The New York Times has a neat, Flash-based interactive page showing the insides of the iPad. It really is a battery with a computer strapped to it.
Category: Apple
The Bottom Line
Jason Snell, bringing some common sense to recent Apple news:
First, it’s absolutely appropriate for people to dislike specific strategic moves Apple makes. I don’t necessarily agree with all of them myself, but I think I understand why Apple is making them. (For example, I understand why Apple dumped Macworld Expo. I don’t necessarily agree with that decision, but I do understand why the company made it.)
Second, Apple is neither a charity nor a public utility. It’s a profit-making corporation with a whole lot of shareholders and billions of dollars in the bank. Apple exists to make money. Yes, under the guidance of Steve Jobs, its mission is to change the world by making innovative and exquisitely designed technology products—but that mission ultimately serves the purpose of making money.
Aluminum and Glass: My Review of the iPad
After Apple unveiled the iPad back in January, almost everyone I know asked me if I was going to buy one. My answer was usually a jumbled thought about not needing a third device.
Not wanting a device and not being excited about it are two different things. In the months leading up the its release, I was excited about it. More so, I was excited about seeing what app developers were going to do with extra screen size and power.
De-Googling the iPhone
iLounge, however, also noted that in iPhone 4’s Safari application, Apple has removed the “Google” branding from the search button and simply replaced it with “Search”. While seemingly a minor detail, Apple has been said to be in discussions with Microsoft to replace Google as the default search engine on the iPhone. If this were to happen, Google would likely still be a user enable-able option.
This, coupled with Steve Jobs’ bit about search not being “where it’s at” on mobile devices can’t be rubbing Google the right way.
Adobe’s CTO Weighs in on SDK Issue
First of all, the ability to package an application for the iPhone or iPad is one feature in one product in Creative Suite. CS5 consists of 15 industry-leading applications, which contain hundreds of new capabilities and a ton of innovation. We intend to still deliver this capability in CS5 and it is up to Apple whether they choose to allow or disallow applications as their rules shift over time.
Apple, Adobe & Section 3.3.1
Since the introduction of the iPhone in January 2007, the platform hasn’t allowed Flash content to play in the browser — or anywhere else for that matter. Apple has always cited Flash’s performance as the problem. True, it’s performance is abysmal. Additionally, Flash is not an open standard, as it requires property software to both create and view content.
But Flash’s penetration on the desktop is virtually 100%. It’s a huge thing to ignore, and Apple has taken a lot of flack for it. Some of the flack is a bit unfair, since many other mobile handsets cannot play Flash content at this time. It’s only in beta for Android and WebOS, while Windows Phone 7 devices will lack Flash support once it hits shelves later this year.
Typography and the iPad
A piece by Stephen Coles highlighted with lots of thoughtful input, unlike some of Apple’s decisions in the iPad’s UI.
Apple Outlines iPhone OS 4
Here are the details. iPhone 3GS and current iPod touch models fully supported, older devices fragmented. Coming to iPad in the fall. Highlights include multitasking, improved Mail, iBooks and Apple-supplied ads for developers to use in their free apps.
OS 4 Predictions Fly
Gruber tosses his guesses into the ring:
iPhone OS 4.0 will only be for the iPhone and iPod Touch, not the iPad. The iPad, like any such project at Apple was developed by a team that was locked away in secrecy, so the team working on iPhone OS 4.0 only found out about the iPad when the rest of us did, on January 27; Dalrymple has it exactly right: OS 4.1 will be the unified OS for all these devices. (My spidey-sense tells me that iPhone OS 4 is going to drop support for first-generation iPhones and iPod Touches, and some of the features may only be available on the 3GS and this year’s new models.)
9:42
Apple’s Scott Forstall, on the how the time displayed on promo shots of Apple products is set:
We design the (product launch) keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience’s watches. But we know we won’t hit 40 minutes exactly.
On Priorities
Craig Hockenberry, back in 2008:
But on the iPhone, you have a limited area and associated mechanisms for getting the user’s attention. In effect, it creates a notification bottleneck.
This notification bottleneck forces the user to work when figuring out who needs attention. First they have to recognize the notification by sound, feel or sight (or a combination of those senses.) Then they have to navigate to the recognized application, which may not be easy given the phone’s current state. Finally they need to deal with the source of the notification. Now imagine doing all this frequently: the network will end up being a constant source of distraction.
‘Sour Taste of Frustration’
It seems to us that since the beginning of the year, Apple has not communicated any more like a manufacturer of computers but more, in the words of Steve Jobs, like a manufacturer of mobile products, primarily of the telephones and tablets. It is difficult to hide from you that this reversal, or rather this radical turn has for us a frustrating aspect. Of course there would be no question of wanting to go back 10 years and to find Apple in a situation of imminent death, but we still need to dream about products which make a ‘bong’ when one turns them on.