah... Then my fears are confirmed. Does anyone else besides me see a potential problem with this?

One which comes to mind are how will developers make money? Also, how will they control security/ malware/ etc.

And of course... On PlayBook, (almost) all your apps are belong to Flash. Mmm hope them Flash on QNX runs real smooth and low power draw/heat...

Well, I said Web apps, because of the technologies used, and because I'm too lazy to write out HTML/JavaScript/CSS, but I think it's actually pretty much the same as webOS apps, which aren't really web apps, even though they use web technology. I'm not 100% certain about that, though.

But, yeah, the Flash part will be a fun time, I'm sure.

I think the reason (necessity?) for the 1GHz Dual Core CPU and 1 GB RAM is to mitigate Flash performance issues.

What remains to be seen is if they can resolve the battery issue.

It's been a while, but AIR, Flash runs like a continuous movie clip with the ability to detect and handle mouse (touch) events and some other events. Even when idle, the "clip" is running.

If they just skin QNX with Flash (or vice versa) then both will be competing for resources to perform similar, overlapping functions. Because of the hardware, that's probably OK (at least as an interim solution).

But, to resolve the battery issue, they will need to shut down some of the hardware (display, CPU Core, a block of RAM, etc). Who (QNX or Flash) detects when and what should be done, and who actually does it-- requires some interoperability between Flash and QNX at a much lower level than that in which Flash usually runs (an app using OS services or a plugin app using browser services).

If they are successful, there are some interesting potentials:

1) An OS with Flash built-in to provide the UI and presentation components

2) Flash with an integral OS

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No. Listener events, do not run, like a "movie" whatsoever.

Isn't there a timeline and a stage?

What provides the animation when a Flash app is idling, listening for events?

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dude. timelines are really passe. you don't need, a timeline for any of that. But you need to understand the way things are done now, it's changed radically in the last few editions. Some projects I have been involved with, I don't go near the timeline.
You don't need a 'movieclip', or timeline for the new event model.

Duda!

OK, then what is responsible for the high CPU usage when a Flash app/window/whatever is open and idling--- not getting any events?


Are you saying that things like this aren't necessary?

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/arti...ng_on_air.html

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That was after he was "questioned" on his earlier post (74) where he clearly implied Apple was just as guilty of using fake videos. .... just another attempt to deflect the blame, imo. Don't take my word for it .... check post #74.

He made an outrageous claim and has spent the rest of the thread ignoring that he even made that claim. IMO, that's an irresponsible thing to do. that's all.

Dick,
as you should well know, any application dev platform requires knowledge of optimization, keeping memory use low, etc. etc.. They -all- have it. It's my view a good number of bad flash sites out there is because of very, poor coding practices.

I don't get the high cpu usage on windows, and I used to with pre 10.1 pre 10.1 was not good, this is why they've begun with a completely rewritten player. It was about freaking time, thx to SJ for lighting the fire finally.

OK!

I just checked -- I use click2Flash, but have 2 YouTube Flash windows open -- one paused, one finished with the "Just Watched" Flash Display. I use latest OS X, Latest Safari with the latest GPU assisted Flash Plugin. Here's the stats:






Contrast this with one from a year ago on the same hardware. 1 Flash window had been open, but that window had been closed:






That's a significant improvement -- the difference between unusable and acceptable.

The CPU and memory figures are great-- I wonder about the threads, though.


So, say I am willing to accept your assertions (or at least consider them)..

How does Adobe or the end user avoid the bad Flash sites or apps?

Should Adobe, after appropriate public notice, enforce a backward compatibility limit (or some such) in the player that assures acceptable performance/quality of the apps?

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Well, its amazing. The miracle has been done. Hats off. Well done, as we know that hard work always pays off, after a long struggle with sincere effort its done.
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robet
stretching exercises

I don't know the answers really to those questions. But it is a tough one, and bad developers will cause all sorts of problems.

I'd expect some pretty interesting html5/js/canvas etc etc monsters to take out my browser some time down the road. With luck, that hopefully won't be a serious problem. But I do recall all the horrible JS stuff in the 90s. Mouse followers blah blah.

Perhaps adobe putting out IDEs that enforce better garbage collection, memory management, I don't know.

Come to think of it, basically this tablet is going to be predominantly Flash-on-QNX. It's more risky the more I think of it.

The old skool Flash was where everything had to be running in an animation, and you poll for events every 1/25 of a second (eg. running 25 fps). As Groovetube mentions now it's more of something where there are listeners for events, you don't need the timeline running. But Flash player still has to be *listening* for events.

There are two forces at work. As Groovetube mentions, on the dev side, there is smart coding and so on. On the other side though, pre-10.1 as we know things are not very pretty no matter what the dev does. The problem is not so much the code but as soon as you start having animations, etc. the render engine starts to chew up CPU. I don't think listeners and idling is the issue as much as animation and sound.

