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Comment by joshfinnie | Hacker News Reader

I am underwhelmed. I think they might have missed the mark on this product or there are a lot of things they didn't discuss in their presentation today!

Multi-tasking? Flash?

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We saw Flash on one of the web demos. It was Safari's missing plugin icon, so it's safe to assume there's no Flash still.

I found that really odd. As pre-scripted as their demoes are, why would they use a page with that?

Can you think of a better way to answer the FAQ "Does it have Flash?"

Yes: don't until you're asked. iPod demos and tech specs pages on Apple's website don't advertise what formats it doesn't play. An iPhone demo wouldn't show dropped calls, at least not if it were easily preventable.

> Yes: don't until you're asked.

I think the question was asked by quite a few people.

> iPod demos and tech specs pages on Apple's website don't advertise what formats it doesn't play.

Usually a format list is complete, if a format is not there, you know it is not supported. But I do not think that it makes sense for the iPad to list all web technologies, as in, it supports html, css, xhtml, txt, javascript, flash, ... . Flash is not just a format.

> An iPhone demo wouldn't show dropped calls, at least not if it were easily preventable.

Now this is a tough point. Of course they would not show a misfeauture in the demo. Perhaps they were making a point that missing Flash is not a misfeature after all, and that web pages should be written without a Flash dependency.

But in the end, I might be completely wrong and it might have been a slip up after all, I wouldn't know.

Nobody asked any questions at that demo. A demo is a highlight reel of what your product does, not a list of pros and cons. It's all pro.

You can safely assume that a device like that will list Flash as a capability if it has it at this point.

If it was on purpose, it almost has to be some sort of dig at Adobe. I can't rationalize that one, but perhaps.

Simply not showing an error during the demo... The demo isn't designed to show all that it can't do.

As a sly way of rubbing it in?

If you want to see the parts of the iPad that Apple cares about watch the video: http://www.apple.com/ipad/ipad-video/ It goes over all the bits they think are really cool.

I really hate to ask this - but is there a way to watch that on linux? I have mplayer, but I can't find the embed link in the source to save the raw .mov file.

http://movies.apple.com/media/us/ipad/2010/tours/apple-ipad-...

This link is a perfect example of the problem I have with Apple. Why do I have to have Quick Time to watch the video? Just give it to me and let me worry about which media player I want to use.

I sold my macbook; gave away my ipod; and I'm never going back.

How would you do multi-tasking, while promising ten hours of battery life?

Perhaps he values multi-tasking more than having ten hours of battery life.

I think the point is that the consumers Apple targets would value 10 hours battery life over multitasking. Engineering is all about trade offs, and if Apple were to deliver everything the geeks wanted (OSX, Flash, multitasking), then Apple would end up with an overpriced, slow, thick, hot, sluggish, power thirsty tablet that would only appeal to computer nerds.

I just don't understand this dichotomy between battery life and multitasking. It would be perfectly reasonable to offer a choice, wouldn't it? Apple could say: if you want the full 10 hours of battery life, don't multitask. Otherwise, accept the battery life tradeoff and multitask to your heart's content. I can then choose to use the device however I want to. Isn't this how battery life estimates with laptops work?

Why does Apple assume their users are idiots that can't be trusted to make an informed choice?

Apple's strategy is to not burden their users with the mental load of having to make that tradeoff. Can you imagine trying to use this device for a whole workday and having to worry about whether you quit that last app so that the battery will last until your shift's up?

For casual multi-tasking, the speed of the flash memory means that well-written apps should be able to save and restore their state pretty quickly even if the operating system does quit the app when the user switches to a new one. More serious multi-tasking (where you would want side-by-side windows and other major UI changes) would definitely reduce battery life and make things much more complex.

* Apple's strategy is to not burden their users with the mental load of having to make that tradeoff. *

Haven't users been making that tradeoff for years with laptops?

Battery life has nothing to do with multi-tasking. It's about providing consistent UX and not having to deal with misbehaving background processes.

They most certainly could be related. If you had a few background apps doing something, such as playing music while browsing the web, that would take more clock cycles. Even something like a native twitter app running in the background could be pinging twitter several times a minute, obviously requiring power to do so.

Every iPhone and iPod Touch ever released has had background apps running at all times to provide services like e-mail. How do you think the iPod mode on an iPhone works? It plays music while you're browsing in Safari by leaving an app running in the background. Email notifications? App running in the background.

Apple controlled, well optimized items running in the background.

Not multiple applications in the AppStore sense of the word.

I would rather have be usable for 4 hours than limited for 10. If you can run iPhone apps not in full screen, why can't I run a few side by side. I don't want unlimited multitasking, but a few at a time would be nice.

That is exactly what I thought. I would have loved to see iphone apps running like widgets. Keep them the same size, but give me three or four running at the same time!

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