Latest Apple News

The iPad Will Rule the World
"Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world." That's what Alan Kay said when Steve Jobs asked him about his thoughts on the iPhone. Alan Kay is one the greatest minds in the history of computing. He worked in the 70s at the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where he said that "the best way to predict the future is to invent it!" He did precisely that.
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Apple iPad demand exceeding pre-launch iPhone buzz?
A new survey has found that 13 percent of respondents are likely to buy Apple's forthcoming iPad, a number greater than the 9 percent who planned to purchase an iPhone before its launch in 2007.
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Apple ranks third in customer service survey
In its bronze medal position, Apple earned A+ ratings in both the qualify of staff and efficiency of service; its overall score increased by almost ten percent over its 2009 rating. ... Apple was 20 places above its nearest competitor, Dell ...
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Report gives Apple top honors for reliability
Apple is selling more Macs than ever these days. And according to a survey from a computer support company, those new customers are enjoying some very reliable machines. On Monday, Rescuecom released its 2010 computer reliability report, with Apple winning the top spot in the survey.
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Aerial Footage of Apple’s New Massive Data Center
Experts note that Apple’s data center will be among the largest in the world, rivaling centers run by internet giants like Microsoft and Google. The unusual size of the data center suggests that Apple is investing heavily in cloud computing.
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New iPhone Ad: On Hold


New iPhone Ad: First Steps


New iPhone Ad: Family Travel

Flash Is Fundamentally Flawed On Touch Screen Devices

A Flash developer offers a good explanation on why Flash would not work well on touch screen devices like the iPad:

"I’m a full-time Flash developer and I’d love to get paid to make Flash sites for iPad. I want that to make sense—but it doesn’t. Flash on the iPad will not (and should not) happen—and the main reason, as I see it, is one that never gets talked about: Current Flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen device, and this cannot be solved by Apple, Adobe, or magical new hardware. That’s not because of slow mobile performance, battery drain or crashes. It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem. ... All that Apple and Adobe could ever do is make current Flash content visible. It would be seen, but very often would not work."

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And here's my take on this ...

More than just hover/mouseover problem, there are many other issues I see here. Flash is fundamentally based on a single pointer, while multitouch devices can allow many touch points at any one time.

So how is flash going to interpret moving your finger over it ? Is it a hover,  drag or scroll ? When you touch the screen, is that hovering or a click ? What about when you touch with 2 or 3 fingers ? Is that like having 2 or 3 mouse cursors at the same time ? If you touch two different buttons on a flash app at the same time, what happens ?

Is there a workaround for this ? Probably, but it will require most Flash sites to be redesigned. And even then, it would not provide the best possible user experience because Flash does not fundamentally support multitouch gestures.

Some are arguing that Apple should just support Flash anyway, even if half of the Flash sites out there would not work properly. Well, one must remember that to Apple, user experience is the most important part of their product design. When users start browsing around and find that many websites don't work properly because it uses Flash, that's just bad user experience. They are not going to care why it doesn't work. As far as they are concerned, it's a problem with Apple's product, even though the problem is caused by Adobe's Flash plugin.

By excluding Flash altogether, Apple is putting the pressure on web designers to redesign their websites for the iPhone and the upcoming iPad. Even now, if you use your iPhone to browse the majority of the popular websites, you will find that they have an iPhone optimised version of their site. In fact, there are many sites with special iPhone apps that makes it even easier to access the site's contents (e.g. Wired, Engadget, etc). So, not having Flash really isn't a big deal.

I should also come clean and tell you now that I personally hate Flash. If you have ever tried to open a website and your computer grinds to a halt, it's likely due to Flash. I have personally encountered this soooooo many times both on Windows and Mac. If they can't even get Flash to work flawlessly on a full blown computer, what makes you think they can get it to work well on a mobile device that has a significantly slower CPU ?

Update: Apparently, the latest Flash plugin 10.1 beta adds multitouch support, but this does not change the fact that all the flash content currently out there needs to be redesigned in order to take advantage of this. And this brings us back to the problem of not all websites working properly ...

Interesting iPad Articles

Here are some of the interesting things that I found on the net about the iPad :) ...

Wired magazine is leading the change in the e-magazine industry and will have their new digital version out this summer for the iPad. It looks fantastic ... I certainly hope all magazines becomes like this :)




If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good
Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, wrote an interesting article about the iPad ... "If your product needs "everything" in order to be good, then it's probably not very innovative (though it might be a nice upgrade to an existing product). Put another way, if your product is great, it doesn't need to be good." Click here to read this article.

