I don't know where to begin.

There is just so much wrong with this. With such completely obvious answers (like letting the user choose content).

This is turning into a war between the heavy hitters. Jobs has fully morphed into Gates. If there was ever any doubt. It's gone now.

Apple has become Big Brother.

We're not hearing the real story, whatever that is. If the issue was plain, Jobs could have described it in a paragraph. All of those multiple paragraphs are like the Health Care bill -- just bury people in words and hope they succumb from the sheer impenetrability of it all.

Indeed, Jobs has become Big Brother.

Speaking of Flash, I'm trying out this plugin for Safari that turns Flash off. Whatever the benefits of Flash, it seems to be a CPU hog and on this old Mac, it's sometimes too much.

Click2flash is very good, i'm using it for quite a while now. Even on a recent mac this plugin makes sense, it's just less stuff to load and display. More speed is always welcome...

Glad to hear of someone else using it. So far so good. It's very easy to enable on specific things on a web page (such as a YouTube video) when needed. Very nice.

quote:

"We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs," the letter reads. "No company -- no matter how big or how creative -- should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web."

Good answer by Adobe. Makes Apple look like the techno-fascists that they are.

Geez. I take that back. I forgot that it was Microsoft that is always trying to restrict everything and is always playing hardball.

I liked the earth better before that whole "leveraging" thing. I liked when the mission was to make computers easy to use, the interfaces customizable, and when the entire intent was to put creative power in the hands of regular people.

Now, it's how many rubes you can force into your view of what sort of chimps they are... what your stupid focus groups tell you are their WEAKNESSES, which you simply exploit. That's a far cry of trying to figure out what we want and need to do, and helping us do that.

quote:

I liked the earth better before that whole "leveraging" thing.

Tonight's movie is "Marked Woman" starring Bette Davis who works in a "clip joint." Her job is to grease the skids on the out-of-town "marks" who are looking for a good time so that they will drink, get a little tipsy, and then can be led to the gambling tables like sheep to the slaughter.

You might be loved by your mother, your brother, or perhaps even your dog, but expect everyone else to treat you like a mark for their clip joint. And, just as was mentioned in this movie, they can do it hard and fast or soft and smooth. A really successful racket is when you willingly hand over your money and don't even know you're being fleeced. It's playing to weaknesses.

This is a pretty good explanation of the history of Adobe v. Apple in my industry. A sordid tale of soul-selling as they rise to dominance.

The losers? Pro Users. It was healthier when Adobe had some competition, like Macromedia and Quark.

quote:

Incidentally, a reader adds: "freefreehand.org has been setup to recruit members and raise funds to try to convince Adobe through legal means to divest itself of FreeHand, which they are trying to let die a slow death. Fortunately this skirmish with Apple has helped shed a tad of light on how hypocritical Adobe is regarding 'healthy competition' and all the other drivel they are spouting regarding Apple spurning Flash."

That's pretty cool. I know there are some diehard Freehand users out there. I used to be one of them. But Illustrator makes "freehand" drawing with the primitive shapes and bezier curves so much easier. I used to get so frustrated in Freehand just trying to select things. It was a nightmare. But I certainly like the idea of bringing some competition back to the market. 95% of the new features of Illustrator I just yawn add. Bloat. Feature creep. The good news is that generally they have added these features in a way that you could just ignore what you didn't want. That is no small feat.

I thought that article was way too Apple ball-licking positive. But it was an interesting read.

quote:

But Illustrator makes "freehand" drawing with the primitive shapes and bezier curves so much easier.

Yeah, NOW. But it wasn't always so. I was a die-hard Freehand user. The interface was much better. Still, Illustrator's interface drives me nuts, and it seems like I'm always moving paths when I want to edit them, fighting the interface which seems sluggish when responding to key commands when working at a good clip.

