A great critique. Catch his earlier takedown, on “the actual process of procuring issues of a magazine,” too.
Craig Mod’s follow-up to his excellent iPad essay.
Lovely essay by Craig Mod:
This is a conversation for books-makers, web-heads, content-creators, authors and designers. For people who love beautifully made things. And for the storytellers who are willing to take risks and want to consider the most appropriate shape and media for their yarns.
Gawker:
On one side, a Times source explains, you have print circulation, which thinks it should control the iPad since it’s just another way to distribute the paper. They’d like to charge $20 to $30 per month for the Times’ forthcoming iPad app. […]
On the other side, you have the Times’ digital operation, which is pushing to charge $10 per month for the iPad edition and is said to be up in arms over print circulation’s pricing.
Love, love, love that the writers make HTML5 sound like an Apple-backed web video technology. Because we all know HTML5 is but a video player. It’s only HTML, after all.
More seriously, though, I just don’t understand all this hand-wringing. YouTube has an HTML5 video player beta out, and Hulu can’t be far behind. The web is already moving away from Flash for video; Apple’s only further encouraging that move.
“But what about my beloved Flash games?” you might say. They wouldn’t be playable on the iPad even with Flash enabled, Neven Mrgan notes:
Attention folks expecting “the full web”, including today’s Flash games, on a touchscreen device: no keyboard, no mouseover. Think about it.
And designers using Flash for essential site elements will face increasing pressure to adopt web standards, to the benefit of everyone.
Even if the reasons for doing so are entirely selfish, Apple is trying to relieve the web of its dependency on Flash, and I applaud the effort.
Jeffrey Zeldman:
Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to build the semantic HTML layer first.
Stephen Fry:
There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it.
Fraser Speirs:
What you’re seeing in the industry’s reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock.
Some much-needed perspective.
I asked Poynter faculty and staff for their five-minute analysis on what the iPad means for their areas of expertise in journalism.