Bad Apple...
No Flash, no Java, no iPad.
Now where did I leave my netbook...
Apple claims that its just-announced iPad "lets you see web pages as they were meant to be seen," but Adobe's group manager for Flash marketing isn't buying it. "If I want to use the iPad to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab - not to mention the millions of other sites on the web - I'll …
Anyway...
Just 'cos it's crap, doesn't mean it isn't popular, take Windows ( oop, had to get that in there, haha!).
Flash might be complete crap, bloody annoying, slow and the bane of most support desks, but the damn thing is everywhere like a rash. Sites are using it 'cos it's cheap and cheerful, whether you lot think it's good or not is irrelevant, Mr Joe Public wants flashy ( no pun! ) sites and lots of eye-candy, Flash gives it and makes it quick and easy, when it works of course.
The iPad may not be technically fantastic, but it will sell like hotcakes, Apple have a well-known brand and the device is small and capable of doing what the makers say it will do, nothing more.
It doesn't have to be good to sell, take VHS, Windows ( get in there! ), Skoda's ( early ones! ), Pot Noodles and SUN hardware, it just has to be good enough to do what the makers say it will do!
..Apart from Youtube, BBC iPlayer, ITV player, 4OD, TV Catchup, Fantastic Contraption...
While I think most people will agree the world would be a better place without flash, at present if you want any kind of video, music or game content on the web then you need flash.
Long-time Flash advocate (in the absence of anything better) but IMO Flash has had it's day. There is little in Flash that you can't do with JavaScript and HTML5 now. While I think Flash still has its place (games) I certainly would not recommend it for regular web sites and frankly flash-heavy sites are a PITA even on a meaty computer. The only 'killer feature' that Flash really adds over HTML5+JavaScript is the ease of putting together sexy UIs, but given frameworks like jQuery or Scriptacul.us that gap is rapidly narrowing: plus iPad is a app-driven platform so you can create your sexy UIs in objective-c instead, no?
It does have a place, but it should not be treated as some DHTML/WEB2.0 standard-by-proxy.
I can play full screen video on my aging PC just fine, but even a small amount of video in Flash kills it (I don't use Windows, so the Adobe support is even worse). I am having a look at Gnash to see if that is an option, but as Flash is a closed "standard" it takes the Gnash team a while to reverse-engineer.
Right tool for a job and all that.
And then, of course, we have Adobe. Who are, last time I bothered to check, yet to release a 64-bit version of Flash for IE 64 on 64-bit systems. Or anything else for that matter. I've given up with Adobe, I won't even bother to mention their non-existent support for paid for and fully licensed products. Apart from that brief mention, of course.
Glad someone else said this...hey Adobe - if you can't even port Flash to 64-bit browsers (even freakin' IE for 64-bit!!!), then I know why Apple doesn't trust you to develop Flash for their platforms.
I mean, it's not like we are asking for it on new browsers - just the 64-bit versions of the world's most popular. Can't do it, can you? I know, I've been waiting now FOR YEARS to actually use my shiny new 64-bit browsers on my 64-bit operation systems - and no dice.
Is it that hard, really? Can't you just subcontract a port to a few guys in India or China at least? You've had years to fix this since IE and others went 64-bit...and the clock is still ticking.
Writing this on my 32-bit IE version running on Win 7 64-bit Ultimate, whilst my 64-bit browser sits gathering dust because I occasionally need Flash...
Adobe = fail. That's why Apple won't let them contaminate their consumer electronics (notice I didn't say PCs - people are used to rebooting them).
I've yet to see a linux box run full screen flash video without turning it into a flickering mess. My machine's hardly cutting edge, but it's not too shabby. Got a decent CPU, 4GB ram, and a 9800GT - with Nvidia's own drivers of course. Windows takes it in it's stride, so why does the penguin struggle?
Not bashing the Linux, I actually like using it, just sayin'...
Using compositing desktop managers tends to mess up fullscreen.
Flash is also inherently unstable under Linux, no idea why, but it's quite often I'll be greeted with a white box (and I don't mean the flashblock one) when trying to load it. Browser restart usually fixes the problem (unless flash kills itself immediately of course). Had the same problems using the 32-bit version through nspluginwrapper and the new(ish) 64-bit version, so I'm fairly certain the problem lies in Adobe's utter lack of ability to write good software.
