But without flash how is a person suppose to watch videos on non-quicktime supported websites.
I believe I already addressed this at least once, but here it is again: some of the major providers of flash-based video also provide alternatives to non-flash-capable browsers. You have a YouTube app on your own 2G iPhone, for feck's sake, and you claim not to know of any alternative??
YouTube (and others) are starting to try out HTML5 as a much simpler, less processor-intensive, less-buggy way of delivering video clips. And guess what? It works very well! I doubt it will "kill" Flash, but it will probably do a pretty good job of eliminating the numerous, cross-platform, universally-complained about problems with Flash-as-video-deliery-tool.
And without a camera it completely neglects the possibility of having video chats.
Yes. That's true.
In part I think this comes down to a few different factors:
a. iChat, much as I love it, is neither widely used nor widely accepted. So the camera would primarily be helping Skype, *an iChat competitor.* Really, one doesn't have to be too much of a rocket scientist to work this one out.
b. AT&T is flatly NOT going to let a high-quality video chat program that millions of people would start using immediately bring down their network. NA GA HA PEN. The bandwidth just ain't there yet. Maybe in a year or two.
c. Hard to figure out how to add both the raw hardware of a video camera AND the necessity of then rewriting iChat (for Mac *and Windows*) without that adding to the cost. They got a mic in there, and frankly most people much prefer audio chatting to video chatting anyway (grandparents excepted).
and finally
d. Apple is big on the quality of the experience. iChat is (frankly) not up to snuff given the demands created if the previous three objections are overcome. Bad video-conferencing quality is actually WORSE for Apple than *no* video-conferencing ability.
The battery wouldn't be drained if neither are in use, plus you're acting like the battery would not be killed if you're watching a quicktime video
Actually, it's not. Again, you can refer back to your very own 2G iPhone (or all subsequent iPhones/Touches) to confirm this. They all have a chipset that 'offloads" the specialised work of decoding h.264 (which is why Apple prefers it), meaning its much less of a drain than Flash would be (... and guess who has never bothered to include hardware acceleration in Flash for Apple products?). This is why I can watch two full-length movies on my original iPhone and still have more than enough for calls I'll need to make, etc when I get off the plane.
Even during the iPad commercial when the person visits a newspaper website you can see the safari error box where a video is suppose to be.
Look again -- I think you will see that that was supposed to be an ad. Please refer to my previous post for my opinion of Flash ads.
I'm just saying, you can't call something the "ultimate internet browser" if you can't even watch videos that aren't quicktime or youtube.
You're misquoting them. They called it "the BEST internet browsing
experience," not the ultimate internet browser. Big difference there.
And while I can't be sure till I get one in my hands, yes I think they're speaking truthfully there. Not being able to see Flash (which is MOSTLY used for ads or incredibly juvenile video sites) is a small price to pay for being able to "touch the internet" ie navigate it in a very naturalistic way.
PS. One more thing -- you've repeatedly referred to the 2G iPhone as crappy or a crap product, and this is just nonsenical malarkey. When pressed, you admit that your opinion is based on its "so called" inability to do MMS (which I could easily disprove, but I digress). This may shock you, but some of us grown-ups out here don't have much use for MMS, and are just as glad to be free of it as have it. It's certainly not a crucial part of the phone life of anyone who has mentally progressed beyond high school.
I continue to run the latest software (which you've repeatedly implied can't be done) and almost all of the latest apps on my original iPhone. Yes, I can do video -- there's an app for that. Yes, I can do MMS if I care to pay for a plan that supports it -- there's an app for that. I *do* miss out on apps that rely on the 3GS' compass or the 3G's true GPS. But nearly every one of the thousands of other apps available on the App Store run on my iPhone.
(and as for GPS, I drove cross-country using only Google Maps and in my seven-week tour, I missed exactly ONE turn. GPS is hugely overrated IMHO).
So, at least for me, I continue to get tremendous value out of my 2.5 year old iPhone and don't expect that to end anytime soon. Maybe when the 4th-gen cell networks really roll out, I'll reconsider. Till then, I'll be doing pretty much the same things with my devices that you're doing with yours -- only not spending as much money.
