UPDATE: Adobe says Flash is not buggy and that Apple is protecting revenue streams from content like movies and games.
Flash will not be coming to the iPad — not now, not ever — says a source inside Apple who is part of the iPad development team.
Instead, Apple will rely on HTML 5 and CSS to play rich media, such as YouTube videos, on the web.
“Flash is too buggy and will crash the whole device,” says the Apple source. “Apple’s done no deal with Adobe.”
Adobe is so bothered by Apple excluding Flash from the iPad, it put porn up on its blog to prove the point.
Abobe’s official Flash Blog has a post entitled “The iPad provides the ultimate browsing experience?” which shows how several popular websites would look without Flash content. Right at the top is a screenshot of Bang Bros HD, a hardcore porn site.
As you can see, an iPad without Flash is going to be pretty much useless for HD porn.
“Millions of websites use Flash,” the blog post says. “Get used to the blue Legos.”
UPDATE: We checked, and there’s an MP4-based version of Bang Bros, which works fine on the iPad as is. So even Adobe’s most desperate tactic isn’t true.
Following up yesterday’s revelation that the iPad SDK contains photo capturing ability, despite the lack of onboard camera, comes this juicy little screenshot, showing the iPad displaying an iPhone-esque “Touch to return a call” bar across the top of the screen.
Since there’s no chance the iPad is going to operate as an enormous mobile phone (I wonder who the exclusive carrier of the iPad in Brobdingnag would even be?) I think this pretty much confirms what I guessed: the iPad SDK has some residual iPhone features still loitering shiftlessly about, and everything will probably be polished up before the iPad’s release. About your business then.
[via Engadget]
See that New York Times article displayed on the iPad in the official Apple demo image to the right?
It’s called 31 Places to Go in 2010: you should click on it and check it out. When you’re done, come back and tell me what’s wrong with the iPad demo image.
Yup. Exactly so. The iPad doesn’t do Flash, but yet the New York Times’ piece contains a slideshow powered by Adobe’s plugin.
This doesn’t mean the iPad secretly runs Flash: Apple’s clearly trying to move the web away from it as a standard plugin, not just because it threatens the App Store but, as Apple themselves noted on Wednesday, the Flash plugin was responsible for more crashes reported to Apple across all of OS X than any other source.
It looks like Apple just fudged the truth a little in their iPad promo images. That’s worth a scolding cluck or two, but there’s no doubt in my mind that sites like the New York Times are already hard at work making sure all of their content works on the iPad without Flash. Not so much a fib, then, as a look at the future.
[via Apple Insider]
Soon after the iPad was introduced, one of the earliest complaints was that readers don’t want apps and other accessories interfering with the words. Now comes a university study showing people need more than reading to fall in love with e-readers.
Indeed, the Univ. of Georgia study found younger consumers may prefer their phone to an e-reader. According to the research, young people view Amazon’s Kindle as “old” compared to smartphones with applications allowing them to do everything from listen to music to finding a restaurant, along with reading online.
Before you can even get your hands on one, Northern Film & Media is offering £40,000 (about $64,500) for iPad application ideas from developers in England’s North East.
Dev teams — which can include some members from out of the area — have until February 24 to come up with revenue-generating ideas that don’t duplicate the device’s standard app functions, aren’t kissing cousins of iPhone apps and are launchable by summer, 2010.
They’re putting up the cash in the hopes that locals will make a mark on the iPad:
“The iPod changed the way we thought about music. The iPhone transformed our attitudes to mobile phones, and opened our minds to all the things they could do other than call people” Tom Harvey, Chief Executive of Northern Film & Media said in the presser. “What does the iPad transform? You decide. Newspaper and magazine reading? Gaming? Writing and painting?”
The location requirement is fairly strict but may be skirtable: the app must “be developed by teams where at least 70% of the team’s talent have their base in and 50% of the budget is spent in the North East.”
Complete info and application download here.
Apple has often dismissed the possibility the company should compete with low-cost netbook computers, saying the popular devices are ‘junk.’ When rumors of Apple making a tablet computer appeared, focus was on ebooks and publishing. But will the iPad turn out to be Apple’s answer to those pesky netbooks? One highly-placed supplier thinks the iPad could outsell netbooks.
With a $499 starting price, the iPad could “achieve annual sales of 10 million units, which is a significant estimate considering the current tablet PC market is only about 3 million a year,” said Paul Peng, executive vice-president of AU Optronics’ global business unit. AUO makes LCD displays.
The iBooks service/feature for iPad is conspicuous in its absence from Apple iPad web pages outside of the USA, and the American site’s rather ominous “iBooks is available only in the U.S.” footnote made people ask whether Apple was going to fumble the ball. PC Pro today got confirmation from an Apple spokesperson about the subject from a British perspective, the statement being: “iBooks will be available in the UK, but the timing of that will not be announced until the iPad goes on sale”. In other words, pretty much as John Brownlee guessed here, yesterday.
