TheFlashBlog’s Lee Brimelow, Platform Evangelist at Adobe “focusing on the Flash, Flex, and AIR developer communities” has put up a series of iPad mockups highlighting a wide range of web sites all showing the blue lego brick of Flash plugin fail — and they feature the range of games like Farmville, news sites like CNN, TV sites like Hulu, and online porn like… well, you get the idea.

In all fairness porn is underplayed compared to the rest, but that it’s played at all by someone from Adobe is — forgive us — a ballsy move. Of course easy to access, free, online porn is a major reason a certain segment is upset there’s no Flash on the iPhone or iPad. Regardless of your personal feelings one way or another about it, porn is historically a huge early adapter of technology, including VHS, DVD, online video — now increasingly Flash-based — and even the iPhone via Jailbreak and web apps.

Brimelow is using the visuals, mainstream and adult alike, to point out how ubiquitous Flash is on the ‘net, and how Apple shouldn’t be calling the iPad (and previously the iPhone), the ultimate browsing experience” when it doesn’t include Flash.

That’s a valid point, and one Adobe’s Photoshop Product Manager John Nack addresses candidly and, in our opinion more convincingly, on his own blog. He made me rethink some preconceptions, so it’s well worth a read.

But Apple isn’t aiming the iPhone or iPad at the web, or computing, as it is today. They’re attempting to reframe their mobile devices as appliances for tomorrow. Yesterday’s web was all about Internet Explorer 6 and Microsoft’s proprietary ActiveX platform. Today is about Flash. We’ve moved passed IE6 and ActiveX, and Apple is betting we’re moving past Flash as well.

The porn industry, interestingly, will likely be one of the early indicators on whether that ends up being true or not. Along with sites like Hulu, Brimelow’s post might just end up being less an inditement of Apple today, but a checkbox for HTML5 conversion tomorrow.

As to gaming, Gruber’s right. How would Flash games written for a mouse and keyboard on an iPad — or iPhone — anyway? They’d need to convert them for multitouch and fingers anyway, and then why not make an app that fully leverages the hardware?

[Via Daring Fireball]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Adobe Flash Blog on iPad/iPhone — Bad for Games, TV, News… and Porn!

Qik Video Camera for the iPhone, from Qik [$0.99 - iTunes Link] finally brings 15 frames per second video recording to the iPhone 3G. It also supports zoom, has some fun filters, and adds an easy system for sending your videos via e mail.

For the complete rundown, and pictures of Qik VideoCamera’s effects, stay with us after the break.

As mentioned above, Qik VideoCamera lets the iPhone 3G shoot video at 15 frames per second (FPS) but that’s only when using the default size. It’s basically a trade off. Qik gives you the option of having low video resolution (200×152) and high FPS or high video resolution (400×304) and lower FPS. I usually go for the low video resolution and higher FPS because if the frames are too few the video is too choppy to appreciate.

Qik video has some really fun special effect filters to play with. Like with video quality, however, when you start using a special effect filter the frame rate slows down. Here are some examples of how they look.

Black and White.

Black white and red, which makes any red object show in color and everything else in black and white. While interesting, aside from the novelty I don’t see many real life applications.

As requested here is some video taken using the black, white and red effect with a resolution of 200×152.

Color game, which inverses blue and red (I call it the Avatar effect!)

There are two mirror effects, both vertical and horizontal. These are good for making object suddenly disappear. It can be a lot of fun for the little ones to play with, if you would trust your little one with an iPhone.

Zoom is another nice feature, though I have found that for shooting anything very close it can cause blurring.

One of the other useful additions to this application is the audio and light enhancing controls. Since the iPhone has no external lighting source (plz 4.0!) the addition of brightness control can make those precious moments easier to see in low light settings. The audio boost helps increase the audio track but I usually don’t realize that something is going to be too soft until the event has already occurred.

Qik VideoCamera also allows you to email your videos easily, by choosing which video to email and typing in the email address. The program is also linked to your contacts so you dont have to worry if you have forgotten the address.

