It sounds to me like you had some sort of role with Flash and/or Adobe, and are simply trying to defend what is, by most intelligent accounts, a POS piece of software.
Perhaps by most hysterical accounts. Flash served its purpose at the time. It filled a void and allowed developers to write once view anywhere and consumers to watch video and play games when no other solution was available. Its usefulness is for all intents and purposes over at this point. I still have one or two uses for it but only in cases where there is no other solution. It is still a very powerful application, and as I said earlier that was its main problem - too powerful. It is almost like its own operating system. Sure it is a resource hog but so are a lot of stand alone applications and that is what you need to compare it to. It is so versatile that you could probably write a program similar to Photoshop entirely in Flash.
Everything I've seen shows the Watch UI is a success. That doesn't mean the product will be a success, but from the look and feel we've seen for over half a year now I don't see how that the SW in and of itself could be a failure.
I am not too keen on the bubbly home screen.
Some of the interface graphics - like the beating heart or the animated emoticon - are horrible as well. I thought Apple had abandoned the skeuomorphic fad? I'd like to see it go in the next software update.
Indeed.
The round analogue watch face that gets shown whenever they want to make the watch look elegant couldn't be more skeuomorphic. Still unsatisfactory, as it is so small and compromised in a rectangle.
As to Solip's comment that the software already looks a success, we still haven't seen it being used in anger, as the demo in the keynote was on rails. It was also never used on the wrist, which will be the real test.
This revelation that Lynch was the lynchpin doesn't inspire confidence.
Perhaps by most hysterical accounts. Flash served its purpose at the time. It filled a void and allowed developers to write once view anywhere and consumers to watch video and play games when no other solution was available. Its usefulness is for all intents and purposes over at this point. I still have one or two uses for it but only in cases where there is no other solution. It is still a very powerful application, and as I said earlier that was its main problem - too powerful. It is almost like its own operating system. Sure it is a resource hog but so are a lot of stand alone applications and that is what you need to compare it to. It is so versatile that you could probably write a program similar to Photoshop entirely in Flash.
Fair enough. I truly appreciate this response. I remember very well some of the early Flash-based stuff, without which video and animation on the Internet would have been unthinkable (my early favorite was the brilliant Australian animated character, Lenny Loosejocks. Available only via Flash).
But a serious question. Why was Flash not able to keep up, i.e., become less of a resource hog so that it could continue to be as relevant in the mobile world? Why was Adobe unwilling or unable to take it to the next level?
But a serious question. Why was Flash not able to keep up, i.e., become less of a resource hog so that it could continue to be as relevant in the mobile world? Why was Adobe unwilling or unable to take it to the next level?
I think they did with Air. Flash was always designed to be a desktop application like Director and Authorware. They forced it on the Internet but it was never a good fit.
How do we know Kevin Lynch is a mistake? Are people just assuming that because his name is associated with Flash?
We don't, I was just responding to the "trust in Apple"-esque arguments.
Though I thought his presentation of ?Watch was probably the worst presentation I've ever seen from an Apple staffer, both in content and delivery.
I agree about the presentation.
It was really geeky; he spoke way too fast—fast speaking can be okay, but it needs to be balanced with slower speech and pauses, ie more nuanced; it was unfocused; there wasn't a direct, clear message getting across; he never wore the Watch; and he didn't engage with the audience.
Perhaps by most hysterical accounts. Flash served its purpose at the time. It filled a void and allowed developers to write once view anywhere and consumers to watch video and play games when no other solution was available. Its usefulness is for all intents and purposes over at this point. I still have one or two uses for it but only in cases where there is no other solution. It is still a very powerful application, and as I said earlier that was its main problem - too powerful. It is almost like its own operating system. Sure it is a resource hog but so are a lot of stand alone applications and that is what you need to compare it to. It is so versatile that you could probably write a program similar to Photoshop entirely in Flash.
My recollection is that it would have had a chance if Adobe had been serious about meeting Steve Job's basic requirement early on; to be able to view full sites with a mobile version of Flash. Adobe promised but never seemed to deliver, although eventually they did, though ultimately too late.
At some point Apple decided that they could no longer depend on Adobe to build a mobile version of Flash (not the lite version) and this reinforced Steve's opinion that development tools should not be in the hands of third parties, who didn't necessarily have Apple's interest in iPhone development.
