John Gruber’s toldjasos and youmustbejokings were interrupted only by Jobs stressing that Apple and Adobe (who makes and markets the ubiquitous player) maintain good relations, so potential enough remains to feed the rumor-mill for posts to come.
However, it’s worth remembering that:
Flash is a notorious resource hog on OS X and Adobe has never really addressed this for the desktop
Regardless of its ubiquity Flash remains a proprietary standard and Apple has stressed open standards (like AJaX for MobileSafari)
And perhaps most importantly, Flash is a competitor to Apple’s (admittedly languishing) QuickTime and Apple could very well be preparing to put some of their sudden mobile browsing penetration behind their own product rather than just handing Adobe the space.
So much for native Flash support in iPhone. In an interview yesterday, Steve Jobs told reporters that Adobe’s mobile Flash player “isn’t good enough” for iPhone, shunning its possible inclusion in the product. He went on to make an oddly elusive and interesting comment, saying “There’s this missing product in the middle,”, hinting that Apple may have said “missing” product in development. What could it be? It won’t be Silverlight, that much is certain.
You may be asking yourself why Adobe Flash support is important? Because nearly all forms of web based video from YouTube, Vimeo, Qik, and Brightcove, to name a few, are delivered or streamed in this format. Without it, such video content cannot be viewed directly. Apple developed a workaround for its YouTube anemic iPhone in the form of a homescreen client app that effectivetly siphons and converts Flash content into a digestible format, but users want a full on web video experience.
Will we ever see true native Flash support brought to iPhone, even if kicking and screaming? Read it and weep.
CEO Steve Jobs (with a veritable chorus of board members and execs answering backup), took his annual grilling yesterday courtesy of Apple’s shareholders meeting.
Among the iPhone related news:
When asked why Apple doesn’t take games seriously enough to acquire their own Halo-class developer (ironic, as Halo was originally intended for the Mac), Jobs highlighted Thurday’s iPhone SDK event as opening a new door for Apple gaming.
With regards to the still languishing .Mac online service — specifically the possibility of blogging tools — Jobs responded that we’d see more from .Mac before the end of the year, and with the iPhone SDK, if Apple didn’t provide a mobile blogging tool, a 3rd party would be able to. (Then El Jobso kindly suggested the questioner learn Cocao and write the app himself!)
On the subject of iTunes movie rentals, and why Apple does not yet have the 1000 movies Jobs said would be available by now, the mustache-twirling serial villains at Big Media were handed the blame, specifically the longer-than-anticipated delays in securing download rights for older films before such rights were ever foreseen, much less clarified. (Perhaps next time someone could ask Le Steve about international downloads for those of us outside the USA?)
Tim Cook, as previously reported, fielded the question on the iPhone in China, and in Asia in general.
In what some are interpreting as a rare slip in the long tradition of Jobs not commenting on potential future releases (his ship don’t leak from the top!), longer than normal pauses apparently prefaced Jobs’ no-comments on questions about an X-Serve Mini style embedded home server and an Apple TV supported by advertising rather than download purchase fees. Not iPhone specific, but either bit of tech could substantially impact the iPhone’s capabilities or content models.
Lastly, when asked why the iPhone always has half the memory of the iPod Touch, Jobs pointed out that things like the cell radio take up more space in the iPhone, leaving less for memory, and that the iPod would likely always take the lead in storage size.
Be sure to check out AppleInsider’s complete coverage on the shareholders meeting in general, including the Mac, Apple Retail, and more.
As Casey posted earlier today, the he said/he said, on again/off again, non-talk talks between Apple and China’s largest GSM provider, China Mobile indicate something may happen eventually, somewhere.
With a mobile market rapidly approaching half a billion, it would be crazy if Apple and China Mobile weren’t in talks, right? Right?!
“We have not yet officially begun talks with Apple over the iPhone problem”
That’s what China Mobile exec Wang Jianzhou said, speaking to reporters this week. Vowing to keep his options open, however, as long as his customers stayed interested.
How the iPhone becomes classified as a “problem” is curious, unless Wang is referring to the way it’s challenging traditional carrier-centric business models, including feature lock-downs and exorbitant data prices? Pity.
