Instead of one sentence explanations buried in emails to obscure customers, Steve Jobs has finally written a proper open-letter that explains Apple’s position on Flash. Frankly, I’ve had an iPad since launch day and have yet to miss Flash.
Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.
I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.
In what has to be one of the more impressive hacks for the iPhone (and inevitably the iPad), a man has figured out how to get the Android operating system to run on Apple’s iPhone.
Pre-built images and sources at http://www.mediafire.com/?xqjzn12igfn. Read the README. For generic openiboot instructions, there’s plenty now that you can search for.
It should be pretty simple to port forward to the iPhone 3G. The 3GS will take more work. Hopefully with all this groundwork laid out, we can make Android a real alternative or supplement for iPhone users. Maybe we can finally get Flash.
I freely admit: I drank the legendary Apple Kool-Aid. As a life-long PC owner, save for the several years my allegiance shifted towards the Commodore Amiga, I have never succumbed to the magnetic pull of an Apple product. It hasn’t always been easy. If most PC loyalists were completely honest, they would admit they love Apple’s design sensibility and its unique library of creative software. What they don’t like, and I include myself in this clique, is Apple’s Nintendo/Disney-like control over its universe.
I knew that at some point, Apple would create something so cool that it would short-circuit my PC-loyalist chip and, tail between legs, I’d become a PC/Apple guy, a hybrid, shunned by both tribes. Such is the case with the iPad. Questionable name aside, it’s the kind of product I have fantasized about for two decades.
So, on the first day of pre-order availability, I ordered my first Apple product at 5:30 A.M. I will be receiving the basic model, a 16GB WiFi iPad. I’m a recluse who seldom leaves his home, so 3G would be useless, nor do I need a ton of storage space as movies and music are handled by other devices. Hence, the basic model should be perfect for my needs.
If you happen to own a PS3 or Xbox 360 and are looking for great media-streaming software, then TVersity is a worthy option. It’s fast, stable and free, my three favorite words when it comes to media-streaming. While it doesn’t support as many formats as Java PS3 Media Server, it does benefit from having a simple design, making it more accessible for your average consumer.
TVersity has just been updated to a new beta version and with it comes some pretty cool new features.
Completely new off-screen browser, based on Google Chromium: runs out of process for increased stability and solves all the known issues with premium content (it used to occasionally fail to start on some systems).
Premium content site are now defined in an external file (osb.xml), advanced users can easily add their sites.
List of supported websites can now be updated without requiring a new release, so expect many new sites to be added and pushed to you from now on. (Advanced users should send us their additions since from time to time we overwrite your osb.xml automatically).
Update and expand YouTube support to include subscriptions, favorites and playlists by user (in addition to user video uploads which were previously supported). Also support adding YouTube content by search queries (replaces the “by tag” category which YouTube has obsoleted).
I’ve had to reinstall Windows countless times over the years for one reason or another. As such, I always find myself going through the same routine of tracking down the install files of my cherished apps and reinstalling them as well. Now, as if a gift from the Gods, two enterprising programmers have created an app called Volery that automates this process.
All you do is simply click the check-marks next to the apps you want installed and oila! Volery updates your clean system with fresh installs. Even better is that it installs all of these applications while avoiding things you don’t want, like those pesky toolbars that tend to ship with free software.
Volery offers up most of which yo probably use, including Firefox, Chrome, OpenOffice, uTorrent, VLC, Adobe Reader, EverNote, Flash, etc.
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