My family has an Ipad we use extensively. However, I mostly agree with Bob.
The Ipad/Tablet devices are good for consuming information created by others.
Thus I do think they will make significant inroads in the book market.
However, the fact that the Ipad makes it difficult to consume certain kinds of
web-based content is likely to be a problem long term. Here's how I see it:
1) Why Apple has migrated to the IOS environment. The original MacOS was very
tightly controlled (as is IOS) and was relatively easy for Apple to figure out
how to provide a seamless and glitzy (for the time) user experience.
Eventually, this closed system became a problem and Apple's market share began
to decline. That is when OSX was released. Because OSX was based on an open
BSD Unix users suddenly had access to all the richness of the more open
markets. I believe this temporarily saved the Macintosh. However, the growing
success of the open-source movement and the growing maturity of various flavors
of LINUX Desktop environments is impacting the market for closed source desktop
and server OSes. I think Apple and other companies that sell closed-source
OSes are expecting to make less and less money on their desktop and server
OSes. They are shifting towards the tablet market. Apple is entering the
market in the same way it entered the PC market. Eventually, I suspect they
will have to shift towards supporting a broader spectrum of technology and
software if their competitors and open source options do, just as they did with
the MacOS.
2) I see two initial options for Jmol usage:
a) For fixed textbook like presentations, views can be packaged as .pngs or
animated .gifs (to show spinning). In many cases Jmol content consists of
views that change with the click of a button in a known way (this is not the
case for servers that open different data files at user request...see (b)). I
could envision modifying my Export-to-Web code so that it would generate a
static .png and a spinning .gif of each view. Rather than putting Jmol in the
page when the user clicks a button these images would be put in the page with a
button to click to "make interactive". If the OS does not support JavaVMs the
user would get a simple dialog message.
b) On the fly data sets are a little more difficult, but I have already
implemented something for the SageMath package. The latest version of
JmolData.jar can be run headless on the server to generate image files. I
still need to work out generating the animated .gifs. Ideally this would be
something we could embed in JmolData.jar, but initially it could be output of
image files and then use another package to make them into an animated .gif.
3) We could also investigate a javascript viewer version, that doesn't have
capabilities to change a view, but could display it interactively. Like 2b
above this puts a lot of potential load on the server and bandwidth.
Some random ideas to start discussions....
Jonathan
On Mar 29, 2012, at 7:41 AM, jmol-users-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net wrote:
> Message: 6
> Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:41:47 -0500
> From: Robert Hanson <hans...@stolaf.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Jmol-users] "Jmol" for iPads?
> To: jmol-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> Message-ID:
> <caf_yuvwu2s-d4nowmeo0go6a-wo0adnoc4muyjbxmqygpww...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 9:19 PM, Craig T Martin <cmar...@chem.umass.edu>wrote:
>
>> Bob,
>>
>> I wouldn't be so dismissive of the iPad/iPhone revolution. Clearly the
>> latter looks to be dominating the smart phone market, despite it's higher
>> price tag. It wasn't that long ago that experts were dismissive of Apple
>> overall (or dismissive of mice and the GUI, for that matter). jmol risks
>> being left behind if it is not adapted to a platform with a growing user
>> base. I do appreciate that Apple's omitting Java support has made adapting
>> jmol very challenging, but I would love someone to rise to this challenge -
>> for my own and for jmol's sake.
>>
>>
> It's not that I'm dismissive. Apple appeals strongly to the early adopter
> community -- I understand that. But before you jump for a new iPad, read
> the reviews of the iPad 3 and do consider the Android tablet instead. My
> son and I absolutely love our Samsung, and I can't IMAGINE trading it for
> an iPad. It's just hands down a better environment. Apple's a game changer
> company, but how much of that fanatical enthusiasm is warranted for that
> particular platform when so many other tablet-based options are available
> and so more flexible? What exactly is the appeal of a tablet that is so
> restrictive when other alternatives are available that let you do what you
> really want to do?
>
> Bob
Dr. Jonathan H. Gutow
Chemistry Department gu...@uwosh.edu
UW-Oshkosh Office:920-424-1326
800 Algoma Boulevard FAX:920-424-2042
Oshkosh, WI 54901
http://www.uwosh.edu/facstaff/gutow/
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