To some extent, you can blame this on Motorola and Metrowerks Codewarrier, which was popular much earlier for development work, but Motorola lost interest in compilers, and this effected developers and Apple. Presumably, Xcode, would be the beginning of Apple's quest to control all development tools, and the certainly played into Steve's desire not to let developers get distracted with tools, in this case Flash, that might at some point become unimportant to their creators.
Personally, I think that Flash was seen to have a large potential for monetization by Adobe and they pushed it too hard in niches that it wasn't well suited.
Wow, talk about being dramatic. His presentation was fine. He never fucked up, he was natural, and I was pretty impressed with the demo. he's no Jobs in charisma, but noone is, but I've seen much worse presenters and much worse demos at Apple Keynotes. Also, what they showed of the Apple watch UI was very limited.
Yeah, a photos app on your watch. That was useful. He made the UI seem fiddly and bloated with nonsense cruft that no one would use, and he was totally lacking in any personality for one of Apple's biggest consumer product introductions. If you thought what he showed was limited then you were watching a different presentation to me; he showed far too much, so much crap that the product seemed more Samsun that Apple, full to the brim with rubbish "we could, so we did" features. He fudged it, a stereotypical tech guy trying and failing to do the job of a marketing guy for a company famous for nailing marketing. Terrible presentation if you ask me. You can disagree, but I hardly think I'm being dramatic, lots of people were saying the same thing at the time; the segment that most needed Apple to pull out the pizzazz barely limped across the line.
Perhaps by most hysterical accounts. Flash served its purpose at the time. It filled a void and allowed developers to write once view anywhere and consumers to watch video and play games when no other solution was available. Its usefulness is for all intents and purposes over at this point. I still have one or two uses for it but only in cases where there is no other solution. It is still a very powerful application, and as I said earlier that was its main problem - too powerful. It is almost like its own operating system. Sure it is a resource hog but so are a lot of stand alone applications and that is what you need to compare it to. It is so versatile that you could probably write a program similar to Photoshop entirely in Flash.
It is powerful, but it hasn't proven to be efficient on resources. You note that other apps are also resource hogs, but when doing something like streaming a videos Flash Lite simply wasn't there when we needed it. Could they made Flash Lite better for mobile devices to pick up that slack well before the original iPhone? I imagine they could have if they had invested the time and effort, but all we know for certain is they didn't.
Now, 8 years later, Flash is being obsolesced. We have Google announcing last month that Flash would be moved to a secondary streaming option for videos on the desktop. I wonder what the performance load difference is.
And all that is before we even consider the security issues that have long plagued Adobe Flash. As you state, it's very powerful and practically an OS unto itself in its complexity, but that's clearly a big reason why it's inefficient and insecure. I'm not pooh-poohing Adobe Flash as a whole, and no one should because we've all been a fan of what Flash can do over the years, but those days are gone, and while there are still plenty of things Flash can do that are still either difficult or impossible with webcode (i.e.: HTML/CSS/JS), it's on the way out.
I expect hope something more efficient and powerful comes in to make coding robust websites easier then using only webcode.
Flipboard recently moved away from the DOM to support HTML's Canvas element. There are pros and cons here.
To some extent, you can blame this on Motorola and Metrowerks Codewarrier, which was popular much earlier for development work, but Motorola lost interest in compilers, and this effected developers and Apple. Presumably, Xcode, would be the beginning of Apple's quest to control all development tools, and the certainly played into Steve's desire not to let developers get distracted with tools, in this case Flash, that might at some point become unimportant to their creators.
Apple was always going to control development tools. One of NEXTSTEP's many strengths was the integrated developer environment, ProjectBuilder, which became Xcode.
The round analogue watch face that gets shown whenever they want to make the watch look elegant couldn't be more skeuomorphic. Still unsatisfactory, as it is so small and compromised in a rectangle.
And this is still what comes to my mind when I see it.
The round analogue watch face that gets shown whenever they want to make the watch look elegant couldn't be more skeuomorphic. Still unsatisfactory, as it is so small and compromised in a rectangle.
And this is still what comes to my mind when I see it.
Sure it is a resource hog but so are a lot of stand alone applications and that is what you need to compare it to.
