&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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;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;&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>

&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;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;Google:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We&amp;#8217;re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We&amp;#8217;ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Google Announces Experimental Fiber Network’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/google-fiber"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Arik Hesseldahl on a &amp;#8220;preliminary estimate&amp;#8221; of iPad component costs from iSuppli:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Research firms including iSuppli conduct so-called teardown analysis of consumer electronics to determine component prices and makers and estimate margins. Researchers at iSuppli didn&amp;#8217;t have an actual iPad and instead relied on Apple&amp;#8217;s public statements on its features.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The next step, I guess, is issuing &amp;#8220;pre-preliminary estimates&amp;#8221; of component costs for products that haven&amp;#8217;t even yet been announced.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Remember the Old Days, When iSuppli Would Actually Wait Until They Could Take a New Apple Device Apart Before Making Up a Ridiculously Lowball Estimate for How Much It Costs to Make?’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/isuppli"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;However, from the comments:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We have not submitted it yet to the Apple App Store. However, we hope that Apple will not deny their users a choice in Web browsing experience.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;There are plenty of third-party web browsers in the App Store. It&amp;#8217;s just that the ones that are allowed are ones that use the system version of WebKit. See &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2008/11/opera_app_store"&gt;this piece I wrote back in November 2008&lt;/a&gt; for more on Opera Mini, including why it might be a very cool app.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Opera Mini for iPhone to Be Previewed at Mobile Web Congress’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/opera-mini"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;No sarcasm intended, I&amp;#8217;m enjoying Thurrott&amp;#8217;s perspective on the iPad. I found this perspective intriguing:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Further unclear is why we would want to learn yet another user interface. Phones, by nature, are simple to use and limited by onscreen real estate. Laptops, of course, offer more expansive screens and more powerful capabilities. But the iPad introduces yet another UI, one that is based on that of the iPhone, of course, but one that is different and more advanced (and complex). Not as advanced and complex as a PC, perhaps. But different from both the iPhone and laptop.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The starting point Thurrott is espousing here, more or less &amp;#8220;&lt;em&gt;Let&amp;#8217;s start with something the user will already be familiar with&lt;/em&gt;&amp;#8221; sounds good, and many times it is the right approach. That&amp;#8217;s the consistency argument for Mac software being Mac-like, and Windows software being Windows-like. But if you shackle yourself to starting with something already familiar, then the state-of-the-art is never going to make a great leap forward. This sort of thinking is why Microsoft&amp;#8217;s tablet computers all run Windows 7.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Clearly, the way Apple approached the iPad was that &lt;em&gt;of course&lt;/em&gt; the iPad was going to introduce a new UI. They&amp;#8217;re really rather fearless about it, because, I think, they&amp;#8217;re so confident in its obviousness. Unfamiliar and new isn&amp;#8217;t a problem if the whole thing is obvious and easy to figure out.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Paul Thurrott, Warming to iPad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/thurrott"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Insightful reporting based on interviews with current and former Microsoft employees:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;When I started at MSFT in 1996, there were six people between me and [Microsoft cofounder] Bill Gates,&amp;#8221; Boris said. &amp;#8220;In 2009, there were 13 people between me and [Microsoft CEO] Steve Ballmer.&amp;#8221; Fred said, &amp;#8220;the number of managers between me and the CEO went from six to 10,&amp;#8221; during the last decade. Another long-time Microsoftie, whom I&amp;#8217;ll call Barry, saw his reports go from six to 12.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Fascinating stuff, too, about the bizarre incentive structure for Microsoft employees. I think this gets to the nut of exactly what&amp;#8217;s wrong with Microsoft. They&amp;#8217;ve evolved a powerful, deep bureaucracy that has lost any sort of focus on creating great products. Worse, for obvious reasons Microsoft&amp;#8217;s management is unlikely to see itself as the problem. As Upton Sinclair said, &amp;#8220;It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Joe Wilcox on Microsoft&amp;#8217;s Glut of Middle Managers’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/wilcox"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Ian Youngs, reporting for BBC News:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Record label Warner Music has said it will stop licensing its songs to free music streaming services. Companies like Spotify, We7 and Last.fm give free, legal and instant access to millions of songs, funded by adverts.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Warner, one of the four major labels, whose artists include REM and Michael Buble, said such services were &amp;#8220;clearly not positive for the industry&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Warner Retreats From Free Music Streaming’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/warner"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/ipad-6.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Hulu has been developing a version of its website just for the iPad, a rumor asserts today. One believed insider claims Hulu has been readying a version of its page that would drop Flash altogether and put videos in a format friendly to mobile Safari. It would potentially be ready in time for when the iPad ships in late March....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/Panasonicvidsm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Panasonic has released pricing and availability for the three new compact HD video cameras and three new standard definition video cameras that it had revealed in early January. The HD cameras will start at $500, and the SD cameras at $250. All six video cameras will be available in mid-March....

