512 Pixels

I know Google likes Android to be thought of as open, but come on…

Holy mother of everything good.

Ina Fried at All Things D:

There are tons of implications to Adobe dropping future mobile development of the Flash plug-in, but one of the most immediate is for those whose job it is to market and sell Android tablets.

With tablets, though, Flash compatibility (poor performance notwithstanding) had been a key selling point for those looking to take on the iPad. It was a major component in ads from Toshiba, Research In Motion, Motorola and others looking to grab a piece of the tablet market.

As poorly as most Android tablets sell, this blow might not make that much of a difference, but Fried’s point is certainly one to think about.

CEO Guerrino De Luca, via The Vergr:

To make the long story short, we thought we had invented [sliced] bread and we just made them. [We made a commitment to] just build a lot because we expected everybody to line up for Christmas and buy these boxes [at] $300 […] that was a big mistake.

The company lost $100 million on the set-top box.

Mike Schramm at TUAW:

We mentioned in passing that the iPhone 4S had sold out in ten minutes at the Hong Kong Apple Store, but given these pictures that have been posted online since, a statement like that doesn’t really do the launch justice. That place looks like a madhouse – thousands of people lined up to buy Apple’s new iPhone, and the police were out in force with barricades and dogs to make sure everything went smoothly. Black market salesmen were buying and selling iPhones outside the store, apparently, and leaving the queue got your picture taken and your number checked. There were even “professional queuers,” low income workers that were paid to simply stand in line and buy the phone when it became available.

Two thoughts:

1. Holy. Shit.
2. This makes me sad for the human race.

I guess it is time for me to update my ACSP.

Even if you don’t take the exam, the Peachpit book is a great resource to keep handy.

Thomas Park has put together a website showing every single Apple Store. While most of Apple’s stores look pretty similar, it’s nice to easily see some of the more wild ones.

Saddle Creek — Store 011 — is my old stomping ground.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Today’s moment of zen.

I finished Steve Jobs over the weekend, and wanted to share my two biggest impressions:

Steve was broken

I can’t even count how many times Steve is portrayed in the book as crying or breaking down. He would fall apart in meetings, on phone calls and on walks.

Steve often befriended someone, just to use and discard them later. He struggled with the fact he had been adopted and later abandoned his own daughter for a time.

His issues weren’t just with abandonment. Jobs fought with what can be described as eating disorders. He took drugs. While he mellowed as he aged, there’s no debate that he was a complex man.

Steve was hands-on

Steve did things no other CEO has done. He met with content providers personally. He touched and played with countless versions of products while Jonathan Ive was designing them. In the book, Isaacson reports that the 9.7" LCD on the iPad was decided upon after Jobs played with numerous mockups of different sizes.

More striking to me, however, was just how often Steve invited people over to his home or for a walk. For all of his flaws, Steve liked connecting with people in a private manner. He tendered his relationships in person as often as he could.

In closing

All in all, while the book may have had some technical errors and didn’t discuss modern Apple as much as I would have liked, I believe Isaacson was fair in his treatment of Jobs — showing all sides of his complex personality. It was a good read, and I’m glad I spent the time to move through it slowly.

In episode 7 of Ungeniused, Myke and I discuss the phenomenon known as “spontaneous human combustion.” It’s a little gory, so this one might not be great for the kids. However, if you love bizarre causes of death, this episode is for you.

Danny Winokur:

Adobe is all about enabling designers and developers to create the most expressive content possible, regardless of platform or technology. For more than a decade, Flash has enabled the richest content to be created and deployed on the web by reaching beyond what browsers could do. It has repeatedly served as a blueprint for standardizing new technologies in HTML. Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices.

However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.

Boom.