Here’s hoping the timescale is ‘very soon’, rather than it taking as long to get British iBooks (and those for other non-US territories) as it did movies and other non-music media in iTunes. Here’s also hoping that PC Pro gives its headline writer a slap—titling an article ‘Book service in doubt for UK iPad’ when the Apple spokesperson confirmed the feature will be in no doubt is, to say the least, inaccurate link-bait tosh.
Since Amazon introduced its Kindle ebook reader, analysts and rivals have attempted to gauge its success via learning sales numbers. Because of that, the online bookseller has jealously guarded those figures – at least until Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Thursday let slip “millions” of people own the device. That number is actually 3 million, according to a new report.
“The total number of all types of Kindles out there in users hands hit 3 million sometime in December,” Michael Arrington of TechCrunch writes, citing sources who’ve been “amazingly accurate” in the past.
Although Amazon spokespeople refuse to elaborate on Bezos’ “millions” remark, the word sent BusinessWeek to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations.
“Assuming that at least two million people have bought the device, and that each paid at least $259 – the cost of the least-expensive Kindle – Amazon now has a business worth more than $500 million in sales,” the publication said Thursday.
Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney also figures Amazon could sell 2 million Kindles this year. Other analysts predict Apple’s iPad may sell twice that in 2010 alone.
Why is it so important how many Kindles is sold? Not only has Barnes & Noble’s Nook attempted to challenge the ebook leader, Amazon figured prominently in Apple’s introduction of its own “Kindle killer,” the iPad. CEO Steve Jobs announced his company will “stand on their [Amazon’s] shoulders and go a bit further.” In private, however, Apple has used Amazon’s pricing as a wedge to split off some big-name publishers. Although Amazon has attempted to adopt some of Apple’s practices (raising the royalties for publishers and adding apps to its e-reader), the company is squarely in Apple’s sights. Little wonder Amazon doesn’t want to talk numbers.
[Via TechCrunch and BusinessWeek]
Enough of my dumb opinions. I thought it would be interesting to find out what some Mac and iPhone developers make of the iPad. What are their first impressions? What do they intend to make for the iPad platform? Do they have any concerns?
I got in touch with a whole bunch of developer contacts and asked them if they’d like to share their thoughts with you, the Cult readers.
Here are the replies I got.
Ken Case of OmniGroup revealed that the company is working on iPad versions of apps like OmniFocus and OmniGraffle:
“We’re really excited about Apple’s iPad, and are looking forward to updating OmniFocus to take advantage of the larger screen size. We’re also looking at creating iPad adaptations of several of our other productivity apps, such as OmniGraffle.”
Manton Reece of Riverfold Software (maker of Clipstart and Wii Transfer):
“I was so annoyed with the closed nature of the App Store that I stopped developing for the iPhone. The iPad will still have those frustrations, but the large screen opens up a whole new class of applications. It’s impossible to resist.”
Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems (maker of Tinderbox):
“The iPad announcement leaves many things unclear. Does iWork depend on private APIs, or will developers be able to write first-class applications? Will individual books be subject the the approval process — leaving 40 overworked Apple employees the additional task of approving or rejecting books an magazines?
“Since 1982, Eastgate’s been publishing original hypertext fiction and nonfiction. These works — many of which are now studied in universities throughout the world — can’t be printed and can’t be simulated in ePub. But, if we bring them to iPad, would that be vetoed as duplicating the built-in book functionality?
“In short, the app store is a source of grave concern for software developers. That said, the iPad is the most exciting personal computing development for a decade. It will transform our notion of computing and redefine the idea of the information appliance.”
With every new Apple product announcement, the press releases for third party accessories inevitably start rolling in. Here’s one of them, courtesy of bag maker Tom Bihn: a couple of iPad bags!
Neither’s particularly radical. The Cache costs 30 bucks is basically just a laptop sleeve rezised to fit the iPad’s dimensions.
The other is the Ristretto, a vertical messenger bag, which costs $120, and comes in olive, plum, black and cocoa.
Nothing too exciting here: these are just quickly redesigned iPad-specific versions of existing products. But, hey! At least you can get them shipped to you now in as little as one business day… unlike the iPad itself.
Yesterday, I speculated that the reason Apple didn’t put a camera in the iPad was to help you look thin, but as many commenters mentioned, another possibility is that Apple had another supply chain breakdown, like the one that robbed the iPod Touch of its camera in June.
Maybe that’s right. Techcrunch spotted that the iPad SDK has reference in the Contacts app to taking photos with a built-in camera.