I'm not sure who's worse out of Apple and Adobe tbh. Neither make products I'm the slightest bit fond of. The iPad (seriously? Who came up with that? It's not even cutesy like Wii), much as I'd love to see it fail, won't. It's aimed at a netbook-a-like market of people with disposable income who will go "$450 for a boring standard netbook or $500 for a shiny-shiny apple thing that the nice people on TV said is THE BEST BROWSING EXPERIENCE EVER!!!!!" You know which they'll choose.
Flash support will cause Apple a truck-load of earache, but I doubt it will kill the device.
HTML5 is coming and provided the codec argument is sorted with Mozilla and H.264, Flash vids will only be used by ads and people will begin to remove the plugin making their machine magnitudes more secure in the proces. Sorry crap coded plugins from Adobe, but I can't wait to get rid of you.
sort your shit out on OS X first and Steve-o might let you play in his garden.
Honestly, if Adobe can't make Flash run well under OS X, how the hell do they expect it to run well on the iPad?
For everyone who is bemoaning the lack of Flash support on the iPad, etc, there are two choices:
- no flash => no flash games, no hulu, etc.
- crap flash => jerky unplayable games, jerky unwatchable hulu, crap battery life, security holes.
Personally, I think telling Adobe to f--k off is the better option...
The next version of our website - which has over a million visits per year - will not be using you for anyone who is visiting with an HTML5 compliant browser. Sadly (or happily depending on your perspective) Internet Explorer sufferers will continue to be abused by Adobe's horrendously shit plug-in, but everyone with a decent browser will be served video content via video tags from HTML5, and slideshows and any other pointless flashy effects via JS.
After god knows how many years, Flash still doesn't provide a single accessibility option for disabled users (screen readers don't even see it on the page) so Adobe can go fuck themselves. We need to be WCAG 2.0 compliant and if we use your rubbish we won't be. Simple as that.
P.S. If anyone thinks that any of the web teams behind any of the websites that were humiliated by not being fully iPad/iPhone compliant in that Keynote aren't thinking exactly the same thing as us, then you are deluded. That plug-in icon was not an embarrassment for Apple it was an embarrassment for them.
Inserting Flash into a page isn't difficult. It is if you don't know what you're doing.
Given that it's so simple to insert a Flash movie into a page in an accessible way that gracefully degrades into HTML or even DHTML, it's a damning indictment that so few websites bother to do it. This could well be down to Adobe not bothering to show them how to do it properly.
So that's a fail on Adobe and also a fail on many of the largest websites; one of which was the New York Times for not bothering to do it right.
The iPad is better off without Flash. Long live FlashBlock.
I'm glad it's gone.
Using IE Flash is loaded automatically - I know because I'm pestered with ads - some of which have sound.
Thankfully, you can turn Flash off in Safari (at least the version I have). It let's you click on a box saying "flash" if you really want to see the content (I never do!)
The only thing I've found Flash useful for is obfuscation - you can put links in some flash and search engines won't know they're there. This keeps them secret from the unwashed masses...
Flash is a bloated, useless security hole and will pretty soon be completely redundant so I am not surprised Apple don't support it.
As other commenters have noted, Adobe don't make a version for IE64 so why should Apple make a version...!?!? It doesn't make sense!
The iPad was rushed into production because Android slates are on the way. I'm not seeing much Flash action on my Android phone giving a 'get out of Flash free' card and the freedom to drag their feet.
Either Android sprouts the Flash infection and Apple will rush out support OR this could be the first time someone who gives a shit (for all the wrong reasons) is powerful enough to dislodge this plague from the web.
So all we need to do is make sure Android never gets working Flash ;)
Flash and Java are not needed to make web apps and the more HTML5 etc develops over the next 2 years the more irrelevant they both become. The writing and supply of crappy (or not) little apps are perfectly possible without either Flash or Java. Client-side databases and caches also meant that web apps don't even have to be online to function.
If people want to bypass the App Store they can already do it. Hell, Google Docs, GMail, etc. and even Office Live when it arrives will all work from Safari and bypass the App Store. Google's own Chrome "OS" is going to be more web based than it is client based, ffs.
Why always the same complaints? You probably use it more often than you think, without even realising it. Chances are most touchscreen kiosks use it. Shopping centres, tills, ticket machines, information desks, etc.
