A Brief History of My Antagonism Towards Flash

I was anti-Flash before Steve Jobs made it cool. I have as much anti-Flash credibility as anyone.

For over a decade I've steered organization after organization away from building solutions in Flash, often against great resistance. I was evangelizing SVG — what I saw as the biggest opportunity for a more illuminated, open solution than Flash — back when its strongest corporate sponsor was none other than Adobe.

Aside: Humorously Adobe was leveraging SVG in their battle against Macromedia's Flash/Shockwave empire, before finally giving in and buying 'em out.

I have railed loudly against Flash on many occasions.

The Great Flash of Propriety

Yet Flash is fairly pervasive, despite my valiant attempts.

Up until around 2005 and the birth of YouTube, Flash had very little presence in the video space: That realm was dominated by Real Player, Windows Media Player, Quicktime, among others. Flash fit in the RIA niche where it displaced the short-lived empire of ActiveX and Java Applets. It was the tool for great web entertainment like You Don't Know Jack, the Net Show.

Then YouTube rose with Flash at its presentation core, and the rest is history. Soon Flash was the oddball foundation for video.

If you mention Flash today, however, the topic will immediately veer violently to the great Flash/Apple battle of 2010, where Apple has loudly rejected Flash (where it represents a proxy for "rich applications they don't control"), and Google, perhaps being a bit antagonistic, has embraced it with their Android and Chrome solutions.

Ok, embraced is probably a bit of an overstatement. In reality Google's initiatives have top notch HTML5 support, the best JavaScript performance, and are probably the best mobile/thin platforms for rich HTML5 applications, but they just happen to optionally support Flash as well, perhaps providing a bridge from the past.

A Very Personal Flash Experience

I've been running Flash on my Nexus One for several months now. I have it configured to On Demand so the scourge of animated, CPU-clogging Flash adverts don't destroy my web browsing experience. When there is Flash content that I want to view, I click the little arrow and voila, Flash is running on my mobile phone.

Overall it has been a very welcome addition to the device. From restaurant sites, to small videos like Zero Punctuation reviews, to games for my children, to product information pages, I like having the option of engaging Flash when the need arises.

So when I saw entry titled "Just How Bad Is Flash on Android" on Daring Fireball, of course I was drawn in. There Gruber indirectly linked to some demonstrations of Flash failing miserably on several Flash video sites.

To which, I say, no kidding.

Anyone under any illusion that having Flash on their mobile device opened up any and all content is willfully or technically incompetent. That or it's link bait trying to herd in the people who desperately need their biases confirmed, and a lot of people desperately need to believe that Flash isn't necessary on mobiles. I'd probably say it's that second option at play.

Of course not all content will play. This is, after all, a mobile device with a little power-sipping mobile processor. While 1Ghz sounds pretty pimp, the Snapdragon in the Nexus One is in many ways a weakling, particularly in video decoding and 3D graphics tasks where it fell behind even the iPhone 3GS.

On this 1Ghz processor I've had trouble playing local 720x480 h264 videos encoded at 1Mbps, encountering frequent stuttering and dropped frames. Compare that to the iPhone 4 which allows for up to 7Mbps+ videos at 1280x720, which it plays flawlessly, owing to the excellent hardware decoding.

When it comes to video the iPhone 4 simply kicks the Nexus One (and virtually every other HTC Android device, as HTC is addicted to Snapdragons) to the curb. Then again, the Samsung Galaxy S kicks the iPhone 4 around and calls it Sally, while the OMAP in the Droid 2/X offers a fair fight.

Snapdragon processor devices are not the top of the pile by a long measure.

So the Nexus One really isn't a great platform to highlight video prowess anyways.

Enough with the hardware excuses.

Add that Flash is often its own worst enemy: When you enable the plug-in, your enable in the Android browser is browser wide for that page, meaning it simultaneously enables the twelve punch-the-monkey animated ads surrounding it, often destroying the experience.

So there is no surprise at all that a high bitrate 1000x500 video surrounded by Flash adverts — a scenario that clogs a high performance 2.4Ghz core on a modern x86 PC (which would be equal to about a 8Ghz or higher snapdragon) — probably with a layer of DRM adding more demands, doesn't run so great on a mobile device.

"So Steve Jobs Was Right! Flash won't work on mobile!"

