iOS Devices

Our report from yesterday must have rattled some cages at Media Arts Lab, Apple’s advertising agency.  As we were told by our source at the secretive organization, Apple came crashing down on them with urgent requests to change the video. 

Update: We’ve just got word from our source at Chiat/Day Media Arts Lab that they make fake optimized web pages for all of Apple’s commercials — which load faster.  In this case they made optimized images to take the place of Flash and are redoing them as we speak.  So probably no Flash.

They’ve been quick to respond with new screenshots and video for Cupertino showing the missing Flash Plug-in logos where Flash videos had appeared to have loaded before.  If Apple had left the Flash movies in the video, they’d be exposed to false advertising claims. 

Below you can see the screengrab of the new video changed to show the iPad’s inability to play Flash.  This is what I saw at the event earlier this week.

Compare to the screengrab of original below:

To compare to the original video, see the youtube here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-aVbSmfTFs&w=700&h=400]

They’ve also updated their stills to show NYTimes pages without Flash in them.  The original:

The new version which has a different, non-Flash page on the left and shows empty space where the video section once showed Flash video:

Apple clearly has no immediate plans to have Flash on the iPad.

(Thanks again to Andrew Paul Simmons for the  tip)

This Apple YouTube Channel seems a little more legit than the one we mentioned last year.  One reason is that it has a pretty solid vanity URL: http://www.youtube.com/apple.   At the moment it only has the iPad video but we’ll see soon if it gets shut down like the last one or if it gets new videos.  

Update: Interestingly, if you look at the feed, you’ll get many more videos but most have been marked as private – screengrab below

 

Yeah, we get it Adobe. Porn is popular and you won’t be able to enjoy all of it on the iPad. Seems like a bit of poor taste though. TheFlashBlog via CoM.

Update: they’ve taken the porn down.

Women are set.  Just throw your new iPad into your big-ass purse and be done with it. 

I’m planning to get Apple’s new gadget. The biggest decision is whether to wait for 3G or get one on March 26th. (Who are we kidding? I’ll be camping out at the Apple Store on release day).  The real question is: How am I going to schlep one of these things around? 

The point of the iPad is that I can take it places where my MacBook Pro doesn’t need to go.  I’m thinking weekend trips, vacations, coffee shops, etc. 

The Europeans are also set.  They have the European carry-all because there (in France at least) you need to carry your car registration with you everywhere and your driver’s license is the size of a passport. It’s socially acceptalbe and dare I say? hip. You can fit an iPad into one of those.

But what about us American guys? 

Fanny pack?  Negative.

Unless anyone has any better suggestions, it is looking like my only option for carrying one of these around is going Euro. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

 

 

This one from Setteb.it.  Tmobile.de, in their irrational exuberance for the iPad, posted a page with iPad pricing to their Website today but then quickly removed it. 

It is interesting that Apple is still selling these through the mobile carrier, since half of the product matrix doesn’t have 3G. 

Also, interesting that Tmobile has already begun rolling out their website as Apple said “they’re currently working out deals with providers”.  The site didn’t provide what rate the 3G plans would cost Europeans.

Full product matrix below:

 

 

Only $11!

But seriously, it seems that those Micro-SIMs that the iPad take aren’t technologically that different from their bigger brethren.  In fact all you have to do is cut some of the plastic off of the regular SIM to make it a micro-SIM, according to CNET.uk and their quote from the ETSI.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which sets the standards for SIM cards, tells us that except for the size of the plastic around the chip, micro SIM cards are identical to the SIM cards we normally find in phones.

And you were worried!  Remember, if you decide to cut your SIM card, it ain’t going to go nicely back into your iPhone, mkay?

Update: Our report has forced Apple to change its Website.  Details here.

You saw it here first, folks.  In Apple’s official video the iPad, they show the New York Times being used.  Looks pretty nice right?  Well, unless the Times has a special iPad version of the site that switches HTML5 out when it detects Apple mobile products (btw, check current iPhone version of the Times below), the iPad has Flash.  

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-aVbSmfTFs&w=700&h=400]

This is interesting because Adobe has already come out against Apple and the iPad for not including Flash.  They’d know if Apple was using it, wouldn’t they?

Normally, we’d say that Apple simply did the renders in the Mac version of Safari and just CG’ed it into the video.  However, you can see the page rendering and being resolution independent as well, so it is likely being done on an iPad.   Note the iPad simulator in Dev Tools also doesn’t render Flash.

Update: We’ve just got word from our source at Chiat/Day Media Arts Lab that they make fake optimized web pages for all of Apple’s commercials — which load faster.  In this case they made optimized images to take the place of Flash and are redoing them as we speak.  So probably no Flash.

Here is a screen-grab the Apple.com video showing the NYTimes front page:

Here’s the NYTimes with ClickToFlash on Safari.  Note that the Video section and Travel section are both Flash.

