Monthly Archives: March 2013

Google + “open” = big joke

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Google + “open” = big joke

For some reason, a lot of people think Google is a benevolent champion of openness. Open platforms, open data, open source, open everything.

Marco Arment hasn’t fallen for it, and neither should you:

If they really cared about being so “open”, they’d open up a nontrivial part of their business that hasn’t already been commoditized, like their searching or advertising algorithms.

Click through for more of his ranty goodness.

Fraser Speirs on iPads for consumption and creation

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Fraser Speirs on iPads for consumption and creation

This has already done the rounds, but if you haven’t seen it yet, click through for a helpful analysis of the iPad’s suitability for tasks based on their complexity and duration. As usual, Fraser is spot-on.

Also, Apple has just posted a 5-minute video showcasing a school that’s using student iPads REALLY well. (For consumption AND creation.) Worth a watch.

A world without Adobe

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Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign. If you believe the hype (and the masses), they’re all “industry-standard”. They also happen to be Adobe’s flagship products, and in my view, they don’t deserve to be industry-standard-anything. Here’s why:

  • Pricing. Leaving aside the breathtaking cost of commercial licenses for Adobe software (which only ever creates a scenario where relatively few legitimate license-holders cover the cost of relatively many pirates), the difference between Adobe’s US pricing and Australian pricing – even for downloadable products with no domestic support options – can be massive. It’s less of a problem than it used to be (thanks to media attention and parliamentary inquiries, no doubt), but this price-gouging remains a blight on Adobe as a corporation.
  • Hostile takeovers. Adobe buys its competitors and destroys their products, either by halting development or by butchering code. Heard of Macromedia? Flash? Pixmantec RawShooter? You know what I’m talking about, then. Adobe is a Big Bad Bully.
  • (Lack of) innovation, bad software engineering. AIR was never fast enough for serious development. Flash didn’t evolve (e.g. by becoming an “open” platform) and was similarly inefficient (hence no mobile Flash on any platform in 2013). As these were used in frontline products (e.g. Photoshop), they became slower, hungrier and buggier. One can only assume that no-one at Adobe knows how to write good code! (Have you ever opened a Lightroom catalog in a SQLite browser? Least. Efficient. Data structures. Ever.)
  • Good alternatives actually exist. No, I’m not talking about GIMP. There’s Pixelmator, iDraw, Acorn, Aperture and a bunch of other fast, affordable, serious alternatives to Adobe’s big-name products. And they’re rapidly getting better.

I own several licenses of Lightroom and Photoshop, and have passively endured each version’s decline in performance and stability. That’s over now. I’m moving to better products, from better-behaved corporations, and I intend to take my school with me.

“Industry-standard” is so last decade.