05.10.2011

So long Steve Jobs! You will be greatly missed …

From Vietnam, we pay our respects to you and deep sympathy to your family and Apple.

It might be new to you no more, Apple officially announced their so-called ‘biggest leap to iPhone since … iPhone’, the new iPhone 4

The new iPhone is just 9.33mm thick – 24% thinner than the current iPhone 3GS. It will have aluminosilicate glass front and back (which was chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic) with a stainless steel band that wraps around all sides. This band is used as part of the antenna system for the GSM, UMTS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth radios.

The new gorgeous display has 960×640 backlit LCD boasts a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch (4 times higher than iPhone 3GS), 800:1 contrast ratio, making it the highest-resolution phone screen ever! It’s called Retina Display ^^

In its heart, the new iPhone employs Apple’s own A4 chip and a larger battery that will offer 40% more talk time than the previous model. It will also be capable of HSDPA/HSUPA speeds of 7.2Mbps down and 5.8Mbs up. Storage-wise, it come with 16GB or 32GB, and remains at same prices

Other new additions include 802.11n Wi-Fi, a Gyroscope to detect motion on 6 axes (improved from current 3 axes), as well as an LED flash to supplement the new 5-megapixel auto-focus lens. The updated camera will have 5x digital zoom and will record 720p HD video at 30 frames per second. Videos captured can be edited directly on the device using the new iMovie for iPhone. Now you can take photo or video in night time with iPhone

The new iPhone 4 will also have a secondary microphone on the top for noise cancellation, as well as a front-facing camera for video calls. It will also use the smaller micro SIM, making use of the micro SIM standard like the iPad.

Application wise, Apple gives you the new iPhone OS – codename: iOS 4 with 100+ new features: FaceTime (video chat), Multitasking, HD Video record/edit/sharing, Folders, enhanced Home Screen, enhance iBooks … just to name a few.

Last but not least, this new baby will go on sale on June 24 in the US, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. In the U.S, it will cost $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model with a new 2-year contract. iPhone 4 will be available in 18 countries by July and finally 88 countries by the end of September 2010 Note: Vietnam is on the 2nd batch, probably via Vinaphone!

Early hands-on gave iPhone 4 certain feedbacks: outrageous, shocking, unbelievable

Being famous as one-liner CEO, today Steve Jobs surprisingly wrote an open and lengthy letter to clear up some of the controversy over Apple’s relationship with Adobe and its unwillingness to incorporate Flash capabilities into its iPhone OS devices.

If everyone still remembers, during Jan 2010, Apple announced its latest hot product – the Apple iPad – and also put an end to Apple’s support for running Flash on its iPhone OS. In other words, Adobe Flash will be no longer run in any iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Simple and straight to the point! Although since 2007, some still hope to see Flash up and running on their iPhones. Debates have been going on and on between 2 companies, between developers in forums on whether Flash is approaching to its end ‘thanks’ to Apple’s final decision or it sucks having no Flash on iPhone OS because Flash is critical to the Web. Everyone seems to have their own valid stand.

(Below is the quick look on Flash timeline)

Let’s see what Steve Jobs thinks of it. Personally, I would feel this should be the way a winner talks I myself hate Flash, period. It’s a mess after Macromedia sold Flash to Adobe. The website loads with flash intro counting percent by percent till 100 is so decade back. It’s time for you to learn and pick up the new things instead of sitting in your own cave and blame someone else, Adobe!

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Thoughts on Flash

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. 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?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

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.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

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The letter reminds me of Steve’s ‘Thoughts on Music‘ during 2007. And yes, he won, big time! The music on iTunes are DRM-Free now. Guess he indeed does it again.

Your MacBook Pro is gorgeous, that we all know How about giving it a slight bump to make sure that wherever you go, whenever you sit, all eyes are on your laptop only ^^ Let’s see how we could personalize our lovely toy:

1. Book it:

BookBook is a one-of-a-kind, hardback leather case designed exclusively for MacBook and MacBook Pro. Available in Classic Black or Vibrant Red, BookBook brings three levels of security to your prized Mac. First, the hardback cover and spine provide solid protection from the rigors of the road. Second, the vintage book design disguises MacBook for superior security. And third, the stylish case protects you from being like everyone else because BookBook is totally original, just like you.

