January 2009: Monthly Archive

Just when we thought it was safe to forget about Flash on the iPhone, after Adobe said they were making it, after Steve Jobs said Flash Lite was too little and Flash was too much, after Adobe was reportedly strong-arming PDF for Flash, after Apple advocated AJAX and WebApps instead, after all the tears, and all the fears, is Flash once again on its way to the iPhone? Apple Insider says it might be:

>In an interview with Bloomberg at the Davos, Switzerland event, Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen describes development as a complicated two-way process [...] “It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” he says. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

While many complain about the lack of Flash on the iPhone, it’s best to remember that while the iPhone provides the best mobile web experience, it’s not a desktop, and real Flash (not old, outdated, limited Flash Lite) is heavy lifting. Adobe has never properly optimized Flash for OS X, and it remains bloated, buggy, and a battery drain, which are annoying on a laptop but terminal on a mobile device like the iPhone.

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UPDATE 2: The error turns out to be the human kind (via GeekBrief.tv):

We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s fixed. Anyone still seeing the problem?

Looks like Google Search may be having some trouble this morning! As I write this, every search on Google, including searches for Google, get flagged as “may harm your computer” and if you click the link, you get an intercept page with an even bigger warning.

I’m guessing the engineers in Mountain View are on it, so enjoy the fun-making while it lasts!

NOTE: It only seems to be broken (for me!) if you’re not logged in (i.e. not logged into Gmail or any other Google service). If you’re logged in, Google search returns results normally.

[Thanks Antony for the tip!]

With my original iPhone 2G, I used a Monster solution to output the audio to my no-dock, no-RCA equipped car. Along came the iPhone 3G and while the Monster still worked, it no longer provided power. See, Apple in their Infinitely Looped wisdom decided to remove the FireWire pin from the iPhone 3G dock connector, and that was precisely the pin many peripherals used to transmit charge.

That was a problem for me, since my daily commute to work is an hour to an hour-and-a-half, and I typically listen to podcasts and audio books there and back again. Without power, my iPhone’s charge was taking a hit!

Enter the Griffin RoadTrip with Smartscan. It transmits iPhone (or iPod touch) audio to your car’s FM radio, and most importantly for our perpetually draining devices — it charges as well.

I’ve spent a month with it now, putting it through it’s paces on the Hoth-like roads of a Montreal winter. How did it hold up? Read on to find out!

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The iPhone dev team have posted a tethered “redSn0w” Jailbreak for the 2nd generation iPod touch. They are providing it with expert-only instructions, and a strict warning that they won’t be providing ANY support for it (if you ask for help, it means you shouldn’t be using it, and they’ll literally ban you from their site).

However, they also say they’re working on an un-tethered Jailbreak, which will hopefully be both much easier to use, and enjoy some level of support.

If you’re a supra-command-line ninja, however, and absolutely can’t wait, go get it now…

CNet takes a look, 6 years later, at Steve Jobs’ 2003 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine and the checklist of predictions — make that accomplishments — is impressive. Then again, Steve Jobs did make his name, and Apple’s, with just that kind of market savvy:

• iPod (and now iPhone) could be more important to Apple than the Mac
• Big media doesn’t understand technology
• iTunes would be non-trivial for others to copy in 6 months (make that 6 years?)
• Copyright is important. Theft corrodes the soul. Apple will provide a legal alternative
• iTunes could sell 1 billion songs a year (now selling 1 billion in 6 months)

What’s even more interesting is seeing how Steve Jobs’ insight not only helped change the face of computers (Apple, Mac), Music (iPod, iTunes), retail (Apple Store), movies (Pixar) but now also cell phones (iPhone). Mostly linked together (Pixar more tangentially), but with the same focus on premium quality, unsurpassed user experience, and utter simplicity of execution.

Makes me even more eager for the iPhone 2,1 (iPhone HD?) to really bring it all together…

[via Daring Fireball]

Yeah, yeah, Michael Dell once said Apple should be shut down and the money returned to shareholders. We all know the can of whupApps Steve Jobs has unleashed on the industry since then. These days, Apple’s profits look as good as their products and Dell’s… likewise.

So it’s with no small amount of trepidation we notice WMExperts noticing the world noticing Dell might just be making an entry into the smartphone market…

What’s wrong with that picture is pretty much what’s wrong with the exhibit in general. While Apple holds a fairly small percentage of the global cellphone market (as it does the global computer market), it happens to enjoy among the largest percentage of profit in the market (also, as it does with computers).