The iPad's secret sauce: it's the software, stupid
"The thing is, tablet PCs running regular software like Windows and Office have never offered any benefit over regular PCs with a keyboard and mouse. In fact, they offer a worse user experience. ... Put another way: the iPad is all about software. Forget the sleek form factor – that's just a prerequisite. Ironically, it's the software and services that Microsoft never 'got', that Apple totally does get." Click here to read this article.

Radical Innovation of Meaning - Apple iPad
"No, what Apple does well is put forth "radical innovations of meaning". That term is from Roberto Verganti, who wrote about the concept in his excellent book "Design-Driven Innovation". Apple's skills with design-driven innovation are what will make the iPad a success."  Click here to read this article.

Inside Apple's iPad: Multitasking
"Another problem relates to security. If apps aren't simply terminated by the user in a straightforward way as they are on the iPhone OS, users may not be aware they are still running. Background apps might provide a valuable service, but without any restrictions, they're also able to install spyware, viruses and other malicious software. That's simply not possible to do on the iPhone OS." Click here to read this article.

Inside Apple's iPad: Adobe Flash
"Adobe's arguments for Flash are difficult to support in the mobile realm. The iPhone has been wildly popular since its debut despite its lack of support for Flash. Apple's smartphone dramatically raised the bar for what customers expected in a mobile web browser. By doing this without Flash, Apple essentially redefined what the web should look like, at least on a mobile device." Click here to read this article.

Thunderous Boom in a Perfect Storm of iPad Apps
"According to Flurry's analytical app-developer tracking skills, January saw the single biggest peak in developer activity ever registered in its system. It's the iPad." Click here to read this article.

Why the iPad is Intel’s worst nightmare
"The iPad is close to Intel’s worst nightmare because it’s a ‘proper’ computer - it’s certainly not a smartphone - that doesn’t use an Intel x86 CPU. It’s also a machine that doesn’t face any of the demand-killing limitations non Intel laptops have done before. It’s not from a no-name company that people won’t trust, or whose products you can’t actually find in the shops. It’s not running Linux or an OS that’s difficult to understand. It’s not unfamiliar – millions of people know how to use the iPhone – and once the Apple marketing juggernaut gets up and running, you’re not going to be unaware it exists." Click here to read this article.

IBM Eyes The iPad
"Rennie says IBM will also design applications targeted specifically at the iPad, which it hopes to release "very close to the delivery date" of the device. "The screen real estate and the touch interface should give us the opportunity to do some very interesting things," he says." Click here to read this article.

Why iPhone Apps Rule !

It should come as no surprise to Apple fans that there are now over 150,000 apps for iPhoneOS, which runs on the 80 million iPhones and iPod Touch devices that are already out there.

There are some however, who questions the need to have that many apps. They ask, do we really need 100 different twitter apps ? 100 different calculators ? 100 different messaging apps ?

I will tell you now that the answer is a big YES! And I shall discuss the various reasons below.

Reason 1 - Competition
When you have 100 different companies making a particular type of app, it means there is very strong competition. In order for their app to stand out above the others, their app must be better, more innovative, more user friendly and better priced. They have to keep making their app better and release improved updates more frequently in order to survive and stay ahead of the competition.

The result from this is that you will get far better apps at a cheaper price on the iPhone than any other mobile devices out there.

Reason 2 - Everyone Is Different
Everyone is different, and have different preferences and needs, even when doing essentially the same thing. Some companies may choose to make their app the most user friendly for newbies, while others might makes theirs the most full featured for power users. So, when you have many choices of apps to choose from, you can pick the one that works best for *YOU*.

The result from this is that you get apps that best suited to you, rather than you having to force yourself to change to suit the app.

Reason 3 - Highly Specialised Apps
There are now over 100,000 iPhoneOS developers/companies. Because of the intense competition, many developers are forced to find more niche markets or specialised tasks to create apps for. Examples for this are the many apps just for doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, etc.

The result from this is that you can get very specialised apps that you would not be able to find on any other mobile platform.

Reason 4 - Sustains the Momentum
The availability of so many apps helps to push even more people to buy iPhones and iPod Touch, which helps expand the market for these apps, and that in turn, pushes developers to create even more apps.

The result from this is that iPhone, iPod Touch and the upcoming iPad will be manufactured in increasing greater numbers, and this will result in greater economies of scale, which will eventually drive down the price of these devices, as well as the apps.

Conclusion
Regardless of whether or not you actually need so many apps, you will still benefit more from buying iPhoneOS devices as opposed to other competing smartphones.