For Apple’s part, CEO Steve Jobs earlier this year quipped that China Mobile negotiations were limited to a single meeting with a single rep, and at today’s annual shareholder meeting, Reuters quotes COO Tim Cook with this profoundly helpful nugget:
“We will enter Asia with the iPhone in 2008… we will one day enter China, we’re not saying when, and we will one day enter India.”
While denials in the corporate world sometimes lead to seemingly miraculous reversals and immanent product announcements, AppleInsider reports that in this case, China Mobile (like the rest of the world), is waiting for the 3G version.
What does this all mean? China Mobile may just be leveraging the size of its market and existing “off-the-books” iPhone penetration against Apple’s revenue sharing and data pricing models, to get the best deal they can on the next gen handset. And it may just come down to who blinks first. (Right, Ireland?)
Google has announced that Google Gears is going mobile on Windows Mobile devices. Google Gears Mobile works the same way it does on the desktop version of Google Gears, via controlled caching of data. One of the first web applications out of the gate to take advantage is Zoho, a popular web productivity suite.
“Developers, look no further. Today we’re announcing the launch of Google Gears for mobile, a mobile browser extension for creating rich web applications for mobile devices. The first version is now available for Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 and 6. It’s a fully functional port of Google Gears v0.2 that can be used to develop offline capability into your mobile web applications. You can also create slick and responsive applications by hiding latency issues through controlled caching of data and storage of information between sessions. We’re also working to bring Google Gears for mobile to Android and other mobile platforms with capable web browsers.”
Yankees vs Red Sox. Coke vs Pepsi. Obama vs Hilary.
Apple vs RIM?
Are we walking down a path that will lead to a no-holds-barred smackdown between smartphone giant RIM and newcomer Apple? Chris Ullrich over at TUAW certainly thinks so. He recently pitted the iPhone against the Curve and comes away with a conclusion not so much different from our good friend Mike Overbo.
The iPhone and Blackberry have long been on a collision course since the iPhone’s inception. With Treos still stuck in the 1990’s and Windows Mobile’s, well, Window-ness, these two companies are destined to battle it now and for the rest of eternity.
So where do you place your bets? Apple, in all its gleam and glory or RIM, with its utilitarian approach? Or is there enough room for the two of them?
As the iPhone bandies around the world, many Wall Street analysts have been wondering when China Mobile would be invited to join the likes of O2, T-Mobile and Orange to the exclusive iPhone party.
As exciting as this news could be for Apple, what with 350 some odd million China Mobile customers helping reach Steve Jobs imposed 10 million iPhone goal, there are potential pitfalls that could stagnate the deal. For one, the price point might be out of reach for the average Chinese citizen who would have to make 2 month’s salary to even purchase an iPhone. And that’s not even counting foreign carrier’s exorbitant and limited data costs.
But with a reported 400,000 unlocked iPhones currently in use on China Mobile (not even counting all the knock-offs), there is undoubtedly a market for iPhones. And to imagine the possibilities of a real live, breathing, fingerprint free iPhone in the hands of 350 million ready-to-buy consumers has got to make Apple stockholders seeing green.
The New York Times is reporting that the iPhone started its life out as a “Safari Pad”. An Internet tablet if you will. Once Steve Jobs saw it, he used his panache and morphed it into an iPhone. The author also goes on to say that when he spoke to Steve Jobs at the recent MacWorld in January, he asked if there would be a larger form-factor iPod touch device. Steve Jobs replied,
“I can’t talk about unannounced products.”
I would personally love a tablet sized device that had Wi-Fi and a data connection a-la Amazon’s Kindle. What is in the future for Apple?
Monday was analyst prediction day, as RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky and Banc of American analyst Scott Craig separately provided the following guestimates on Apple’s next gen iPhone:
Abramsky predicts him some amped up CPU, more memory, and the faster 3G speeds that allow for higher def (HD?) video, voice capture, streaming HD video, real-time GPS, and other Trekkie goodness. All this would, coupled with a mid-2008 release, would let Apple blow past 10 million, and hit a potential 11 million unites sold by year end.
For his part, Craig skipped features and stuck to the money: “We believe that demand in the U.S. may have been impacted by the anticipation of a new 3G phone…” (Perhaps because of continued analyst bombardment of same?) Craig also sees a 3G handset in 2008 as necessary to complete the 10 million handset march.
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
