&lt;p&gt;On my flight to San Francisco yesterday, I finished reading &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/1578062977/ref=nosim/daringfirebal-20"&gt;Stanley Kubrick Interviews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, an excellent collection edited by Gene D. Phillips. I was struck by this passage by Richard Schickel from Time magazine in 1975, a few weeks prior to the release of &lt;em&gt;Barry Lyndon&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;About his work Kubrick is the most self-conscious and rational of men. His eccentricities &amp;#8212; secretiveness, a great need for privacy &amp;#8212; are caused by his intense awareness of time&amp;#8217;s relentless passage. He wants to use time to &amp;#8220;create a string of masterpieces&amp;#8221;, as an acquaintance puts it. Social status means nothing to him, money is simply a tool of his trade.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Reminds me of &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/4307703430/"&gt;someone else&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;There was a meta-message in today&amp;#8217;s Apple event, not about the iPad in particular, but rather about Apple as a whole. Jobs&amp;#8217;s brief preamble included a bit of extra emphasis on the fact that the Apple now generates over $50 billion per year in revenue. (Apple also emphasized this $50 billion revenue thing in their &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/25results.html"&gt;PR two days&lt;/a&gt; ago announcing their Q1 2010 financial results.) He also said that when you consider MacBooks as &amp;#8220;mobile&amp;#8221; devices, Apple generates more revenue from mobile hardware than any other company in the world; the three competitors he singled out were Sony, Samsung, and Nokia. The adjective he used was &amp;#8220;bigger&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, there&amp;#8217;s the fact that the iPad is using a new CPU designed and made by Apple itself: the Apple A4. This is a huge deal. I got about 20 blessed minutes of time using the iPad demo units Apple had at the event today, and if I had to sum up the device with one word, that word would be &amp;#8220;fast&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It is fast, fast, fast. The hardware really does feel like a big iPhone &amp;#8212; and a big &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; iPhone at that, with the aluminum back. (I have never liked the plastic 3G/S iPhones as much as the original in terms of how it feels in my hand.) I expected the screen size to be the biggest differentiating factor in how the iPad feels compared to an iPhone, but I think the speed difference is just as big a factor. Web pages render so fast it was hard to believe. After using the iPhone so much for two and a half years, I&amp;#8217;ve become accustomed to web pages rendering (relative to the Mac) slowly. On the iPad, they seem to render nearly instantly. (802.11n Wi-Fi helps too.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Maps app is crazy fast. Apps launch fast. Scrolling is fast. The Photos app is fast.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The iPad hardware is exactly what you think. It looks great, it feels great. It&amp;#8217;s very nice to hold. (People are &lt;a href="http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2010/01/27/apple-drops-an-idud.aspx"&gt;complaining&lt;/a&gt; about the wide bezel around the display, but without that, where would your thumbs go? You don&amp;#8217;t want your thumb that&amp;#8217;s holding the device to cover on-screen content or register as a touch. Trust me, it&amp;#8217;s just right.) Just like with the iPhone, it&amp;#8217;s all in the software. And the software is obviously marvelous in many ways. It is clearly the result of deep thought and hard work.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But: everyone I spoke to in the press room was raving first and foremost about the speed. None of us could shut up about it. It feels impossibly fast. (And our next thought: What happens if Apple has figured out a way to make a CPU like A4 that fits in an iPhone? If they pull that off for this year&amp;#8217;s new iPhone, look out.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t talk much about the technical details of the iPhone. They never talk about CPU speed or the name of the chip being used. They don&amp;#8217;t tell you how much RAM is in there. Part of their vision for moving computers from technical culture to popular culture is about getting away from defining these things by their technical specs. So the prominent talk about A4 is telling. This is something they want us to notice.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I mentioned this year-ago quote from Apple COO Tim Cook the other day, but it&amp;#8217;s apt here, too. &lt;a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc20090621_038917_page_2.htm"&gt;Cook told BusinessWeek&lt;/a&gt;, &amp;#8220;We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple now owns and controls their own mobile CPUs. There aren&amp;#8217;t many companies in the world that can say that. And from what I saw today, Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t just own and control &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; mobile CPU, they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world. Software aside (which is a huge thing to put aside), it may well be that no other company could make a device today matching the price, size, and performance of the iPad. They&amp;#8217;re not getting into the CPU business for kicks, they&amp;#8217;re getting into it to kick ass.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;They&amp;#8217;re Microsoft and Intel rolled into one when it comes to mobile computing. In the pre-taped video Apple showed, Bob Mansfield said of the iPad, &amp;#8220;No one else could do it.&amp;#8221; Only Apple.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And so my takeaway from this &amp;#8212; with the bragging about making their own CPUs and their annual revenue and their size compared to companies like Sony, Samsung, and Nokia &amp;#8212; is that this is Apple&amp;#8217;s way of asserting that they&amp;#8217;re taking over the penthouse suite as the strongest and best company in the whole ones-and-zeroes racket.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;h2&gt;Automatic Transmission&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission. With an automatic, the transmission is entirely abstracted away. The clutch is gone. To go faster, you just press harder on the gas pedal.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;s where Apple is taking computing. A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn&amp;#8217;t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;s not to say there aren&amp;#8217;t trade-offs involved. Car enthusiasts (and genuine experts like race car drivers) still drive cars with manual transmissions. They offer more control; they&amp;#8217;re more efficient. But the vast majority of cars sold today are automatics. So too it&amp;#8217;ll be with computers. Eventually, the vast majority will be like the iPad in terms of the degree to which the underlying &lt;em&gt;computer&lt;/em&gt; is abstracted away. Manual computers, like the Mac and Windows PCs, will slowly shift from the standard to the niche, something of interest only to experts and enthusiasts and developers.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Popovers and Split Views&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Across the iPad system, Apple has introduced a new UI element, which they&amp;#8217;re calling popovers. It&amp;#8217;s a perfect name. Popovers are like a cross between dialog boxes, drop-down menus, and inspector palettes. One example is the list of mailboxes in Mail when in vertical mode. When iPad Mail is in horizontal mode, you see a split view with two panels at once: accounts/mailboxes/messages on the left, and an always-present message detail panel on the right. When iPad Mail is in vertical mode, you just get one panel, but you can tap a button at the top left to show a popover of messages in the current mailbox.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;They&amp;#8217;re very well thought-out. As their name implies, they appear on-screen &amp;#8220;over&amp;#8221; existing views. But you can&amp;#8217;t drag them around. They aren&amp;#8217;t windows. They&amp;#8217;re in a fixed position, always with an arrow pointing to the button or other control (like an event in Calendar) that the user tapped to open the popover. To close a popover, you just tap away from it &amp;#8212; tapping anywhere other than within the popover closes it. Perhaps conceptually, it&amp;#8217;s more like tapping the view &lt;em&gt;under&lt;/em&gt; the popover to make it disappear. So popovers don&amp;#8217;t have an &amp;#8220;X&amp;#8221; button in the top-left corner, or anything explicitly labeled &amp;#8220;Close&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;Cancel&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;Done&amp;#8221;. You just tap away. This is one of those aspects of the iPad UI that you just have to &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; to get. It feels perfect.