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My wife is dubious. She doesn't like the lack of Flash. She doesn't like trying to type on the software keyboard. Her parents, definite technophobes, were inti

My wife is dubious. She doesn't like the lack of Flash. She doesn't like trying to type on the software keyboard. Her parents, definite technophobes, were intimidated by it. The first thing they wanted to look at was a slideshow on smugmug.com, some pictures of their granddaughter. Also Flash. They looked at me incredulously as I explained to them that you couldn't view the slideshow on the iPad. They tried to use the navigation on the website, but the navigation links were small and adjacent to the shopping cart link. At the height of their frustration, I pulled out my MBP so they could watch the slideshow on it. The thought of explaining to them how to set up their iPad to sync photos gives me chills. OTOH, my 3-year-old LOVES it. She can use a mouse and a trackpad, but she has to concentrate and make deliberate movements. On the iPad, she flies. She can get to her favorite apps and watch her videos in a flash. There are lots of downsides to having this device in a toddler's hands, and I'd never let her use it unsupervised, but that's an aside from the usability issue.

ubernostrum 16y ago
a slideshow on smugmug.com, some pictures of their granddaughter I have a feeling that if the iPad sells well, the "why do it in HTML when we could do it in Flash" style of site will die out. It's no consolation right now, of course, but I wouldn't complain if that ends up happening (and, really? Flash just to show some pictures one after another?).
- blhack 16y ago
  Ehh...I'd say that, if anything, web developers don't want apple dictating how they design their websites. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people aren't HN readers and really don't care that adobe has changed their CS5 pre-order app to flash. They like going to smugmug and having it just work.
  - MWinther 16y ago
    But apparently, having Adobe dictating the very same thing is fine, then?
    - blhack 16y ago
      Assume adobe released a hardware platform and it didn't support javascript. If somebody were to suggest that the entire web development community was going to abandon javascript in order to allow adobe's platform to reach the saturation required to make it the "standard", then your argument might make sense. As it stands, the iPad exists in a state that makes it almost unusable for the overwhelming majority of web users (at least as anything more than a novelty, much like web browsing on the iPhone)
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        Perhaps unusable as their only machine. That by no means makes it merely a novelty.
        Tichy 16y ago
        But it makes it useless as "the computer for mom".
        glhaynes 16y ago
        I was responding to a claim that the iPad is "almost unusable for the overwhelming majority of web users (at least as anything more than a novelty [...])". If mom's savvy enough to use a computer aside from her iPad then she can use that computer to get to the sites she wants to go to that her iPad doesn't support. If she's only savvy enough for an iPad, then she's still better off being able to get to the non-Flash parts of the web than nothing.
      - sesqu 16y ago
        Graceful degradation. People would absolutely suggest that, and charge dearly for implementing it. Companies would pay for some of it, and in 5 years, it would either die out or there would be some sort of "cgi on rails"-framework that automates some minimal version of that, that looks horrendous and sorta-kinda works. Probably ASP.net. Then we'd have hobbyists and ux professionals hand-crafting everything on a lamp-like stack, and everyone else would get along with upgrading backends. ECMAScript may be google's horse in the race, but it's still just an add-on.
  - buster 16y ago
    Also people tend to forget that Adobe pretty much owns the whole creativity/content creation chain. Magazines, Books, Websites, Images, HTML, CSS, JS, Flash, whatnot. All those things are currently done pretty well with Adobes products alone. Granted, i'm no magazine editor and i don't do flash. I wouldn't use Dreamweaver for writing websites, but i can understand quite well when designers like to use Adobes tools as they provide them with pretty much everything they need.
    - blhack 16y ago
      And this is something that I cannot believe apple seems to have overlooked. They haven't just pissed on some little obscure software company, they've pissed on the software company that the people they need to win over (content creators, designers) use for everything.
  - qeorge 16y ago
    Definitely true. We've all been barking up the "don't use Flash unless you need it" tree for years, but it hasn't really made a difference. Bottom line seems to be that people love the way Flash sites look. If we can achieve that differently, bully for us, but most people probably won't notice.
revorad 16y ago
That's a very interesting experience. and watch her videos in a flash. Delicious irony.
Tichy 16y ago
Funny you mention your 3-year-old. I have been thinking exactly that, that there might be a way to create fun apps for babies and kids. I am firmly against wooden toys and want to give my kid a computer asap (OK, nothing against wooden toys, but you get the idea). So I wondered if the iPad is durable enough for a kid. Ultimately I expect cheaper variants to appear, with special kids durability (of course not from Apple, but maybe Android or sth like that). Would be interested in hearing more stories about kids on pads.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  "I am firmly against wooden toys and want to give my kid a computer asap" Less chance of splinters.
  - mikepurvis 16y ago
    Is that actually a concern? I can't tell if you're being flippant or serious...
    - jimbokun 16y ago
      Flippant.
- Psyonic 16y ago
  As is, $500 for a 3-year old's toy seems a little crazy. By her a leap-frog instead? But cheaper, more durable options would make a lot of sense.
  - pohl 16y ago
    Isn't it more likely that the pad would belong to the parents and a $1.99 app would be the child's toy?
    - Psyonic 16y ago
      You'd think so, but this is the 3rd review I've read where the adult was relatively disappointed in the iPad, but OH BOY does his child love it. It's starting to make me think its for kids.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mortenjorck 16y ago
I still don't understand why Apple ever decided to play up the iPad's web browsing experience. I've written on this at length before, but even apart from Flash, the desktop web is simply not compatible as-is with a tablet interface. The iPad will make a fantastic browser for the tablet web, if and when that web is built, but today it's a poor substitute for a mouse and keyboard when websites expect those.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- necubi 16y ago
  I don't think you've actually used the iPad to browse the web. Personally, I block flash on my desktop and rarely find reason to unblock it, so the lack of flash doesn't bother me. Meanwhile, surfing on the iPad is in general so nice that I've been doing it even when near my computer.
  - zzzmarcus 16y ago
    I have an iPad and I don't really miss Flash too much, but I do find other aspects of web browsing much less efficient. Tabs are much more cumbersome. Instead of just clicking a tab, you've got to zoom out, pick your window and zoom back in. It's a lot more motion. Scrolling, typing, copying and pasting are also not as simple. Touch scrolling is nice, but it's a lot more movement. Typing and copy/paste are just slower. I still type slower on the large iPad keyboard than on the much smaller iPhone keyboard. Another problem I have with it is that if I'm filling out a form, for example a message on Facebook, and I need to switch to email to copy something and come back to Safari and paste it in, there is no guarantee that the Facebook message I started typing will still be there. It's a little frustrating. I'm sure all these kinks will eventually be worked out, but as it is, I still find myself grabbing my Macbook Pro when I'm going to be any "serious" browsing or my iPhone when I'm just looking something up really quickly. I really like the iPad for some things, but in my experience, browsing hasn't been all it was cracked up to be.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    It's a great experience for browsing a web page. But here's something I had to do when I had my iPad, which sucked with it, but is great on desktop: We have a wiki and I needed to move a bunch of comments to work items in our bug database. So on my desktop I would have just have two instances of the browser open and would literally read from the wiki and create new work items in the bug database. On the iPad this was painful. There's no side by side view (that I could get to work at least), and it seemed to reload the bug database every time I'd toggle back to that page!!! I don't want a reload, just show me the page I was looking at 10 seconds ago! Not a good experience.
skeletonjelly 16y ago
"She can get to her favorite apps and watch her videos in a flash. " Pun intended?