Given that I've enjoyed Flash on my smartphone on many occasions, I find such claims — which I keep seeing made by seemingly non-stupid individuals — ludicrous. It is fervent, desperate doublespeak.

Mobile Flash exists. It's far from perfect. The available content usually isn't even aware that it exists. Yet still, it is.

And really, it isn't a fair fight anyways. When sites provide HTML5 video, they do so often specifically for the iPhone/iPad because of the massive namespace territory they conquered. Most sites don't even feature sniff for the functionality — they don't care if you are running Chrome or Safari or IE 9 and can run HTML Video — but will instead refuse to serve up HTML 5 video for anything but those Apple devices. Given that, they encode specifically and only for that platform, with appropriate bitrates and complexity profiles ideal for those devices.

There's no big surprise that it often runs well.

That isn't a very encompassing, scalable solution though. One device family isn't meant to rule, and at some future point HTML5 will start to leave the iOS devices behind. The iPhone lived through a special moment in time where it was handled as a blessed child, getting its own special treatment, however that moment is passing.

Of course the Flash people have a solution for disparate devices, using dynamic streaming that is based upon the consuming device (resolution and bitrate scaling based upon the capabilities of the device, very similar to some technology in Microsoft Silverlight). Not surprisingly there is little use of it yet given that mobile Flash devices just started appearing very recently, and still comprise a tiny market.

"So...Steve Jobs Was Right?"

No.

When I originally thought about how to respond to this, my first idea was to make a video demonstrating a smartphone failing miserably at rendering and interacting with various HTML5 sites. But then I thought better because someone might confuse that as a serious criticism of HTML5 when I love the technology stack and pragmatically realize that it can't (and shouldn't) always be universally accessible.

Yet still, contemplate the failings of HTML5 on mobile devices:

• Layout can be ill suited for the screen dimensions and resolution of a smartphone.
• Functionality can be overwrought and too heavy for a smartphone.
• Input techniques might not work on smartphone.
• etc.

Anyone who has browsed on their smartphone or tablet has experienced all of those. If someone were looking to go out of their way to act shocked that such an experience exists, source material can be found everywhere.

Which is of course why many sites, like the atrocious script pig TechCrunch (seriously, load it up in Firefox with Firebug and check the net tab), created special mobile pages that they force you to, against your will, when you try to visit on a mobile device.

The next time you see a TOP 10 CANVAS DEMOS on your social news site of choice, pull them up on your tablet or smartphone and check out how well they work. Chances are overwhelmingly that they will fail miserably. Almost every HTML5 game demands that you use a keyboard to control it, if they aren't simply too resource demanding for a little mobile device.

So do we write off web browsers on mobile devices? Do we say, in a tut-tut-tut fashion, "No mobile browser exists. WAP is the world for portable devices!" I hope not.

Punching Monkeys Coming in HTML5 Soon To You

One trend that is accelerating is the movement of many ads to HTML5 and away from Flash. That short period where iOS devices came with an almost intrinsic AdBlock+ in the form of the lack of Flash capabilities is rapidly disappearing. Soon every page you visit is going to be a mishmash of computationally demanding canvas renders and DOM manipulations, and it's going to become much more difficult to avoid their cost.

Closing Notes

For those who are on the fence about the whole Flash thing — whether they care about it on their mobile or tablet — take a look a the quick video I put up above. The videos did not run perfectly, the auto configurator didn't provide a seamless, perfect experience...yet if the option is that or nothing, I think most reasonable people would agree that it's better than nothing.

Survey Results are Meaningless minus the Methodology

If you're in the survey (or "Marketing Intelligence") business, an easy way to gain lots of free publicity is to publish some results that feed into an ongoing skirmish: For little cost a press release will percolate across the web, bubbling up everywhere, spreading your brand. In all likelihood a newswire writer will have the same motivation, and carefully pick and choose factlets with the goal of making a story more inflammatory.

Given that smartphones are big business now, and the battle (RIM, Nokia, Apple and Google's hordes) is a very public one, smartphones and their operating systems are often the focus.

We've seen this play out quite a few times already: Some survey results come out, usually with a very pro-Apple slant (the Apple enthusiast ecosystem is far more receptive to such material, and is more likely to run with it), and is quoted everywhere.

