Apple, Mac, & iPhone News...
February 4th, 2010
Morning, everyone,
In the long war between Apple and Flash another salvo was fired last week with the pulling of Flash content from iPad ads. We'll go over a few of the key issues here today and take a look at what the future could hold. And then (for a little fun!) let's celebrate the extension of iTunes Preview and rethink our views on Twitter.
The Battle
We know there's a specific war analogy to be made here, but we're so confused about the continued rift between the two companies we can't even tell if we're looking at a siege or a trench war.
Apple has called Adobe's Flash many things, but none of them good: "slow," "buggy," "lazy..." the list goes on. But Flash is ubiquitous across the internet and while we can appreciate Apple's decision to do what it thinks is best for its products there has to be a point where a good consumer experience trumps philosophical standpoints. The iPhone not supporting Flash has caused enough trouble but the iPad not supporting could hamper sales of the device.
HTML5 may be the answer for comparable functionality but not for a while as it still needs to be standardized across the huge number of browsers available; Apple has exhausted all its excuses but we doubt it will give up its death grip of control regardless of dismay over missing content.
Preview Extended
And back to the good stuff: iTunes Preview, originally just a web window into iTunes allowing users to see what was available without opening or installing the software added audio track previews earlier this year. Now the preview functionality has been added for iPhone and iPod touch applications and instead of being asked to open iTunes it quietly opens to the app's page while you're viewing the pertinent information.
You can then just flip over to iTunes instead of deciding to buy and then waiting for the program to get up to speed...it's a great time saver and we're all about that.
Teens on Twitter
Now we don't know about you, but we don't spend a whole lot of time considering the demographics of Twitter; however, we were under the impression that it was popular with teens. Turns out we were wrong! According to Pew Internet only 8% of teens who use the internet use Twitter. Considering that 73% of kids aged twelve to seventeen are active on social networks it's even more interesting.
Guess Twitter's just for old fogeys like us...share the pain!
Till Monday, Newsies...