Filed under: Software

Back in December we got an early look at an app that allowed you to view and share your Mac's files while on the go. Put simply, Here, File File! [iTunes link] aimed to be the cure to what ailed the file-forgetters among us. Yesterday, the crew behind the very promising preview video announced that HFF was officially available from the App Store.

Read on for our full review of Here, File File!, and be sure to read all the way down to the bottom of the post for news of a Valentine's Day special (because we just love files that much) as well as your chance to win one of five copies of the app for your very own.

The Here, File File app works in conjunction with a small server application that runs on your Mac to grant access to your files from your iPhone. The server has a pretty small footprint in terms of CPU load and takes care of setting up your Mac for remote access for you -- just run the app and access your Mac with your mobile device. Communication between your iPhone or iPod touch and the HFF server on your Mac is password-protected and SSL-encrypted, providing peace of mind for those that are concerned about privacy.

The HFF server is also responsible for configuring the network to allow remote access to your Mac. It uses existing technology (Bonjour and UPnP) to ensure making the connection is as simple and fast as possible. Most recent routers already support automatic UPnP configuration, including Apple's Airport Express and Extreme base stations. The HFF server has a status window that clearly depicts your ability to access your files. If your network does not support UPnP, the HFF support page explains it is necessary to manually forward specific ports. For most cases, it'll work just fine, but if not, you might need to do a little bit of (guided) network tweaking.

Once your Mac and network are both configured with the HFF server, adding your Mac to the app on your iPhone is very simple. When you run the app for the first time, it will attempt to automatically find and connect to your Mac via Bonjour. In my testing, this worked flawlessly. My MacBook Pro was found almost instantly and my iPhone connected to the HFF server on my Mac without any problem.

By default, the app does not save your password for the remote Mac but since I keep my iPhone locked down with a PIN I opted to have HFF remember the Mac's password so I wouldn't have to type it every time I wanted to log in. If the app is not able to locate your Mac on the local network it is a pretty simple affair to manually add the Mac to your list of servers.

Once you've set up and connected to your Mac, the main screen that appears when you launch will be a beautifully depicted tabletop with an image of your particular Mac and its current wallpaper. Towards the top of the screen is the name of your Mac as it appears in OS X, and below that is the timestamp for the last time you connected. You can swipe to the right to view other Macs on your "desk" or to add a new one using the wizard or via manual entry.

The real magic happens, though, when you tap on your desired Mac: a heavenly spotlight shines down upon your Mac as the connection is established. The speed of the connection is may vary depending on your network speed at home and whether your iPhone is on 3G or Wi-Fi. Once connected, there are three main views to select from.

The first view, "Files," is very reminiscent of the sidebar in Finder. It lists several common "Places" on your Mac, including the Home folder, your Desktop, and your Documents folder. Additionally there is a category for "Volumes" which lists the currently-mounted hard drives on your remote Mac. My only complaint here is that the Downloads folder is not listed as one of the default Places in view, but the developer says this was a simple oversight and plans to add it in a future release.

It is the Files view where you likely spend a lot of your time as this is where you will navigate in and around the file system of your remote Mac. It is clear that a lot of thought was put into this app as it is a very intuitive experience. It seamlessly integrates the left-right navigation of iPhone OS with the thumbnail icon file navigation of Finder. Files have their own displays -- a Pages document will be displayed with its icon as the first page of the document, and the same goes for PDFs and Microsoft Office documents as well.

As expected, tapping on a folder causes the whole interface to move to the left, as the view is then populated with the list of folder contents. Tap on a file and it slides seamlessly into view. Slower connections and/or larger files will result in a short wait, with a Loading File indicator. When the file finishes loading, it appears in fullscreen, where you can swipe to navigate to different parts of a document, pinch to zoom in on a single face in a photo, or play/pause any Quicktime-compatible song or video.