As always, methodology and details actually come second. It's then that critical, mind-blowing flaws in the survey or its presentation/interpretation are revealed. Of course by then the message was already delivered and has become truth through repeated assertion.

So for all you market research startups out there, I encourage you to post a self-selective survey on the website of an already biased group where they can profess themselves as wealthy, virile, mega-sexed super-humans. Release these extraordinary findings via press release and watch as lazy bloggers and tech columnists run with it.

Remember this ridiculous survey? It was the harbinger of doom for Android. Only it wasn't. It is only one of a long line of terrible surveys, and only one example where the tech press and wire writers misrepresented the already poor survey, or at a minimum didn't bother asking the questions that matter.

So we'll wait for GfK's methodology (never expect tech journalists to care to look this up. As an industry it is rife with incredible ignorance and laziness), and the inevitable correction will be a whimper to the roar of the original release. At a glance it is obvious that all is not as it appears, and it isn't simply that the numbers don't confirm my bias: They just don't add up, and have little correlation with other surveys on the same topic.

RIM Isn't Dead

Many years back I applied to RIM. They never contacted me. Clearly that's the source of all of their travails today.

Really, though, I await great things from RIM: The company had some golden handcuffs to their existing platform — the lucrative enterprise messenger system undermined more innovative initiatives in the same way that Windows and Office hobbles Microsoft — but now that they're seeing some serious attacks that can't be ignored, the battle is underway again. The PlayBook looks like it may be a winner, and I'm willing to sandpaper my fingers to use that 7" tablet if it delivers what it promises. QNX is simply a glorious operating system (it is elegant and close to perfect), so that alone has me interested.

On Monday I posted an entry titled Lies, Damn Lies, and surveys, the focus being that surveys — especially online surveys — are often of dubious merit, and worse are often intentionally or ignorantly misinterpreted by the press.

Yet it works wonders for both the press and the marketing research companies: There is a whole industry of lazy tech writers who will run with whatever is sent to them. Any slant they provide merely globs extra vaseline on the lens of accuracy.

In that case I was spurred by some just released results of an online survey done by GfK.

Take a look at the Fortune summary of said survey. As is the case with most other retellings, the Fortune writer seemed to simply rewrite the original Reuters story which itself said:

The survey found that just 25 percent of smartphone owners planned to stay loyal to the operating system running their phone, with loyalty highest among Apple users at 59 percent, and lowest for Microsoft's phone software, at 21 percent. Of users of Research in Motion's BlackBerrys, 35 percent said they would stay loyal.

The figure was 28 percent for users of phones running Google's Android software, and 24 percent for users of Nokia Symbian phones.

The Fortune story includes a big graph with the title "Plan to stick with your smartphone OS?". The iPhone towers at 59%, with Android down at a miserable 28%.

Wow, looks pretty rough for Android!

So I emailed GfK and they kindly responded with the same press release that they had sent out to the press. Unfortunately it still is only a summation, including no notes on methodology or the actual questions asked (which can often be very leading), yet it is far better than most survey companies that simply hide their summary behind a paywall, enjoying the attention as the press mangles it into something more hit magnetic.

Here's the table that was the source for most of these stories. I have to guess (based upon the surrounding wording) that it was the responses to a question asking current smartphone owners what they're going to consider when they next upgrade their phone.

There's Android at 28% among these single choice options. That's the meat of a lot of easy "news" stories.

Note the second line, though: "Will stay loyal to smartphone OS but switch handset make". Sum those two lines and for Android suddenly you're at 44%. Sure, maybe someone with an HTC Evo 4G is looking longingly at a Samsung Galaxy S, or maybe they're imagining getting that Android-powered Playstation phone when it comes out, but we (meaning virtually every single press reference to this survey) are talking about the OS here.

So Reuters (and any that followed Reuter's lead) couldn't manage to achieve a grade-school reading ability. I'm serious: my daughter had table reading assignments in grade 1 that were just like this, a job that many in the tech press would fail.

Extraordinary.

But it gets even better. Among those who answered "I will look at all options" (which ideally should be 100% of respondants), here are what each current platform's users are considering as their considerations when they upgrade at some point in the future (multiple choices obviously being allowed).

It paints a rather different narrative than the common, egregiously wrong interpretation. You end up with hilarious ignorance like this garbage. With what you have learned here, check out the chart here and see if you can figure out what's wrong.