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;According to the iPad Human Interface Guidelines (which, alas, are only available to registered iPhone SDK developers), there is a modal variant:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Popovers and modal views are similar, in the sense that people typically can’t interact with the main view while a popover or modal view is open. But a modal view is always modal, whereas a popover can be used in two different ways:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Modal, in which case the popover dims the screen area around it and requires an explicit dismissal. This behavior is very similar to that of a modal view, but a popover’s appearance tends to give the experience a lighter weight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Non-modal, in which case the popover does not dim the screen area around it and people can tap outside its bounds to dismiss it. This behavior makes a non-modal popover seem like another view in the application, not a separate state.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#8217;t recall encountering the modal variety during my all-too-brief iPad spelunking expedition; the non-modal ones seem far more prevalent.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The overall effect of popovers is that you do &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; less view switching in an iPad app than you do an iPhone app. Things that slide an entirely new full-screen view on screen on the iPhone &amp;#8212; like say going back from a message to a list of messages, or displaying your Safari bookmarks, or showing the details of a calendar event &amp;#8212; on the iPad instead appear as popovers on a main view.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So imagine, say, an iPad Twitter client in horizontal mode. You could have a split view with a list of tweets running down the left. On the right, you could have a web view for reading web pages linked from tweets. Rather than sliding over and replacing the tweet list, they could exist side-by-side. And then a popover could provide an interface for switching between different accounts.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Information Density&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The iPad display offers 1024&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;768 pixels. At 9.7 inches diagonally, the pixel density is roughly 132 pixels per inch. That&amp;#8217;s less than the iPhone and iPod Touch, which have 480&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;320 displays with roughly 162 pixels per inch. So text looks a little less sharp on the iPad. But it seemed to me that I naturally held it further away from my face than I do my iPhone, such that it seems just about equally sharp &lt;em&gt;effectively&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What I found interesting is that I&amp;#8217;m very familiar with this resolution &amp;#8212; for &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt; I used PowerBooks and iBooks with 1024&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;768 displays running Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X. 1024&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;768 somehow seems very different on the iPad than on Mac OS &amp;#8212; physically smaller but conceptually bigger. The full-screen concept, without Mac-style overlapping draggable windows, leaves the iPad free to use as many pixels as possible for display &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; rather than UI chrome.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;With the iPad Calendar app for example, the month view seemed more efficient and information-dense than iCal running on my 1440&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;900 pixel MacBook Pro display.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Also interesting is iPad Safari. Even though the screen offers the same pixel count as what was once the standard size for a laptop display, iPad Safari renders pages like iPhone Safari. The web surfing experience is all about zooming and panning.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Hardware Keyboard Support&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The announcement that most surprised me is the iPad&amp;#8217;s support for hardware keyboards &amp;#8212; not just the new docking unit, but also Bluetooth keyboards. I&amp;#8217;m surprised because it is a very practical decision, but not elegant. There&amp;#8217;s a certain beauty to how, with the iPhone and iPod Touch, input is completely and utterly limited to the touchscreen.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Needless to say, though, I&amp;#8217;m surprised in a happy way. I can totally imagine traveling to conferences (or events like this) without a MacBook, but rather with an iPad and a keyboard.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The on-screen iPad keyboard is not bad at all, for what it is, but it&amp;#8217;s exactly what you think &amp;#8212; it&amp;#8217;s for &lt;em&gt;pecking&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;typing&lt;/em&gt;. If you want to do actual writing, you&amp;#8217;re going to want a hardware keyboard.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Having used the hardware keyboard yesterday, though, it is clearly a secondary form of input. You cannot even vaguely drive the iPad interface by keyboard alone. It is almost entirely only for text input. The arrow keys really only work for text editing. Shift-arrow combos work for selecting ranges of text, and Command-arrow combos work for moving the insertion point to the beginning/end of lines. Option-arrow combos do not work for moving a word at a time, though.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Arrow keys don&amp;#8217;t work for navigating the interface. This is the sort of thing I expect to improve over time (and who knows, maybe even before it actually ships), but there are some glaring holes. For example, in iPad Mail, when you start typing in the To: field to address a message, and the iPhone-style autocomplete suggestion list appears under the field, you cannot select from it using the keyboard. You have to touch the screen. The docking keyboard has no Esc key, replacing it instead with a key to simulate the iPad Home button. But so if you try to dismiss a popover with &amp;#8220;Esc&amp;#8221; and hit that button, boom, you&amp;#8217;re dropped back to the home screen. And once back at the home screen, there doesn&amp;#8217;t seem to be a way to launch apps via keyboard alone. It just seems like it&amp;#8217;s not finished yet.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Typography and iBooks&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The iPad&amp;#8217;s version of iPhone OS contains more fonts than iPhone OS 3.1, including my beloved Gill Sans. The iBooks app lets you switch the text face, but only from a choice of five fonts.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;iBooks uses full-justified layout for books, with no apparent option to switch to ragged right. It doesn&amp;#8217;t do hyphenation, so you wind up with very unsightly word-spacing gaps. No e-reader I&amp;#8217;m aware of does justice to proper book typography, but I was hoping for better from Apple. It&amp;#8217;s decent web-caliber typography, not print-caliber typography.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As for Amazon, they might wind up delighted with this thing. Apple&amp;#8217;s in the business of selling devices first, content second. I think Amazon is in the content business first, the device business second. A world where Kindle hardware sales pale in comparison to the iPad but where there&amp;#8217;s a very popular Kindle app for iPad that competes against iBooks is not a bad situation for Amazon. Apple is only selling e-books for use on their own devices; Amazon is willing to sell e-books anywhere they can.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Money on the Table&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, a thought regarding the iPad&amp;#8217;s aggressive pricing. Apple is obviously leaving money on the table here. They could easily charge $999 as the starting price and have hundreds of people lined up outside every Apple Store ready to buy one on day one. Then they could drop the price later in the year, as the holiday season approaches.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Clearly they&amp;#8217;re more interested in unit sales than per-unit margin. The mobile computing landscape is in land-grab mode, and Apple is trying to stake out a long-term dominating position.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Robert Scoble &lt;a href="http://scobleizer.com/2010/01/30/can-flash-be-saved/"&gt;has a good analogy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like &lt;a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/01/apples_ipad_--_a_broken_link.html"&gt;Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail&lt;/a&gt; because of its own set of broken links.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Regarding those blue boxes that indicate embedded Flash content in MobileSafari, think of it this way: Who can make them go away?