Posts by Don Christie
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Good good good. One comment, your graphics folks (like ours) love these washed out font colours. My eyes are dimmer than theirs...
Another, just test the site on a fairly old phone. Much easier to read the articles and comments. Don't know if that was deliberate but it works. Congrats (again) Cactuslabs
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Giovanni
And I'd be the first to cheer if we discovered an hitherto unknown reservoir of Marxists.
Well, we do, sort of. Some ended up with the Greens and others ACT. I think Steven Franks was last seen as a National candidate in Wellington, so maybe he is on his way back in that direction.
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Oh the joys of passing one country's labour laws others.
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Hey, it's Friday:
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Russell, that was a great (extended) interview with Allan Bollard. Some fascinating snippets, especially where he refused to admit reading David Haywood's blog to help inform during the 2008 crisis (although the truth was obvious to all).
Congratulations.
And whoever it was that tweeted that @nzben is "full of shit" is, well, full of shit :-)
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Warning: contains pieces of Apple
Thanks, makes me feel like I got my own personal shout out :-)
Because it is Friday and I *am* cool, I give you Tom Jones (who is the new old cool)...
"It's just like standing next to the tube coming in..."
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Fark. I thought I had signed off, but wait, there is more...
It was the iPad than banned Flash, but more tellingly along with Apple's change in what tools you could use to develop App store apps. That was well after youtube an Vimeo did their html5 video stuff. Firefox has been developing against the <video> tag for an age...
...and, sad to say (I am old and not at all cool), I cut my teeth on developing Apple apps in the early 1980s and on blowing up their external floppy drives. So I have some history with the platform...
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Ok, I past the boring point a long time ago so I leave you with this plea from someone on twitter
Can publishers follow Apple's lead and only publish Apple hype to Apple devices?
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Hi Russell. Thanks for explaining the iPad ads.
Russell is allowed to like them
Of course he is. But he is also an independent commentator, with a great track record of bringing balance and insight to his audience. That's why we love him so :-) Personally I find those two things missing from his reviews of Apple stuff.
HTML5 ... for a long time Apple delayed the release of HTML5 (along with others) and opposed the inclusion of video tags. They were still pushing Quicktime as a platform and claiming IP over video formats (which they still do through a company they have shares in).
Youtube and Vimeo were offering HTML5 video well before Apple banned Flash from their platforms.
BTW, the controls Apple put over users are nothing to what they do to developers, especially when they change the T&Cs mid-stream.
Couple of posts from Rob O'Callahan to look at. The first explains why resisting ActiveX in Firefox enabled a whole lot of new innovation to take place...off the MS platform. Second is a review of the way developers are at risk using the Apple store.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/activex_all_ove.html
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/04/more_apple_evil.html
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Rich, don't think the OSS bit is particularly relevant. I *am* however an InternetNZ councillor and so I certainly buy into the idea that the founders of the Internet deliberately designed it to be "open and uncapturable" and that this is fundamentally what has made the Internet such a runaway success. People like Russell also believe this and have championed that cause brilliantly.
In the past there have been times when the Internet has become in danger of becoming closed and captured, as someone mentioned, there are cycles. But preventing this happening does not happen by accident, Firefox applied these principles and challenged Microsoft's control of the way folks accessed the Internet, just in time.
The danger with the near constant and overwhelming flow of Apple hype, coupled with their successful product lines, means that there is a danger of a new hegemony appearing and one that wants to control and restrict how users interact with technology *and* content. Apple could make products that would be just as successful without these inane and ultimately dangerous restrictions.
They fact that they don't right now does not mean that they would not respond to pressure in the future. So, can't we shoot for the best of both worlds? Great Apple tech and freedom to use it how we want to?