is it a magical, amazing, revolutionary device that changes the paradigm as we know it?

Nah, it's like the old one with knobs on. But multitouch knobs, obviously.

The first Honeycomb in the UK:
MOTOROLA Xoom Internet Tablet - Now available for pre-order

This might be interesting when then there are some Apps for it. At the moment there seem to be very very few.

http://www.slashgear.com/ios-apps-65000 ... -02137192/

Also it could do with being about half the price. If Apple are ripping users off what does that say about Motorola's prices?

Actually for a change the advert bigs up the iPad in general but is fairly modest about the iPad 2 (well by Apple standards)

I have a YouTube link for those that hate Quicktime.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Apple#p/u/0/Z_d6_gbb90I


CC

The first sentence of the article lays the foundation to an argument for the author's opinion and it is just wrong.

People buy Androids not because they are cheap, they buy them because the are not made by Apple! That means that they get flash for the web, memory cards, they get to root their phones without consequences from the manufacturer, they get variety of handsets, physical keyboards or whatever it is they want that Apple doesn't have.
Not long ago most of you were laughing at Androids pointing out it's shortcomings and now Androids outsell every other platform on the market. It may have taken 3 years to come up with Android phone that is comparable to Iphone but it did happen.

In tablets however, it took only 12 months to come up with a tablet that can compete with Ipad. I know some people will not buy a tablet that is not Apple just because it is not Apple. But some will buy the Android tablet for the very same reason.

Xoom costs £500 and ipad £430. For me the flash itself would be worth £70, not to mention the memory card that is added bonus. I think tablet without flash is like a fish tank without fish.

Regarding apps, I think you are missing the point. On the mobile phone I admit, you need them. But on the tablet?! You have a really good browser so I don't think you needs apps as much. And who says there are no apps for it anyway?! Excepts Steve Jobs of course, but he says a lot of things...

What does everyone do that needs Flash? I block Flash on my desktop machine because it's so frickin' annoying and buggy. I rarely miss it.

Where are all the iPad users bemoaning the lack of Flash? Despite eschewing the "core internet technology", the shiny things have sold in container loads.

I'm not after an argument. You make valid points, and any competition for Apple will be a good thing. The problem is, it's been a year, and hardly anything that remotely approaches the iPad has made it to the shelves. By the time the competition catches up, Apple's already launched something new!

That is true, and I don't mean this in an 'odd' gloomy way, but what will happen when Jobs isn't around? Share prices dropped while he wasn't around and rose again when he was seen at the launch.

I just wonder how it'll all pan out.

Videos come (mostly) in flash. If I am to spend £400-£500 on a tablet I want a proper browsing experience. I don't want to be forced to switch my main pc on just so I can watch a video on some website. Simple as that. I can forgive my phone not having flash, but not my tablet.


I can't honestly answer that question without being called names afterwards so...


Why do you think they haven't caught up? That Xoom is better than Ipad for me but I guess most apple fans will disagree with me. If you are expecting "Apple like" product from anybody else than Apple you will wait forever.

7" Galaxy Tab was a let down because it used OS built for phones, not for tablets. Xoom, Galaxy tab 10.1 and Optimus 3D from LG use Honeycomb made specifically for tablets.
Playbook from RIM will have new QNX OS and views so far suggest that it is very good.

YouTube and Vimeo both provide alternatives to Flash delivery if there is no plugin detected in the browser. There's also the issue of battery life with Flash - something even Adobe acknowledge.



Fair enough!



I keep reading about the iPad competition, I keep seeing demonstrations of the latest thing to emerge from <insert big name here>, but they don't seem to be offering anything that the iPad doesn't already do. I don't see them in the stores, either.

It seems I got it wrong.


Read more: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/motorol ... z1FXQRsIaj

So they will cost the same according to this.

Yes, but not all videos are on those two. When I open random link from Google news I want to be able to see a video to that story, that kind of thing matters to me.

That's not to point and it's been beaten to death in previous months. And yet I think flash is a must have on a tablet.



You said "haven't caught up" first and now you are complaining about not "offering anything anything new". Not quite the same thing, wouldn't you agree?

And they do offer new things, I mentioned them already. Maybe you just don't need them yourself.
Give them a month and you will be able to buy them.

I’m in two minds over Flash. I certainly don’t miss it on my iPad, and I have extensions installed on my desktop (and laptop) browsers to ensure that only the Flash I want to run runs. I’m sick of adverts pulling down audio and video, eating into my bandwidth, slowing stuff down. And why, oh, why do adverts always arrive first - their sluggish content creating a time differential between me clicking on a link and me getting to read what the link referred me to? Disabling Flash has made browsing the web a faster, more pleasurable place - even on machines where I CAN run it.