Yes, the Apple fanboyism kicks in, but that's just because Adobe's response to Apple has been brilliant and makes them look bad. No Flash is patently ridiculous. I mean it's classic Apple trying to control chimps.

Adobe simply plays the same game. And they're such a juggernaut now, that you can't cross them and not pay. Er, well, like I said, it's not really APPLE that's gonna pay... it's all the Mac PRO users who depend on Adobe software.

I'm mostly moved over to CS1 Illustrator by now. But it's still a pleasure to work in Illustrator 8 from time to time. I generally have to do a lot of fine work with bezier curves. Feel matters. Any stutters or delays kill the feel of the tool. When you can just look at a curve and know where to place the points, how far to stretch the handles, well, you know you've arrived. A simple-looking curve can be the devil to make if you get the points wrong. But I surprised myself the other day when I had to draw a fairly curvaceous logo from scratch. The basic vectorize routine. I nailed it. But many times I don't. But when you get the curves right, it's great.

I always arrange the Illustrator palettes that I need on a second screen, so the interface mostly works just fine. But I can't imagine what it would be like if the keyboard wasn't accepting those one-key shortcuts for changing tools. So far I haven't had that problem.

My first vector art program was actually CricketDraw. Remember that one? It was one of the first to do type effects and complex blends. And Illustrator for the longest time was a dog compared to FreeHand. Illustrator couldn't place images. But you could use FreeHand like a page layout program, and many did. You could do multi-page stuff okay. I *think* at one time that FreeHand was also far superior in creating separations. There were a lot of features I liked (firing up version 8 in Classic now). If you didn't like the interface, you could certainly customize it.

But both programs went through horrible periods when the interface was a complete kludge. I'm not sure which was worse, but Freehand 3 was pretty bad, as I remember. I'm not absolutely sure of the version though. The menu or palette configurations made no logical sense. But was it outdone by the horrid palettes and organization of Illustrator 5? That's debatable.

But: warning. You probably shouldn't go back and look at Illustrator 8. It's all very crisp and clean. It looks like the interface has been focused from the blur it normally is in all later versions. To this day I'm still astounded that "artists" would still be so pleased and tickled with form over function. People like this stuff because it looks "cool." WTF? Is the job of a basic tool to look cool? Michelangelo apparently (like probably all sculptors of the time) would forge his own tools out of bars of metal. Did he worry about putting pearl handles on them? JHC. The vacuousness of today's yute still amazes me. And that's precisely how Obama got elected. Complete style over substance.

---

I was just thinking about Illustrator's interface and I'm pretty sure that the general "palette" structure emerged in version 6. It seems to me that 6 was a short-lived version that was fairly soon replaced by seven which, until version 8, was a very stable and good version of Illustrator.

Oh Mercy, you're Markle. I thought I was Markle, working on a Mac G5 (rather than an Intel)... but now even Markle has an Intel Mac.

I can't even remember back that far. I vaguely remember CricketDraw. Yes, definitely Freehand was the better pro tool for separations, I remember that. I judge those programs based on how easy it is to ILLUSTRATE in them. Meaning generating full-on spot illustrations, drawing in them. If you can't CREATE illustrations from scratch easily, what's the point? Freehand was better at this. If I had to draw something like simple black line illustrated assembly instructions for a BBQ grill, or whatever, that's where I went. It seemed to be designed for artists. Until Illustrator came into its own, I always felt like I was fighting it. It's much better now, and I could prove in a court of law all that is because of Freehand. Now, however, there's no competition. Adobe is the be-all and end-all, I can already tell they are getting lazy. Nowhere to go but down.

Adobe's interfaces have become a mess. The more they try to organize the jillion palettes, the more bloated and cumbersome it all becomes. I have no idea what I'd do if I didn't have a 30" monitor. So much of my real estate is taken up with friggin' Adobe nonsense. But the one thing Adobe has over Apple: it allows you to CUSTOMIZE the bloat better. You can design yourself a workspace and save it. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass to do it, but I've found that it saves time in the long run.