Pricing at $80, each BookBook is handmade to make sure no two are exactly alike, order at TwelveSouth

2. Skin it:

Amongst million MacBook Pro skin, one could caught your eyes within a second, and I would nominate the Iron Man decal:

Made by transparent material and coated with water-proof high glossy protective film, that skin has brilliant full-color in high resolution, plus the light came directly from Apple’s logo inside Iron Man’s palm ^^ There’s no need for further explaination:

Iron Man sticker fits all MacBook Pro models (13′, 15′, and 17′ ) both original and new unibody type. Orders can be made online at Etsy shop, under CoolSkins account. Each piece costs you around $15.

Still not satisfy yet, you may want to have a decal that covers your front lid fully? Check out the collection of GelaSkins, they have thousand beautiful designs with wildest range of topic came from many many artists – a serious style boost for your notebook:

Those GelaSkins are made by 3M materials with durable anti-scratch anti-UV coating; and hence prices at ~ $30. Similar collections are available for iPod and iPad too.

3. Etche it:

There’s no simple rule and no way back for laser engraving Your laptop will look distintively coolest ever! Best part: you choose your own design and send in the notebook for engraving. Second best: it will not void your Apple warranty since laser engraving is considered cosmetic rather than a modification that would change the behavior or performance of your laptop. Keep in mind: it will be parmanent, either a beauty or a beast.

As engraving on MacBook Pro can be done at any shop providing the service on laser etche, mostly on aluminum or wooden surface. It could be the shop next door or a store few thousand miles away. Try your luck

At today’s highly-anticipated media event, Apple finally announced the tablet device they’ve been working for years and years, the Apple iPad, featuring a 9.7′ LED-backlit, IPS display (in-plane switching) with resolution of 1024 x 768 plus flash storage of 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB It should be no surprised to anyone that the iPad’s day has come, even though one could expect more or less!

Hardware
iPad equipped with a custom-designed yet low-power 1 GHz “Apple A4″ chip which gives very fast performance (reviewed by Gizmodo). It weighs in at 1.5 pounds and is 0.5-inch thin (slightly thicker than iPhone 3GS). First hands-on by Engadget and Gizmodo said: it’s lightweight, it’s thin, and it’s beautiful. The screen is crisp and gorgeous, feels like a giant iPhone

In terms of standard connectivity, the iPad offers Wi-Fi (802.11n) and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, with 3G models also offering cellular data connectivity. All iPad models have an accelerometer, compass, speakers, a microphone, and a 30-pin dock connector. No USB, no camrea, no HDMI, no DVI, not even a Mini DisplayPort The iPad also offers a claimed 10 hours of battery life for viewing video, with 1 month of standby battery life.

Software
The iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2 with built-in standard apps for personal information management, including Address Book, Calendar, E-mail, Safari, Google Maps, and Notes. A special version of iTunes and iWork are on board to provide an optimized experience on the device’s 9.7-inch screen. Apple also unveiled new app called iBooks featuring a 3D virtual bookshelf with a user’s personal collection. It will contains a link to the iBookstore which allows users to purchase and download books from a variety of publishers.

Other apps can be brought from Apple Online Store, just like how you download and sync for iPhone before.


Note: there will be no multitasking at all, which mean no video streaming while you are working on iPad. No Flash too. And the iBooks app might work only in the US

Pricing
Depends on model and capacity, the iPad starts from $ 499. Models with 3G will be unlocked and will be able to use GSM micro SIMs. In the U.S., AT&T will offer two data plan options – $14.99 for up to 250MB/month and $29.99/month for unlimited data. No contract is required for either option, and free access to AT&T’s Wi-Fi hot spots is included. Data packages for iPad users outside of the U.S. will by in place by June.

Accessories include dock, case, connection kits:

The iPad first edition is obviously neither a netbook killer nor a tablet for work, you are likely buying a big iPod Touch + Kindle indeed. It’s not a wow for me too. The next revision might have multitasking, but it’s yet to come. Personally I would feel my eyes now are on the 32Gb Wifi iPad ^^ Whether Steve’s true about ‘the most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price‘ or not, we need to wait till late March for worldwide availability to confirm