Nelson Wong Life Blog

Steve Jobs publishes some ‘thoughts on Flash’

Steve Jobs just posted an open letter of sorts explaining Apple’s position on Flash, going back to his company’s long history with Adobe and expounding upon six main points of why he thinks Flash is wrong for mobile devices. HTML5 naturally comes up, along with a few reasons you might not expect. Here’s the breakdown:

• It’s not open. “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.” Man, that’s some strong irony you’re brewing, Steve. Still, we get the point — HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript are open web standards.
• The “full web.” Steve hits back at Adobe’s claim of Apple devices missing out on “the full web,” with an age-old argument (YouTube) aided by the numerous new sources that have started providing video to the iPhone and iPad in HTML5 or app form like CBS, Netflix, and Facebook. Oh, and as for flash games? “50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free.” If we were keeping score we’d still call this a point for Adobe.
• Reliability, security and performance. Steve hits on the usual “Flash is the number one reason Macs crash,” but adds another great point on top of this: “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.” You’ve got us there, Steve, but surely your magical A4 chip could solve all this?
• Battery life. “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.” Steve Jobs is of course H.264′s #1 fan, and it’s hard to blame him, since he cites 10 hours of H.264 playback but only 5 hours with software decode on the iPhone. Still, those “older generation” sites that haven’t moved to H.264 yet are pretty much the exact same sites that aren’t viewable with HTML5, which means we’re being restricted in the content we can access just because some of it doesn’t perform as well.
• Touch. Steve hits hard against one of the web’s greatest hidden evils: rollovers. Basically, Flash UIs are built around the idea of mouse input, and would need to be “rewritten” to work well on touch devices. “If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?” That doesn’t really address the Flash-as-app scenario (that’s point #6), but it’s also a pretty silly sounding solution to a developer: your website doesn’t support this one UI paradigm exactly right, so why not rewrite it entirely?
• The most important reason. Steve finally addresses the third party development tools situation, but it’s really along the lines of what we were hearing already: “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 doubt this will end all debate, but it’s clear Apple has a line in the sand.

He concludes in saying that “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice.” Basically, it’s for the olds. And you don’t want to be old, do you? Follow after the break for the whole thing in brilliant prose form.

Who say iPad can’t print

HTC Supersonic

we’re not saying it’s unpossible for someone with some incredible Illustrator skill to have thrown this together after seeing the supposed leak last night — there are definitely plenty of talented people out there with far too much time on their hands. That being said, this matches up perfectly with everything we know and everything we’ve been told so far, so even if it is fake, it probably gives us some good insight into what Sprint’s terrifying beast of a phone is going to look like up close. The Supersonic is said to have a 4.3-inch display and WiMAX alongside Sense — so if it’s all true, we strongly suggest other carriers be ready to step up their Android game. Any other leaks care to step forward today?

Xbox 360 – Bypass Xbox Live Suspension

Navigate to Xbox.com

Click Sign In

Enter login information

Click the login button

Your url address will change to include continue.

Once the address changes and has the text “logout”

Quickly hit the back button.

Reload page.

If done correctly you’ll be signed in.

____________________________________________

How this works:

You sign in, Xbox.com reconizes that your account has a suspension on it. It then redirects your address (xbox.com/login.php?xx=ald <- Example) to logout.cgi or whatever the extension is. Once there it simply tells the system to log your account out. The point of this glitch is to hit the back button before it can send the information to log your account out. Rendering your account still logged in.

Notes: You cannot loggout, you must clear cache after performing this.
It works best to hit the back button as soon as the logout is displayed in the address bar.
If it says to “re-send” information, simply click cancel and change your address to xbox.com then navigate to the web page.

Windows Vista SP2 is ready to download

in between waiting for Windows 7 to launch and tweaking the XP build on your newly purchased netbook, there’s this little thing called Windows Vista that needs to be maintained. Today, Microsoft did its part and released the standalone installers for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Service Pack 2 for Vista and Server 2008. Now it’s all up to you. Hit the read links to patch the Wow with a little SP2 Meh.