Interesting how every new computing technology goes from its initial lean phase to its final fat phase, then starts over.
Mainframes that helped put man on the moon had 8MB of memory that was doled out efficiently and sparingly among hundreds of terminals.
As their capacity for storage increased, so did the memory requirements of their software.
Minicomputers followed the same trend up until their unplanned obsolescence at the hands of micros.
Original microcomputer operating systems ran in 4k, 8k,16k.
The first Mac operating system utilized a 64k library toolbox in ROM, operating in 128k RAM, that blew away the graphics capabilities of 640k MS DOS systems.
Windows went from highly efficient 3.1 to bloated Vista and 8.
Now iOS has evolved to run in a 64 bit address space and the Apple Watch begins anew.
Make no mistake: the Apple watch operating system is the beginning of the next big thing in computing.
If there is going to truly be an "internet of things", it will be an OS like the watch's that will drive the future.
Which is good, because Microsoft and Samsung need something new to copy. . .
Even if the Apple watch is a sales flop, it will lay the groundwork for future innovation in software user interface and operating system design.
Lynch has been present during the gestation of groundbreaking software. It's not his fault Flash entered its fat phase. All systems do.
It was also never used on the wrist, which will be the real test.
This revelation that Lynch was the lynchpin doesn't inspire confidence.
You're right, I'm sure it hasn't occurred to Apple to test the watch software from the wrist during development. You should get in touch and let them know, just in case they forgot.
He fudged it, a stereotypical tech guy trying and failing to do the job of a marketing guy for a company famous for nailing marketing. Terrible presentation if you ask me. You can disagree, but I hardly think I'm being dramatic, lots of people were saying the same thing at the time; the segment that most needed Apple to pull out the pizzazz barely limped across the line.
Apple typically gets the software leads to demo the software, not random "marketing guys". Forstall used to demo iOS. Fegherini OSX (and now iOS too). iWork/iLife apps were always demoed by those in charge of that. It's what I always liked about those demoed, they were done by those intimate with the software and development process, not a "marketing guy" with notes. It's sad that's what you want apple to do, just to add some fakeness to it. It's also sad that you feel the need to justify your opinion with the "lots of people" bullshit. You and I know that every single keynote gets millions of comments of hatred, no matter what Apple does. "Barely limped". Sorry, enough with the bullshit. Not everyone is a fucking God of giving presentations, nor do they need to be.
Some of the interface graphics - like the beating heart or the animated emoticon - are horrible as well. I thought Apple had abandoned the skeuomorphic fad? I'd like to see it go in the next software update.
And I thought we'd finally got past folk dropping 'skeuomorphic' into conversations when it didn't really apply.
You know that picture of a heart you see on Valentine cards? Well believe it or not, an actual human heart doesn't look anything like that.
Comments
Perhaps by most hysterical accounts. Flash served its purpose at the time. It filled a void and allowed developers to write once view anywhere and consumers to watch video and play games when no other solution was available. Its usefulness is for all intents and purposes over at this point. I still have one or two uses for it but only in cases where there is no other solution. It is still a very powerful application, and as I said earlier that was its main problem - too powerful. It is almost like its own operating system. Sure it is a resource hog but so are a lot of stand alone applications and that is what you need to compare it to. It is so versatile that you could probably write a program similar to Photoshop entirely in Flash.
Yeah. I still don't understand the hiring of Lynch.
It was to get Flash running on the iWatch.
Get it? ha ha.
Everything I've seen shows the Watch UI is a success. That doesn't mean the product will be a success, but from the look and feel we've seen for over half a year now I don't see how that the SW in and of itself could be a failure.
I am not too keen on the bubbly home screen.
Some of the interface graphics - like the beating heart or the animated emoticon - are horrible as well. I thought Apple had abandoned the skeuomorphic fad? I'd like to see it go in the next software update.
Indeed.
The round analogue watch face that gets shown whenever they want to make the watch look elegant couldn't be more skeuomorphic. Still unsatisfactory, as it is so small and compromised in a rectangle.
As to Solip's comment that the software already looks a success, we still haven't seen it being used in anger, as the demo in the keynote was on rails. It was also never used on the wrist, which will be the real test.
This revelation that Lynch was the lynchpin doesn't inspire confidence.