ubernostrum 16y ago

a slideshow on smugmug.com, some pictures of their granddaughter I have a feeling that if the iPad sells well, the "why do it in HTML when we could do it in Flash" style of site will die out. It's no consolation right now, of course, but I wouldn't complain if that ends up happening (and, really? Flash just to show some pictures one after another?).

blhack 16y ago
Ehh...I'd say that, if anything, web developers don't want apple dictating how they design their websites. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people aren't HN readers and really don't care that adobe has changed their CS5 pre-order app to flash. They like going to smugmug and having it just work.
- MWinther 16y ago
  But apparently, having Adobe dictating the very same thing is fine, then?
  - blhack 16y ago
    Assume adobe released a hardware platform and it didn't support javascript. If somebody were to suggest that the entire web development community was going to abandon javascript in order to allow adobe's platform to reach the saturation required to make it the "standard", then your argument might make sense. As it stands, the iPad exists in a state that makes it almost unusable for the overwhelming majority of web users (at least as anything more than a novelty, much like web browsing on the iPhone)
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      Perhaps unusable as their only machine. That by no means makes it merely a novelty.
      - Tichy 16y ago
        But it makes it useless as "the computer for mom".
        glhaynes 16y ago
        I was responding to a claim that the iPad is "almost unusable for the overwhelming majority of web users (at least as anything more than a novelty [...])". If mom's savvy enough to use a computer aside from her iPad then she can use that computer to get to the sites she wants to go to that her iPad doesn't support. If she's only savvy enough for an iPad, then she's still better off being able to get to the non-Flash parts of the web than nothing.
    - sesqu 16y ago
      Graceful degradation. People would absolutely suggest that, and charge dearly for implementing it. Companies would pay for some of it, and in 5 years, it would either die out or there would be some sort of "cgi on rails"-framework that automates some minimal version of that, that looks horrendous and sorta-kinda works. Probably ASP.net. Then we'd have hobbyists and ux professionals hand-crafting everything on a lamp-like stack, and everyone else would get along with upgrading backends. ECMAScript may be google's horse in the race, but it's still just an add-on.
- buster 16y ago
  Also people tend to forget that Adobe pretty much owns the whole creativity/content creation chain. Magazines, Books, Websites, Images, HTML, CSS, JS, Flash, whatnot. All those things are currently done pretty well with Adobes products alone. Granted, i'm no magazine editor and i don't do flash. I wouldn't use Dreamweaver for writing websites, but i can understand quite well when designers like to use Adobes tools as they provide them with pretty much everything they need.
  - blhack 16y ago
    And this is something that I cannot believe apple seems to have overlooked. They haven't just pissed on some little obscure software company, they've pissed on the software company that the people they need to win over (content creators, designers) use for everything.
- qeorge 16y ago
  Definitely true. We've all been barking up the "don't use Flash unless you need it" tree for years, but it hasn't really made a difference. Bottom line seems to be that people love the way Flash sites look. If we can achieve that differently, bully for us, but most people probably won't notice.

