How to Beat Apple – Get Serious About Product Design.

Andrew Kim's HTC 1 phone design render

Apple are unstoppable right now. Unbelievably, their market value recently surpassed Microsoft’s. In my opinion, the one reason Apple are in this position is because they understand the power of fantastic product design.

As a case in point, let me describe a recent trip to Best Buy. A couple of weeks ago my trusty MacBook Pro died. After hearing good things about Windows 7 and not agreeing with some of Apple’s recent policies, I decided to buy a new Windows laptop. After looking at every one in the store I realized that each one was more gaudy and plasticy than the last. From the strangely colored cases to the myriad of extra buttons, lights and nipples, they seemed like a collection of badly designed toys. I guiltily drifted over to the Mac area and checked out the the new MacBook Pro with its aluminum unibody, beautiful screen and minimalist controls. Eventually I walked out with one.

Apple understand that laptops and phones are the new watches and jewelry. We are using them majority of our waking life. They define us to the people around us. They need to be both functional and beautiful. Apple products have plenty of hardware and software issues, but people are willing to forgive them since the products are so nice to look at.

The amazing Android Phone Prototype above by Andrew Kim, shows the kind of phone that HTC need to build in order to knock the iPhone off the top of the most-wanted list. What happened to all the great Nokia and Erikson phones from a few years ago? Why are they not building Android phones? Why can’t Sony create a laptop as well-designed as the MacBook Pro?

Apple’s competitors need to get serious about design, both hardware and software. They need to invest in their design teams and hire the best and the brightest talent available.

Check Out Chompin – a great way to discover music on your phone.

Chompin is a sweet mobile app that allows you to discover new music on your phone. It’s currently available on Android with an iPhone version coming soon.

Basically it allows you to enter any band name and get a list of MP3s to stream on your phone or to ‘chomp’ (meaning to download to your SD card). The MP3s are pulled from the multitude of music blogs out there. It’s a little like the Hype Machine but in a slick mobile app form.

It’s a Good Time to be a Web Developer.

I think this graph from Google I/O says it all:

Webs Up!

With all the FUD around Flash and the iPad its easy to forget that we are living in a golden age of web development. The web is fulfilling all but the most outlandish predictions of its success from back in the 90s. Things are just starting to get interesting.

The other take-away I got from the I/O keynote is how a lot of HTML5 is basically HTML playing catchup with Flash. Many of the coolest new features have been available in Flash for years. This means all the skills you honed as a Flash developer are directly applicable to the newly emerging platforms of HTML5, Unity, Android and even iApps:

  • Creating animations and transitions that enhance static content.
  • Optimizing for performance and fast page loads (including preloading).
  • Handling rich media: video, audio and images.
  • Custom text layouts and font handling.
  • Asynchronously querying the backend.

Only the syntax has changed – the end result remains the same.

Which Way Now? Web Development in the iPad Era.

Flash? No Thanks!

So it turns out Steve Jobs does not like Flash, and won’t be allowing it onto the iPad in the foreseeable future. This creates the first dent in the Flash player’s ubiquity for many years and leaves a more complex set of web development choices ahead of us.

Rather than get into the debate over whether Flash is good or evil, I would like to discuss what options are available for delivering rich interactive experiences on the web today. Most developers don’t have a philosophical preference over which tools they use, they simply want the technology that can provide the best experience while reaching the most users. With that in mind, let’s look at some numbers.

How Big is the iPad?

The iPad is selling phenomenally well and may be the herald of a new era in computing. That said, if we look at the web usage numbers for the iPad’s progenitors, we see that the usage numbers do not equate to the amount of media buzz these devices get.

In the last 12 months, mobile web usage accounted for 1.48% of total web usage, versus desktop usage at 98.52%.

Of that number 32% came from iDevices (iPhone + iPod Touch). That gives iDevices a whopping 0.45% of total web usage. Lets be generous and say the iPad doubles this usage in the coming year. That will give iDevices around 1% of total web usage in the coming year. Admittedly, mobile usage is about to explode and iDevices will be part of that, but I think it’s important to keep some perspective on the current state of the market.

What About HTML5?

Steve Jobs has suggested that we should drop Flash for HTML5. HTML5 holds a great deal of promise, however it is currently unsupported on the great majority of web browsers.

For example, based on current browser usage, 71% of web users cannot view the HTML5 video tag. This means that that building a website solely in HTML5 is not currently an option. Since IE9 will support HTML5, the IE9 adoption rates will be the deciding factor as to when we can start targeting HTML5

Where Does this Leave Web Developers Now?

So what should we recommend to our clients who want a brand experience or RIA today? It depends 🙂

  • If you can simplify the requirements enough, build it in plain HTML with a few jQuery animations thrown in. This will work in many situations. The truth is that many sites that are currently in Flash do not need to be. Most sites can get by with plain HTML, images and simple javascript animations.
  • If you need complex animations, interactivity, games, video, audio, web cam support, etc – build it in Flash. Your content will be viewable by the vast majority of web users. In addition, build a simplified HTML version for non-Flash devices. This is typically what we have been doing since the first web accessible mobile devices came around.

Looking Forward

Personally I find it hard to believe that Apple can single-handedly kill Flash when it is so ubiquitous on the web and has such a huge and loyal developer community. I still hold out hope that Flash will eventually come to the iPad in the same way that multitasking came to the iPhone. In the short-term, iPad users will be locked out from a lot of great content. Only when HTML5 browser support and tooling is broadly available can we start looking at developing RIAs with it.

[Credit to Noel Billing for pointing me to the StatCounter global data.]

Fix for Flash Builder Content Assist 'did not complete normally'

One of the best features in Flash Builder is the content assist. Start typing a class name and hit Control+Space for the IDE to suggest a list of valid class names. As a bonus it will automatically import the specified class into your file. Unfortunately in Flash Builder Beta 2 this functionality is broken in some cases. Often you will get an error like this:

“Content Assist” did not complete normally. Please see the log for more information. java.lang.NullPointerException

I found a solution that worked for me here:

1) Quit FB
2) Delete this folder: .metadata\.plugins\com.adobe.flexbuilder.codemodel [in the top level of your workspace folder]
3) Restart FB

[UPDATE – this fix seems to be only temporary. Once I imported some new assets from an assets SWC into my project, the error re-appeared. Anyone got a long term fix?]

[UPDATE 2 – The quickest fix is to close and re-open the FB Project.]

SimpleViewer 2.0 Released!

Big news over at SimpleViewer.net – SimpleViewer, the free customizable Flash image gallery has been upgraded to version 2.0. Check out a run-down of the new features here and grab yourself a copy here.