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adobe can&amp;#8217;t. They can&amp;#8217;t put Flash Player on iPhone OS on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apple could, &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash"&gt;but they won&amp;#8217;t&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Users could make Apple change its mind by refusing to buy iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads because they don&amp;#8217;t support Flash. That does not seem to be happening. In fact, iPhone sales are accelerating.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Web site producers could do it, by replacing or providing an alternative to the Flash content on their sites.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/29/porno-flash"&gt;initial reaction to the iPad&lt;/a&gt; seems to be geared toward #3 &amp;#8212; emphasizing publicly that iPhone OS devices are not capable of rendering the (admittedly, substantial amounts of) Flash content on the web today. Good luck with that.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe&amp;#8217;s fear, of course, is that #4 is what will happen. And with good reason, since I think it&amp;#8217;s fair to say that we&amp;#8217;re seeing this happen already. Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow &lt;a href="http://theflashblog.com/?p=1703"&gt;made his little poster&lt;/a&gt; showing what a bunch of Flash-using web sites look like without Flash without actually looking to see how they render on MobileSafari. Ends up a bunch of them, including the porno site, already have iPhone-optimized versions with no blue boxes, and video that plays just fine as straight-up H.264. iPhone visitors to these sites have no idea they&amp;#8217;re missing anything because, well, they&amp;#8217;re not missing anything. For a few other of the sites Brimelow cited, like Disney and Spongebob Squarepants, there are dedicated native iPhone apps.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigiphoto/4314276957/"&gt;Kendall Helmstetter Gelner put together this version&lt;/a&gt; of Brimelow&amp;#8217;s chart using actual screenshots from MobileSafari, the App Store, and native iPhone apps. The only two blue boxes left: FarmVille and Hulu.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The explanation is simple. Web site producers tend to be practical. Those that use Flash do so not because they&amp;#8217;re Flash proponents, but because Flash is easy and ubiquitous. Few technologies get to 100 percent market penetration; Flash came remarkably close. A few years ago you could say that, effectively, Flash was everywhere. It made total sense for sites like YouTube and Hulu to go with Flash.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Flash is no longer ubiquitous. There&amp;#8217;s a big difference between &amp;#8220;everywhere&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;almost everywhere&amp;#8221;. Adobe&amp;#8217;s own statistics on Flash&amp;#8217;s market penetration &lt;a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html"&gt;claim 99 percent penetration&lt;/a&gt; as of last month. That&amp;#8217;s because, according to their &lt;a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/"&gt;survey methodology&lt;/a&gt;, they&amp;#8217;re only counting &amp;#8220;PCs&amp;#8221; &amp;#8212; which ignores the entire sort of devices which have brought about this debate. Adobe is arguing that Flash is installed on 99 percent of all web browsers that support Flash, not 99 percent of all web browsers.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Used to be you could argue that Flash, whatever its merits, delivered content to the entire audience you cared about. That&amp;#8217;s no longer true, and Adobe&amp;#8217;s Flash penetration is shrinking with each iPhone OS device Apple sells.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What&amp;#8217;s Hulu going to do? Sit there and wait? Whine about the blue boxes? Or do the practical thing and write software that delivers video to iPhone OS? The answer is obvious. Hulu doesn&amp;#8217;t care about what&amp;#8217;s good for Adobe. They care about what&amp;#8217;s good for Hulu. Hulu isn&amp;#8217;t a &lt;em&gt;Flash&lt;/em&gt; site, it&amp;#8217;s a &lt;em&gt;video&lt;/em&gt; site. Developers go where the users are.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Some good questions &lt;a href="http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/01/31/whatIfFlashWereAnOpenStand.html"&gt;from Dave Winer regarding Apple, Adobe, and Flash&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;What if Apple were trying to erase something that&amp;#8217;s not company-owned? Either a formal or de facto standard? Further, what if their alternative were something that was locked-down and owned by a company? Further, what if the company was Apple?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;d say that&amp;#8217;d be a different ball of wax entirely. It would depend, for one thing, on the specific open / de facto standard technology.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But as for open &lt;em&gt;web&lt;/em&gt; standards, the evidence &amp;#8212; actions and shipping code, not just words &amp;#8212; strongly indicate that Apple is a major proponent of them. Apple didn&amp;#8217;t have to release WebKit as an open source project &amp;#8212; they could have kept their extensions atop the LGPL-licensed WebCore private.&lt;sup id="fnr1-2010-02-01"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn1-2010-02-01"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; They&amp;#8217;ve re-written WebKit&amp;#8217;s JavaScript engine from scratch at least twice, and released it all as open source. (Apple has also been aggressive about releasing its advanced non-web developer technology, &lt;a href="http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Conceptual/Blocks/Articles/00_Introduction.html"&gt;like blocks and LLVM&lt;/a&gt;, as liberally-licensed open source.) All of Apple&amp;#8217;s top competitors in the mobile space have either already adopted WebKit or soon will: Android, WebOS, even BlackBerry. Members of Apple&amp;#8217;s WebKit team have been helping drive HTML5 since its inception. In short, I&amp;#8217;d say Apple likes its technology open and its products closed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;E.g., it makes all the difference in the world that Apple is pushing H.264 rather than, say, QuickTime as the way forward for embedded web video.&lt;sup id="fnr2-2010-02-01"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn2-2010-02-01"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I do understand &lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/31/ipad-review-comments-naughton"&gt;the fear&lt;/a&gt;. It&amp;#8217;s indisputable that Apple seeks large amounts of control over its products. So it&amp;#8217;s a reasonable question to ask whether Apple sees the web itself, which they have no control over, as a problem. I don&amp;#8217;t think that&amp;#8217;s the case at all, though. The web, as a whole, is arguably the single most entrenched computer technology ever created. So where Apple seeks control with regard to the web is in the technology to render it &amp;#8212; HTML, CSS, JavaScript. No one can tell them what to do with WebKit; they wait for no one to shape and bend WebKit to suit their needs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My feeling is not that Apple seeks total control over all content and software in iPhone OS. I&amp;#8217;d say it&amp;#8217;s more like they&amp;#8217;re providing two well-defined, nice, neat, easily-understood extremes: the totally controlled native Cocoa Touch, and the totally open web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Winer ends with a suggestion for Adobe:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe might want to consider, right now, very quickly, giving Flash to the public domain. Disclaim all patents, open source all code, etc etc. That would throw the ball squarely back into Apple&amp;#8217;s court and would frame the question right now in its most stark terms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;d be an interesting move, and it would certainly shake things up. But what if the source code to Flash Player is &amp;#8212; as many would wager &amp;#8212; a huge steaming pile of convoluted C++ horseshit? It&amp;#8217;s sort of like what if Microsoft open-sourced the Internet Explorer rendering engine. It&amp;#8217;s not like anyone who is now using WebKit or Gecko would switch to that just because it was opened &amp;#8212; or that WebKit, Mozilla, and Opera would suddenly be obligated to or even interested in adopting IE-specific web features.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The problem for Flash is just like the problem for IE &amp;#8212; the web has already moved on.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div class="footnotes"&gt; &lt;hr /&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li id="fn1-2010-02-01"&gt; &lt;p&gt;An earlier version of this article stated that the entirety of WebKit is BSD-licensed. That&amp;#8217;s wrong; the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML"&gt;KHTML library&lt;/a&gt; that Apple started with is LGPL-licensed, and so therefore is the WebCore component in WebKit. We regret the error.