You focus on how bad the latest exploit is. Or how it's only ever good for advertising, or sluggish games. The majority of bad press Flash receives is down to piss poor scripters. And if it's too sluggish on your mobile device, news flash - it's a mobile device. Not a laptop or desktop. We're only now starting to see mobile devices catch up in terms of hardware.
As for the iPad, what a joke. More like iPhail. All that hype, even with St. Jobs' legendary gift of the gab, and seemingly bottomless bank accounts, they still couldn't afford to make it multi-task. And it's being pitted against netbooks? ROFLMAO!
I never use flash unknowingly because I use Adblock which highlights to me exactly which components on the screen are Flash.
Flash has been the same disaster for the internet and Microsoft has been for desktop computing.
Flash has slowed browser development as developers take the easy route only to find they're tied into some proprietary infrastructure which costs them too much to escape from. It means an end user experience consisting of slow downloads, clunky install paths and versioning hell where if you don't have the right version of some crappy plug-in installed then the website doesn't work at all. How crap is that? If the problems with Flash are people writing poor scripts then this is Adobe's fault for allowing this and not being defensive against it, not the developers fault.
Flash is basically a dead technology, and good riddance.
brym wrote "Chances are most touchscreen kiosks use it. Shopping centres, tills, ticket machines, information desks, etc."
FFS, what has that got to do with how shitty Flash is? NASA continued to use Amigas for certain work long after they had stopped producing them. It doesn't mean we have to as well - it's horses for courses and Flash is a lame bloated old nag.
(but next time I'm browsing the web on the tills and ticket machines at home then I'll be sure and check that flash works)
Just for the record, the iPad DOES multitask as you would know if you'd read the specs. Only trusted applications can do it though and at the moment that means Apple's applications.
... is that not what Apple said in the early days about the iPhone too ...? And then had to admit it couldn't when it came to producing IM clients, turn-by-turn navigation etc.? Maybe I am wrong, but I am pretty sure Apple admitted this when they released their update which included cut-n-paste etc.?
..... Yup, it would indeed be a good thing if html 5 is as good as it has been billed. But hold on a second, can the iPad deal with html 5 right now ? It's kind of academic isn't it, because with the device not too far from launch day, so much media is supplied via flash..... oh dear. So much for consuming media, unless ..... oh yeah, you have to buy all of it. Anyone care to hazard a guess when the current installed base of flash is going to migrate to html 5 ? Thought not.
Html5 isn't ready for primetime yet, and neither are some browsers.
One last little dig at the some of the more aggressively religious Jobs believers who point out the use of Flash for advertising - do bear in mind the vast chunk of the electro magnetic spectrum used for conveying ads, from visible light to radio and tv, or are you going to give that up too if your cult leader tells you to do so ? Let's be honest, it's just another computing device, a limited one, and not, definitely not, a lifestyle boosting wonder product.
Stop and think.
Flash is indeed inefficient garbage, but it's also a necessity for large chunks of the web.
The reason Apple exclude it is because of the video competition. Why pay to download expensive itunes movies/tv when you can get it free from the likes of hulu/iplayer/skyplayer//etc? Oh wait, you can't, because Apple blocked it.
no matter what OS you use (windows, Mac, linux etc...) you are FORCED by to install unwanted 3rd party pluging that are:
1. Bloated to the point of been CRIMINAL
2. totaly useless, un-optimized
i am talking of course of the 2 most dangerous virus on the internet:
Flash and Acroscrap reader.
These 2 things as ben the most useless, bloated piece of software ever FORCED on users. Microsoft look like a bouy scout compared to Adobe.
Adobe should be arrested for polluting the internet.
... they found that the only people who knew how the core technology worked had been made redundant years ago. Try as they might they can't find anyone who can write new versions of flash plugins. They have to try to port the old crap with wrappers and part ports making it even more inefficient. Proof? the 32bit windows version is the only one that actually works to any extent. Anything else and you need twice the cpu cycles to do the same thing.
Can i point out, that this article is probably highly irrelevant. Flash came to the iPhone eventually, and so will this. I think apple do these stupid things to spark such reactions. Its still a useless paving slab, but all the same, flash WILL come to it. Why shouldnt it?
when Apple discontinued the Floppy Drive?
World will end.
Apple will crumble.