All in all, Qik VideoCamera is a very nice app and has a lot of useful and fun effects for saving your life’s special moments. It’s not the same resolution or frame rate as the iPhone 3GS’ built-in video recorder, but for iPhone 3G users who didn’t get that feature, it’s currently the next best thing.

Here is some video without any effects, taken with a resolution of 400×304.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick Review: Qik VideoCamera Video Recording for iPhone 3G

e-Book reader Classics [iTunes link, which like Delicious Library saw its UI copied by Apple's new iPad iBooks app, has decided to go free in celebratory protest. Gorgeous app, great public-domain content, so check it out.

iBomber [iTunes link] is also free, though we’re not sure for how long. Georgia recommends it though, so give it a try.

And to celebrate the 2,000,000 download mark one of the top games of 2009, Battle Bears, [iTunes Link] is now FREE for today only in the App Store!

Check out the video of Battle Bears in action after the break!

[Via Touch Arcade]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apps for Less: Classics Free post-iPad, iBomber Free, Battle Bears is Free Today Only!

UPDATE: 9to5mac followed up and found out they were hi-res mockup/optimized pages used for the promotional material. Likely NO Flash.

TiPb assumed, for reasons we’ve written about ad nauseum infinitum, that there was no way Apple’s new iPad would include Adobe’s Flash plugin, yet 9to5mac has been analyzing the publicity videos and claims in them Flash there be:

In Apple’s official video the iPad, they show the New York Times being used. Looks pretty nice right? Well, unless the Times has a special iPad version of the site that converts Flash into jpegs or something, THE IPAD HAS FLASH. Normally, we’d say that Apple simply did the renders in the Mac version of Safari and just CG’ed it into the video. However, you can see the page rendering and being resolution independent as well, so it is likely being done on an iPad.

Of course, during Steve Jobs’ on-stage demo, we saw no sign of Flash, only the now famous/infamous blue lego-brick of plugin fail. And Adobe doesn’t seem to know anything about it, given the little barb the Flash team posted the other day:

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.

We’ll get to that scary ePub news in another post, and schedule our tears right behind those we’re saving for the “iPad/iPhone don’t run ActiveX” charges inevitably to follow, but for right now–

What’s going on here? Internally Apple has Flash running in the lab and it crept into the demo? “One more thing” scheduled for pre-launch hype? Is the NYT doing dynamic for-iPad/iPhone Flash to H.264 or JPG conversion? Did some eager video maker make a colossal mistake? WHAT?!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

UPDATED: iPad Displaying Adobe Flash in Apple Publicity Videos? Wait, What?

Apple has sent a note out to iPhone and iPod touch developers encouraging them to start developing iPad apps today… with the iPhone 3.2 SDK beta (!)

iPhone SDK 3.2 beta is now available to all iPhone Developer Standard and Enterprise Program Members from the iPhone Dev Center.

The iPhone Dev Center also provides additional resources including the iPad Programming Guide, iPad Human Interface Guidelines, Preparing Universal Applications, and sample code.

Log in to the iPhone Dev Center and start developing innovative applications for iPad today.

And yeah, Apple said from the beginning that iPhone 3.2 beta was exclusive to the iPad, but come on Apple, it’s iPhone 3.2, are you going to throw the actual device, the one that hasn’t seen even a hint of an update for months, a little love here?

Or are we going to have to wait for an iPhone 4.0 beta in March?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple to Developers: Start Developing Your iPad Apps Today… with iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta (Sigh)

The godfather of tech columnists, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, got some face time with Steve Jobs at the iPad launch and Boom Town’s Kara Swisher was there with the shaky cam!