The iPhone still takes the lead (with loyalty oddly dramatically higher in Germany — the home country of the survey organization — than in any other nation), but look back at the original Reuters statement: "The survey found that just 25 percent of smartphone owners planned to stay loyal to the operating system running their phone...the figure was 28 percent for users of phones running Google's Android software".

I suppose that sounds better than the more accurate "44% of Android users have pledged undying allegience to the operating system, regardless of the endless and unpredictable changes among competing choices. Of the remainder, the vast majority still plan on hopping back on the Android train regardless.

It has no notification LED.

It's a decent if unexceptional device. I can live without a real keyboard. I can live without a microSD slot (especially given the broken way that Android uses external storage). NFC is neat if extremely premature and consumer-only at this point.

The lack of a notification LED on Google's flagship device, however, is deadly.

The iPhonification of Android

I don't want to endlessly turn the screen on or suffer disruptive notification sounds (that I miss if I'm not nearby at that moment) just to know that an email dropped.

Hence why I like devices to have a notification LED. Preferrably one that is easily visible when it's in a case (beside the power connector would be perfect).

The Nexus One has such a notification behind the trackball. It's suboptimal given that it suffers from a very slow cycling rate by default (meaning you have to stop and look at the device for 10 seconds to see if it pulses), and the fact that it's hidden when the phone is in a case, yet it's far better than nothing.

Purportedly there are some fixes conceived to use several of the OLED pixels as a hacked out notification LED. Aside from the poor positioning and minimal visibility of the low brightness screen, my big concern there is OLED fade. Like plasma OLED has a finite lifespan, and the pixels that shine the brightest live the shortest, so you may end up with a notification burn in pattern on your screen.

On The Value of The Negative

My LED notification is just as valuable when it isn't blinking. It communicates with accuracy and reliability (meaning I'm assuming the battery hasn't run dry) that there is nothing demanding a response.

This "negative notification" concept eludes many, yet it's incredibly valuable.

Tracks in snow tell a lot, but snow without tracks tells just as much. A dog barking at an intruder tells you plenty. A dog quietly sleeping tells you as much.

Many are predicting that the smartphone market is set to explode in 2011, some speculating that Android is poised to capture much of that growth.

Not a very risky prediction, really.

MG Siegler weighed in via a TechCrunch piece in which he repeats a couple of myths that somehow bear truth only through repeated assertion.

The "Apple is a Luxury Brand" Myth

And so the only way for the iPhone to “beat” Android would be for Apple to either open iOS up in the same way that Android is, or to create a huge variety of iPhones spread across the spectrum in terms of features and price. Neither of those things is going to happen.

My young daughter happens to enjoy Angry Birds, so recently I thought I'd grab her a little portable device to play it and her movies and music on. Being a casual mobile app developer, targeting Android for almost arbitrary reasons, I looked to see what Android devices were available so it could double as a convenient testing target.

There is nothing. The few devices I found were in the $400 range and generally featured underwhelming processors, terrible screens, and shoddy builds.

You simply can't find an Android PMP as economical as what Apple has achieved with the iPod Touch. A4 processor. Brilliant display. Great GPU. Facetime. Dual cameras. That thing is just a crazy value.

Sure, technically the iPod Touch isn't an iPhone, but for how most people use their smartphones (where the "phone" part of it is utterly irrelevant, and it's merely a mobile computing device), with the widening deployment of WiFi it is increasingly just as capable.

And make no mistake: The iPod Touch is a critical element of the iPhone's domination. We're talking platforms here, and while Google was busy actually undermining the non-smartphone devices (until recently Google treated tablets with incredible antipathy. Whatever the internal politics — perhaps the perceived birthright of ChromeOS — they were not supportive whatsoever, at one Google I/O acting both irritated and confused when an audience member asked about tablets. Nor are they supportive of PMPs where they pull market access and essentially cripple the device at birth), Apple was busy spreading iOS far and wide, creating a healthy ecosystem for developers to target.

Apple knows how to price down technology with the best of them, and they have demonstrated a strong ability and willingness to do so. The dated 3GS is still being manufactured and sold as new, just as the 3G hung around long after the 3GS became the starter.

The 3GS is incredibly dated by contemporary standards, and its slow processor, limited RAM, and old-school screen resolution place it firmly in the "low end" market. Apple still sells it. Read what Siegler had to say above and consider that.

