April 2010 – TheBoyEllis Blog

Jobs Fails to Justify Flash Snub

iPhone no Flash — It is clear that the App Store is Jobs' primary concern when it comes to Flash

Big boss man of Apple, Steve Jobs, has recently attempted to justify his company’s reasons for not allowing the use of Adobe’s Flash on it’s mobile platforms. It’s an interesting read: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/.

However, all it does is confirm the one deciding factor he claims isn’t a deciding factor: the App Store.

In his second paragraph, Jobs begins by quashing any idea that Apple’s phenomenally successful application store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch is at the heart of the denial of any Flash-based web content:

Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues.

Later on in the piece, he goes into full-on contradiction mode:

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

…Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices. We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.

…Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen.

Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps…

And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

Not trying to protect your App store, Mr Turtleneck? I’m not so sure.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but it once again highlight’s Jobs’ ignorance and, surprisingly, apparent disregard for proof reading; the irony and contradictions in his article above are nothing short of laughable.

You don’t like Adobe and you don’t want Flash to be available on iPhones because it represents a direct threat to the growth of the App Store. That’s fine. Just admit it!

New Track: The Mack – Update (Persona1600 mix)

I’ve been a little quiet on here recently, but that’s mainly due to a renewed focus on production. So, here’s my latest – ‘The Mack’, which includes a tasty sample from Sir Mixalot…

UPDATE: The Mack makes an appearance on a rather tasty mix from a good colleague of mine. Check out Persona1600’s mix below and find out more about him here: http://www.to/1600

Brown ‘Bigot Gaffe’ is Boring

As often as I watch it, I freely admit I’m not a fan of Sky News. Their insistence on making mountains out of molehills is teeth grindingly irritating and, quite often, toe curlingly embarrassing; particularly when they partake in the grilling of news subjects who have clearly said all they need to say. Just shut up, Kay Burley. Move on.

Maybe that makes me two faced. If it does, I’m with you, Gordon Brown.

Today, he called a 66-year-old woman from Rochdale a bigot having just engaged in what looked like a somewhat frustrating conversation with her. Mrs Duffy (how often will we hear that name over the next few months/years?) was a straight-talking, honest woman with very clear views, and there’s nothing wrong with that. She was a handful and the conversation she struck up with the PM ended up being a very one-sided affair.

The resulting ‘insult’ was uttered off-the-cuff, in the back of the PM’s car as he departed the housing estate. It was mildly amusing, but certainly nothing to lose sleep over. It won’t sway my vote either way.

The lady in question, while clearly not a bigoted racist, wasn’t without fault herself. As someone I follow on Twitter quite accurately summed up:

The “bigot” complains her grandchildren might have to pay to go to uni, then at the end says they’ve just come back from Australia…

But, of course, no one’s interested in analyzing her comments. Everyone is now interested in one word – ‘bigot’.

It’s not Brown’s fault, I’m afraid. In my opinion, the reason for the endless, tedious replays of the incident in question lies squarely at the feet of the media. They will run this story into the ground, drag in every no-mark ‘expert’ or columnist to provide their take on it. They’ll constantly say ‘we’ve received lots of Tweets and emails about this’ before reading out the most damning. And they will do this for the rest of the week, regardless of what else happens in the world.

There is more of a hint of bias about Sky News’ coverage in particular, with every sentence uttered by their reporters seemingly intent on painting the PM as a nasty bit of work.

I don’t think he is. Throughout this election campaign, I’ve warmed to him (and this comes from someone who has written some pretty disparaging thing about him on this very website). I like the fact he freely admits he isn’t comfortable in certain situations and I actually like the way he deals with the regular gaffes he makes. The footage of his apology on Radio 2 showed a man completely and utterly knackered and fed up with it all. He’s quintessentially British and part of me admires that.

Yes, he’s made a mess of things, but who would want his job? In any position of power or management, you have to make decisions and say things that aren’t popular with everyone. Whoever ends up as our new PM next week will have the exact same problem and I refuse to believe that we won’t be talking about them with the same disregard six months down the line.

By far the most insulting thing I’ve heard today is Adam Boulton’s surmise of the woman at the centre of this controversy; ‘Mrs Duffy, while clearly not the most literate of people…’ If ever there was a more insulting, sweeping generalisation of the very people who help pay Boulton’s wages – the people of this great nation – that’s it and it was far, far worse than Brown’s comments today.

Goodbye PowerPC, some of us will miss you

If a PowerPC Mac were a chicken, this would be the announcement of Christmas — If a PowerPC Mac were a turkey, this would be the first mention of Christmas

Having installed iLife ’09 on my Apple Mac G5, I launched Garageband, eagerly awaiting my first experience of the much hyped music lessons included within.

What transpired was both surprising and teeth-scrapingly frustrating. You see, while Apple will allow you to install their latest consumer software suite on your old PowerPC-based Mac, they will quite happily deny you access to one of its main features. Because you don’t have an intel chip, like.

Alarm bells started to ring.

iLife ’09 was joined by Google Chrome and, perhaps most disconcertingly, Snow Leopard. None would entertain my sad old G5.

I’m sure there are plenty of other instances of similar intel-only programs, but the three above signaled the final nail in the coffin for my studio workhorse.

Frustratingly, my G5 would be perfectly capable of running these pieces of software (and Apple’s new operating system, no doubt). Apple have simply closed their doors to what was once hailed as the most powerful consumer computing platform around. And they can. They have the power to do this when their entire hardware platform is proprietary. What they say, goes, and there’s only so long you can hold on before succumbing to the inevitable.

I now sit typing this on my new MacBook Pro. Everything suddenly works. There are no restrictions. I just have a somewhat lighter wallet…