In Perspective, Planet: Apple and Google's world! Adobe and Microsoft lose a little clout!

The recent addition of the ipad to our way of life is another example of Steve Jobs' policy of providing solutions that are internally self supporting and ignore the rest of the market. In one swipe, the venerable mouse, an invention scooped up from Xerox Park, has been made less relevant. In one month over 1 million ipads have been sold. Even children are trying to swipe their TV set to get a new station! The touch and gesture control of devices is here for good. My 18 month grandchild easilly opens anyone's iphone with a few touches and yesterday sent an email to my son by accident, mind you!

So how does all this effect change? Well Apple has banned Adobe's flash from it's world of iphones and iphads and other companies have now followed suite and gone to Apple-google supported HTML version of Quicktime. Although Adobe updates it's software suites each year as a sort of tax on us, apart from content aware corrections there's not a lot new that I for one would need. Adobe's photoshop is one app the Apple might have its eyes on as things evolve.

Meanwhile the big giant Microsoft is seeing it's mammoth browser market with Internet Explorer shrink further, now below 60%, with most of the share going to Google.

One investment fund has put $100 million US $ to being out new ipad/iphone gesture controlled apps, but no mouse support! There's the future! As long as Apple behaves like a benevolent dicatator and gives us integrated products that make folk happy, then Apple is going to reign supreme in it's own world that hardly knows anything else exists outside its market borders.

Here endeth the lesson!

Asher

I find this whole thing interesting.. I have been using 'tablets' for years. I even have (somewhere) a GridPad built in 92. Ran MSDOS. I just like them. But it seems, no one else did. People buy them, use them for a couple of months and decide it's not really what they want. Usually it's the lack of a keyboard. I like one that you can actually run real software on. A couple of months ago I bought an Asus t91 MT. Runs Windows 7, and is a convertible, so I can use a keyboard/mouse if I want. Multitouch screen. 8.9 inch screen, Solid state HD, 2gb ram, bluetooth, Wifi, USB ports. Not as thin as an Ipad, but close enough.
I can run Lightroom on it.. not blazing fast, but very usable.
I am glad Apple came out with this thing.. I should make the other makers up their game.
Wonder what the Federal Trade Commission will decide on Apple's clamp down on development kits for the Iwhatevers. It does sort of mess up any developer who wants to make apps for more than one platform.
Flash is sort of a mess, but I have 2 computers that blow up when I try to get Quicktime to run. Plus every time it upgrades it wants, Itunes, Safari and more junk to load.
I guess for me the Ipad is not something that seems very useful.. Cute though..

Duke,

The iPad is meant for home, the coffee shop and as an adjunct on your desk devoted to your favorite pictures or private email you don,t want on your work machine.$568.69

I,m typing this on my suns iPad and it.s pretty fast, except I can.t see the apostrophe!


Asher

You seem to be having an issue with the apostrophe being mixed up with comma's and periods..
See the typing issue..

I do like sitting on the couch using my Asus in the tablet mode and just poking around the inter wide web net.
But if I need to answer an email that keyboard/netbook mode is nicer.

Duke Beattie said:

You seem to be having an issue with the apostrophe being mixed up with comma's and periods..
See the typing issue..

Click to expand...

Duke,

That was my first expsoure to the ipad. The apostrophe is in the lower L corner and it returns one to the text after it's inserted. There's a .com key too and that saves 3 strokes, LOL! It's so easy to read in the sun-drenched cabanah, here in Miami by the pool. Yesterday I tried with a notebook and coul hardly read the screen!

The great thing is that one can control one's cameras with iphone apps on the iPad! Pretty neat! My son has a keyboard that the iPad stands up in for use at a desk.

Asher

Here's Adobe's lame reply to Steve Job's assertion. in an amazingly frank open letter, here, that flash is a successful technology of an age that has passed.

I'm technologically beaten to a pulp. Six months ago I buy CS4. Then they come out with CS5. I recently bought the 13" MacBook Pro as the 17" with the wonderful display is just too heavy to travel with. I've got a negative scanner that I just don't have time to really learn to use, website dramas due to the new machine purchase, and a camera housing that requires another $1,000 investment if I want to have TTL capability. Arrrgh!

I'm all for innovation, I just can't keep up with it!

Wendy

Wendy Thurman said:

I'm technologically beaten to a pulp. Six months ago I buy CS4. Then they come out with CS5. I recently bought the 13" MacBook Pro as the 17" with the wonderful display is just too heavy to travel with. I've got a negative scanner that I just don't have time to really learn to use, website dramas due to the new machine purchase, and a camera housing that requires another $1,000 investment if I want to have TTL capability. Arrrgh!

I'm all for innovation, I just can't keep up with it!

Click to expand...

Wendy,

Everyone who wishes to use photoshop for its brilliant local editing capability should look to get at least PS 7 to be able to work with layers and masks. Go to CS2 to have Shadow-highlight capability, (it might have been in CS). Really I don't see the point in CS3, CS4 or CS5 for most folk unless you are relying on Photoshop for opening the RAW files from the latest cameras. If the programs were really innovative, this would not be needed to keep up Adobe's sales. There's an appearance of a blackmail system; no latest RAw translation in the older Photoshop versions! So what! Get another capable program such as Capture one!

I can't wait to get CS5 because I'll use the content aware eraser regularly. However, if not for that, PS 7.0 or CS2 does everything I need.

Asher

I actually like using Nikon's Capture NX2- it's not as versatile as Photoshop but for quick viewing and editing, it is just the ticket for Nikon users. Unfortunately, it's installed on the big MacBook Pro and not this small one I am using and the software is at home in Houston. That said, I like reviewing a day's work in Bridge, starring them, then going to Photoshop. In ten days in Indonesia I shot nearly 2,000 images and Bridge allows me to get through that sort of volume quickly. I'm way behind the curve regarding competent use of CS4 but I'm getting there.

I think I neglected to mention that I spilled gin and pineapple juice on the keyboard of the big laptop It still works fine but I need to have a new keyboard installed.

This little 13" is just the ticket for the lifestyle I lead, though- it's very portable, I have 8GB RAM in it, and it seems to handle the big D3x files well. Only complaint is the glossy screen but I am adapting.

Wendy

Wendy Thurman said:

I think I neglected to mention that I spilled gin and pineapple juice on the keyboard of the big laptop It still works fine but I need to have a new keyboard installed.
Wendy

Click to expand...

It's that pesky pineapple juice that's the issue.. Happens here all the time .. "My friend (never them) spilled a large sticky glass of juice, soda, beer, coffee with sugar on my computer" I fixed a keyboard last week for a student that had a very large cup of orange juice spilled on it.. very sticky keys.. Just take the keyboard off and run it under hot water, let it dry for a day to be sure it's dry and just like new... At least 95% of the time.. Next time use more Gin..