Shane Fagan » Apple

RE: Thoughts on flash

Shane — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:51:08 +0000

I fully agree with Steve Jobs about the problems with flash.
All of his points are correct but one of his points is very hypocritical.

He complains about Flash being a proprietary technology when most of the apple platform is proprietary.
He also complains about Adobe having complete control over the Flash platform, when apple themselves used their control over their products to block Flash coming to the iPhone OS platform.

The technology points are very correct Flash causes so many problems when browsing for me personally. Since I moved to AMD64 I have problems almost every time I browse sites that use Flash.

Adobe said that Flash is an open spec and that anyone can deploy it but it will never be as complete as Adobe’s own. If Flash is to survive the crossover to HTML5 they will need to make an open source version and allow community contribution to make it stable. Adobe said a few months ago (I cant remember the link) that the reason they cant open source it is because they have a H.264 decoder included in it. Just strip it out plain and simple.

I love some Adobe products like Flex, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. They are all fantastic programs but until Adobe get smart they wont survive without their main product. Plus I really hope they release the creative suite on Linux.

Ubuntu 9.10 are we ready?

Shane — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:39:06 +0000

I was wondering what effect a release of Ubuntu 9.10 being released at the same time as Windows 7 and Mac “Snow leopard”.
First thing we have to ask is are we ready?
I think no but Karmic+1 we will be in my opinion. Some things that other operating systems have by default we are missing.
Totem and Rhythmbox need to be replaced very soon. I think this is the most clear problem to most users switching. Maybe Banshee is the answer but its not ready yet maybe Karmic+1.
As we have seen with the most recent Mac releases and also Windows Vista looks matter. We dont have anything really nice looking and running without problems. Gnome-Shell should fix that but its being released in April (ish) too so it may not make it into Karmic+1.
I think we really need the app centre. Its in development but id love to have it in before Karmic+1, ill even help out if they need anything simple done. The problem with the current system is you get people using synaptic package manager and breaking their systems. Advanced tools aren’t needed by 90% of users so maybe we should remove synaptic and make users install it if they need something more advanced.
We should have media sharing in some form DAAP or UPNP or icecast (by default?).
Its great that the media are starting to see Ubuntu and linux in general as a good alternative. I just dont believe this October is going to be our time to make a real push against Apple or Microsoft but April or next August we should be ready for the battle ahead.

Theora and Vorbis, HTML and Google

Shane — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:38:39 +0000

What an interesting company Google is they announced that they are buying On2. On2 is the company that provided the basis for OGG Theora by open sourcing the VP3 codec. Google, Mozilla and Opera all supported the addition of Theora to be included in the HTML 5 standard because they are free (Libre and Price) but were shot down by Apple and Nokia. Have a look here for more info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_controversy
Nokia’s opposition confuses me because they support Qt and the KDE project and they are open source. Apple support H.264 and dont want to use anything but H.264. Microsoft are even more interesting to me because they are completely missing from the HTML 5 discussion altogether. Maybe they dont need anything new because they will just use silverlight (and their users will use adobe flash)
For anyone who hasnt read the spec for HTML 5 look here.
Here is the quote that is causing all the trouble:

It would be helpful for interoperability if all browsers could support the same codecs. However, there are no known codecs that satisfy all the current players: we need a codec that is known to not require per-unit or per-distributor licensing, that is compatible with the open source development model, that is of sufficient quality as to be usable, and that is not an additional submarine patent risk for large companies. This is an ongoing issue and this section will be updated once more information is available.

If Google open sources the On2 codecs or simply offers an assurance that they wont sue for patents (This seems kinda similar to Microsoft’s community promise) there wont be anything stopping Theoras inclusion in HTML 5. The even more interesting thing is this http://www.youtube.com/html5. It is a HTML 5 prototype of youtube using the video tag with an mp4 file.
So Google is looking into replacing the Flash video with something different and maybe buying On2 will free Theora from the “submarine patent risk”. Its already been included in Firefox and its coming soon on Chrome and Opera so its gaining ground but still its a shame that Internet Exporer (Which is the default for Windows and is the most used in the market) and Safari (Which is the default for Mac) dont support it.
Google is a great supporter of Open Source so hopefully we will hear some good news from Google soon about Theora.
The only thing I want is to not use Adobe Flash anymore its way too heavy and should die with the introduction of not only the video tag but also using Java Script and SVG files.
On the Ubuntu front we should really make use of HTML 5 in http://video.ubuntu.com/ and http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/

Update: Found this post to the W3 mailing list from a Microsoft employee have a look http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/0389.html

Reply to Ballmers recent interview

Shane — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:28:32 +0000

I read and listened to an interview from Steve Ballmer:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10301028-16.html
Ok we all can agree that Mac is quite expensive but its great looking and works well. He says windows is high quality low price but we all know that vista is low quality and medium price. When you pay for an enterprise linux solution (From the likes of Novell or Red Hat ..etc) you get what Ballmer mentions as “High Quality, Low Price”.
He says that the development of linux distros is chaotic. Linux is developed at a speed that it may seem chaotic but really its speed of development and innovation and this is because of its community development model. The Kernel is the best example of this quick but innovative development cycle.
He also mentioned that when windows 7 comes out it will have all this cool new hardware but he failed to mention a lot of this new stuff will work on linux eventually too. I can agree with the point that PCs get the best hardware and Apple are always a little behind but thats because they only are one company and Microsoft doesnt make hardware so they cant judge Apple in that regard.
He also said that because of IP reasons that linux is not free and I have not paid a thing for Ubuntu so in that respect he is dead wrong. Id like to also mention that maybe you dont have to pay for linux with money but if you like it try to contribute in any way you can.
Its funny that Ballmer started off with “Linux its all about linux, we have been competing with linux for a number of years”. So he see us as a competitor and that is great. He says that windows has a fixed design and that is what makes windows great but its quite the opposite, it will follow its own design and push it to the end even if its bad. Linux is evolution, if we see a flaw in a design we change it or replace it with something better. Free as in beer and freedom is a lot better than a “fixed design” and “low” (but not really) in cost.
I think this interview like all Ballmer interviews reveals how out of touch Microsoft is. He sees Windows as low cost but its not compared to Linux distros and Mac is expensive but you pay for the stability and the good software built in (although Macs have their flaws http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32210255/ns/technology_and_science-security/)
I actually I enjoyed listening to the interview and I think any publicity is good publicity so even though he is dead wrong on many levels he revealed one thing that was of use and that is that he sees linux as a threat.