PC WEENIES: Tech Toons and Reviews

Open for Debate

Chapter: Random

One couldn’t help but note the palpable irony in Apple’s recent HTML5 showcase. Which is why you’re seeing today’s “weekend edition” hot off the digital press.

HTML5 has compelling features, as I’m sure Apple touts, but look carefully before you think the company is being completely “open”.

Enjoy the ‘toon! (if you like it, why not plug it on StumbleUpon, Reddit, or your favorite social networking site? I would totally appreciate it!)

And now I leave you with one of my favorite movie mash-ups, tangentially related to the punchline:

If you haven’t seen it, may I strongly recommend watching “The Princess Bride”?

-Krishna

These beautiful and intelligent people wrote

LtSiverReply
June 5, 2010 at 12:09 am
Open – as long as you’re using apple. Love the princess bride quotes. :)
- Krishna Reply
  June 5, 2010 at 10:58 pm
  good on ya, LtSiver – I was hoping someone would pick up on the Princess Bride quote. Great film! :)
  - SeamusReply
    June 6, 2010 at 11:19 am
    Thanks for putting up that little bit from Princess Bride…..Even now I still laugh when I see it….It is one of those movies that just hits the mark every time you view it.
BertReply
June 5, 2010 at 5:37 am
You seem to forget that those demo’s are actually written with open standards. The only problem is that almost no other browser but Safari already supports ALL of these standards.
Chrome supports most, Firefox supports some, Opera supports some, and even IE supports some with some workarounds, but at this point it would be too much work to test compatibility and add seperate browser requirements for each demo. (Heck, even Safari on Windows doesn’t support the 3D demo yet.)

The showcase is about the future of webdevelopment, not the present, so it’s not surprising it doesn’t work in every browser.
Besides, even Mozilla which is probably the most open browser vendor has some demo’s that only work in their browser (at this point):
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/12/file-drag-and-drop-in-firefox-3-6/
http://blog.mozbox.org/post/2009/10/12/Some-new-demos

Anyway, I know it’s just a joke but I thought I would clear up some common misunderstandings :) Great work ‘though, love the site!
- Krishna Reply
  June 5, 2010 at 10:58 pm
  What about H.264?
  - Aljiro Reply
    June 6, 2010 at 11:14 am
    Yup. H.264 Its not exactly “Open” is it?
  - BertReply
    June 7, 2010 at 5:34 am
    True, H.246 isn’t open. But as far as I know, it’s been around much longer then ogg and almost all videos on sites such as Youtube and Vimeo are encoded in H.246, not ogg.
    But I’m not trying to say that Apple is in fact open, all I’m trying to say is that every browser has some proprietary features, and no browser is in fact really “open”. Mozilla comes close with it’s open-source code but still, it’s adding features that aren’t found in the standards. But if we’re looking at open-source code: WebKit is open-source as well. So from that point of view Opera, IE and Flash are less open then Apple.
    And as I said before, the big video sites are using H.246 already. If Apple was trying to earn secure its earnings from this encoding type it would simply defend Flash, because it’s already using H.246.
    Instead, they’re promoting a whole new standard. And HTML 5 isn’t only about by the way, so saying Apple isn’t open at all because one small factor of the new HTML standard isn’t 100% open seems a bit extreme. (Especially since Apple doesn’t control this standard)
  - BertReply
    June 7, 2010 at 5:35 am
    That was supposed to be: “And HTML 5 isn’t only about the video tag by the way”
SeamusReply
June 5, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Though let’s be honest here….Steve Jobs is no different than Bill Gates…and that is he wants you using nothing but MAC OS, Safari, Quick Time, iPhones, iPads, and iPods…..he is a business man who wants 100% of the market share just as all the rest do. Once folks realize that he is out for Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs alone, then people can start making a real thought out decision about his products…..

He pushes Quick Time and Java, but has problems with Flash…Now yes Flash has security problems….though no more than Java does….The difference is that Apple owns Quick Time and it is a DIRECT competitor to Flash.

Look at Apple products as they should be….Do you need it? Do software companies write the software you need for that OS? Will it increase your ability to do your job? Is its abilities worth the price? Don’t just get in line to purchase the next “new” product just because it is a “New Apple Product”…..it makes it look like you are a “groupie”…do your homework and see if that product is actually something that will increase your ability to earn an income…..why? Because toys come second….no matter how much you would love to have one.
qkaReply
June 7, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Even if you are on an Apple system, some of the touted new features don’t work unless you are running Snow Leopard, the latest Max OS.

So, instead of plugins it’s the underlying operating system.

Not exactly an improvement.
leeReply
July 30, 2010 at 10:58 am
Bert…when you say…but at this point it would be too much work to test compatibility and add seperate browser requirements for each demo, it is work but that is exactly what we did as HTML3 was coming of age. We checked browser and version and created modifications as needed based on our targets.

PS good comic