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr1-2010-02-01" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li id="fn2-2010-02-01"&gt; &lt;p&gt;H.264 is an open standard, but admittedly and unfortunately &lt;a href="http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/"&gt;not a free standard&lt;/a&gt;, hence Mozilla&amp;#8217;s opposition to it. My point here is simply that H.264 is not owned by Apple or any other single company.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr2-2010-02-01" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Steven Frank:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;shutup.css is a custom user stylesheet that can be applied to your browser to hide comments on many popular web sites without user intervention.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Shut Up’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/03/shut-up"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Is there a more iconic sign of the times?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Tweets His Support for Repealing &amp;#8216;Don&amp;#8217;t Ask Don&amp;#8217;t Tell&amp;#8217; Policy’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/mullen"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Stuart Parmenter:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We’ve decided to disable plugin (not to be confused with add-ons, which are supported) support for this release.  The Adobe Flash plugin used on many sites degraded the performance of the browser to the point where it didn’t meet our standards.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Firefox for Maemo RC3’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/firefox-maemo"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Speaking of which, this piece from The Economist is delightful.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Speaking of Gays in the Military’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/kristol"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Former Microsoft vice president Dick Brass, on Microsoft&amp;#8217;s internal culture:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another example: When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Can you imagine the head of Apple&amp;#8217;s iWork team declaring by fiat that there wouldn&amp;#8217;t be versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers for the iPad because he didn&amp;#8217;t like the concept?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;Microsoft’s Creative Destruction&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/microsoft-creative-destruction"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Mike Monteiro gets it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;They Want the Thing in the Movies&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/monteiro"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;James Kendrick: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;My findings are disappointing to say the least. I found that both the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus performed virtually identically in the testing, which was expected given the similarity of the phones. The problem is I could never get anything above abysmal bandwidth with either phone.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I hope it&amp;#8217;s something Palm can fix in a software update. It&amp;#8217;s a killer feature on paper.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘James Kendrick Gets Poor Results From Palm Mobile Hotspot’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/kendrick-palm-tethering"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Bob Fernandez, reporting for the Philadelphia Inquirer:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Comcast Corp. said yesterday that it would re-brand its TV, Internet, and telephone services as Xfinity on Feb. 12 to signal to customers that this isn&amp;#8217;t the same old company. [&amp;#8230;]&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This re-branding comes as Comcast has struggled to rebuild its reputation because of poor service and problems with its network that resulted in telephone and Internet outages. Its customer-satisfaction rating is among the lowest in the industry, but it has improved slightly in the last year. Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said the re-branding was not an attempt to distance the service from the Comcast name. &amp;#8220;This is about our product. It is about providing our customers with products that just keep getting better.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Many companies walk away from household name brands just for kicks. Sure.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Comcast Rebranding as &amp;#8216;Xfinity&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/comcast-xfinity"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Brad Stone:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;AT&amp;amp;T announced Thursday morning that it will now allow the SlingPlayer iPhone app to stream live over its 3G network. “Since mid-December 2009, AT&amp;amp;T has been testing the app and has recently notified Sling Media &amp;#8212; as well as Apple &amp;#8212; that the optimized app can run on its 3G network,” said the carrier in a press release.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘AT&amp;amp;T Gives Green Light to Sling TV Over 3G’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/att-sling"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Ran Sun into ground. &lt;br /&gt; Schwartz cracks cute with jokey tweet. &lt;br /&gt; Ignominious.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Jonathan Schwartz Tweets His Resignation in Haiku’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/schwartz-haiku"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve been waiting for this for so long &amp;#8212; a way to link to App Store entries without requiring iTunes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘App Store Previews Now on the Web’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/app-store-web"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Why in the world did they respond to &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?ref=opinion"&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;? And even worse, without refuting any of his claims, most especially his core premise that Microsoft is divided into dozens of bureaucratic fiefdoms that fight against each other to protect their turf?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘The Official Microsoft Blog Responds to Dick Brass&amp;#8217;s NYT Op-Ed’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/04/microsoft"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Federico Viticci on &lt;a href="http://code.google.com/p/movist/"&gt;Movist&lt;/a&gt;, an open source Mac video player:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Where Movist really outstands the competition is in file support. It’s the only app that played my .mkv files perfectly, even when VLC was crashing. Not to talk about .mp4 and .avi support, pretty obvious. Moreover, Movist plays .wmw files faster than Quicktime, and you can also switch from FFmpeg to Quicktime playback with a single click on a toolbar button. Awesome.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Movist, Alternative Video Player to VLC for Mac’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/movist"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Apple Developer Connection:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you build your application with features based on a user&amp;#8217;s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user&amp;#8217;s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple: Core Location Not for Use Solely for Serving Location-Targeted Ads’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/core-location"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Chris Foresman:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;AT&amp;amp;T made headlines Thursday by announcing that it had decided to allow SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone to stream video from a Slingbox over its 3G network. AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#8217;s CEO claimed in the announcement that Sling Media modified the app to be more efficient on its network, but Sling has responded, saying it didn&amp;#8217;t have to change a thing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Foresman has updated his article; seems Sling &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; do some lab testing with AT&amp;amp;T to prove that the app behaved well.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Sling and AT&amp;amp;T’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/sling-att"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Remarkably dismissive overall. Nilay Patel is the only one who sees the potential.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Engadget Staff&amp;#8217;s Initial Thoughts on the iPad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/engadget-ipad"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Doug Gregor of the LLVM project:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We built all of LLVM and Clang with Clang (over 550k lines of C++ code). The resulting binaries passed all of Clang and LLVM&amp;#8217;s regression test suites, and the Clang-built Clang could then build all of LLVM and Clang again. The third-stage Clang was also fully-functional, completing the bootstrap.