When Apple feels pressure to segment the marketing of iOS more than they already do ("You can get an iPhone minus the 3G radio and fine-GPS for just $240 full retail, or you can get your subsidized 3GS if you're a chump and can't afford a couple hundred when signing up for a two thousand dollar contract commitment...."), they will. Any illusions that they won't, or moreso that they haven't already is just blind zealotry, lost in the weeds desperately trying to feel around for some comfort to assuage against Apple's marketshare competition.

I recently gained an interest in American football (after becoming aware that there was so much more to the game than just a bunch of guys smashing into each other, not to mention the "be prepared to explain man things" motive given that I have three young sons) and one of the things I have noticed in that live-can't-fast-forward world is that Apple advertises like crazy. From my limited sampling they are easily the overwhelmingly dominant pitchman on television, alternating between iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone commercials. They are as mainstream as a corporation could get.

Stop your PVR fast forwarding for a while and pay attention to the commercials. Microsoft, Intel, Dell, even McDonalds...they are drown out by Apple's message.

The "Apple's Profitable Niche" Myth

They’re perfectly happy “at the top of the market” where they make a ton of revenue and profit. Billions more, in fact, than Google does with Android.

A recurring claim is that Apple will be pleased to retreat to their profitable little niche: That they're a purveyor of high markup, limited-run technology devices for the connoisseur, and they'll continue happily in their grey poupon ways, Android be damned.

Of course for much of Apple's history it was an incredibly unprofitable enterprise. Through the 90s, despite having their confident bevy of expensive devices and their single-digit saturation, Apple was an economic basket-case, posting billion dollar losses or cutting to the bone and barely breaking even. At one point in Steve Jobs' reign they were bailed out by Microsoft (an investment that would be worth untold riches for Microsoft today had they not quickly divested it).

The iMac started to turn that around by providing an inexpensive all-in-one computer that was novel and accessible for everyperson USA, going back to its middle class Apple II roots. My wife still berates me for not hopping on the AAPL train after correctly predicting what the iMac's impact would be.

After it, of course, the iPod stormed the market. It was a good device that was marketed right, and it laid the groundwork for the iPhone to make some major inroads on day 1. Again, the iPod sat at virtually every price point, easily winning the value race in most categories.

Cars and televisions and stereo receivers came with iPod connectors or docks. They didn't for any competing device.

Apple's profitability grew.

Apple's ability to squeeze a growing profit margin out of their business came by escaping from the niche. In the smartphone market there was a period where Apple was effectively closing on 100% of the market, which is exactly how developers and the media treated them (see the countless organizations that made an iPhone app and that was it -- they felt the consumer was served). Sure, the graphs would include Blackberries and Nokias, but come on -- Apple had the market to itself outside of things your work makes you carry and "What, you mean this thing is supposed to be a smartphone?" devices.

And like most businesses Apple is great at working the synergy. Many of their PC sales came about because they first got the user with an iPod or an iPhone. In the development world, a million developers ran out and bought an Apple equipment stack to try to write their own lottery ticket on the grand iPhone AppStore bet.

Apple has no plans on retreating to a niche. Nor was that niche ever profitable for them. Their strategy pounds home this point, with a focus that is engineering around significant if not dominant market positioning, with network lock-in that makes it difficult to challenge or break. Their application strategy, the top to bottom segmentation, and the "you're with us or you're against us" decisions like Facetime, there should be no confusion that Apple is targeting anything less than being the Microsoft of the decade.

The Red Lobster of Technology Companies

You can't get more mainstream than Apple. Apple is no more exclusive than the GAP or Target or eating at Red Lobster.

They make great devices, no doubt about it. I've been riding the Android train for 17 months now based upon the promise of many capable companies working together, but until the latest generation of devices, such as the Desire Z, I have never felt confident in recommending the devices to anyone else. Really I'm a little surprised it survived thorugh those birthing pains.

But it did. Android today is a very decent device and it's only getting better. Pundits like Scoble (whose fame still confuses me) lament that Android isn't deserving because the apps are better on the iPhone. Apps don't appear overnight, Scoble, and the surge in developer sentiment towards Android has been overwhelming over the past months. On my device I'm getting app update notices literally daily now, as development teams rush to fix up what previously was nothing but a second thought.