• When asked why people would buy an iPad iBooks book for $14.99 rather than an Amazon Kindle book for $9.99, Jobs said the books would be the same price, and further said publishers withhold books from Amazon because they’re not happy about the price. (Could be referring to Apple’s standard 70/30 split which Amazon just recently announced they’d match in some cases).
• When asked about battery life, Jobs said the iPad’s quoted 10hrs for video/WiFi would actually be a bit longer for iBook reading, and around 140hrs for music playback.
• When asked if 10hrs was enough for iBook reading, Jobs pulled out the “no big deal”, said users would just plug it in, and asked if anyone reads for more than 10hrs anyway.
• When asked if Mossberg could write his iPad review on the iPad, Jobs told him he sure could, in iWork Pages, and export it as a Word Doc if he wanted to. (there’s been talk it can export as PDF for easy sharing as well).

[via Macrumors]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Jobs to Mossberg: iBooks Same Price as Amazon, iPad 140hrs to Music, Save iWork Pages as Word Doc

Joe Hewitt, who developed the awesome Facebook 3.0, but controversially (and some would say detrimentally) left the iPhone platform before Facebook 3.1 over the App Store review process, has come out extremely positively about the iPad:

iPad is exactly the product I’ve been wishing for ever since I wrapped my mind around the iPhone and its constraints. While the rumor mill was churning with all kinds of crazy possibilities for the Apple tablet, I mostly rolled my eyes, because I felt strongly that all Apple needed to do to revolutionize computing was simply to make an iPhone with a large screen. Anyone who feels underwhelmed by that doesn’t understand how much of the iPhone OS’s potential is still untapped.

Hewitt claims the biggest constraint he had in making the ultimate Facebook app was screen size, and the iPad removes that completely. As to the “closed” nature of the iPhone as a platform?

The one thing that makes an iPhone/iPad app “closed” is that it lives in a sandbox, which means it can’t just read and write willy-nilly to the file system, access hardware, or interfere with other apps. In my mind, this is one of the best features of the OS. It makes native apps more like web apps, which are similarly sandboxed, and therefore much more secure. On Macs and PCs, you have to re-install the OS every couple years or so just to undo the damage done by apps, but iPhone OS is completely immune to this.

But what about his concerns over Apple’s role as iPhone — and now iPad — gatekeeper? Web apps is how he sees working around Apple. Anyone can make anything they want for the iPad, provided they’re willing to run it on their own server and not gunk up the end-users machine. That, Hewitt says, is the key to total client-side freedom.

So here’s hoping the platform gets Hewitt back, if not for Facebook 3.2 or 4.0 for the iPad, then for something equally as impressive…

[Thanks to Fassy for the tip!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Former Facebook for iPhone Developer Joe Hewitt Says iPad “Everything He’s Been Wishing For”

The 3G version of the iPad is unlocked, so if your carrier supports micro-SIM, it should “just work”. Wait… what? Steve Jobs dropped the micro-SIM comment so matter-of-factly during the iPad introduction that it took us a moment to process — Micro-SIM, aka 3FF or 3rd generation SIM card. Yeah, don’t have one of those, and neither does any iPhone. Awkward…!

PCMag’s Sacha Seagan fills us in:

3FF SIMs were developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to fit into devices too small for a regular SIM. Where a regular SIM measures 15 millimeters x 25 mm, a 3FF SIM card measures 12mm x 15mm.

Today’s “regular” or mini-SIM is the 2FF, much smaller than the credit card-sized SIM that was generation one, and the 3FF is teensy-tinier still. Sure, no one in North America uses them yet, but T-Mobile is getting them, AT&T is obviously getting them since they’re supporting the iPad with data plans, and we’re guessing over the next 3-6 months, more carriers will get on board too. (Engadget is saying the pipeline is set for Orange and O2).

And the reason why Apple went with the Micro-SIM in the iPad? Could be they needed to save space in a device already twice the size of an iPhone. Could be it’s just Apple being kill-the-floppy-drop-firewire-Apple. If that’s the case, it’s quite possible the 4th gen iPhone will get it next, and then what would Apple do with all that extra space?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPad Uses Micro-SIM for 3G. What is it and Will the 4th Gen iPhone Get It?