Fair enough. I truly appreciate this response. I remember very well some of the early Flash-based stuff, without which video and animation on the Internet would have been unthinkable (my early favorite was the brilliant Australian animated character, Lenny Loosejocks. Available only via Flash).
But a serious question. Why was Flash not able to keep up, i.e., become less of a resource hog so that it could continue to be as relevant in the mobile world? Why was Adobe unwilling or unable to take it to the next level?
But a serious question. Why was Flash not able to keep up, i.e., become less of a resource hog so that it could continue to be as relevant in the mobile world? Why was Adobe unwilling or unable to take it to the next level?
I think they did with Air. Flash was always designed to be a desktop application like Director and Authorware. They forced it on the Internet but it was never a good fit.
How do we know Kevin Lynch is a mistake? Are people just assuming that because his name is associated with Flash?
We don't, I was just responding to the "trust in Apple"-esque arguments.
Though I thought his presentation of ?Watch was probably the worst presentation I've ever seen from an Apple staffer, both in content and delivery.
I agree about the presentation.
It was really geeky; he spoke way too fast—fast speaking can be okay, but it needs to be balanced with slower speech and pauses, ie more nuanced; it was unfocused; there wasn't a direct, clear message getting across; he never wore the Watch; and he didn't engage with the audience.
Perhaps by most hysterical accounts. Flash served its purpose at the time. It filled a void and allowed developers to write once view anywhere and consumers to watch video and play games when no other solution was available. Its usefulness is for all intents and purposes over at this point. I still have one or two uses for it but only in cases where there is no other solution. It is still a very powerful application, and as I said earlier that was its main problem - too powerful. It is almost like its own operating system. Sure it is a resource hog but so are a lot of stand alone applications and that is what you need to compare it to. It is so versatile that you could probably write a program similar to Photoshop entirely in Flash.
My recollection is that it would have had a chance if Adobe had been serious about meeting Steve Job's basic requirement early on; to be able to view full sites with a mobile version of Flash. Adobe promised but never seemed to deliver, although eventually they did, though ultimately too late.
At some point Apple decided that they could no longer depend on Adobe to build a mobile version of Flash (not the lite version) and this reinforced Steve's opinion that development tools should not be in the hands of third parties, who didn't necessarily have Apple's interest in iPhone development.
To some extent, you can blame this on Motorola and Metrowerks Codewarrier, which was popular much earlier for development work, but Motorola lost interest in compilers, and this effected developers and Apple. Presumably, Xcode, would be the beginning of Apple's quest to control all development tools, and the certainly played into Steve's desire not to let developers get distracted with tools, in this case Flash, that might at some point become unimportant to their creators.
Personally, I think that Flash was seen to have a large potential for monetization by Adobe and they pushed it too hard in niches that it wasn't well suited.
Wow, talk about being dramatic. His presentation was fine. He never fucked up, he was natural, and I was pretty impressed with the demo. he's no Jobs in charisma, but noone is, but I've seen much worse presenters and much worse demos at Apple Keynotes. Also, what they showed of the Apple watch UI was very limited.
Yeah, a photos app on your watch. That was useful. He made the UI seem fiddly and bloated with nonsense cruft that no one would use, and he was totally lacking in any personality for one of Apple's biggest consumer product introductions. If you thought what he showed was limited then you were watching a different presentation to me; he showed far too much, so much crap that the product seemed more Samsun that Apple, full to the brim with rubbish "we could, so we did" features. He fudged it, a stereotypical tech guy trying and failing to do the job of a marketing guy for a company famous for nailing marketing. Terrible presentation if you ask me. You can disagree, but I hardly think I'm being dramatic, lots of people were saying the same thing at the time; the segment that most needed Apple to pull out the pizzazz barely limped across the line.
Very well said, Crowley.
It is powerful, but it hasn't proven to be efficient on resources. You note that other apps are also resource hogs, but when doing something like streaming a videos Flash Lite simply wasn't there when we needed it. Could they made Flash Lite better for mobile devices to pick up that slack well before the original iPhone? I imagine they could have if they had invested the time and effort, but all we know for certain is they didn't.
Now, 8 years later, Flash is being obsolesced. We have Google announcing last month that Flash would be moved to a secondary streaming option for videos on the desktop. I wonder what the performance load difference is.