While all of this is useful above-and-beyond what Dropbox and MobileMe provide -- after all, they require you to know which files you want to access before leaving the house -- Here, File File goes one step further by allowing you to actually send any file via email. Once the file has been loaded, you can bring up an option of attaching or linking the file. Attached files work as expected: the file is copied directly into the email and the recipient can open the attachment upon receipt. Linked files are a little different, though: HFF creates a randomly-generated link that lasts for 48 hours. Every time a linked file is sent, a new link is generated. As you might have guessed, the purpose of the randomization is to keep unwanted intruders from forcing their way into your filesystem by decoding the links.

If the file is large (more than a couple MB), then a linked file email is more appropriate, as large files can take some time to send via EDGE or 3G. While the file is loading in HFF, it's still possible to share the file over email, but you will only have the option of sending a linked file rather than an attached file. Still, it's a useful feature, especially if you have a 10MB PowerPoint presentation that you need to send to someone, but don't have the time to wait for it to finish downloading to your iPhone.

Even though Downloads is not listed as one of the default Places, there is still an easy way around this slight UI mistake. The "Favorites" view shows a listing of directories and files that you have starred in the course of your use. Any directory or file can be configured as a Favorite for ease of access at a later time. So just by starring the Downloads folder, you can access it under Favorites whenever you want.

The third view, "Search," allows you to (you guessed it) search for files or folders on your Mac. The search is run on your Mac and the results are sent back to HFF on your iPhone (which not only speeds things up a bit, but helps to improve battery life as well). The search window is also filterable, so you can sort your searches into Folders, Images, Movies, Music, PDF, and Presentations. I found the search and filtering to work quickly and without any issue. The biggest shortcoming here is that the search results are currently limited to just sixteen folders/files in the results. The developer says this is for performance reasons and that as HFF gets faster they will increase this limitation. Unfortunately there are no filter options for Word/Pages documents or Excel/Numbers spreadsheets. In my opinion, this is not a deal-breaker by any means especially since a simple update will likely fix this in the future.

Here, File File! is quite simply the most useful utility for accessing your files while on the go. It has a clear leg up on both Dropbox and MobileMe because your storage is not limited to a few gigabytes and you don't have to take an extra step to make sure a certain file is in your Dropbox or iDisk. Since you only pay for the app once, there's no yearly fee to contend with, either. Installation can be a little tricky (especially if your network isn't average), but once it's running, you basically have access to your Mac straight from your iPhone.

Here, File File is available now on the App Store. Regularly priced at $9.99, the functionality it provides is worth every penny. Through Valentine's Day, Here, File File! is being offered with a 30% discount bringing the price to just $6.99.

And even if you don't want to take the plunge, we'll hook you up anyway: We're giving away five free copies to five lucky readers. Simply leave a comment describing how you would best use Here, File File! and we'll randomly select five commenters to get the app for free.

The details of the giveaway are as follows:

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
• To enter, leave a comment telling us what your favorite typeface is.
• The comment must be left before Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Five winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One promo code for a copy of Here, File File! (Value: US$6.99)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

TUAWTUAW Review and Giveaway: Here, File File! originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 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/windows7startmenu-sm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Microsoft plans to make its next version of Windows a major overhaul, an employee claimed in an MSDN blog that has been pulled but remains cached online. What most people refer to as Windows 8 will be something "completely different from what folks usually expect of Windows" and will have a broad consensus from the company. The company is depending on collaboration from "dozens and dozens of teams" to generate the final product....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/macbookpro15.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Apple ranked a solid fifth amongst US electronics retailers during 2009, figures from the NPD Group show. Judging by physical store revenue, Apple found itself behind Best Buy, Walmart, Staples and Target. The company was also fifth in terms of online-only numbers, dominated by Dell, Amazon, Best Buy and HP. This marks a slight slide from 2008, when Apple placed fourth in online sales....

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch

Navigon continues to be very aggressive at making its navigation platform a continued top seller for the iPhone. Today, the company announced an open app interface called AppInteract, which is a simple script that embeds a link into any app to launch Navigon's MobileNavigator. At the same time, it transfers any selected address into turn-by-turn directions.

"For example, if you find a restaurant in an app that has implemented our AppInteract interface, you can get turn-by-turn directions to a chosen place instantly," said Gerhard Mayr, vice-president worldwide mobile phones and new markets for Navigon. "Our aim is to provide elegant and easy to use navigation solutions, for our customers, as well as to the developer community."

The technology has already been embedded in the Where To? app that I've reviewed previously. Now every developer who wants the technology can get easy access to it.

