Posted on 04/25/2010 7:56:28 PM PDT by dayglored
A US gamer has been banned from ever buying another iPad. Why? He reached his "lifetime limit." Who knew that such a limit existed? ...
After two Apple Employees - identified in the tale as Guy #1 and Guy #2 - check his identity via credit card, Guy #2 informs him: "There is a limit to the number of iPads that customers can buy." Our protagonist ask what that limit might be, and Guy #2 answers: "Only 2 per customer."
At that point, Guy #1 returns, and the conversation takes on a Kafkaesque quality:
* Guy #1: I'm sorry sir, but you have reached your lifetime limit of iPad purchases and will not be allowed to buy any more.
* Me: Is the iPad limit per person? Per credit card? Per household?
* Guy #1: All I can say is that you have reached your lifetime limit.
* Me: What does that mean? Can I use a different credit card to buy it? I'm buying this for a friend.
* Guy #1: You are not allowed to buy this iPad.
* Me: Wait, what? Lifetime? What does that mean?
* Guy #1: All I can say is that you have reached your lifetime limit of iPads and will not be allowed to buy any more.
...
An Apple Store employee, noted: "The employee got it wrong. The *daily* limit is two iPads per day. The 'lifetime limit' is ten."
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Why wouldn't it?
Let me find that article... be back ...
February 20th, 2010
Daniel Eran Dilger
Morgan Adams, an interactive content developer who knows a lot about building Flash, wrote in with an interesting perspective on Flash and the iPad. The remainder of this piece is his comments on the subject.
Inside Apple’s iPad: Adobe Flash
I’m biased. I’m a full-time Flash developer and I’d love to get paid to make Flash sites for iPad. I want that to make sense—but it doesn’t. Flash on the iPad will not (and should not) happen—and the main reason, as I see it, is one that never gets talked about:
Current Flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen device, and this cannot be solved by Apple, Adobe, or magical new hardware.
That’s not because of slow mobile performance, battery drain or crashes. It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem.
Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what.
All that Apple and Adobe could ever do is make current Flash content visible. It would be seen, but very often would not work. Users would hate that broken promise much more than they hate gaps in pages, missing banner ads, and the need to download a game once from the App Store instead of re-downloading it every time they visit a Flash game page.
Mouseover examples:
* Video players where the controls appear on mouseover and hide otherwise. (This seems to be the norm, in fact. Whereas a click on the same video does something different: usually Pause. Try Hulu for instance.)
* Games where you steer with the mouse without clicking (extremely common).
* Menus that popup up subpage links when you mouse over a main button, vs. going directly to a main category page when you click.
* Buttons that have important explanations/summaries on mouseover, which you need to understand before deciding what to click.
* Functions that use mouseover to preview and click to commit; such as choosing hair colors for an avatar: you mouse over the colors until your character looks the way you like, and then you click to commit.
* Maps and diagrams that don’t use click at all, but pop up info as you mouse around.
* Numerous other custom mouseover functions that “just work” with a mouse and need no explanation.
None of these things can work right with a finger (or traditional stylus) because on a touchscreen, pointing at something without clicking isn’t a mouseover: it’s just holding your finger vaguely in the air. The device doesn’t even know it’s happening.
In addition, some Flash sites rely on right-clicks (such as for security settings), and many rely on a physical keyboard. Especially games, which are the main kind of content people want from Flash. (I’d say video, except video can easily be done without Flash, and sites are increasingly doing so. Much of the video missing from your favorite Flash site is probably easily found on YouTube anyway.) Games often use realtime key control, requiring a distinction between a single press and a long hold, and including the need for chording. For instance: holding right arrow continuously to walk, while simultaneously hitting the space bar to fire, and either hitting up-arrow once to jump or holding up-arrow longer to jump higher. A touchscreen keyboard can’t handle these kinds of rapid, precise combinations well. And the keyboard would block the game view, too. Games on a touchscreen need controls suitable for a touchscreen (and/or tilt).
The only potential “solutions” to the mouseover problem are terrible ones:
A) The best case: every Flash app on every site is re-thought by its designers and re-coded by its programmers (if they’re even still available), just for touchscreens. They wouldn’t use mouseovers any more—or else they’d have dual versions of all Flash content, so that mouse users could still benefit from the mouseovers they are used to. That’s a ton of work across the Web, for thousands of parties, and just isn’t going to happen. Plus, with many sites, mouseovers are so fundamental that the very concept of the site would be altered, creating a whole different experience that would annoy and confuse the site’s existing users. (And would this be any easier than simply re-designing without Flash at all? Not always.)
B) Gestures, finger gymnastics or extra physical buttons are created that simulate mouseover—which is absurd since mouseovers, by their nature, are meant to be simpler than a click/tap, not more complex. And meant to be natural, not something new to learn. Not a whole set of habits that violates our desktop habits. And any additional complexity is unworkable when it comes to games: you need to react quickly and simply, not remember when to hold the Simulate Mouseover button, or use three fingers, or whatever. The game itself is enough to deal with. Anything on top of that takes away fun.
C) Make clicking itself—the fundamental, constantly-used action—MORE complex. Such as requiring a double-tap or two-finger tap before anything is registered. (Two taps is how Mobile Safari does JavaScript popup menus: the first tap pops it up, the second selects.) But many Flash apps and games already use double-click (or rapid-fire clicking) for other things. Extra taps only make sense for certain limited situations (like menu popups). And it’s not just clicking: you have to allow for movement: dragging vs. a moving mouseover. And even if a system could be created that was quick and simple enough to do all this in the middle of a game, how would the user know which parts of a web page played by these special rules? One part of a page (the Flash elements) would do fundamental things like scrolling or link-clicking differently from the rest of the page! (Not to mention the rest of your touch-based apps.)
