Apple

Adobe has fired back against Apple’s recent ban on building iPhone apps via Flash. And this time, Adobe’s not pulling any of punches. In a recent blog post on The Flash Blog, Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow goes on the offensive for seven paragraphs, ripping into Apple’s recent change to its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement that only allows for applications to be written in Objective-C, C, C++ or Javascript and executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine. In fact, the post was so strong that Adobe asked Brimelow to delete a segment. ...

The new release rental is officially dead. As expected, Netflix has signed new deals with Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Studios Home Entertainment — similar to its deal with Warner Bros. — that delay new release rentals by 28 days and add new titles to its streaming collection. Both deals go into effect later this month; Netflix will start the 28-day hold for Fox titles with Avatar’s release and Universal flicks with It’s Complicated. ...

One of the finer points Steve Jobs let loose at the end of the iPhone OS 4.0 announcement today is that only the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch third generation (the most recent iteration from fall 2009) will have the capacity to support the iPhone OS 4.0’s new multitasking features. In other words, owners of the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G, and first or second generation iPod touch models will not be able to multitask. ...

Multitasking, the feature that has been the absolute top of every iPhone user’s want list –which, by proxy became a major marketing point for both Android and webOS — has made its way to iPhone OS 4. “We figured out how to implement multitasking for third party apps and avoid those things [battery life and lag]. So that’s what took so long,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs this morning. While it’s not actually full background processing, Apple has devised a way to reproduce the feeling. The company provided 7 APIs to developers which constitute the always-on services that apps can communicate with. These include: background audio, VoIP, Background Location, push notifications, local notifications, task completion, and fast app switching. ...

Steve Jobs has just taken the stage at Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 press event. Before getting to the anticipated product announcements, Jobs took the opportunity to highlight the immediate success of the iPad, which launched on Saturday. As of today, Apple has sold 450,000 iPads — 150,000 more than total sales on the first day. That’s a phenomenal figure on the hardware sales side, but Jobs wasted no time celebrating some the iPad’s software accomplishments as well. ...

Apple is hosting an event at 1 p.m. EST to unveil the next-generation iPhone 4.0 OS. Take a look at some of the features Apple might just unveil today: Multitasking *Last year, it was all about copy and paste; this year, it’s all about multitasking. While native iPhone applications like iPod, Mail and Safari can take advantage of backgrounding or multitasking (i.e., you can listen to music using the iPod app while playing a game or surfing the web), third-party applications can’t do this. While there are specific reasons that multitasking or backgrounding hasn’t been implemented on a system-wide level, that hasn’t stopped complaints from users and pundits alike. Since January we’ve been hearing rumors about multitasking coming to the next iPhone OS. While we’re not sure how Apple will implement this feature, we have a strong feeling that it is coming. ...

Today, Apple revised its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to effectively ban the use of the Flash-to-iPhone converter. Throughout 2010, Steve Jobs and Apple made it very clear that they do not like Adobe. At all. They prominently left Flash off the iPad, instead promoting HTML5 at every opportunity. For some time now, though, Adobe’s had a tool to circumvent Apple’s ban on Flash for the iPhone and iPad: the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Flash-to-iPhone converter, which would have allowed developers to create apps in Flash and then port them over into iPhone. ...

Today, Apple unveiled a major update to the iPhone OS which is expected to reach iPhone 3G/3GS and 2nd/3rd gen iPod users sometime this summer, and iPad users in the fall. While the banner feature of this release is its multitasking capability, the announcement that Apple will open a web-based gaming network akin to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network has potential to be the biggest coup. Game Center lets users invite friends to play games, start multiplayer games through matchmaking, track achievements, and compare their high scores on a Web-based game network. This is a huge addition to the iPhone ecosystem which puts it on par with the two major home consoles, and actually catapults it past BOTH Nintendo’s Wii and its DS. ...

A couple of weeks ago, Digg (finally) launched its official iPhone application to much fanfare. Like all first versions, however, it suffered from a couple of glitches, some of which have been addressed in this latest update, which brings the version number to 1.1.0. The list of improvements and fixes is as follows: – Closing the app on a Digg story page doesn’t result in a crash when reopening the app – A range of stability improvements allows the app to be used for longer periods without crashing – An “open in Safari” option for viewing websites from the story pages – The app opens on the last page viewed when it was last closed ...

Qualcomm’s mobile broadcast television service called FLO TV existed for about five years under different wireless carrier brand names: Sprint TV, Verizon V Cast TV, and AT&T MediaFLO TV. But the carriers didn’t push it very hard, so it did not break through into the public’s consciousness. But then Qualcomm began advertising FLO TV on its own, with its own smartphone-sized pocket TVs made by HTC, and it looks like it is finally beginning to stick. ...