Flash is a seductive mistress to website owners, promising all manner of stuff from video, audio, panoramic scenery, slideshows and so on. All of these can be achieved with the newer HTML spec, and as long as your browser supports them, you’re in gravy. The browser, armed with JavaScript and some rather nifty CSS and HTML can do the heavy lifting. No need for the processor burning pain that Flash can cause.

You want exakples? I can give you examples. I mentioned panoramas. IT just so happens that I create these, and if you have a suitable Flash equipped browser, then this link will give you an example:
http://www.worldofpaul.com/panoramas/acecafe.html
HOWEVER, if you are running Safari on a PC, a Mac or (gulp) and iPad or an iPhone, you will get the very same thing. This time, it’s achieved with HTML, JavaScript and CSS. On an iOS device, you can tap and drag to scroll around.

JavaScript and ActionScript (which is used in Flash) are pretty similar. It would not take too much effort for a Flash developer to move from writing Flash stuff to writing the same kind of things with browser available technology. Here is Lemmings, lovingly recreated using DHTML stuff. Not a hint of Flash anywhere.
http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

Other uses include the embedding of fonts on web pages. Again, this can be done in CSS using @font-face. Embedding fonts in Flash (for example for use in SiFR like tools) bring with them the same licensing restrictions as they would with using pure CSS, so there is no real benefit to using Flash here either. There are enough font embedding formats to let browser from 10 years ago happily work, and, yes, they work on the iPad. The key here is not to crowbar some horrible Flash-based hack onto the page, but to use modern techniques and allow the page to degrade gracefully.

Far be it for me to “feed the Trolls”, but Apple has posted some rather lovely HTML5 alternatives to the regular Flash fare that is out there in internet land. It]s well worth a look to see what is possible. An HTML 5 supporting browser is advisable, BTW.
http://www.apple.com/html5/

The onus is shifting - once, yes, Flash was essential if you wanted a web experience, but that was only because it was compensating for the deficiencies that HTML, JavaScript and appalling non-compliance that certain browsers had. Much like a hybrid car, it’s plugging a gap which will one day be filled by something much better and less awkward. The weight is now bearing on website owners to re-purpose their content. Video was mentioned. Well, as you know, YouTube re-sampled its library to support the iPhone, and latterly the iPad. It is now possible to view most of the content on the site from an iOS device. Again, Safari plug-ins allow you to view the YouTube H.264 streams using an HTML 5 tag instead of Flash.

Some of my demos are here:
http://www.actionsworld.com/Actions/Caxton/demo.php

So what of other sites not doing this? Well, they are getting left behind. The BBC uses Flash for its video and audio content, rendering them useless when browsing the site on an iPad. However, they do provide an app which does play the video content. This is a curious thing to do - they could just have enabled their video content using the HTML 5 <video> tag on the website and be done with it. No doubt there is some management issue with content and how it’s disseminated, and do I recall it was a very, very long time before they started using Flash as a playback mechanism in favour of Real Player or Microsoft’s AVI formats. The BBC has been in bed with Microsoft rather a lot, especially during the time of the initial iPlayer development cycle, so I’m really not surprised that they are behind.

Other sites will have their own reasons for not supporting the <video> tag. I try to on sites I run - certainly it’s been at the front of the minds of one of the companies I work for, and instead of mushing on with .flv files and the like, I’ve been dutifully turning out videos for the <video> tag to support as many browsers as possible. This is a nub of many an argument against the <video> tag (and to a lesser extent, the <audio> tag). Most modern browsers support it, but they support varying codecs. An H.264 video file won’t play in Firefox - you have to use OGG or (in the future) WebM. Microsoft and Apple support the H.264 format. So, as you can tell, you need to encode the same movie a multiple of times. For the small player, this may be a pain, but for the large players it}s a no-brainer. Server space is cheap, as is storage, and the resources are there to crunch the files.

There are no technical barriers NOT to use Flash. Those who are keen to see it stay are the advertisers, who employ ever more dubious techniques to try and grab your attention - HTML and CSS alone won’t cut it. Flash is now being routinely used to pop open windows behind your main browser window instead of JavaScript. This is happening because most browsers now have options to switch this behaviour off from scripts - but seem to ignore what Flash is up to in this area. Disabling Flash stops these from appearing too.

In short - Flash is not going to be missed when it goes. It will take a while for it to vanish, but it’s a technology of the 1990’s. It will require a concerted effort from web developers and managers of larger web sites to step away from its siren-like attractions.

excuse me, I misread what Paul wrote. I'm blaming jetlag.