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Is there any other type of project that offers the same potential for recursive satisfaction as a compiler that can compile itself? It&amp;#8217;s a singular milestone for LLVM.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Clang Successfully Self-Hosts’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/clang"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Ken Segall:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;My point is, Apple has always demonstrated tremendous common sense. It’s just hard to believe they’d choose the name &lt;em&gt;iPhone OS&lt;/em&gt; if iPad was already on the drawing board. My inner Sherlock tells me iPad wasn’t even a twinkle in Apple’s eye until well after March, 2008.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;There&amp;#8217;s no argument about it that &amp;#8220;iPhone OS&amp;#8221; no longer makes sense as the name for this OS. The iPad HIG and developer documentation is chock full of features and APIs and guidelines that do not apply to the iPhone (or iPod Touch). So there are features in the iPhone OS which do not apply to the iPhone.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I still say the iPad has been in the works for a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; time. Many, many years. Certainly not the iPad exactly as it was announced, but the general idea &amp;#8212; the final design of an Apple product is the result of non-stop iteration. I could be wrong, and Apple, of course, isn&amp;#8217;t going to say. But I&amp;#8217;d say the awkwardness of the &amp;#8220;iPhone OS&amp;#8221; name is proof only that Apple picks names from the gut &amp;#8212; names that &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; right rather than &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; right. &amp;#8220;iTunes&amp;#8221; is exhibit A.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘How Long in the Works Was the iPad?’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/segall-iphone-os"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Funny, never heard that one before.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘If Global Warming Is Real Then Why Is It Cold?’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/warming-cold"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;So good.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Greg Knauss: &amp;#8216;The Days of Miracles and Wonder&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/days-of-miracle-and-wonder"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Bill Clinton was president of the United States when SVG started.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Microsoft Joins SVG Working Group’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/msft-svg"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Radioshift is a Mac app that acts like a DVR for Internet radio stations. My thanks to Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring this week&amp;#8217;s DF RSS feed to promote it. Radioshift has thousands of preset stations from around the world (including, for me, all my favorite stations here in Philadelphia) and a great interface, including the ability to schedule shows to be recorded automatically. Download it for free, and through the end of February, save 20 percent when you purchase using coupon code &amp;#8220;DARINGRADIO&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Plus, Rogue Amoeba is exhibiting at Macworld next week. See them at booth #1545.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Radioshift’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/05/radioshift"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Dan Phiffer&amp;#8217;s second weblog post is about second weblog posts.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘The Second Post’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/06/phiffer"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Remember &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIFCV2spKtg"&gt;this video from 2007&lt;/a&gt;, demonstrating a technique for content-aware image resizing that didn&amp;#8217;t involve cropping or distorting the central elements of the image? Savoy Software&amp;#8217;s Liquid Scale brings this technique to the iPhone. Pretty cool.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Liquid Scale: Content-Aware Image Resizing App for iPhone’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/07/liquid-scale"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Special issue of Hamish Hamilton&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://fivedials.com/fivedials"&gt;excellent literary magazine&lt;/a&gt;, &amp;#8220;A celebration of the life of David Foster Wallace with contributions by Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, George Saunders and others.&amp;#8221; Designed by our old friend Dean Allen. So good &amp;#8212; do yourself a favor and print it out.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Five Dials No. 10 (PDF)’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/07/five-dials-dfw"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Sourcebits is a leading developer of software and services for iPhone, iPad, Mobile, Mac and the Web. We specialize in robust, high performance code with an elegant, easy to understand front end. With over 4.5M downloads from the iTunes App Store and a growing portfolio of Android, BlackBerry, and Rich Internet Applications, Sourcebits brings its record of innovation and success to each new project. Whether mobile, Mac or RIA, trust our 200+ strong team of talented programmers and user interface designers to build your next application. Contact us today for a quote.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Simple web-based painting/drawing app. No Flash.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Sketchpad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/sketchpad"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;A great win by a great team from a great city. Sports at its best.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Saints Beat Colts 31-17 to Win New Orleans&amp;#8217;s First Super Bowl’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/super-bowl"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that back in August, Retrevo released survey results showing that Apple&amp;#8217;s MacBooks were getting killed by netbooks in the back-to-school market. That &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/19results.html"&gt;didn&amp;#8217;t exactly pan out&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Before You Place Your Bets on Retrevo’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/retrevo-netbooks"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Retrevo, which bills itself as &amp;#8220;the ultimate electronics marketplace&amp;#8221;, has been getting a lot of attention in recent months for its consumer surveys on Apple products, including this one from Friday:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;As we like to say, it’s the apps that sell smartphones like the iPhone and it could very well be those same apps that motivate buyers to run down to the Apple Store and get in line to buy a shiny new iPad. Whether this device becomes a big hit is anyone’s guess but based on this study it sure looks doubtful.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;So let&amp;#8217;s mark them down as bearish on the iPad.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#8217;s also keep in mind that Retrevo is the same outfit who, just three weeks ago, &lt;a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=11426"&gt;released survey results showing that the most important features&lt;/a&gt; in an (at the time, hypothetical) Apple tablet were &amp;#8220;long battery life&amp;#8221;, &amp;#8220;3G&amp;#8221;, and &amp;#8220;an e-book store with big selection&amp;#8221; &amp;#8212; and that the main thing people did not want was a required monthly data plan. Oh, and the price needed to be under $700. Sounds like something familiar.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Retrevo: iPad Doubters’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/retrevo"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Love this line from the New York Times&amp;#8217;s David Carr on the Charlie Rose show, regarding the iPad:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;One thing you have to understand about this gadget is that the gadget disappears pretty quickly. You&amp;#8217;re looking into pure software.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#8217;t think it&amp;#8217;s a coincidence that Carr is a business reporter, not a tech reporter. He sees the forest, not the trees. But this is really astute. I&amp;#8217;ve been using a Nexus One Android phone for the last few weeks, and Carr&amp;#8217;s quote summarizes the fundamental difference between Android and iPhone OS. On the iPhone, once you&amp;#8217;re in an app, &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; happens on-screen, with touch. Everything. You go outside the screen to the home button to leave the app or the sleep button to turn off the device. On Android, many things happens on screen with touch, but many other things don&amp;#8217;t, and you&amp;#8217;re often leaving the screen for the hardware Back, Menu, and Home buttons, and text selection and editing requires the use of the fiddly trackball. An Android gadget never disappears.