And all that is before we even consider the security issues that have long plagued Adobe Flash. As you state, it's very powerful and practically an OS unto itself in its complexity, but that's clearly a big reason why it's inefficient and insecure. I'm not pooh-poohing Adobe Flash as a whole, and no one should because we've all been a fan of what Flash can do over the years, but those days are gone, and while there are still plenty of things Flash can do that are still either difficult or impossible with webcode (i.e.: HTML/CSS/JS), it's on the way out.
I
expecthope something more efficient and powerful comes in to make coding robust websites easier then using only webcode.Flipboard recently moved away from the DOM to support HTML's Canvas element. There are pros and cons here.
To some extent, you can blame this on Motorola and Metrowerks Codewarrier, which was popular much earlier for development work, but Motorola lost interest in compilers, and this effected developers and Apple. Presumably, Xcode, would be the beginning of Apple's quest to control all development tools, and the certainly played into Steve's desire not to let developers get distracted with tools, in this case Flash, that might at some point become unimportant to their creators.
Apple was always going to control development tools. One of NEXTSTEP's many strengths was the integrated developer environment, ProjectBuilder, which became Xcode.
The round analogue watch face that gets shown whenever they want to make the watch look elegant couldn't be more skeuomorphic. Still unsatisfactory, as it is so small and compromised in a rectangle.
And this is still what comes to my mind when I see it.
A true classic. Is it for sale?
Interesting how every new computing technology goes from its initial lean phase to its final fat phase, then starts over.
Mainframes that helped put man on the moon had 8MB of memory that was doled out efficiently and sparingly among hundreds of terminals.
As their capacity for storage increased, so did the memory requirements of their software.
Minicomputers followed the same trend up until their unplanned obsolescence at the hands of micros.
Original microcomputer operating systems ran in 4k, 8k,16k.
The first Mac operating system utilized a 64k library toolbox in ROM, operating in 128k RAM, that blew away the graphics capabilities of 640k MS DOS systems.
Windows went from highly efficient 3.1 to bloated Vista and 8.
Now iOS has evolved to run in a 64 bit address space and the Apple Watch begins anew.
Make no mistake: the Apple watch operating system is the beginning of the next big thing in computing.
If there is going to truly be an "internet of things", it will be an OS like the watch's that will drive the future.
Which is good, because Microsoft and Samsung need something new to copy. . .
Even if the Apple watch is a sales flop, it will lay the groundwork for future innovation in software user interface and operating system design.
Lynch has been present during the gestation of groundbreaking software. It's not his fault Flash entered its fat phase. All systems do.
It was also never used on the wrist, which will be the real test.
This revelation that Lynch was the lynchpin doesn't inspire confidence.
You're right, I'm sure it hasn't occurred to Apple to test the watch software from the wrist during development. You should get in touch and let them know, just in case they forgot.
He fudged it, a stereotypical tech guy trying and failing to do the job of a marketing guy for a company famous for nailing marketing. Terrible presentation if you ask me. You can disagree, but I hardly think I'm being dramatic, lots of people were saying the same thing at the time; the segment that most needed Apple to pull out the pizzazz barely limped across the line.
Apple typically gets the software leads to demo the software, not random "marketing guys". Forstall used to demo iOS. Fegherini OSX (and now iOS too). iWork/iLife apps were always demoed by those in charge of that. It's what I always liked about those demoed, they were done by those intimate with the software and development process, not a "marketing guy" with notes. It's sad that's what you want apple to do, just to add some fakeness to it. It's also sad that you feel the need to justify your opinion with the "lots of people" bullshit. You and I know that every single keynote gets millions of comments of hatred, no matter what Apple does. "Barely limped". Sorry, enough with the bullshit. Not everyone is a fucking God of giving presentations, nor do they need to be.
, they were done by those intimate with the software and development process, not a "marketing guy" with notes.
This is where I feel Schiller's presentations fall flat.
Yes, I read somewhere that Lynch stopped iTunes Radio being released in the UK as soon as he heard you wanted it. He is a bad man.
And I thought we'd finally got past folk dropping 'skeuomorphic' into conversations when it didn't really apply.
You know that picture of a heart you see on Valentine cards? Well believe it or not, an actual human heart doesn't look anything like that.
And I suspect the design of the UI is down to Ive, not Lynch.