D) Have a visible mouse pointer near your finger, and not interact with things directly. Use Apple track-pad style tap-and-drag gestures, as seen in some VNC clients. This kind of indirect control violates the very principle of direct touch manipulation. This is making the touchscreen be something “like a laptop but worse” and has little reason to exist. And again, you’d have to keep remembering whether you were in direct touch mode or “drag the arrow” mode, and which parts of the page behaved in which way.
E) Require extra force for a “real” tap. So you’d have to learn habits for a light tap vs. a hard tap. This extra complexity is non-intuitive, cramp-inducing, and easy for the user to get wrong (even with click feedback, as in RIM’s failed BlackBerry SurePress experiment). This complicates the whole device just for the sake of one browser plugin, and makes it more expensive to build.
So it’s not just that Apple has refused to support Flash. It cannot, logically, be done. A finger is not a mouse, and Flash sites are designed to require a mouse pointer (and keyboard) in fundamental ways. Someday that may change, and every Flash site could be redesigned with touch-friendly Flash. But that doesn’t make Flash sites work now.
Even if slow performance, battery drain and crashes weren’t problems with Flash (and they truly are), nothing can give users of any touchscreen, from any company, an acceptable experience with today’s Flash sites. The thing so many complainers want is simply an impossibility.
By the way, imagine my embarrassment as a Flash developer when my own animated site wouldn’t work on the newfangled iPhone! So I sat down and made new animations using WebKit’s CSS animation abilities. Now desktop users still see Flash at adamsi.com, but iPhone users see animations too. It can be done.
Morgan Adams, adamsimmersive
interactive design and games
I wonder what the difference could be. Can’t imagine how the input device (touch) could make a difference.
See Post #23 ... :-)
If they decline to sell, then no debt exists in the first place, regardless of what forms of tender may be offered. If they had already sold it to the guy, and it was time to complete the transaction, then they would have to accept cash. E.g., you eat a meal in a restaurant, and the waiter brings the check. A debt now exists, and you can pay in cash, without regard to the restaurant's wishes.
What’s an I-pad? /s
I’m with you.
After this news, I refuse to buy any Apple product!
It is NOT about Apple bashing, or comparisons between various mobile devices, nor the manufacturer's thereof. And certainly not the relative IQs, genealogies, or sexual proclivities of the purchasers of various products.
It is my wish that this thread remain unsullied by the loathsome argumentative pissing matches that have destroyed most of the tech threads in the past week or two.
Thank you all for your restraint, and trying to keep to the topic, which again is about the nature of business and restricting buying quantities, the reasons therefor, and related topics.
What’s an I-pad? /s
Ummmm... no such thing exists, and it's just a Windows person who doesn't know how to spell... LOL ...
On the other hand -- an iPad -- is something made by Apple ... :-)
Interesting marketing scheme indeed! Has this ever been tried before? Does it work? Just asking.
You’d be surprised what’s possible these days.
That certainly applies to Flash code that assumes use of a cursor (mouse pointer), and I agree that's a BIG problem.
But what about videos and other embedded non-interactive content? Isn't that the larger application of Flash these days?
Sheer unadulterated nonsense. All one needs to do is have the Flash run on most of the screen and have a virtual trackpad and click bar on the rest of the screen, which control a mouse-pointer the same way the physical trackpad and click bar do on a laptop.
Yeah, apparently they did the same thing with the iPhone at first. It's to keep early devices out of the hands of the gray market.
I'm sure that, just like with the iPhone, they'll back down from this position as soon as supply has caught up with demand.
It’s that Ipad Show loophole. Congress should act.
;0)
BTW, this thread is about the free market, the right to do business as you please, and the interesting conflict between Apple's desire to do business as they please (limiting the number of iPads per customer), and the customer's desire to do business as -they- please (buying as many as they want).
I would favor the action on Apple's part, because what Apple is about is making a good product, having high customer satisfaction and supporting their product properly with legitimate customers -- so as to not sully their Trade name, on the open market.
And these measures that they're taking is protecting all these things... the consumer, their good name, their good reputation for customer support and being able to continue to give that good customer support and build up their customer base.
What happens when others do this (who don't care about customers or customer support or Apple's good name in the business or in building the customer base) goes ahead and sells for several times the normal price and the customer can't get support, can't get something fixed (if necessary) and can't get any degree of "customer satisfaction) and sell outside of Apple's market (where they haven't set things up yet to sell there and support the product) -- is that these "product scalpers" (like ticket scalpers) are simply making money off Apple's good name -- but actually destroying Apple's good name.
I think this is an excellent business move on Apple's part to continue building and growing its customer base.
Regardless of his party politics, he's the most successful capitalist CEO in the world for the past five or more years. I doubt his voting record has a thing to do with this, and his desire to distribute the early release of his product as he pleases has everything to do with it.
The way I read the article is that when the fellow went to pay he used a credit card and when it showed up on his system that he had reached his purchase limit, he was refused the sale. What I wanted to know, was what would have happened if he had payed with cash and didn't or claimed he didn't have a credit card and couldn't or wouldn't provide any other form of ID. Example: He walks into the store, plunks down $500 bucks and says give me an Ipad and refuses to provide any more information. Would he be refused a sale even though he had "cash in hand"? And if the answer is yes, it would seem to open Apple up to all kinds of claims from discrimination to false advertising.
Remember, if the customer has $1000 left over after buying his first 10 units and wants an 11th it's best for Apple that the purchase be delayed several weeks so that the customer buys a new unit from them for $500 rather than have him fork over $700 for a unit Apple already sold to someone else.
Every retailer knows that it's his money in the customer's pocket, and the trick is to get that money into his own pocket ~ and not just handed over to strangers!
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