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;The Gadget Disappears&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/rose-carr"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;My favorite commercial of the night by far.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘How the Letterman-Oprah-Leno Super Bowl Ad Came Together’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/letterman-oprah-leno"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Philip Elmer-DeWitt on the highlights of this week&amp;#8217;s Macworld Expo in San Francisco:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;John Gruber. The ill-tempered author of the widely read Daring Fireball blog is flying from Philadelphia, presumably without his &amp;#8220;What Are You Looking at Dicknose?&amp;#8221; t-shirt, to discuss the &amp;#8220;top 10 issues facing our world.&amp;#8221; &lt;em&gt;Friday 4:30 p.m. PT&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;First, &amp;#8220;ill-tempered&amp;#8221;? Second, everyone knows that shirt &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035767733@N01/3183085025/"&gt;doesn&amp;#8217;t have a question mark&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;Who&amp;#8217;s Scruffy-Looking?&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/ill-tempered"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Apologies to the Hulu-less.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘An Even-Tempered Apology From White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/rahm"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Wolf, responding to &lt;a href="http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/02/the_iphone_obse.html"&gt;PPK&amp;#8217;s argument&lt;/a&gt; that MobileSafari is the new IE6:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Mobile web developers, like most developers, are future-focused. We’d rather all mobile phones catch up with the iPhone we have in our pockets today, rather than bend over backwards to accommodate the current majority.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;When Koch damns developers for professional hypocrisy and incompetence, I see a quiet revolution of mobile developers waiting for other phones to catch up to the iPhone.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Count me in with Wolf on this one.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Wolf Rentzsch: MobileSafari Is Not the New IE6’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/wolf-ppk"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;CSS nerds: have you checked out &lt;a href="http://lesscss.org/"&gt;LESS&lt;/a&gt;? If so and you dig it, you might be interested in this.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘LESS CSS App for Mac OS X’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/less-css-mac"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Gee, I wonder if e-comic-book distributors are excited about the iPad?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Panelfly’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/08/panelfly"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Nice complement to &lt;a href="http://clicktoflash.com/"&gt;ClickToFlash&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#8212; BashFlash monitors Snow Leopard&amp;#8217;s Flash Player process and lets you kill it when it starts using excessive CPU time.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘BashFlash’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/09/bashflash"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Palm, RIM, Microsoft losing market share; Apple and Google gaining. (RIM has the most to lose, of course.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘ComScore Reports December 2009 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/09/comscore"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Faces, places, and brushes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘What&amp;#8217;s New in Aperture 3’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/09/aperture-3"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Better questions: &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; will iPhone OS support third-party multitasking, and in what form? &lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Adam Engst: Does the iPhone OS Need Multitasking?’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/09/engst"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/"&gt;Macworld Expo&lt;/a&gt; 2010 kicks off tomorrow in San Francisco. Is it going to fly without Apple? I don&amp;#8217;t know. I don&amp;#8217;t think anyone does yet. Apple&amp;#8217;s traditional presence at Macworld was so large, both figuratively (with the attention paid to their keynote address) and literally (with their massive booth on the show floor), that their absence has effectively rendered Macworld a new event. I think it&amp;#8217;s smart that IDG moved the date back a month; anything they could do to emphasize that it&amp;#8217;s going to be new and different this year can only help. (I have no idea if it was feasible, but if it had been, I&amp;#8217;d have advised moving the show across the street to Moscone West, just to make it &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; different, too.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple&amp;#8217;s absence will be felt in two ways. First, the lack of an Apple keynote address has significantly diminished the amount of media attention. That was inevitable. But it wasn&amp;#8217;t really Macworld Expo, the trade show and conference, that was garnering that attention. It was Apple itself. Apple&amp;#8217;s keynotes really didn&amp;#8217;t have much at all to do with the exhibit floor or conference sessions. I suppose there were some number of attendees who considered attending the keynote as a major reason to buy a conference pass, but percentage-wise only a small number of attendees could ever see the keynotes in person. It&amp;#8217;s not like Apple hasn&amp;#8217;t given us much to talk about recently &amp;#8212; hello, iPad &amp;#8212; it just wasn&amp;#8217;t announced at Macworld itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The more worrisome factor for me is Apple&amp;#8217;s absence from the show floor. They had a huge booth in a prominent spot and they drew people in. The role they played on the show floor is very much analogous, I think, to the role played by a big department store like Macy&amp;#8217;s or Nordstrom at a shopping mall.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;To me, though, the reason to walk the show floor has always been about the small companies &amp;#8212; often the &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; small ones. The ones where the employees manning the booth are the engineers and designers who made the product they&amp;#8217;re promoting. I&amp;#8217;ve been to a bunch of Macworld Expos and I never once failed to discover at least one fascinating product by walking the show floor. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In terms of what&amp;#8217;s going on other than the trade show, I&amp;#8217;ve long thought that the inordinate amount of front-loaded attention paid to Apple&amp;#8217;s keynote address drew attention away from the fact that Macworld has turned into a large and successful conference, with tracks spanning everything from programming to graphic design.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Nothing could replace a Steve Jobs keynote address, so, wisely, they&amp;#8217;re not trying. Instead, Macworld has scheduled a &lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/fp"&gt;bunch of featured speakers&lt;/a&gt; throughout the week, including David Pogue, Kevin Smith (yes, &lt;a href="http://www.viewaskew.com/"&gt;that Kevin Smith&lt;/a&gt;), Leo Laporte, and, yours truly. &lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/sessions?s=QSHOWA0005AZ"&gt;I&amp;#8217;ll be speaking Friday at 4:30pm&lt;/a&gt;, where I&amp;#8217;ll share the secret recipes for my award-winning cupcakes and melt-in-your-mouth croissants.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(DF readers: you can register for the show using the discount code &amp;#8220;GRUBER&amp;#8221; to get a &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt; expo pass that will get you into my talk (and the show floor, and the other feature presentations). That code is also good for a 20 percent discount on any of the conferences. Just keep in mind that with that code, it&amp;#8217;s &lt;em&gt;totally free&lt;/em&gt; to come see my talk and the other feature presentations.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The bottom line for me is that the potential is there for Macworld to remain a great show. Imagine if there&amp;#8217;d never been a Macworld Expo before, and that this was the first year. It wouldn&amp;#8217;t be surprising that Apple declined to participate. But is there demand for a days-long nerdfest for Mac and iPhone professionals and aficionados? I say yes.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