32-bit
64-bit

iPhone 3.0

Apple just announced their iPhone 3.0 software update. This is a major update for Apple that adds fundamental building blocks for the future of the platform. The In-App purchase is the change that will have the most effects for the developer community and Apple itself as it could bring billions of dollars in extra revenues a few years down the road. As for the rest, there are nice incremental changes, but nothing “groundbreaking”. Some of the demos were nice, like the Sims, but other games like Livefire (a first-person shooter) remind us that the touch screen remains a difficult control interface. Here are the top changes:
iPhone 3.0 is a free update

Coming this summer…
In App Purchases

This is a huge business opportunity for Apple and for developers. The market for add-ons in games, social network and applications might be worth billions. Similar business models in Asia have already proven to be great. This will also enable subscription-based businesses like ebooks and newspapers.
Peer to Peer Connectivity

Peer to Peer communication is something that we expect from a communications device, but it is added only now and to be honest we had not missed it before. This could lead to networked games and simple apps to send your business card.
Accessories Control

This will take accessories to the next level. Accessories and iPhone can now communicate both ways, enabling the phone to analyze incoming data and reacting, thus making the accessory effectively smarter. Let’s see what comes out of this.
Maps for all Apps

This is convenient for developers: now they can use parts or all of Google maps – except if they want to do turn by turn directions (for maps licensing reasons). However, they can still use their own maps and retrieve the GPS location via Google Maps, saving a lot of time and code on the way.
Copy/Paste

Better late than never: this third time around, Apple has managed to pull Copy/Paste off, one of the (sadly) most anticipated feature. You won’t have to type in your WEP key from now on! You can select a block of text and double tap to display the copy/cut/paste menu. It kind of works like you would expect it to.
Landscape QWERTY keyboard

This was long overdue – good stuff.
MMS

Finally, MMS is here! Some people don’t care because they have email, other feel really strongly about having it. The bottom line is that any dumb phone can do it, so there’s no reason why the iPhone couldn’t
Voice memo

Send voice memos to yourself…
CalDAV

Makes the iPhone compatible with other services calendars such as Yahoo or Google.
Search

Searches in “key” apps like email, apps, contacts, music… that’s nice for people who do have a lot of contacts or music. We like this.
And a bunch more…

Head to the Apple website to check ALL the new features and updates, but there you go, you know what matters the most.

HP MediaSmart 2.5 Update Now Available

Yesterday, HP released the iStream application for the iPhone and also for the iPod Touch.

Today, in fact, in the last few minutes, HP have released the HP MediaSmart Server 2.5 Update to the web.

In order to get it click on the Check for updates link on the HP Updates tab in the Settings area on your Windows Home Server Console.

HP Update – before

It should then check for the update, and if it is found, you will see the MediaSmart Server Update 2.5 selected. As you can see, it’s just under 218MB in size.

MediaSmart 2.5 Update Available

A full review will follow shortly, but for now go and start the download :

And remember, this update is only available for the EX485 and EX487 owners!

iPhone OS 3.0 to Be Revealed March 17

iPhone OS 3.0 is going to be revealed on March 17 in an Apple event.

Citi “Thank You” Points System – Deals On XBLA Games – As Low As 400 Thank You Points

1. Have to have “thank you” points (ie points through a citi bank credit card)
2. Have to add at least 2 games
3. “Shipping discount” increases with a max of %60 off
1 game – 1000 pts
2 games – 1400 pts – 700 pts per game
3 games – 1800 pts – 600 pts per game
4 games – 2000 pts – 500 pts per game
5 games – 2500 pts – 500 pts per game
6 games – 3000 pts – 500 pts per game
7 games – 2800 pts – 400 pts per game
and everything after that is 400 pts per game
4. Not sure yet how the games are sent will update when I find out
5. All games available are 1000 thank you points
6. Almost all XBLA games are available. Notable exceptions: Geometry Wars 2, Street Fighter II Turbo HD

Obviously you have to be earning “Thank You” points via a credit card through Citi to get in on this deal.

www.thankyou.com

Search: Xbox live arcade download

Most of the stuff on that reward system is WAY overpriced so I did a search and found a lot of XBLA games for 1,000 points. When I put them in my cart it showed an automatic shipping discount that knocked %60 off the price. So each game came out to be 400 points. Really good deal if you are looking to spend some points and don’t want to get taken advantage of. Maximize the deal by ordering games that are more expensive like Castle Crashers.
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Microsoft’s Vision For the Future