It's getting better everyday.

We came periolously close to a unipolar smartphone market, and despite the pains that I had to suffer with Android during its terrible toothing years, I'm glad that we now have a market that's open for any and all. Like Firefox did for Chrome, by making multiplatform support the default Android leaves an opening for Blackberry, Microsoft, Nokia, or anyone else to come along with something better, without being crowded out by an existing and impenetrable ecosystem surrounded by an unassailable network lock-in.

The "Apple Gave The Power Back to the Users, Android Gave It To The Carriers" Myth

The flip-side to this Android domination is what we’re already seeing. The carriers (again, in the U.S. in particular) are using Android’s openness to perform many of their same old tricks. I can’t help but think sometimes that it looks as if Google actually did the carriers a huge favor in the long-run because they’ve taken many of the bells and whistles that drove users to the iPhone in the first place and opened them up for the carriers to use as glittering lures to rope customers back into their traps.

This is the myth that I find simply extraordinary, the overwhelming evidence that it is utter nonsense being so obvious.

In the US Apple has been laying in bed with AT&T for years. Want to go to Verizon? Sorry, not an option. T-Mobile? Not an option. There is zero competition if you want an iPhone in the entire US of A.

Gave the power to the users, did it? First they came for your choice of carrier, with AT&T paying heavily into Apple's treasure for the priviledge.

Apple originally had a no app policy — as demanded of them by AT&T due to fears that apps would go crazy and take down the network — just as Facetime refuses to work over 3G, and various apps that threaten the AT&T / Apple relationship will get quietly squashed.

While Apple doesn't have NASCAR apps or similar bloatware that have very unfortunately appeared on a small minority of Android phones, every single choice on the device is made for you if you're set on an iPhone.

Compare that to Android: Pick your carrier among all available. Pick your device among literally dozens of top rank devices. Use standard consumer discretion to align interests with vendors.

Heard that Verizon stuck some bloatware and a Bing default on their phone? Okay, as a consumer you have countless alternative choices to choose instead while still using the apps you know, the data you've accumulated, and the platform that you've invested in, sending the message that it isn't viable. If Apple, on the other hand, decided that one half of your display will henceforth show nothing but ads (another ridiciulous myth is the proposition that the iPhone represents a purer transaction, which is utter tripe. Apple is locking you in as a consumer to their various media, application, and advertisement platforms), you have no options aside from simply abandoning the platform and whatever you have invested in it.

The iPhone only empowers users in a 1984-esque redefinition of the meaning of empowering. Any control it took from the carriers it placed firmly in the hands of Apple.

Some wager that the upcoming iPad 2 will pixel double both axis, similar to what the iPhone 4 did relative to its predecessor, while others believe that it will keep the resolution of the current generation.

Doubling both axis is a formidable technical challenge and would be a unique, likely expensive display. Continuing with the current resolution would represent a significant competitive disadvantage. As people acclimate to high density smartphones, such as the iPhone 4, the iPad's low density is really starting to stand out.

Few believe it will do anything in between. It won’t, the common wisdom goes, go to say 1536 x 1152 or 1280 x 860, or any other fractional improvement less than an outright doubling or quadrupling. The logic is that pixel scaling issues eliminate the possibility of such a half measure.

This harkens to discussions that occurred over 20 years ago.

It should be an embarrassment that such a discussion is occurring in 2011.

In the TiPb article linked above the author leads off with a slur towards Android, saying “Either iPad 2 will have a standard 1024×768 display or a doubled 2048×1538 Retina Display, or developers and users will be in for the type of frustration usually ascribed to Android.”

That makes for an odd, if not outright ignorant, statement: I can’t recall ever reading anyone complain about the density independent pixel of Android, or its awareness and accommodation of a wide variety of profiles. That’s a problem that it has solved very well, and a large ecosystem of sizes and resolutions of displays exist in remarkable harmony.

Consumers like being able to choose between 3” – 15”+ devices with a wide variety of densities. Choice is good.

Because of course the DPI issue has long been solved. Otherwise you would be lamenting that your 72dpi word processor isn’t compatible with your 300dpi printer: “Everything prints out all tiny-like”. Is that the case?