Filed under: iLife, Multimedia, Software Update

Well, it's Tuesday, and Apple's favorite day to update software.

Today we get an iLife '09 update, and a bunch of camera RAW updates.

Here's what Apple has to say about the iLife update:

Provides system software resources that are shared by iLife and other applications. This update improves overall stability for the Media Browser and iPhoto slideshows. It also provides compatibility between Aperture 3 and the Media Browser.

The update is recommended for all users of iLife '09, iWork '09, and Aperture.

And the camera updates:

This update extends RAW image compatibility for Aperture 3 and iPhoto '09 for the following cameras and formats:

Canon PowerShot S90
Canon sRAW
Canon mRAW
Leica D-LUX 4
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3

It's not earthshaking, but will be welcome for heavy iLife '09 users. You can get these from the software update option under the Apple menu.

[Thanks Michael for the tip]

TUAWApple offers 2 software updates originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just a quick heads up to all your iPhone and iPad developers out there. The new version of the 3.2 SDK is now available for download. The Apple developer site is getting a bit slammed right now but it looks like a really exciting new update. Can't wait to start playing with it myself.

As per last time, the new beta SDK is under NDA, so please go check out the details for yourself to get further information about the changes between this beta and the last.

TUAWiPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 2 available now originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/realrhapsody-tivosm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />RealNetworks in a surprise move tonight broke off Rhapsody as a separate company. The move has the blessing of Real's partner in the venture, Viacom, and will transfer all the rights to Rhapsody so that its streaming and download music services remain intact. Real will also inject $18 million in cash and promises that Rhapsody will be independent, with no one else holding a majority stake....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/notioninkadamin.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Initial impressions of a prototype Adam tablet from Notion Ink, first announced late last year, show that the device has some significant advantages over competitors such as the iPad. Powered by the new NVIDIA Tegra chipset and using a low-power display from Pixel Qi, the pre-production Adam is said to last at least two to three times longer than the 10-hour battery life for the iPad when browsing the web using Wi-Fi or watching video, according to Notion Ink CEO Rohan Shravan....

