Linked List: July 7, 2007

Saturday, 7 July 2007

Roughly Drafted: ‘The iPhone Threat to Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Real, BREW, Symbian’ ★

Daniel Eran Dilger:

In any case, the iPhone is Apple’s best shot at killing Flash, and Apple appears happy to be using it as such. The company just recently removed all remains of Flash from its corporate website, implementing everything that had been Flash-based using standards-based Ajax techniques instead.

My hunch is that beyond the technical considerations are political ones. For one thing, Apple and Adobe seem to be in a bit of a cold war. For another, is there any part of iPhone’s software that is based on source code Apple doesn’t completely control? Flash is in Adobe’s control, not Apple’s. I know Mossberg just wrote that Apple does plan to include Flash in a near-future iPhone software update, but with the release of Safari for Windows and complete control over the iPhone, I can’t help but wonder if Apple is working on a rich web app development environment of their own — something that takes advantage of technologies like Quartz and Core Animation, rather than ignoring them like Flash does — and the hook for which would be that it’s the only browser plugin environment that works on iPhone.

David Young on Flash and iPhone Safari ★

David Young:

On the application side, many Flash applications (no naming names) written to run in Flash in a browser just don’t care about performance or resource utilization because most web applications have a process lifetime of a page view, or about 10 seconds. Finally, in a mobile context, consider the effect that Flash’s inefficient programming model will have on battery life. The last thing to remember is that the Flash runtime’s performance is about 4-20x worse on Mac OS X than it is on Windows — I bet Apple evaluated its options and decided it didn’t want to have its browser experience marred by Adobe’s lack of focus.

I’m not sure what Young’s source is for the “4-20x times worse” figure, but in my observations, it’s true.

Restarting Innovation ★

Michael Tsai, regarding Paul Kafasis’s idea that it would be good for indie developers if Apple were to release more WebKit-style system-wide frameworks:

To build a really innovative application you may have to start from scratch, and then you’ll wish that the framework didn’t exist. If the framework provides 70% of what you need, you’re now spending 100% effort to get that extra 30% ahead of your competition. Because of the framework there are now lots of 70% applications that took a weekend to build, and some of which are free, so it’s harder to differentiate your product.

This Technique Certainly Makes Product Reviews Easier ★

Tim Carroll of Palm Infocenter conducts a “ten-round” comparison between the iPhone and Palm Treo, scores it 6-5 in favor of the Treo. Then in the comments, he admits he not only doesn’t have an iPhone, he hasn’t even seen one in person.

Next up: reviews for films he hasn’t seen and books he hasn’t read.

Mossberg Says Flash Is Coming to iPhone ★

Walt Mossberg:

At launch, the iPhone version of the Safari browser is missing some plug-ins needed for playing common types of Web videos. The most important of these is the plug-in for Adobe’s Flash technology. Apple says it plans to add that plug-in through an early software update, which I am guessing will occur within the next couple of months.

Apple hasn’t said this to anyone other than Mossberg, that I know of.

iPhone Contractions Shortcut ★

Another outstanding iPhone typing shortcut:

Type “helll,” and the keyboard software will recommend “he’ll.” Type “welll,” and the keyboard software will recommend “we’ll.”

This is great, but too bad it doesn’t work for typing “itss” for “it’s”.

Update: Reader Morris Tsai points out that if you type “itsa”, the suggested correction is “it’s”. Excellent.