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People really shouldn't lie outright in marketing materials: iPaper Requires Download: No iPaper Requires Installation: No Last time I checked, Flash was sti

by boucher 19y ago

People really shouldn't lie outright in marketing materials: iPaper Requires Download: No iPaper Requires Installation: No Last time I checked, Flash was still a plugin, not a built in feature of the web. I'm just as likely to not have flash on my system as a PDF reader. Cost to create documents is perhaps the most misleading: iPaper: Free, PDF: $299, Office: $150 There are a billion ways to create PDFs for free, including built in support in every application in Mac OS X. There are also free ways to create office compatible formats. Most of the rest of this is distasteful, but less of an outright lie. Certainly PDFs can be embedded as links, not to mention, there are ways to embed on the page itself, with the supporting plugins. "Size of the application" is silly, given that you download Acrobat Reader once (and pretty much everyone has it), instead of downloading iPaper on every page load. Of course, again, Mac OS X has this all built in.

zaidf 19y ago
1. Actually this shows that practical people, not lawyers, wrote the product description. Flash's widespread adoption means that a vast majority of Internet users don't have to install anything to use iPaper. http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers... 2. There are tools for free to create PDFs, just as there are tools to do almost everything for free versus its paid alternative. That does not mean iPaper has to compete with the free tools. They are competing with Adobe Acrobat which remains a paid application.
- boucher 19y ago
  "Flash's widespread adoption means that a vast majority of Internet users don't have to install anything to use iPaper" I could argue the exact same thing about PDF. Although Adobe does not seem to have published adoption statistics, I would bet that they roughly equal that of flash. Not to mention, I haven't come across a computer that didn't understand PDF files in many years. Beyond the obvious distrust of statistics coming directly from Adobe, there are new platforms, like the iPhone, where flash is not even available, and PDF is. "There are tools for free to create PDFs, just as there are tools to do almost everything for free versus its paid alternative. That does not mean iPaper has to compete with the free tools. They are competing with Adobe Acrobat which remains a paid application." They are competing with Acrobat Reader, which is a free application. This is not a tool for generating documents, its a tool for viewing/embedding them. That's why you have to create PDF, DOC, TXT etc. to get anything into iPaper in the first place.
  - zaidf 19y ago
    Scribd takes that into account by stating PDF "sometimes" requires download. I think that is fair--most marketers would just say "yes" instead of "sometimes." Also, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume the penetration of Flash as greater than Acrobat Reader. "This is not a tool for generating documents, its a tool for viewing/embedding them." Let's back up to the original goal of PDF: fixed-layout document sharing with built-in security. To generate PDF files, Adobe SELLS Acrobat to general PDF files. iPaper seems to be a) implementing the original goal of PDF, b) with better usability, and c) with no cost to convert.
    - tlrobinson 19y ago
      I can't speak for Windows, but Mac OS X has always had PDF viewing and creation built in. It's as easy as selecting the "Print to PDF" button in any print dialog. 100% penetration on OS X. Personally, I prefer a straight up link to a PDF. My browser can display it inline, and if I want to save it to my hard drive I just option-click.
      - zaidf 19y ago
        Acrobat Reader on Windows remains slow and unstable. Also, it hasn't ever come pre-installed for me. Don't forget Mac's market share is still tiny compared to Windows, especially with businesses where PDF is used most.
        tolmasky 19y ago
        Yeah, but if you care about the mobile market at all, then PDF is the way to go, given that Mobile Safari is the number 1 mobile browser and it supports PDF natively (as well as .doc)
    - boucher 19y ago
      "Can Acrobat Reader convert/read documents not in PDF format" No. As such, this is a legitimate point for iPaper to make. They support more formats. Of course, many of the document creation programs do support conversion to PDF, but this is still a nice thing about iPaper. But, it has nothing to do with the cost of creating documents. The cost to create an iPaper document is not zero, its undefined. You cannot create a document in iPaper, period. You must create that document some other way, be it MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, or one of their free alternatives, or a text editor. If anything, they're advertising the cost to share a document. Which is free for every other type of document too, unless that person doesn't have a program to read the given file format, which is obviously the real thing iPaper should be trying to sell users on.

by boucher 19y ago

zaidf 19y ago

1. Actually this shows that practical people, not lawyers, wrote the product description. Flash's widespread adoption means that a vast majority of Internet users don't have to install anything to use iPaper. http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers... 2. There are tools for free to create PDFs, just as there are tools to do almost everything for free versus its paid alternative. That does not mean iPaper has to compete with the free tools. They are competing with Adobe Acrobat which remains a paid application.

boucher 19y ago
"Flash's widespread adoption means that a vast majority of Internet users don't have to install anything to use iPaper" I could argue the exact same thing about PDF. Although Adobe does not seem to have published adoption statistics, I would bet that they roughly equal that of flash. Not to mention, I haven't come across a computer that didn't understand PDF files in many years. Beyond the obvious distrust of statistics coming directly from Adobe, there are new platforms, like the iPhone, where flash is not even available, and PDF is. "There are tools for free to create PDFs, just as there are tools to do almost everything for free versus its paid alternative. That does not mean iPaper has to compete with the free tools. They are competing with Adobe Acrobat which remains a paid application." They are competing with Acrobat Reader, which is a free application. This is not a tool for generating documents, its a tool for viewing/embedding them. That's why you have to create PDF, DOC, TXT etc. to get anything into iPaper in the first place.
- zaidf 19y ago
  Scribd takes that into account by stating PDF "sometimes" requires download. I think that is fair--most marketers would just say "yes" instead of "sometimes." Also, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume the penetration of Flash as greater than Acrobat Reader. "This is not a tool for generating documents, its a tool for viewing/embedding them." Let's back up to the original goal of PDF: fixed-layout document sharing with built-in security. To generate PDF files, Adobe SELLS Acrobat to general PDF files. iPaper seems to be a) implementing the original goal of PDF, b) with better usability, and c) with no cost to convert.
  - tlrobinson 19y ago
    I can't speak for Windows, but Mac OS X has always had PDF viewing and creation built in. It's as easy as selecting the "Print to PDF" button in any print dialog. 100% penetration on OS X. Personally, I prefer a straight up link to a PDF. My browser can display it inline, and if I want to save it to my hard drive I just option-click.
    - zaidf 19y ago
      Acrobat Reader on Windows remains slow and unstable. Also, it hasn't ever come pre-installed for me. Don't forget Mac's market share is still tiny compared to Windows, especially with businesses where PDF is used most.
      - tolmasky 19y ago
        Yeah, but if you care about the mobile market at all, then PDF is the way to go, given that Mobile Safari is the number 1 mobile browser and it supports PDF natively (as well as .doc)
  - boucher 19y ago
    "Can Acrobat Reader convert/read documents not in PDF format" No. As such, this is a legitimate point for iPaper to make. They support more formats. Of course, many of the document creation programs do support conversion to PDF, but this is still a nice thing about iPaper. But, it has nothing to do with the cost of creating documents. The cost to create an iPaper document is not zero, its undefined. You cannot create a document in iPaper, period. You must create that document some other way, be it MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, or one of their free alternatives, or a text editor. If anything, they're advertising the cost to share a document. Which is free for every other type of document too, unless that person doesn't have a program to read the given file format, which is obviously the real thing iPaper should be trying to sell users on.