Bill Gates will save the World.
Flash ... Ahahh. (for film fans)
Seen one on a computer lately?
Flash is crap. Adobe know it. Stevie knows it. Apple know it. Millions of victims know it.
Apple are right ... again.
(I'm not sure about the iPad yet, though. I don't think it will go the way of Newton or the Cube but it does need a bit more Wow!)
As to Adolf ... he chooses the HP Slate ... he killed himself. Seems about right!
Good. Flash blows. Unless you are running a massively powerful CPU, Flash just rapes your system. Non-Windows support is even worse. Flash also bloats web pages with stupid ads and is why the various blockers are so popular. I hope the more-money-than-sense fashionistas who will buy this thing cause web sites designers to drop Flash.
Of course, they are using Flash in the first place to try and avoid all the browser quirks because the dominant player (MS) can't be arsed to follow the standards. The shining-white hope (Google) recently shoved two fingers to the world as well by adopting H264 for the HTML5 <video> element. That just blows too.
OGG Theora may not be perfect, but you can implement it for nowt. You can record on it for nowt. You can share it for nowt. No patents to worry about either. How hard is it to make the right choice? Just how fucking hard?
"Unless you are running a massively powerful CPU, Flash just rapes your system"
My N900 'only' has a tiny ARM CPU, and manages Flash fine. Flash 10.1 is going to have a ton of mobile-optimised versions, and most *mobile phones* will hardware accelerate it.
But the iPoo can't ? Don't you believe it, it's *wont*.
While I agree that HTML5 + SVG may well be the future for a lot of things not supporting Flash or Silverlight short term is going to impact the user experience for many ... though it might result in Farmville etc migrating
Right now though OGG Theora, while it has some advantages, just doesn't hold up on a quality bar - especially for live video - in the same way that Flash and now the Silverlight Smooth Streaming (http://SmoothHD.com for some great samples)
If the Ogg folks can get some more work on their platform to provide adaptive chunked http streaming for Live and On-Demand, and some decent hardware and software encoder solutions then dropping plug-ins won't be quite such a step backward
Until then for a large part of the web Silverlight and Flash will continue to be important
So now the iPad is here and the specs are not anything to talk about, the lack of Flash for a large screen device is hillarious. True to Apple's recent hardware, it will be an overpriced lock-you-in-to their world device and once again the technologically illiterate will be bowing down and preying to MrJobs for enlightening their world with more apple godness.
Baaaahhh! - If you baaaaah-y this then you 're an apple sheep. Once again Apple prove they are only interested in hooking into your pocket with medioca products.
iForOneWontBuyAnythingAppleEverBecauseTheirProductsReallyAreAverageAtBest.
For all the anti-flash twaddle, Flash is a damm good platform, yes it can also provide advertisers with a way to visually spam you with their ads but there are countless millions of sites and games based on flash that provide intefaces and entertainment that couldn't be done otherwise.
If you want to go back to 1985 and have HTML and crusty animated gifs, thats fine, but for the majority of us, Flash does more positive than bad. I suggest you give up your adsl and 3g phones and get yourself a nice 14.4k modem you dinosaurs.
The iPhone WAS pretty good but it is old news and even the new generation iPhones are pretty poor "hardware wise" compared to other devices. The ONLY 2 good things about them are the apps and the 3G. They can't even supply a decent screen resolution or basic multitasking.
I have lost track of the countless sheep who think as a brand Apple are superior, based on the blind advertising hype, and indulge in purchasing their products based on this alone.
This is Apple who use intel based hardware (PC's) as their computer platform because their own hardware was OK at best but rubbish compared to PC's so they ditched theirs.
This is Apple who tried to cornere the market with a medioca phone that really only has 2 good features, the rest is average compared to the rest of the market.
This is Apple who force DRM on you, remember when you couldn't back up your iTunes purchases and if you lost your device you lost your money?
This is apple who don't like to support open-standards because there is nothing in it for them, or there is no way for them and their partners to squeeze you for every penny you have, which you quite rightly should lose (because you were dumb enough to buy their products in the first place!).
Oh yer, this is Apple who according to them invented digital music (MP3 etc)..... I had my first MP3 player YEARS before there ever was Apple and their iTunes/DRM. I had a lovely device that you could simply drag/drop your music files onto the device and off you go... Apple's solution to this is to lock you into a format that scams you for your money and locks you into their hardware and their rubbish iTunes software.