There’s a few interpretations here. This could just be a legacy feature, having to do with the fact that the iPad runs on the iPhone OS. It could also have to do with the iPad’s ability to connect to external cameras through an accessory. Or maybe the camera was pulled at the last minute, just like the iPod Touch’s.
My guess is it’s a legacy goof. What do you think?
Although I was underwhelmed with the iPad overall — a natural reaction, I think, given how much my gig reporting on iPad rumors over the last couple months engorged my expectations — one thing I think the iPad did with its combo of a long battery life, great display and iBooks e-reading app was punch a steaming hole right through the chest of Amazon.
But I may have spoken too soon… at least as far as it concerns international iPad customers like myself. iBooks and eBooks aren’t even mentioned on the Australian iPad listing page. Other countries’ iPad pages feature similar omissions.
Now, obviously, this is simply an issue of getting deals inked with international publishers, but still, it’s troubling, and gives Amazon the leg up in at least one regard: after all, at least the Kindle’s e-reading functionality is now global, although it took them a couple years. I only hope we’re not looking at a similar 2 year delay for the iPad to do international e-books.
[via Gizmodo]
In yesterday’s purgative disgorging of iPad news, it was easy to miss some of the details about Apple’s iPad accessories… and what they cost. Here’s a quick run down of four of them.
The first accessory was the iPad Keyboard Dock, priced at $69. Although it also functions as a charging and syncing dock with stereo out, though the addition physical keyboard is what is likely to make this the most popular iPad accessory: it will theoretically allow the iPad to be used like a netbook… but in some ways, it feels like an omission of defeat by Apple: “Yeah, we want you to be able to work on this thing… but we just couldn’t figure out a good software data entry solution. Sorry.”
The iPad Case, costing $39, seems like a similar admission of data entry failure: you’re just not going to get as good a look at the screen when typing on the virtual keyboard if it’s flush with a surface. The soft, rubbery case solves this problem with the addition of a triangular kickstand. This will also likely make watching movies when the iPad is on a surface in front of you a lot more pleasant.
Maybe Terry McGraw III forgot the old World War II saying about loose lips. Not only can they sink ships, but prime exposure for your brand as well. It seems Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn’t like his iPad being unveiled by McGraw, CEO of textbook publisher McGraw-Hill on CNBC a day before the big event.
“Insiders say as soon as Terry shot his mouth off on CNBC, Jobs had the company cut from the presentation,” according to VentureBeat. Sure enough, Wednesday, when Jobs took the stage, McGraw-Hill’s logo was absent from a screen listing publishers involved in the iPad.
“Hi, can I speak to Steve please?”
Steve speaking.
“Steve, hi. Listen, we’ve just found out that someone else already has a product called iPad.”
Uh-huh.
“Yeah. Fujitsu. Looks like they’ve had it for quite some time. Since about 2002.”
Really.
“Um, yeah. What do want us to do? Call Legal?”
UPDATE: Check each contest website for details and closing dates — newer ones are last.
The contest list has doubled from the original post. If you hear of others, let us know. Scams have also cropped up with iPads as bait, so remember your due diligence.
Before the launch, we wrote about a daring intern who risked his job by staging a contest with the as yet unseen iPad as a prize.
Today, a bunch of contests giving the iPad out as prizes have already cropped up, many involve no-brain activities like tweeting (sorry, witty chiruppers!) or signing up for Facebook groups. (If you can bug fix, try here or here. )
So if you want to get your hands on one without spending any cash, this may be the ticket.
If you come across other ones, please add them in the comments.
NB: If you win one, Cult of Mac staffers reserve the right to come over and play with it.
It’s mostly been assumed that the iPhone SDK’s omission of terms enabling VoIP over 3G was prompted by Apple bowing not just to AT&T’s bandwidth concerns, but by concerns that 3G VoIP would make calls and minute moot.
It now looks like that assumption may have been unfair: Apple has just updated the terms of the iPhone SDK to allow VoIP calls over 3G. iCall is the first company to be jubilantly crowing that their free VoIP app has implemented 3G VoIP, but others (hopefully Skype!) should be soon to follow.
That’s not to say that VoIP 3G will work universally — T-Mobile in Germany, to my irritation, doesn’t allow VoIP over 3G — but it’s nice to finally see this functionality hit the iPhone after a couple years wait.
[via 9to5Mac]
One analyst Wednesday expressed ‘measured enthusiasm’ for Apple’s iPad, the thin, lightweight tablet device Cupertino announced after months of speculation. Despite the cautionary optimism, Piper Jaffray senior analyst Gene Munster said the iPad could mean $4.6 billion in new revenue for Apple by 2011.
“We have measured enthusiasm for the device’s first year, but we expect 2011 to be a breakout year for the iPad,” Munster told investors. The Apple watcher said it will take a year for the iPad business to ‘solidify’, but be worth $4.6 billion, or 7.5 percent of the company’s revenue in 2011.
