iAd Producer from Apple
developer.apple.com
developer.apple.com
(EDIT) To clarify: what I have in mind is a pro app that is sold in the same way Apple's other pro apps are (Final Cut, Logic, Aperture). No dev account needed, pricing between $300-500. It would produce clean, readable code that would run on any platform that has a decent JavaScript engine and support for HTML5, Canvas, CSS3, SVG, and h.264.
That's quite better than the super-proprietary world of Flash... that allows me to use any of the 3 major platforms, using a number of free development environments, and publish anywhere and any way I want.
However, I'm grateful for Adobe ruining WYSIWYG HTML editors for me. GoLive 5 crashed so often that I finally decided to start coding in BBedit. That was back in 2000, and I never looked back.
Maybe you should send out a memo to set them straight, the entire creative industry is still using those overpriced toys. Surely designers don't need high quality type display, font and color management, and built-in multi-language support.
Are we really still grappling with the idea that some people's time is worth enough that the extra money paid for the laptop isn't a big deal?
I thought we'd gotten past that kind of "ra ra ra GO TEAM!" mindset in terms of the tools we used.
Should we debate the merits of Chevy vs. Ford trucks now?
Maybe I could tell you how much better my football team is.
Anyways, in most settings in the creative industry, the software on a workstation is more expensive than the hardware, no matter whether that's a Mac or a Windows machine. And yes, if the person operating the machine earns more than minimum wage, a couple of thousand for a computer really isn't the biggest business expense.
Plus, really good designers are like really good developers. If they don't get to work on the machines they like, they'll walk. Which is just too bad for anybody in IT that wants to push Windows.
Mac displays are not very good. Their color range is poor. It is the middle-top end of consumer displays, but it is by no means a professional display. I wouldn't even dream of doing anything requiring accurate colors on an Mac display. Their 30" is about as relevant as Xserve. It is not their target demographic any more.
I am not knocking Mac hardware. Their mobile hardware is the best on the market. However, the perception that Macs are design machines came from when Photoshop was a Mac exclusive. This has not been the case for a very long time and I would say the PC version of Photoshop is significantly better than the Mac version as it stands. I have a MacBook, but I also have a PC largely because I use Photoshop many hours each day and Photoshop on OS X is bad.
Color management, besides being supported by Windows, is more applicable to print design and pretty much irrelevant when it comes to design viewed on a screen.
Ofcourse, the creative industry has always preferred Macs, and they still do. That's why it's the designer's platform, not because Apple targets them.
As for Apple's displays: you're right, they're not as good as high-end monitors from Samsung, Eizo or Barco. Apple's displays are not made for print designers, they're made for multimedia. This has been the case ever since Apple switched from CRT to LCD. However, the price is right: $999 for a 27" screen with LED backlighting and IPS is hard to beat.
As for Photoshop performance on Mac vs Windows: are you using an older version of Photoshop for Mac? Those weren't 64-bit, didn't utilize the GPU and didn't make use of multiple cores well. Try CS5 on Mac, it's stable and fast.
I wasn't really talking about performance on Mac vs Windows. Photoshop on Mac is buggier, designed poorly, and very flakey overall. I have used both platforms. I own both platforms.
Yes, most designers do just fine with them. Most workspaces of high end design firms I've seen, or you can see photographed on the intertubes, are using Macs with Mac displays.
And they tend to do just fine against the competition at reviews too.
And it's Apple that "doesn't get designers"?
Aperture is a photography workflow app, it's not an image editor. If you want to compare it to something, compare it to Adobe's own Lightroom, to Capture One, et al.
I don't blame people for statements like "Once such a WYSIWYG app exists, there'd be no excuses left to use Flash online". They're authoritative and are tapped into the zeitgeist. As an Interactive Dev, though, I hope my opinion can count as some kind of counterweight to what I sometimes view as polemic.
Here's Adobe/Macromedia's fairly recent tech history:
* Use AS2, so much better than AS
* Use AS3, so much better than AS2 and soon to be the ES Standard. Whoops!
* Use our new 3D API, it sucks less than our non-3D API you hacked to kind of do 3D.
* Use our new, new unreleased incompatible 3D API, it sucks much less than our existing 3D API.
* Please continue to use our runtime because it has three virtual machines for three different languages, a 15 year old graphics engine we still haven't really modified to take advantage of modern GPUs, and an IDE that's a cruel joke.
And that's just Flash. They also spent two years hyping Atmosphere before abandoning it. They added a 3D API to Director, then ripped it out, then added another one, then basically left it without an update for five years.
So, basically, yes there's a use-case for Flash. Animated / interactive ads that run on a lot of platforms and custom video players that let you implement ads overlaid on video. Oh, and some casual games where you can ignore the fact Flash doesn't like to handle dynamic screen refresh rates.
Any new functionality Adobe bolts onto its carcass needs to be avoided like the plague.
That's really just about it.
There are lots of things to gripe about with the Flash platform. Adobe doesn't seem to "get" what it means to support developers. They can't figure out how to run a proper open-source project, but I do them some credit for trying. We suffer from a "banner ad" culture that favors getting things done quickly without regard for craftsmanship at the code level. AS3 allowed developers to start improving this, and there are always notable exceptions to this generalization. This, to me, has been detrimental for the overall public perception of the Flash Platform.
Java and Internet Explorer are also huge in the enterprise. IMO, I'm blessed not having to work in enterprise. I simply wouldn't have the patience.
This is Apple's preemptive assault against the WebOS Ares SDK. They know they could have a situation on their hands if HP doesn't botch the next generation of WebOS devices.
But here's the thing: When Apple releases something that they think is significant, they say so.
Personally, I don't think iAd Producer (or its sibling) will create "native-quality" apps. I can't imagine games like Infinity Blade being created in HTML5. But surely, database viewers (like many apps in the App Store are) should run fine.
There's room for a secondary, more abstracted dev environment for the iPhone. Palm is proving it with Ares.
You could do a lot of cool, eye catching graphical stuff (3D, etc) that wouldn't suffer slowdown and would probably even use less memory (if well designed). Plus ad designers would have the full native UI library at their fingertips.
Anyone know why they aren't allowing this?
So the iAd market will have to get really huge before native ads are worth the trouble.
Does anyone know if this will be changing any time soon?
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Coherent (Dashcode's JS framework): http://coherentjs.org/
AdLib (for iPad): http://almost.done21.com/2010/04/adlib-apples-secret-ipad-we...
PastryKit (for iPhone, iPod touch): http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/12/pastrykit-best-iph...
http://daringfireball.net/2009/12/more_on_pastrykit
Gianduia (for desktop browsers): http://lists.apple.com/archives/Webobjects-dev/2009/Nov/msg0...
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More about the use of these different frameworks:
http://www.appleinsider.com/print/10/05/07/apple_developing_...