How you hold your tablet matters

by utpal.

The Landscape Tablet Landscape
[Via Daring Fireball]

One the biggest differences between Apple’s and Microsoft’s tablet strategies.

[More]

The article also links to a Tim Bray comment about portrait mode being better than landscape.

Taking a landscape as the dominant mode with portrait as an after thought would be a tremendously poor strategic decision.

One of the great things about the iPad is that you can pretty much use it in whichever mode makes sense. Reading a book is better in portrait. The form factor just makes sense.

Games and TV work better in landscape. Typing also makes more sense in landscape. But I can often choose the orientation that works best for me.

I find it is easier to hold the iPad with one hand when in portrait mode than landscape. So taking pictures is better when the camera is designed to be used in portrait mode.

Apple makes it very easy for the developer to create apps using both modes of orientation. If MS does not make it as easy, if mostly expects developers and customers to only use one orientation, it could be making a big mistake.

No Flash for Microsoft’s tablet

No Flash Player in Metro IE
[Via Daring Fireball]

No plugins, period. Microsoft IE lead Dean Hachamovitch:

Running Metro style IE plug-in free improves battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers. Plug-ins were important early on in the web’s history. But the web has come a long way since then with HTML5. Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from, rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro style UI.

There is no room in the future for Flash.

[More]

When Apple declared Flash off limits to the iPad, it was an indication of the fascist attitude of Apple, even when Jobs explained the effect on battery life, reliability and privacy for consumers.

Now that MS has admitted the same thing, I am sure the fanbois will describe how reasonable this it.

And how far along would HTML 5 have been if Apple had not forced its usage? I’d expect not very. We have increasing HTML 5 usage because in large part of Apple.

Apple again leads the market into new and better territory – HTML 5 – while MS follows.