Apple today released iLife Support 9.0.4 via Software Update, bringing stability improvements and compatibility with Apple's new Aperture 3 release.

Provides system software resources that are shared by iLife and other applications. T...

Filed under: Humor, Odds and ends, iPhone

I can type fairly quickly on my iPhone, at least in landscape mode -- I average about 30 - 35 words per minute compared to around 77 WPM on a standard keyboard -- but the guy in the video above has gone to plaid with his typing speed. Using an app called iTextSpeed [US$0.99, iTunes Link], this anonymous texting speed demon reaches an incredible 56 words per minute on his iPhone in portrait mode. I have no idea how he does it, particularly in portrait mode; I make an average of one mistake every other word unless I'm in landscape, but the guy in the video, whose thumbs look even bigger than mine, only screws up one word during the entire timed sequence.

A few people grouse about the iPhone's lack of a physical keyboard, but the cyborg-thumbed guy in this video proves that for some of us, it's not an issue whatsoever.

[Via Macenstein]

TUAWLudicrous speed: 56 WPM on the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple today released Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 3.0, bringing compatibility with a number of digital camera models to iPhoto '09 and Apple's new Aperture 3 release.

This update extends RAW image compatibility for Aperture...

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/belkinpadin.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Belkin on Tuesday announced it has redesigned its Laptop Cooling Pad to now include a unique AirFlow Wing shape that is more efficient at taking heat away from the computer and a user's lap. At the same time, the design results in the notebook itself being quieter. The fan was repositioned compared to the previous pad and retains its USB power cable....

<img align='left' src='http://photos_macnn@photos.macnn.com/news/1002/pdfconveter1.2-story-29.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Zevrix has launched PDF Checkpoint 1.2, updating its PDF preflight and conversion software. The app exports PDFs as images, and splits and reduces the size of PDF files. Hundreds of files can be handled at a time via drag-and-drop batch processing....

<img align='left' src=' http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/siri.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Siri has launched a public beta of its personal assistant software for the iPhone, Siri Assistant. The program is designed to help with everyday tasks such as booking a restaurant or contacting a taxi service. Its main feature is voice recognition technology, which operates in a question-and-answer style. Over time the app is designed to adapt, and become simpler to use....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/elecomsdxcin.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Japan's Elecom has launched two new memory card readers with support for SDXC memory cards. The MR-A001BK is a USB thumb reader that can also read nine other types of memory cards, including SD Pro High speed cards. The MR-A002 reader is larger and attaches using a USB cable. It will be available in black or white and supports 32 different types of portable media cards....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/0909/iphone3gs-triple.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Several analysts have expressed conflicting views on AT&T's iPhone exclusivity, and whether or not it will end in 2010 or be extended another year. Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research has raised his Verizon rating from Underperform to Neutral, in part because there may be little future for AT&T even if Verizon does not get the US iPhone. AT&T's growth will "sputter" without the iPhone as a guaranteed draw, says Moffett....

Filed under: Apple

Last week I downloaded (but did not install) the iPhone OS 3.1.3 firmware for my 3GS. I wanted to have a copy of the firmware on hand, but didn't want to upgrade right away. I checked "Do not ask me again" and clicked Download Only. I thought that was the end of the matter.

Unfortunately, this Sunday, I plugged in my iPhone and left the room to grab some tea. When I returned, the iPhone was 50% of the way through the 3.1.3 firmware upgrade procedure. It did something I had no idea that it would do: it upgraded me without asking.

How frustrating! What's more, I didn't have a copy of 3.1.2 on-hand to downgrade to because iTunes automatically deleted the old firmware files and I was using default Time Machine settings; Time Machine does not normally back up ~/Library, the folder that contains the iTunes ipsw files.

Fortunately, I had several resources. First, because I had jailbroken my phone and registered my device signature with Jay Freeman's caching service, I knew I could downgrade my phone. As Jay and I discussed in this LiveChat from a few months back, Apple no longer allows you to freely downgrade your iPhone software. All firmware installations must be verified with Apple's signature servers.

By jailbreaking your phone and registering your device signature with Jay's system, you'll be able to bypass Apple's verification system and return to the firmware you prefer -- or at least to the earliest firmware whose signature you have stored on the caching site. To make this happen, you must both register your device and update your /etc/hosts file. Jay's site has complete instructions on how to comply.

Second, I could grab a copy of old firmware from sites like Felix Bruns' http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/ and iClarified's http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=750. These sites provide Apple download links for old firmware releases. I downloaded a fresh copy of the 3.1.2 ipsw (iPhone software archive) and installed it onto my system. Using a standard option-restore trick, I was able to put that firmware onto my iPhone. iTunes verified the upgrade with Jay's server and installed it onto the device.

Note: If you receive the "The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (3004)." error, make sure to quit iTunes and flush caches at the command line: sudo dscacheutil -flushcache.

If your device updates properly, you will receive a 1015 error and your unit will now enter a semi-permanent recovery mode, the mode in which your device shows an iTunes logo and will not boot further. To proceed, you'll need to use iRecovery. Download a copy from this site. (It requires libusb, so read the entire post before running.) Run iRecovery from the command line and supply the -s flag. Wait for the "]" prompt, and do not type anything until you see that prompt appear.

Enter the following commands:

] setenv auto-boot true
] saveenv
] /exit

After, you will return to the command line. Reboot your phone by pressing the home and sleep buttons for 10 seconds, per the instructions on the site, and your iPhone should boot back to standard 3.1.2.

Note: Be aware that this method does not downgrade your baseband. It remains at the 3.1.3 setting.

Thanks Jay Freeman, Sjoerd (aka WiFone), and Paul "PhoenixDev" Griffin

TUAWTUAW How To: Downgrading your 3.1.3 iPhone to 3.1.2 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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