The worst interfaces right now, are Flash, and Dreamweaver. Just awful... really a bear to customize to make them usable. Relatively speaking, Illustrator is positively less-is-more next to those beasts.

I loved to work in Freehand 5 with the completely black/white-UI enabled. Man, what a Killer setup, it felt great and the speed of the tools were killer.

Yeah, FH5 (and later version) also had horrible downsides. For example the lack of an intelligent search-function when placed pictures were moved to another place. Quark had this running very nicely, FH failed - you had to find EACH file by hand. :-)

But for Logo-Design, Curves, the basic design process it's still one of my favs.

Thalo, i'm also using workspaces in ID too. Yeah, it takes some time to find the perfect setup, but to me it's very useful and timesaving. I use my second screen for the palettes, works great.

Yes, I am the new Markle. The reason I don't have a new Intel Mac? It's George Bush's fault.

quote:

Thalo, i'm also using workspaces in ID too. Yeah, it takes some time to find the perfect setup, but to me it's very useful and timesaving. I use my second screen for the palettes, works great.

I'm seriously thinking of getting another screen just for Palettes myself. I tried "spaces" and couldn't find a workflow that, uh, WORKED.

The problem is, I'd rather spend any extra money I can save on RAM. I know I'm going to need it.

As much distaste as I have for Apple of late, I'm going to have to side with them on this one because for all Apple's faults, I am more angry with Adobe.

First off, Flash sucks. It sucks as a web design component, and it sucks so much more as part of the UI of an application. It only runs on a select few platforms that Adobe deigns to port it to, and it doesn't seem to run well on any of them. Since they came into ownership of it, Adobe has been trying to push Flash into new territory, notably into the interface of their own professional applications, which is going down the tubes. Adobe is breaking interface conventions with its apps on both Mac OS X and Windows in horrible ways, and Flash is one of the foremost tools they are using to that end. Adobe software used to feel like a native Mac OS application, but since they bought Macromedia, they have been getting farther and farther from that. I always used to like Adobe apps for their straightforward, relatively standard interface and hate Macromedia's for their clunky rule-breaking interfaces, but now all of Adobe's software looks like Macromedia crap.

The root of why I approve of Apple's behavior here is this:

quote:

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features... Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps.

Cross-platform apps are almost always substandard, yet they are becoming increasingly numerous because developers can make their software run on Windows/Mac/Linux etc. with little extra work. I don't see handheld devices being any different. Because it's so much easier for developers to use cross-platform tools, they're going to keep making them as long as they're able. Something like Apple refusing to support Flash is the only way to discourage their use.

Forget all the happy talk about openness and compatibility; the real issue at hand is application quality. I know Apple's motives are self-serving, but that doesn't necessarily mean what they're doing is wrong. I hate Apple, but I hate trashy cross-platform apps that ignore my operating system's GUI conventions even more, and I'm in support of anything that helps cut down on their prominence. Adobe, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org/Oracle, anyone who makes GUI software in Java - I'm looking at you.

quote:

Since they came into ownership of it, Adobe has been trying to push Flash into new territory, notably into the interface of their own professional applications, which is going down the tubes. Adobe is breaking interface conventions with its apps on both Mac OS X and Windows in horrible ways, and Flash is one of the foremost tools they are using to that end.

I'm guessing Apple could easily accommodate Flash. If so, then they just don't want to. Why? Well, the thought occurred to me a couple days ago (much like you said) that its because Flash is a competing interface. It's a platform within a platform, a paradigm within a paradigm. I think that's the true reason Jobs doesn't like Flash. There could be other reasons as well. But that certainly jibes with what you're saying, ianj.

I pretty much hate Flash but only because it's usually all about eye candy, not content. Flash is the thing to endure while you get to the real stuff, which doesn't mean that people aren't using flash in innovate ways to present data. They are, but often it's just virus-like.