Put all this on top of QNX and you've got an interesting but risky situation. Everyone is going to go nuts on the animation of apps because they can and because of current Flash habits. On top of that the PlayBook OS itself is supposed to be intensely animation heavy and especially, transparency-compositing-heavy. As Flash designers and devs know, once you have transparency, be prepared for some CPU nom nom nom. Throw in on-the-fly drop shadow, blur and other render effects on a per-element(symbol) basis. Mmm...

Basically what happened is Adobe and RIM got together based on their desire to stick it up Apple. RIM of course wants to be back in the limelight and prevent tablets and iPhones from invading their business domain. Adobe is pissed that a major, popular mobile OS almost completely locked them out. They want to get back on Flash on mobile in a big way, who knows how Froyo adoption and Flash-on-Froyo is doing. So Adobe goes to RIM, promises some very, very, very big things, they scheme, and voila. A Flash-driven, RIM developed iPad killer.

It will be good times to see how this plays out.

Adobe is smart, in terms of betting on both Android and RIM. But time will reveal the payout from the gamble.

I have dabbled in animation and compositing with FCP and Motion... everything from simple transitions, titles, tracking, rotoscoping, particle generation, morphing, tweening... could someone 'splain to me how you do some of these things without a timeline.


For purposes of this question, ignore the old, bad, legacy Flash and focus specifically on 10.1 or state-of-the-art Flash.

Let me make sure I understand.

1) Flash remains an interpreted language, correct?
2) Instead of being poll-driven, it is interrupt-driven (listeners)
3) when a listener is triggered, an "animation" runs
4) the animation is coded in ActionScript and must be interpreted
5) once interpreted the graphics generation is handled by a real-time render engine


Emphasis mine:

I understand the attractions/costs to use dynamic, real-time animation at the app level.

But, you are saying that the QNX/Flash hybrid OS is going to do animations at the system level.

Certainly that won't be ActionScript and interpreted then rendered-- rather some very tight code like CoreAnimation on iOS... right?



Here's a Flash from the past, ca 1994:


I re-watched the PlayBook video paying close attention to the animation.

I think that, now, I better understand-- they were showing off the OS's animation/presentation capability.

To be fair, Apple and Android Device mfgrs do this in their presos, to some extent -- but it is always in conjunction with a user...

The PlayBook video didn't show any user interaction, not even one finger -- Don't touch that touch screen!

Seriously, it was just one big [Flash] movie... more of a cartoon, actually.


Above, you said: "Put all this on top of QNX and you've got an interesting but risky situation."

It appears, at least for now, that RIM/Adobe have fallen victim to the "animation" temptress, and forgotten the user.

Will they be able to kick the habit?



Just for the record, I ran the PlayBook vid at 720P, full screen, on a 24" iMac 2.8 GHz, Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD2600 GPU. The Flash plugin spiked from about 12% CPU up to about 104% CPU for the duration

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There will ALWAYS be good programmers and bad programmers.

Go and look at QNX CAR, the entire HMI is done with flash.

Apple rules

yes. it was a big day for RIM and they did make a good impression to many people.

with several people trying to discredit RIM, absolutely. i welcome the iPad, PlayBook and all other tablets to the marketplace; it's healthy for the consumer.

You can code it, obviously there's an internal timer, but you don't have to touch the timeline to generate x, y, alpha, etc. parameters for objects on the screen. That's as far as my understanding. Similar to how in HTML/CSS/Javascript you can create fade-ins and animation without an explicit timeline. Basically code is in loops, every xth of a second change a certain parameter, or, generate new movie clips on the fly (that's how you create pretty particles/movie clips programatically). If someone knows how this is now done in a better way, do share.


This was what I was bitching about in another thread. 10.1 was predominantly about GPU decoding of videos. Then now they're talking about 3D acceleration. All this does not fully address the issues you raised above. I still say IMO the real-time render engine is the most CPU intense part of Flash, in most cases where highly complex math is not being done.


Another poster mentioned above it will be more tightly integrated. Let's hope so. It will be the first time it is done for Flash at any significant scale.


I know you're kinda concerned about this, so am I. Basically it was a mock-up and teaser video that RIM just really needed to get out the door as a massive PR and Marketing stunt. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and see what eventuates. The whole video was probably composited in After Effects or maybe even a Discreet tool.


Well, this is what they think they can/ need to do to fight the iPad. Not many people actually "get" Apple. Sure stuff from Apple and the UI is cool and sexy, but it is rarely outright frivolous.


I think your GPU is not supported for 10.1 hardware decoding. You'll have to check the release notes. Yet another issue with 10.1. It really wasn't that superb of an update, it is no panacea.

Well, I look forward to the PlayBook. We need other companies to step up to the plate. Apple alone is not enough (in terms of quantity of units to meet people's needs) to bring us to this next level of computing, and certainly things like holographics somewhere down the line.

A good comment on that blog: "This is clearly FUD intended to try and prevent Blackberry folks from moving to iPad between now and Q1 2011, when this device is supposed to be out."

Bingo.

That said, I still look forward to what they come up with. If it fails, at least we'll have a laugh. If it doesn't, it will be interesting.

You can register for the SDK - I have. I'll let you know when it ships!