I don't subscribe to being dictated to, Apple don't give you choices, once they have you hooked they dictate what you can and can't do.
Finally, their laptops and desktop (PC's, yes PC's, don't argue they are not PC's - they ARE based on X86 hardware and they are PC's running OSX), are built well and are pretty good machines but I can build better PC's for cheaper and there are some pretty amazing non Mac laptops around for the same silly price, so they are so-so no better no worse. But definately not worth the "Mac is better than PC" argument being that they only represent 4% of global sales.
Great to sit in Starbucks and pretent you are writing a novel, but what a price to pay for a pitiful pose.
Apple is a company just out to make $$$ like everyone else.
They do not always have the best despite the spin. They are a fallible company. They do stupid things too.
Do you remember pre-OSX times? Arguably, windows at the time, 95 and above was arguably more stable with more protection and pre-emption which MacOS lacked completely.
For YEARS apple ran MacOS which was shit when they needn't have had to. On possibly the FINEST 32 bit chip in production at the time (which they DITCHED eventually when x86 caught up and overtook it, without allowing it due time for maturation, I think to allow better vm'ing of windows, despite what they might say otherwise).
AppleTards do not like to be reminded about this but this is true.
So, wake up AppleTards, by all means, buy Apple, some of their products are probably worth it, some aren't (ie iMacs), but don't be blind. They are no more indifferent (evil) than M$ or what have you.
As every firefox+noflash user knows, most web pages look a LOT more user friendly without the unnecessary annoyances such as flash.
99% of web pages will be IMPROVED by dropping the flash. And if it forces a few idiot web designers to check that their site remains fully usable on a noflash reader, that will be a very POSITIVE improvement for everybody, not just iPad users.
Lets hope they also bring out a NOSCRIPT version. There are far too many sites using scripts unnecessarily. Javascript is never necessary for a search form, or in links. Just code the form properly so that scripts aren't necessary.
...and others. Please try implementing the above using only HTML4 or XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS and Javascript.
I look forward to requiring a Cray supercomputer to run the thing.
Sure, you can do a lot more with DHTML now than you could do, but until HTML5, SVG and all the rest of it become standards supported by Internet Explorer, silly web games will require Flash.
Fortunately, Silverlight doesn't seem to have caught on, at least.
Flash is not a proper open standard, so why should Apple put their money into supporting it?
Safari is one of the most forward-looking browsers around, and supports almost all of the good things that flash can do in W3C native code: HTML, JS and CSS
There is no real need for more: the only thing worse for web-standards than Flash is Silverlight, and I don't hear much complaint about that being missing from the iPad, iPhone and iTouch.
Title says it all really. I don't like Flash.
There is nothing wrong with the technology itself (except all the bugs, holes and processor requirement), but I HATE the way people use it. I was once forced to use a supplier's website that was one single flash app. You had to wait for the whole thing to load, and then every single link click gave you an animation before the next page loaded.
I hope Flash stays off the iWhatever for ever. I hope that companies hammer web page "designers" over their insistance to build the entire website in dreamweaver, and that webpages start to be web pages again.
On the one hand, I hate Flash. On the other hand, I hate Apple.
I'd love lack of Flash support to slow the relentless rise of Apple's locked-down products. But I'd love the popularity of Apple's products to hasten the demise of Flash and the adoption of web standards.
Which side am I supposed to be on, goddammit?
Whilst there appears to be some negative comments on the Adobe Flash blog I suspect a large number of posts have not been displayed. I posted as soon as the blog entry went up and my comments do not appear, neither do those of a friend of mine. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe are taken aback somewhat by the amount of negative feedback they're receiving about this issue.
If Firefox cave in, or are granted a license for H264 in their browser (and subsequent open source offshoots) then it's all over, everyone will dump Flash for playing back movies. It's overkill for movie playback and is overly resource hungry (and crashy).
Let's be honest, Flash is dead in the water unless it can come up with some new application for itself. YouTube was its saviour, YouTube will kill it. HTML5 is putting paid to the need for Flash. It's Star Wars, Luke killing Darth, all over again.
This time next year, Flash will just be something you clean the bathroom with.
It's true.
You know it's true.
Macromedia Flash was terrific. Adobe Flash sucks bytes.
