Linked List: April 29, 2010

Thursday, 29 April 2010

Mike Arrington: HP to Kill Windows 7 ‘Slate’ Project ★

Mike Arrington:

Hewlett-Packard has killed off its much ballyhooed Windows 7 tablet computer, says a source who’s been briefed on the matter.

If true, that means Steve Ballmer got up on stage for his CES keynote to promote a “slate” that will never actually ship.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch: ‘Moving Forward’ ★

Kevin Lynch:

However, as we posted last week, given the legal terms Apple has imposed on developers, we have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple devices for both Flash Player and AIR. We are working to bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others.

Not much substance, other than declaring a “general release” of Flash Player 10.1 for Android in June, but nothing to disagree with either. This is about as good a response as Adobe could have given.

Microsoft Confirms That ‘Courier’ Concept Will Not Be an Actual Product ★

I win another bet.

HTC Agrees to Pay Microsoft for Patent Licenses Regarding Android Phones ★

Todd Bishop:

The Redmond company says mobile-phone maker HTC will pay Microsoft an undisclosed sum to license a series of patents that, according to Microsoft, cover technology in HTC mobile phones that use Google’s Android operating system. Of course, that would be the same HTC that Apple has sued for patent infringement over the same Google Android devices.

This, on top of the patent suit from Apple. Android doesn’t sound so “free” for HTC anymore. I wonder how the patent fees HTC has agreed to pay Microsoft for each Android phone it sells compare to the cost of a Windows Phone 7 license.

Sage Wallower, the Middleman ★

CNet:

Hogan, however, had help in finding a buyer for the phone. CNET has learned that Sage Robert Wallower, a 27-year-old University of California at Berkeley student, contacted technology sites about what is believed to be Apple’s next-generation iPhone. [...] CNET’s sources said Wallower, a former Navy cryptologic technician who transferred to UC Berkeley two years ago, acted as a go-between. [...]

In an in-person interview with CNET at his home in Oakland on Thursday, Wallower said, “I’m not the person who found it. I didn’t see it or touch it in any manner. But I know who found it.” He declined to identify anyone else, however, in part because he said conversations with law professors had convinced him that Apple was a “legal juggernaut.”

“I need to talk to a lawyer,” Wallower said. “I think I have already said too much.”

When do they buy the wood chipper?

Wired Identifies Seller of Lost iPhone Prototype ★

Brian X. Chen and Kim Zetter:

Brian J. Hogan, a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, says although he was paid by tech site Gizmodo, he believed the payment was for allowing the site exclusive access to review the phone. Gizmodo emphasized to him “that there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press,” according to his attorney Jeffrey Bornstein.

So begins Hogan’s efforts to put it all on Gizmodo.

A friend of Hogan’s then offered to call AppleCare on Hogan’s behalf, according to Hogan’s lawyer. That apparently was the extent of Hogan’s efforts to return the phone.

Read that closely. First, Hogan never called anyone, including Apple, to attempt to return the phone. Second, his friend, according to this paragraph, “offered to call AppleCare”. Did this friend actually even call AppleCare? It’s not clear from Wired’s article that Hogan did anything at all to return the phone.

His attorney says he recently transferred schools and will resume his college education in the fall. He has been working part time at a church-run community center giving swimming lessons to children and volunteered at a Chinese orphanage last year while he was enrolled in a study-abroad program.

“He also volunteers to assist his aunt and sister with fundraising for their work to provide medical care to orphans in Kenya,” his attorney says. “Brian is the kind of young man that any parent would be proud to have as their son.”

You know it’s bad when your attorney is asking for leniency before you’ve even been charged.

‘I Know You Are But What Am I?’ ★

From the WSJ’s live coverage of their interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen regarding Steve Jobs’s piece on Flash:

Speaking about Mr. Jobs’s assertion that Adobe is the No. 1 cause of Mac crashes, Mr. Narayan says if Adobe crashes Apple, that actually has something “to do with the Apple operating system.”

Uh, OK.

Mr. Narayan calls accusations about Flash draining battery power “patently false.”

Who are we going to believe, Shantanu Narayen or our lying Activity Monitors?

Weak sauce, Adobe.

I Really Do Try to Avoid Linking to Self-Aggrandizing Stuff, but This One’s Too Good to Resist ★

Archived here, for when Tputh’s headlines rejigger.

Kottke on Jobs on Flash ★

More “web-like” is exactly right.

Textie ★

New iPhone (and iPod Touch) app from the creators of Borange and Tweetie, lets you send free messages to “any email address and most U.S. mobile phones”, with free replies, and iPhone push notifications for new messages. It’s a route around phone carrier text messaging. Read the FAQ for more info.

Free with ads, $2 without.

Michael Gartenberg:

Like Steve, I have not seen Flash work well on a mobile device. That doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t. Adobe needs to not respond to Apple with words but rather actions and showcase shipping devices and how well they can run Flash.

Tim Bray on Flash History ★

Tim Bray:

Flash filled an real need; for a lightweight portable graphics programming environment, and for an ubiquitous reliable video codec. That, plus a lot of determined marketing by Adobe, got us to the status quo, where it’s assumed that every computer has a Flash player installed.

One more thing: Flash Studio offered developer tools that let designer/developers who were (and are) more designer than developer create software. That’s where Flash still beats HTML5; you need to be more developer than designer to create Flash-like things using HTML5. For now. There’s a real opportunity today for an HTML5 IDE for designer/developers.

Michael Gartenberg’s Advice for Adobe ★

Good advice, but it’ll be more fun if Adobe doesn’t take it.

Read It and Weep ★

Jobs’s “Thoughts on Flash” in Flash.

Apple Homepage Placement for Jobs’s ‘Thoughts on Flash’ ★

I wonder how many page views this piece will get.

Steve Jobs: ‘Thoughts on Flash’ ★

Steve Jobs makes the case against Flash on iPhone OS. Cogent, detailed, straightforward, brutally honest. No prevarication. Read the whole thing, but there are a few choice bits. First, Apple couldn’t include Flash on iPhone OS now even if they wanted to:

We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

And they wouldn’t if they could:

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

While you’re reading it, think about how little wiggle room the whole thing leaves for Adobe to respond.

WSJ: Apple to Charge Premium Prices for iAd Mobile Ads ★

Emily Steel:

Apple is hitting the road to showcase its new mobile-device advertising capability, dubbed iAd, and has indicated it could charge as much as $10 million to be part of a handful of marketers at the launch, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Ad executives say they are used to paying between $100,000 and $200,000 for similar mobile deals.

And:

Apple is planning to charge advertisers a penny each time a consumer sees a banner ad, ad executives say. When a user taps on the banner and the ad pops up, Apple will charge $2. Under large ad buys, such as the $1 million package, costs would rack up to reach $1 million with the various views and taps.

Flash Player H.264 Hardware Decoding in Mac OS X ★

Adobe already has a pre-release version of Flash Player available that takes advantage of the new H.264 hardware decoding APIs Apple added in Mac OS X 10.6.3. Clearly Apple and Adobe are in a cold war regarding Flash and iPhone OS — but just as clearly, they’re working together to make Flash perform better on Mac OS X.