Category: iPhone

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Adobe Apple Development iPad iPhone

Jobs on Flash

Apple LogoApple: “Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?” – Now you know.

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Indie iPhone

The Tapbots on Twitter for iPhone

Tapbots Blog: “What are their intentions? If it’s just to provide an official free client for users, that’s great. But we need to know if they’ll continue to welcome and encourage 3rd party clients to keep going. They also need to give us a fair chance to succeed by not giving their official client an unfair advantage when it comes to accessing the API. There are so many unanswered questions right now. We are aware of their dev conference this week, Chirp. We aren’t attending, but hopefully good news will come from this event.” – First off, these guys make great software. Second, they have the right attitude regarding the Twitter acquisition of Tweetie. They’re hoping it doesn’t kill off their product, but they’re not yelling and screaming about it. It’s the right way to approach it. Regardless of the outcome I’m sure they’ll continue to bring us great software, and that’s what it’s all about.

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Apple iPhone Life

A little anger

Lee Brimelow (The Flash Blog): “Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there. I’ve already moved most of my book, music, and video purchases to Amazon and I will continue to look elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear that I am not suggesting you do the same and I’m also not trying to organize some kind of boycott. Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy’s to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won’t be buying my wallets at Macy’s anymore, no matter how much I like them.” – Honestly I’m surprised Adobe would employ this fella. He’s the same guy that used porn in a post as an example of why Flash was needed.

Curly, the original knucklehead.If Adobe has a problem with Apple they have a perfectly good way to show it, stop creating product for Apple platforms. Will they do it, no, of course not. They have an established brand on the Mac with a huge following. It’s not like Apple is going to jerk the rug out from under them on the Mac, how can they. The Mac is what it is. Flash is what it is on the Mac. Steve Jobs chose to keep the new platform clean. It’s apparent he doesn’t like how cross platform applications look, feel, and perform on the Mac. I’m sure we’ll get crummy apps on the iPhone and on the iPad, but I don’t have a problem with their move. If you want to write code for the iPhone, or iPad, just download the tools, and get to work. Hey, if a knucklehead like me can figure this stuff out, you can too.

Adobe has a lot of different options in the mobile space, embrace those, if Flash becomes wildly popular on the other platforms Apple may have to “give in” at some point.

John Gruber’s take on it: “Consider, for one example, Amazon’s Kindle clients for iPhone OS and Mac OS X. The iPhone OS Kindle app is excellent, a worthy rival in terms of experience to Apple’s own iBooks. The Mac Kindle app is a turd that doesn’t look, feel, or behave like a real Mac app. The iPhone OS Kindle app is a native iPhone app, written in Cocoa Touch. The Mac Kindle app was produced using the cross-platform Qt toolkit.”

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Apple Development iPhone

Will 4.0 ban “cross-compiling?”

John Gruber: “My reading of this new language is that cross-compilers, such as the Flash-to-iPhone compiler in Adobe’s upcoming Flash Professional CS5 release, are prohibited. This also bans apps compiled using MonoTouch and Unity3D — tools that compiles C# and .NET apps to the iPhone. It’s unclear what this means for tools like [Appcelerator] and [PhoneGap], but it sounds to me like they’re on the wrong side of this new rule, and the folks behind Appcelerator already realize they might be out of bounds.” – I’m not exactly sure how things like the Flash to iPhone App conversion stuff works but if they’re running running Flash code through something that generates Objective-C code, which is then compiled, is that breaking the rules?

Food for thought.

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iPhone Mobile

iPhone on Verizon?

CNN: “(CNET) — Rumors that the iPhone is coming to Verizon have been buzzing around the Web over the last day or so. So what should Verizon iPhone users expect when the device finally comes to the nation’s largest wireless network?” – There are three very interesting “takeaways” in that article for me.

  • AT&T 3G Network is faster.
  • Being able to talk and surf at the same time is a feature of the network, not the phone. AT&T is GSM based, Verizon is CDMA.
  • Verizon’s network may collapse just as AT&T’s did under the added weight of iPhone use.

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iPhone Mobile

iPhone + Flip Phone

After having lunch with my brother and sister-in-law this afternoon we decided to go to the Verizon store and look for a Palm Pixi, I haven’t seen one yet and wasn’t convinced the screen was as small as my brother claimed. So we head into the store and my brother guides me through the store, showing me his favorite phones, and why he likes them. Then we get some help and find they don’t have a Palm Pixi, but they have the Pre+, so the guy helping us gets one out of the back and let’s me check it out. It’s actually a really nice device, but, I digress…

The iPod Touch 3G

Something my brother said while he was talking to the salesman really got me thinking. He said “You know what would be perfect, an iPod Touch with 3G, and no phone.” When I heard that I thought to myself “That’s a screwy idea.” Wait, no wait, that’s NOT such a screwy idea. Think about this for a couple of minutes. What if you could have an iPhone/iPod Touch with 3G and no phone and have a cheap flip phone for all your voice communication, on the same phone number? That would be awesome. Why? Well here’s the thing. The iPhone sucks battery, and face it, most of the time you don’t use it for talking. It’s mostly about e-mail, texting, Twitter, and Facebook isn’t it? Yes, that’s what I thought. Here’s my brothers, and my, logic. One of the best cell phones I ever had was a cheap “free” Samsung flip phone. No bells and whistles, just a simple voice phone. The thing worked. The sound quality was great and the best thing about it? I had to charge it about once a week.

That’s just crazy talk

Yeah, well, maybe it is. I’ll give you that, but in my brain it makes sense, especially if I can have them both on the same number. Allow voice and text on the cheap phone and use the iPod Touch 3G for all your social adventures, and texting of course. The big advantage is battery life, and from my experience, a better pure phone. This may not be the case for most folks. It would seem that most people text way more that they actually talk, but for me it works.

Then again maybe Apple can just get to work on a battery that’ll last a week on a charge, even under heavy use.

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Development iPhone Mobile

Yeah, what he said

Marco Arment: “But the biggest reason why there’s no iPhone SDK on Windows or Linux is that it doesn’t need to exist. The iPhone is the premier platform where the most money is being made. Developers will come to Apple — Apple doesn’t need to come to developers. (Google does, as the underdog.) It’s the same reason why there’s no OS X or Linux port of Microsoft Visual Studio, and you don’t see a lot of Mac owners yelling at Microsoft for not porting its sophisticated development environment to their chosen operating system.” – I really like this Marco guy. He’s about as blunt as can be, but he makes fine points. He’s also the creator of Instapaper, an application that’s quickly becoming my favorite little utility.