Journalists streaming into the iPad event yesterday were greeted by a handful of volunteers from the Free Software Foundation protesting DRM restrictions in the about-to-be released device.
They dubbed the iPad the iBad for two reasons:
* All media in the iTunes store (with the one exception of music) is wrapped in Apple’s DRM. That means films, TV shows, movies and audiobooks (NB: books are in an open format ePub) are locked to Apple’s platform, taking away your right to share.
* All applications must be signed by Apple if they are to run, an unprecedented level of control for a general purpose computer. On top of this, Apple can push updates to the device over its wireless connection, letting them add or remove capabilities at any time.
There were only about six or seven naysayers outside Yerba Buena center yesterday, but they still hope to bring about some long-term change, namely by getting people to sign an online petition.
Analysts appear to be in love with the iPad’s low price, a figure falling below most expectations. The morning after Apple unveiled the device, many experts raised sales forecasts for 2010 and 2011.
Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray nearly doubled his sales expectations to 3 to 4 million iPads this year and 8 million of the devices in 2011. Earlier this week Munster warned if the tablet were price between $800 and $1,000 “adoption is going to be much lower than the hype would lead you to believe.” At the time, the analyst said 1.4 million iPads would likely sell in 2010.
“Yes, we were surprised by the $499 price point,” Piper Jaffray’s Andrew Murphy tells Cult of Mac. “We were originally expecting $600-$800 and 2 million units in its first calendar year of sales,” he said.
Netflix instant streaming on the iPad? Not any time soon.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says, “Until we get our TV ubiquity and our Blu-ray ubiquity and we’re getting close on video game ubiquity, then we would next turn to the small screen. It’s just not a primary movie-watching (option). So it’s something we will get around to but it’s not in the near term.”
Even with iTunes’s thumb in the movie rental pie, Netflix instant streaming on the iPad needs to happen as soon as it drops. If I’m going to pay $15 for Wi-Fi on a plane I need to watch a couple episodes of Due South for it all to be worth it.
(via Yahoo! News)
The backlash against the iPad was inevitable and predictable. The lack of a hard keyboard was enough to send most geeks into a fit. But the backlash against the iPad is particularly vicious and visceral.
The word “iTampon” is the #2 worldwide trending topic on Twitter right now.
“This thing sucks. Anyone who buys it is a moron,” says one commenter at Engadget.
Some sites, particularly Gizmodo, are going the extra mile in iPad-bashing.
“My god, am I underwhelmed by the iPad,” says Gizmodo’s Adam Frucci. “This is as inessential a product as I’ve ever seen, but beyond that, it has some absolutely backbreaking failures that will make me judge anyone who buys one.”
But similar reactions greeted the iPhone, the iPod and the original iMac (no keypad, closed system, no floppy), and look what happened to them. They’re just the most popular smartphone, MP3 player and single model of a PC ever built.
Thing is, the last people to ask about the iPad are geeks. This isn’t a product built for them. They’re WAY too in the weeds. They can’t get over the lack of camera, multasking or Flash. But ask my wife about the iPad and Flash and she’ll look at you like you’re speaking in tongues.
As we predicted, the iPad is Steve Jobs’ “computer for the rest of us.” It’s a natural successor to the original Mac, which introduced the GUI to PCs – and was derided by geeks as a “toy.” But look around, the GUI kinda caught on.
The iPad is not for geeks. It’s for ordinary people who want a lightweight computer and are sick of computer headaches. This is a machine you’d buy for your grandmother and not have to worry about tech-support.
Yeah, you relinquish some control — which is something PC fans have always hated about Macs — but most ordinary people are grateful not to think about file systems, software installers and virus definitions.
The iPad is the first computer for people who are completely computer illiterate — and there’s millions of them.
Earlier on we gave you a post crammed full of iPad hardware pics. But now, some software:
See that iTunes UI? A little bit different. What’s that slider at the top left? Thicker, chunkier controls. I might write a whole post about that.
Here’s the App Store. Looks very familiar.
Right now, only the people who were at the event have actually touched the iPad. So what are they saying about it?
Comedian and author Stephen Fry said on Twitter:
Ryan Block from GDGT told TWiT: “It’s heavy.” He picked it up and felt it was bulky in comparison to other tablet-like devices. He still liked it, though.
Elsewhere on TWiT, another contributor (sorry, I wasn’t fast enough to pick out who it was, it might have been Andy Ihnatko), said it was fast. It kept up with his finger movements without any fuss at all. The page-turning felt like actual page-turning. That’ll be the A4 chip doing its thing, then.
Seen any other comments by people who have Actually Touched the iPad? Shout in the comments.