Look, it's easy to see where Apple is coming from. Apple wants a reliable user experience that is as bug-free as possible. And since Adobe took over Flash, Flash has been buggy. I had one website that sold online Flash tutorials that stopped working when Adobe introduced Flash 10. Six weeks of working seven days a week couldn't get it running again and I lost all that revenue.
Flash under Adobe allows for sloppy Flash apps that eat your CPU and memory with the ferocity of a starving lion.
Apple obviously didn't want the iPad to be blamed for Adobe's failures so they figured that it's safer to exclude Flash than deal with the bugs.
But never fear - according to some articles I've read, if the website being visited is running IIS Media Services, it can stream Microsoft Silverlight video to the iPad! Oops, Adobe!
I tend to agree. Flash certainly has its uses, just a pity that most of the time those aren't the uses it gets put to.
Sites done entirely in flash and sites strewn with annoying CPU crunching bandwidth sucking flash-based ads make me want to vomit then drop my pants and crap on my own vomit. Or run flashblock, which is significantly easier albeit not quite as satisfying.
Somehow though I doubt the iPad will do much to reduce Flash abuse.
I agree with this. Seems that many sites have stopped offering a "HTML only" version of their sites. I tried visiting American Greetings' Kidzone website on my cellphone the other day. The darn thing instead redirected me to a page telling me I need flash, blablabla. Disney, Nickelodeon and tons of other sites do the same. The lack of flash support on my device meant I had to go looking for a way to get flash onto the device since Adobe doesn't offer Flash as a free download for Windows Mobile.
Maybe HTML5 should make it a specification that all websites with embedded contents should have a "HTML only" version of the site offered as well. Since using flash locks out mobile users.
Fail to the web designers who designed the abovementioned sites. A "HTML only" option should be an necessity, not a luxury.
Ask yourself what the percentage of browsers in the World can render HTML5.
Then ask yourself how many people are still running IE6 which came out 8 years ago.
Then tell yourself HTML5 will not be viable for another 8-10 years.
Sorry - that's the way "Open Standards" work. You'll have to deal with that horrible, mean 'ol Flash for many years to come.
Don't think for a second that lack of flash has anything to do with html5 idealism, or security. Apple is not in a business of making devices which are designed with consumers best interest at heart. You are foolish to think otherwise. Ipad is meant for you to to buy more of THEIR shit; apps, books, video, music, TV. Why would they want you to have other people's free content (flash games/etc) ?
God you web developers are a bunch of girls. 'Oooooh flash is dead because Apple doesnt support it. This might force people to start coding to new standards so in a few years flash wont be as widespread on the net as it is now'. Great....you hear that guys?....run out and spend $800 on a device that will allow you to see most of the internet in at least 2 years.
Are you the same bunch of lazy arsed, copy/pasting, shortcut using morons who slagged off MS for trying to get their browser closer to your so called wonderful open standards because it meant you might have to do some work and recode your IE6 optimised sites?
Listen kids, we, the people who build server farms for multi-site hosting, fix things, provide solutions to REAL problems actually understand how computers operate. We know that the reason the website doesnt work isnt because the server has run out of disk space, its because the developers crappy PHP script is trying to load 2TB of modules when its called.
Web developers will always blame the technology and not their own abilities (You Firefox/Opera users will understand). Actually I should admit I use that excuse when it comes to Dell kit. In a few years we will see them slagging off h264 or whatever the popular tech is at the time. Web development is about trying to obtain maximum reward for minimum effort.
As for the iPad, it just fills a hole that was never there so I suppose it could be called a lump. It will sell of course as they have again taken someone elses ideas and made it idiot proof. OSX users should be worried though, the iPhone OS ands App store look like the beta for OS11. Any graphics workers out there care to run 1 CS app at a time?
...was used for a satirical video about those CDs with thousands of fonts on them. I suppose it's a great example of a tantrum.
It is true that a Tablet Mac would have been a useful product; if Apple had made a Tablet Mac with multitouch extensions to OS X, it could indeed have been a major item.
But while the iPhone 10" does underwhelm me, hey, it does also double as an eBook reader. That is something useful. Except not anywhere but in the U.S., as I've learned from the Register. And the video seemed to have one thing wrong: I thought you could make phone calls with it. Perhaps I was mistaken.