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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Apple, Adobe Team To Add Flash To iPhone

Adobe is working with Apple to develop a version of Flash specifically for the iPhone, according to a report Monday. Adobe’s CEO said tailoring Flash for the touch-screen handset required Apple’s involvement.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen told Bloomberg while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Although 80 percent of handsets use Flash, in 2008 Apple CEO Steve Jobs dismissed the standard and light versions of Flash and said Adobe needed another version for the iPhone.

After initially responding a Flash version could be created using Apple’s existing development tools, Adobe backtracked, noting difficulties that “prevent third-party code from running in the devices’ built-in programs,” a report noted.

About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

Email the author | Read more posts by Ed Sutherland.

2 comments

    Why?

    The iPhone is the best chance we have of finally killing flash. Picture it… a world with far fewer annoying ads, lousy sites which you can’t direct link to, crappy quality video.

    By not having flash, the iPhone has forced sites like YouTube and iPlayer to come up with less annoying ways of delivering content.

    The people that think Flash is only used for goofy ads and crappy video quality need to reset their clocks about five years. There are a multitude of important sites that rely upon Flash to produce and deliver exceptionally compelling content – like the New York Times which carried fantastic and highly educational interactive content during the recent election season. Also, Flash/ON2 video quality is extremely impressive these days, and promises to keep getting better. Remember, if a site is using too much Flash or Flash in ways you don’t like you have a great, almost magical way of avoiding it – don’t go there! But, to torpedo the technology for everyone else using it in ways that are deemed useful seems selfish.

    Apple – you know we want Flash on our iPhones. The browsing experience isn’t “whole” without it. One day we may want, gulp, Silverlight too. Maybe.

    Adobe – quick belly aching. We know you can build it for the iPhone class of computing devices. It’s running in your lab. Let it free.

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