Ben's Blog World: Translating the Toshiba Tablet iPhone, iPad site

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Translating the Toshiba Tablet iPhone, iPad site

Toshiba is yet another company launching yet another Android-based tablet trying desperately to differentiate themselves and get a little attention by having some fun with iPhone and iPad users. So I thought I’d have a little fun back. Launching a super-secret Word Lens-like iPhone app that automagically translates BS into English, I went to the Toshiba [...]

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Toshiba is yet another company launching yet another Android-based tablet trying desperately to differentiate themselves and get a little attention by having some fun with iPhone and iPad users.

So I thought I’d have a little fun back. Launching a super-secret Word Lens-like iPhone app that automagically translates BS into English, I went to the Toshiba Tablet site, was redirected to their “iOS doesn’t support Flash” site — wait, what? Really? — then watched as the letters re-arranged themselves in augmented reality glory to give me a more accurate reflection of devices true capabilities.

The “entire internet” isn’t achieved by simply adding Flash to WebKit. Flash isn’t even a part of most of the internet, just the Web. Even the “entire web” includes more plugins than just Flash, including Silverlight and the Flash of the previous decade, ActiveX.

So while it would be nice to have a Flash player on iOS, it would be even nicer if companies like Toshiba spent less time making silly sites targeting iPad users and spent more time making fantastic user experiences to woo iPad users away (and force Apple to work harder to woo them back).

Otherwise they’re just proving Tim Cook right.

(Actual Toshiba screen shot after the break).