Tag Archive for 'ipod'

Steve Jobs’s Thoughts on Flash

Published on April 29, 2010 in tech.

Steve Jobs has published an open letter regarding his thoughts on Flash.  This well-written outline of Apple’s relationship with Adobe lays out why Flash is not on any iPhone OS device.  This sums it up pretty well:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.  – Steve Jobs

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out how the detail of the letter gives Adobe “little wiggle room” to respond.  Michael Gartenburg (via Daring Fireball) makes the equally good point that Adobe’s only real play here is to respond with a version of Flash that runs favorably in a mobile touch environment.

A lot of talk from the blogs is about how this hinders developer’s choice when developing for the iPhone OS.  This type of commentary drives me crazy.  Developers can choose whether or not to developer for a given platform.  If they don’t like the ground-rules, they can go play somewhere else.  Logic dictates that if Apple drives away developers, fewer apps will be published, which makes the platform less attractive for consumers.  The power of choice is still there.

The “problem” for developers is that the iPhone OS and it’s associated devices are the most sexy from a consumer perspective.  So as a developer, here is your choice:  do you stand on your principles (or lack of ability to evolve as a developer) and miss the market, or do you challenge yourself to learn something new?  In the end, if lack of Flash is why you choose not to create an iPhone OS app or iPhone/iPod/iPad optimized experience in the browser, you probably weren’t committed enough the platform to make a great app in the first place.

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“Your iPod is like your home answering machine…”

Published on April 21, 2009 in business and tech.

…”I guarantee you it will be hard to sell an iPod five or seven years from now when every cell phone can access your entire music library wherever you are.”  — Sun CEO, Scott McNealy in a 2006 article at The Register.

Being big tech industry news, MacRumors posted a note on the Oracle buyout of Sun.  It points out that Sun attempted to buy Apple once, and there were two occasions where the companies nearly merged.  MR cites a 2006 article at The Register with Sun co-founder Bill Joy that I quoted above.

The article points out Scott McNealy’s hesitance toward Apple, especially the long range success of the iPod, which prompted the quote.   In retrospect, that quote looks so funny with my iPhone setting on my desk and talks that Apple is developing technology to stream music from your desktop to you Internet-connected iPhone or iPod anywhere in the world.  Three years later, Apple is going strong, and Sun has been gobbled up.

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MacBook Air, iTunes movie rentals and new iPhone software launch at MWSF

Published on January 16, 2008 in tech.

Side view of the new “Macbook Air”

The MacWorld San Francisco keynote by Apple CEO Steve Jobs came and went yesterday. I have to admit that I’m left pretty unimpressed. I haven’t watched the full keynote, but judging from the announcements that came out, nothing really blew me away. Of course, I bring higher than reasonable expectations into each keynote. Here are my impressions of the high points.

MacBook Air: This is an ultra-thin addition to the Macbook family. It’s less than one inch thick at it’s thickest point. It has a 64GB solid state storage option (for a whopping $999). It sacrifices and optical drive for space, but features an ability to “borrow” an optical drive from another Mac or PC on the network. I think the thinness is cool, but it won’t fit in my pocket, so I’d still rather spend all that cash on a loaded MacBook Pro.

iTunes Movie rentals: This idea interests me, but until I have an HDTV and an Apple TV, I really have no use for it. Given that the library already includes around 100 HD-quality movies, and I do have a new 20″ HD display on my computer, I might try this out to see if an Apple TV is really worth getting when the new TV comes (hopefully soon).

Apple TV: Along with movie rentals, they also released an updated Apple TV and dropped the price to $229.

iPhone software update: Updates are available that allow for a customizable home screen, enhanced mapping with psuedo-GPS for figuring out where you are, and multi-recipient SMS capability. Alas, no news on hardware updates, though. The new maps app is cool, but it guesses your location based on your relationship to cell towers and wi-fi routers instead of GPS. I want an iPhone badly, but I think I can wait until a 3G version comes out, especially now that AT&T has 3G in Oklahoma City, and it is really fast. Maybe 3G and true GPS are coming this year. If so, I’m all over it.

Time Capsule: This is a product that I just might buy soon. They have basically released an AirPort wi-fi base station with a hard drive in it that is capable of acting as a wireless backup disk with Leopard’s Time Machine. I’m currently in the market for two things: a) a hard drive for backup and b) an 802.11n wi-fi router with Gigabit Ethernet. This has them all. So I am definitely going to check this one out.

Those are the high points. I’m looking forward to watch the keynote to see if there is anything I missed. Overall fairly ho-hum compared to previous years, but it’s clear Apple doesn’t save everything for MacWorld anymore. So new announcements could be just around the corner.

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Trent Reznor’s “sense of disappointment”

Published on January 10, 2008 in music and tech.

c|net’s News.com has posted an interview with Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor regarding the release of songs from his collaboration with Saul Williams on the album “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust.” The album, similar to the Radiohead release of “In Rainbows”, was made available for $5 or free to see who was really willing to pay for high-quality, non-DRM music.

As it turns out, the answer is not very many when it comes to Saul Williams’ album. Reznor reports that only one in five people were willing to pay. The interview reveals a different side the the “music in the new Internet world” debate. Reznor comes off very defeated and not sure where to go from here.

“The toothpaste is out of the tube and a whole generation of people is accustomed to music being that way. There’s a perception that you don’t pay for music when you hear it on the radio or MySpace.,” he said.

One idea he has is an ISP music tax, whereby everyone pays around $5 extra and all music on the Web is free. If it’s an optional tax, like taxes of gasoline or cigarettes, I don’t think its a bad idea. However, I have a real problem with forcing a tax on people who “legally” acquire most, if not all, of their music collection.

Read the full article here.

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Apple unveils iPhone

Published on January 9, 2007 in tech.

The Apple iPhone is a reality (despite Cisco’s trademarks). I had written a long blog entry about Apple’s latest beauty. Unforunately, my browser crashed in the process, and I lost it all. I don’t have the energy to go through it all again when you can go to Apple’s site and get a better rundown than I can provide.

I think this device looks awesome. I only wish it had 3G wireless data connectivity and was being sold unlocked. Alas, it is exclusively for Cingular’s EDGE (2.5G) network. I will be curious to see if Cingular changes its data plans to support a very data intensive phone. That being said, I’ll buy it the second I have $500 to spare.

Check out Apple’s site, and take note of the cool features like the advanced touch screen interface, advanced orientation sensors, as well as info in many ways to get information. It is said to run on slim version of OS X and contains full web browsing, e-mail and SMS capability.

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