revorad 16y ago

That's a very interesting experience. and watch her videos in a flash. Delicious irony.

Tichy 16y ago

Funny you mention your 3-year-old. I have been thinking exactly that, that there might be a way to create fun apps for babies and kids. I am firmly against wooden toys and want to give my kid a computer asap (OK, nothing against wooden toys, but you get the idea). So I wondered if the iPad is durable enough for a kid. Ultimately I expect cheaper variants to appear, with special kids durability (of course not from Apple, but maybe Android or sth like that). Would be interested in hearing more stories about kids on pads.

jimbokun 16y ago
"I am firmly against wooden toys and want to give my kid a computer asap" Less chance of splinters.
- mikepurvis 16y ago
  Is that actually a concern? I can't tell if you're being flippant or serious...
  - jimbokun 16y ago
    Flippant.
Psyonic 16y ago
As is, $500 for a 3-year old's toy seems a little crazy. By her a leap-frog instead? But cheaper, more durable options would make a lot of sense.
- pohl 16y ago
  Isn't it more likely that the pad would belong to the parents and a $1.99 app would be the child's toy?
  - Psyonic 16y ago
    You'd think so, but this is the 3rd review I've read where the adult was relatively disappointed in the iPad, but OH BOY does his child love it. It's starting to make me think its for kids.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

mortenjorck 16y ago

I still don't understand why Apple ever decided to play up the iPad's web browsing experience. I've written on this at length before, but even apart from Flash, the desktop web is simply not compatible as-is with a tablet interface. The iPad will make a fantastic browser for the tablet web, if and when that web is built, but today it's a poor substitute for a mouse and keyboard when websites expect those.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
necubi 16y ago
I don't think you've actually used the iPad to browse the web. Personally, I block flash on my desktop and rarely find reason to unblock it, so the lack of flash doesn't bother me. Meanwhile, surfing on the iPad is in general so nice that I've been doing it even when near my computer.
- zzzmarcus 16y ago
  I have an iPad and I don't really miss Flash too much, but I do find other aspects of web browsing much less efficient. Tabs are much more cumbersome. Instead of just clicking a tab, you've got to zoom out, pick your window and zoom back in. It's a lot more motion. Scrolling, typing, copying and pasting are also not as simple. Touch scrolling is nice, but it's a lot more movement. Typing and copy/paste are just slower. I still type slower on the large iPad keyboard than on the much smaller iPhone keyboard. Another problem I have with it is that if I'm filling out a form, for example a message on Facebook, and I need to switch to email to copy something and come back to Safari and paste it in, there is no guarantee that the Facebook message I started typing will still be there. It's a little frustrating. I'm sure all these kinks will eventually be worked out, but as it is, I still find myself grabbing my Macbook Pro when I'm going to be any "serious" browsing or my iPhone when I'm just looking something up really quickly. I really like the iPad for some things, but in my experience, browsing hasn't been all it was cracked up to be.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  It's a great experience for browsing a web page. But here's something I had to do when I had my iPad, which sucked with it, but is great on desktop: We have a wiki and I needed to move a bunch of comments to work items in our bug database. So on my desktop I would have just have two instances of the browser open and would literally read from the wiki and create new work items in the bug database. On the iPad this was painful. There's no side by side view (that I could get to work at least), and it seemed to reload the bug database every time I'd toggle back to that page!!! I don't want a reload, just show me the page I was looking at 10 seconds ago! Not a good experience.

skeletonjelly 16y ago

"She can get to her favorite apps and watch her videos in a flash. " Pun intended?