It's clear Navigon wants to become a hub for all the apps that look up addresses, and for good reason -- there are many of those in the App Store.

Looking back, it's amazing how far the iPhone has come in the last couple of years. I suspect there is a lot more around the corner, especially with iPhone 4.0 being released later this year.

TUAWNavigon determined to link with every app it can originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple today released 2009 Aluminum Keyboard Firmware Update 1.0, addressing battery life issues with Apple's recently-redesigned wireless keyboard when used with other Bluetooth devices.

This firmware update improves battery performan...

Filed under: Accessories, iTunes, iPhone

Parrot also has a line of more intricate Bluetooth devices that either integrate with your car stereo or replace it altogether.

• The Parrot MKi9000 US $299.00 (installation required) puts the same functions as the Minikit Slim on your dashboard or console and comes with two microphones; one for the driver and one for the passenger. It also connects to any iPhone, iPod touch, USB flash drive or just about any MP3 player, and plays your music through the car stereo.
• The Parrot MKi9200 US $299, adds a screen that gives you full utility of your iTunes library, including playlists.
• The Parrot RKi8400 US $399 replaces your car stereo entirely. It's a small panel that you snap your iPhone or other device into and then hide it in the capacious enclosure that previously housed your radio. The RKi8400 is a thin panel that snaps onto the front of the enclosure, and contains a screen mimicking all the controls of iTunes or other musical sources. If you're worried about theft, just take the panel with you.

Whichever unit meets your needs, the Parrot line seems to do a very nice job of turning your car stereo into what it should have been the day you bought your vehicle without buying a bunch of wires and boxes that can get complicated.

Take a look at these videos to see the Parrot MIi9200 going through its paces:

TUAWMake your iPhone hands-free for less than the price of a ticket originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/intactin.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Very similar in concept to the Microsoft Surface comes a table-like PC from Intact Lab, dubbed Touchy Remix. The Touchy Remix is slightly different in execution from the Surface, however, as its fiberglass base caves inwards, giving users space for their knees when seated, unlike the box-like Surface. In the center of the device is a 40-inch touchscreen with 1366x768 (720p) resolution, while a fully integrated Mac mini powers the device....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/fapserver.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Insider Software has begun shipping FontAgent Pro Server 4, an upgraded version of its font management software. The code organizes, tracks and distributes fonts in use by a group of workers, keeping an eye on problems like font corruption or license violations. Server 4 incorporates a real-time usage manager, which monitors activations and deactivations, as well as who has permission to access a given font or library....

Filed under: Macworld, Video

We're live at Macworld Expo, which will be opening to the public tomorrow. The TUAW team has already seen some pretty astounding things, but those are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Join your regular TUAW TV Live host Steve Sande and special TUAW guest Mike Rose for a quick half-hour of discussion, stories, and fun live from the TUAW booth (#654) at Macworld Expo. It all starts today at a special time, 6 PM ET / 3 PM PT, here at TUAW.

TUAWTUAW TV Live special Macworld Expo 2010 edition at 6 PM ET today originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software, Internet, Internet Tools, App Store

Opera Software announced on Wednesday that they're going to offer a sneak peek of their Opera Mini web browser for the iPhone during Mobile World Congress 2010 (MWC). Several features of the Mac-based Opera will be included, like tabs, Speed Dial and the password manager, says Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner. He also mentioned his app's compression technology that will make browsing fast and reduce data surcharges. For more details than that, we'll have to wait until the cat has been let out of the bag.

Two years ago, Opera claimed that they submitted an iPhone browser to the App Store only to have it rejected, a claim that was later refuted. In a comment posted to the Opera blog earlier today, Espen André Øverdahl, the Community Manager at Opera Software, said "We have not submitted it yet to the Apple App Store. However, we hope that Apple will not deny their users a choice in Web browsing experience."

Before you assume that Apple will deny an iPhone browser because of Mobile Safari, note that there are several other web browsers in the App Store already, including Perfect Browser 3, Full Browser and Mercury Web Browser. As John Gruber notes, however, the browsers that are in the store use the system version of WebKit.

[Via Daring Fireball]

TUAWOpera mini coming to the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/connected.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Accountek has launched a new version of Connected Enterprise, its higher-end accounting suite. Separating Enterprise from the basic Core software are tools for handling purchases, distribution, order entry and manufacturing. A Job Costing module lets users track projects and any billing or expenses....