MacDailyNews highlights that while Apple ships an insignificant number of units compared to a behemoth like Nokia, it makes DOUBLE the profit of Nokia. Likewise, while rivals such as the Palm Pre are getting some much deserved attention, their finances (and thus ability to pay talent and fund much needed R&D) are on the brink — while Apple has nearly $30 BILLION in the bank.

So, while carriers are increasingly desperate for “hero” phones to make a splash and attract high-spending customers, according to mocoNews.net, current performance is showing few — if any — can currently match either the return on investment, or user experience, of the iPhone.

Sure, the smartphone market in general is continuing to grow, and may even be recession proof according to Forbes, but is anyone outside of Apple really poised with enough creativity, cash, and cunning to leverage it?

[Thanks to Jeremy and Dieter for source links!]

The illustri-notorious Dev Team has blogged about Jailbreaking iPhone OS 2.2.1, released by Apple earlier this week.

Simple version: You can now Jailbreak, if you haven’t already upgraded to 2.2.1 via iTunes, are using a Mac, aren’t affected by the OS X 10.6 DFU-mode bug, and — if you want to keep using yellowSn0w for unlock — are happy to spin your own custom firmware.

Complex version: involves closing the barn door — see here.

(For community-based jailbreaking advice and support, please check out our Jailbreak Central Forum)

Hopefully an easier solution will surface when the Dev Team has spent more time hacking away at iPhone OS 2.2.1. Until then, the cat and mouse game continues!

Our sibling-site PreCentral.net points us to an interesting developer commentary up on Ars Technica which provides this little golden spitball of insight:

he had a lot of good things to say about how Palm is handing the extremely nascent developer community and his hopes for the future of the platform. The developer told us that he has explored mobile development on Apple’s iPhone SDK and found much of the company’s position towards their community to be “developer-hostile”—an obvious reference to their insistence on enforcing a pointless NDA well past its expiration date and their strong hand in regulating what can and cannot be developed for its platform.

Apple, of course, is providing Cocoa Touch, an iPhone-optimized version of their Objective C frameworks that, while highly administrated by Apple, provides desktop-class power with a hefty of amount of access to developers. Palm, by contrast, is using Mojo as an open, web-standards based framework for the webOS, which we’re guessing will be something similar to how Widgets work (half way between WebApps and native apps).

Every solution comes with compromises, so in the end it will be up to each developer to choose which platform(s) best suit their needs and the apps they want to build, but is the way in which Apple treats developers — something entirely outside the SDK — going to be a concern as competing alternatives like Android and webOS become increasingly available?

Today on the forums we have a few threads that are not to be missed.

First up we have the Slacker Radio Plus give away thread! 10 lucky members of our forum have a chance to win a month free of their premium service. For more details head into that thread now!

Next up are the Official TiPb Reader’s Choice threads! All 10 of them! Rene has worked very hard putting this together for all of the TiPb faithful so please be sure to participate. This is your chance to make your voice heard, so don’t let another minute pass without voting! For more information take a look here.

This one is a older a thread that was brought back to life, and it is a good one. How do you spend most of your time on iPhone? Do you use it mostly for the phone? Email? SMS? How about Internet? Let us know!

Last but not least we have a Twitter thread. Twitter has exploded and is very popular as of late. Are you addicted to it like all of us here at TiPb? You can follow TiPb on Twitter for all our latest updates, and feel free to add all of your favorite TiPb personalities! Here are some links to us: Myself, Rene, Chad, Brian, Casey and last but not least — Dieter.

To get in on all of this action be sure to register for the forums, it’s simple and free.

See you on the forums!

Hot on the heels of the premium “App Store Plus” (TM Erica Sadun) $19.99 rumor we helped propogate yesterday, in his (its?) weekly column, the Macalope pulls a follow-up rumor out of his rear port (actually makes it up on the spot) for a concept that’s actually pretty darn intriguing:

You know how Apple’s still trying to figure out the Apple TV? Sure, you do. You’re smart and sexy and you keep on top of these things. Well, last summer the brown and furry one’s old sparring partner Adrian Kingsley-Hughes actually hit on a great idea: making the Apple TV into a gaming platform and selling games from the App Store. The only thing Adrian thought was missing was a controller. [... The controller is] your iPhone or your iPod touch with a brand new game-controller app. Remember how Apple likes to make its products interdependent so you have to buy all of them to unlock Super Steve God Mode? And, really, who has an Apple TV and doesn’t also have an iPhone or iPod touch?

Personally, I’ve got an Apple TV and an iPhone, and I love the Apple Remote App for watching video, so this idea appeals to me quite a bit. Casual gaming, Wii-style, on the big screen, with an amazing multi-touch controller? Yes please.

Anyone else want this like now?