Here is the Travel Section as they show the iPad using it with the “31 Places to Go in 2010”:

 

 

 

Here is that same page on Safari with ClickToFlash:

The demo units they had at the event showed the NYTimes.com with Flash plug-in monikers as well.  This shot from Engadget/Adobe shows what we saw at the event:

Will we see Flash on the final version of the iPad?  (Vote now!)  The chances just got a whole lot better, no?

Update: For those who think the Times have a special HTML5-enabled version of the site for iPad and iPhone, here is the same page on iPhone complete with missing Flash plugin:

(big thanks to Andrew Paul Simmons for the tip!!)

 

 

 

Folks who have been fiddling with the new SDK have been able to get the

Mossberg talked to Jobs about the iBooks application, battery life and whether Walt could write his eventual review of the iPad on the iPad.  The part you care about is at 1:55.

http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf

 

What

If you or your company is making the switch to Google Apps and you are on the Mac, you now have a quick way to upload your email to Google’s servers.

read more

…so you can pretend? Download it here but note that the aspect ratio is different on the iPhone/touch to the iPad’s 4:3.

Patently Apple found a patent published today by the US Patent & Trademark Office, describing the functionality and use of a still or video camera in the iPhone and/or iPod touch (generally described as “a portable device”).  The patent, which was filed on June 5, 2009 (just 14 days before the unveiling of the iPhone 3GS), includes a picture of the portable device with a camera lens located on the back left side.  Obviously, the iPhone’s lens is located on the back right side of the device, which leads Patently Apple to believe that the device pictured is, in fact, the iPod touch. As many of you will remember, the iPod touch was believed to be gaining a camera last August, but strangely it did not.

This patent garners even more attention due to the recent discovery in the iPad SDK (“iPhone 3.2 SDK”) of a reference to taking a picture with a built-in camera (something the iPad doesn’t have).  As we know, Apple’s traditional iPod refresh season falls in August, though they did add more storage to the device in February 2008.

The entire patent can be viewed here.

The iPad 3G wasn’t pictured at the event but is in Apple’s gallery.  The difference is obviously the black patch on the back which also comes over the top of the device until it hits the screen.  The plastic allows for better 3G (and GPS?) signals to reach the internal antennas.  

It will be interesting to see how good Wifi access is on the regular iPad compared to the one with the plastic backing.  Keep in mind the iPod touch has a patch of plastic on its back to help the wifi signal reach the internal antenna.

 

Adobe’s Adrian Ludwig posted a quick reaction to the news that iPad, at least in its initial form, won’t have Flash.  The decision not to include Flash on iPhones was already controversial, but now with a bigger screen and a different usage profile, the iPad’s decision not to use Flash has even more people up in arms. 

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers.  And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.

If I want to use the iPad to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab — not to mention the millions of other sites on the web — I’ll be out of luck.

Would Flash make the iPad better?  Surely, even Apple’s go-to publication, the NYTimes.com uses it (and uses it extremely well).  For me, Hulu is the most important Flash site that won’t work on the iPad.   Instead of being able to watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report free with ads, my only option is to buy them on iTunes (or download a torrent and convert to a format that the iPad can use – but that’s getting absurd).

Will Apple continue to shut out Hulu if they don’t go to HTML5 or build a dedicated app?  There might be other iTunes-related politics on that particular case.  But what about the NYTimes or any of the sites mentioned above by Ludwig?  Until there is a good HTML5 SDK (might not be a bad idea to tack this onto the Webkit team, Apple?), Flash is the best alternative for companies that want to put out interactive content for the web.

The Flash issue was, for the past three years, a technical issue on the iPhone.  Those Samsung ARM chips wouldn’t deliver a good Flash experience and Steve Jobs even mentioned that as the reason for not including Flash.   But now Android phones and others with ARM Cortex A8 processors are getting a very usable version of Flash.  It stands to reason, then, that Apple’s new A4 ARM Cortex A9 chip would provide a good experience, especially with Adobe working with ARM on optimizing the experience for their architecture.  

So now it isn’t about speed.  The iPad’s processor can handle Flash.  It is politics.

On one side, you have Apple who doesn’t want to rely on Adobe to keep its application running well on its platform (see Mac version of Flash) or nor do they want competition for App Store developers.  On the other, you have Adobe who’ve optimized their code for mobile devices and have millions of Flash apps already on the web and thousands of developers spitting out new applications every day.

In the middle, is the consumer who wants to buy an iPad to watch Hulu TV.

Perhaps, if implemented like Safari on the desktop with Flash running as a separate process with a ClicktoFlash implementation, it would make sense for Apple to support it.  It could be done like Copy/Paste, MMS or tethering (whoops!) on the iPhone: Slow, behind the curve, but eventually done right.

But there is also every possibility that Apple will never let the Flash player onto any of its iPhone OS products.  

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4&w=640&h=400]