Vector fonts with pixel independent abstractions have been around for a long time (in TrueType and Postscript form), with Apple as one of the primary inventors. Most GUI frameworks, including iOS, have the ability to scale UI rudiments to virtually any resolution and pixel density with ease.

That is an ancient problem, long solved.

But what about icons? What about bitmap graphic artifacts?

In an ideal world icons would come in vector graphic form. That isn’t the case on Android (the platform doesn’t support SVG, including in the browser, which is a huge deficiency), but it is still shocking that Apple, which usually takes the lead on such innovations, doesn’t use them for iOS, as had been widely speculated as a given before the iPhone OS was first released.

With a vector graphic the rendered image is always perfect for the target, ideally with hints that suppress decorations at very low sizes.

Even with bitmap graphics, however, while it’s easy to contrive ridiculous examples to demonstrate the worst of scaling, the reality is that given that text should always be UI generated from vector fonts, perfect for the target, and graphics are usually just supplementary decorations, where scaling up or down by partial multiples is often perfectly adequate.

For your consideration below are some iOS icons (used for fair use purposes but owned by Apple) at their original pixel size, and then scaled to 125% and 150%. Scaling was done using Sinc (Lanczos3), which is a good algorithm to use when scaling up and you want to maintain fine detail.

The horrors! Just to be clear (as it's hard to imagine what the larger images would look like when shown in the same physical space), we're comparing this to simply pixel-doubling, which would look like the following (cropped to avoid exceeding most reader's screen bounds).

There is no universe where a straight pixel-doubled image looks better than an interpolated image, unless you have fine detail in the image (like text) which shouldn't be in the image to begin with.

Not only do they still look great, but remember that in such a case the actual viewed sizes would also decrease proportionally, so the marginal artifacts would be rendered completely irrelevant. Reading some of the blog entries on scaling you would think you’d end up with some sort of blob.

Not to mention that most iPad apps would be fixed up to handle the new platform shortly after the SDK were released.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that Apple will maintain the same resolution. The device was already considered under-pixeled when first released, and has succeeded despite that deficiency. With the appearance of actual competition over the coming months it would put the successor at a serious disadvantage out of the gate. Apple has always emphasized and often led in the spec department (the thinnest, lightest, brightest screen, widest viewing angle, highest pixel density, etc), so I don’t believe that Apple would allow such a scenario.

At the same time, doubling the pixels is a big expense because such a panel doesn’t yet exist, and that sort of density is rare in larger displays.

Then again, Apple, in talking about their blockbuster quarter yesterday, spoke about a mysterious $3.9 billion dollar supply chain investment. It would not surprise me in the least if they managed to get the volumes and process in place for such a display given how critical the iPad has become to their bottom line, and Apple's tendency to set new benchmarks.

If I had to place a wager, however, I would bet that Apple neither keeps their current resolution, nor will they double the resolution. I would guess that they will go to 1536 x 1152, or more likely 1280 x 960.

No More Google I/O Freebies

Some are hoping that Google gives away nothing at Google I/O 2011.

I strongly agree.

It's possible that I'm motivated by sour grapes after trying to register for Google I/O mere minutes after registration opened, to be met with a sold out notice.

The quick sellout is partly a reflection of the astonishing success of Android, coupled with the setup that last year's attendees were given first dibs over the preceding week: They knew with close to certainty that they'll leave with $1000+ in freebies, so it's a pretty easy choice.

Now that I'm not in the running for what will likely include a free Motorola Xoom and Nexus S, maybe I'm just trying to urinate in the waters.

But really, such giveaways do provide the wrong motivations. Trade shows are notorious for this, with herds of incredibly cheap attendees — hotel and flight paid for by their employer, if not simply locals — motivated primarily by free pens, t-shirts, and so on.

Such a spectacle is an embarrassment. It was, I suspect, one of the things that killed COMDEX: When most of the floor is occupied by people just looking to enter draws and score swag, the value of the show is seriously undermined.

"Yeah, great demo. Where's my freebie?"

I refuse to believe that it enables development for Android. Is there really a credible Android developer who couldn't accommodate that minimal capital expense themselves? Does Apple need to give out free iPads and iPhones?

Worse still, it devalues the entire ecosystem because it makes you a sucker if you paid real money for something. It makes buying that Xoom for development even more painful because you know that so many got it for free, courtesy of Google, quickly flipping it on Ebay.