iPhone, what apps do you use.

[M_Lewis (Mark)]

do a google search for 'iphone explorer' - very small program, and just install it onto your computer. You plug your iphone to your computer as per normal, and open up iphone explorer (close itunes), and it lets you use your iphone as a USB drive, copy music, ringtones...anything to and from it. You dont' need to jail break your phone to do this.

[avandonk]

Thanks for the advice all. I ended up getting a prepaid phone with a screen almost as big as the iphone. I really only want a phone that makes phone calls. If I want to do some heavy stuff I will use my i7 920with 12GB of ram. I got very suss when after I asked 'could I buy the iphone up front and forget all this contract stuff?' The young bloke was flummoxed 'no one does that!'. He could not even offer me a price.

Bert

[Satchmo]

Nah I don't buy that . All those sites I want and expected to work on my Ipod don't , so its a simple case of a flawed product not giving me the internet experience I expect that I have on my PC .

Its about Apples greed in not allowing applets to run on its platform that you haven't paid for in the app shop. I don't care if the odd flash experience is flaky. For that matter I have a number of Apps on my Ipod that are pretty flakey..so much for the Apple quality control

( I'm being a little cheeky there )

I would love to own an Ipad neverthless , I have a few apps that would be worth the cost of an Ipad alone to run touch them on a big touch screen.

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Here you go Mark:. Looks like Flash isn't a "gimme"... make up your own mind. Gotta love big business. LOL!

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/tec...0503-u2bk.html

[Wavytone]

Mark I think you're being a bit cruel there... it's the developers who have made shoddy s/w, not Apple per-se.

OTOH StarMap Pro on an iPhone 3G is the ducks nuts as far as I'm concerned...

[Satchmo]

Nah I wasn't being that cruel Chris tabled that the reason Apple didn't support Flash was that it wanted supreme quality control over the Applified `internet experience'.

I just pointed out that a number of sites I use a lot like online chess don't work on my Ipod which is a travesty. If as many flash sites were as dodgy as some of the Ipod apps I'd be surprised. Remember, Apple first screen and approve every app that appears on there site free or not. Hitler would be impressed.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by Satchmo

Nah I wasn't being that cruel Chris tabled that the reason Apple didn't support Flash was that it wanted supreme quality control over the Applified `internet experience'.

I just pointed out that a number of sites I use a lot like online chess don't work on my Ipod which is a travesty. If as many flash sites were as dodgy as some of the Ipod apps I'd be surprised. Remember, Apple first screen and approve every app that appears on there site free or not. Hitler would be impressed.

Hi Mark - I've just been involved with a mammoth task (here, USA, UK & Russia) developing Flash-based apps with an eye to eventually replacing our suite of high-end publishing workflow applications with said Flash versions. Over the past 3 years we've had so many problems with it that we have recently decided to dump the new developments due to their general inconsistency across multiple guest environments and incapacity to be easily modified prior to specialist deployment. It can be and was at times very slow and clunky for our users, the majority of who just gave up testing in a beta program. As an enterprise-level platform it just doesn't cut the mustard - especially in the high-pressure, time-critical newspaper and magazine business where new quad-core machines are definitely not the order of the day. It could have been a real panacea, but just wasn't. Admittedly, Flash works just wonderfully for low-end games and for corporate presentations and such. I recently had a look at Pizza Hut and Dominoes corporate Flash offerings, and while they work, you can hear the grinding noises going on in the background as they try to do the best they can and keep you interested.

We're an iPhone developer as well, and at this juncture are in agreeance with Jobsie I'm afraid. I'm actually working at this coalface, not observing from afar. I'm not sure why you mention Hitler. Yes, Apple wants its users to have as unified an experience as they can offer - because fewer problems mean better performance of the platform in general. This has always been mis-understood by most, as some prefer to work in an environment where anything goes, and good luck to them.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Take it as you will. If you have a pre-determined dislike for the guy then I guess that your reaction will be predictable.

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

[Kevnool (Kev)]

Sorry fellas i just like a phone i can ring people on.
Cheers Kev.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Kev,

You can ring people on an iPhone. But, you can do a whole lot more, like read IIS on the dunny.

H

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by Octane

Kev,

You can ring people on an iPhone. But, you can do a whole lot more, like read IIS on the dunny.

H

You can make calls to other people? Cool!

[Satchmo]

Hi Chris

I do appreciate all you say..and I even waded through Steve Job's piece on Flash. That being said I still find it frustrating that I can't gave the same Internet experience with the Ipod as do on my PC. My PC makes no exceptions about what content I can view and interact with . For me , the Apple experience is still a `censored' experience. I haven't gone over to 'the dark side' but will still be getting a 16gb Ipad this year..I can't wait..

Mark

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Hi Mark - I've just been involved with a mammoth task (here, USA, UK & Russia) developing Flash-based apps with an eye to eventually replacing our suite of high-end publishing workflow applications with said Flash versions. Over the past 3 years we've had so many problems with it that we have recently decided to dump the new developments due to their general inconsistency across multiple guest environments and incapacity to be easily modified prior to specialist deployment. It can be and was at times very slow and clunky for our users, the majority of who just gave up testing in a beta program. As an enterprise-level platform it just doesn't cut the mustard - especially in the high-pressure, time-critical newspaper and magazine business where new quad-core machines are definitely not the order of the day. It could have been a real panacea, but just wasn't. Admittedly, Flash works just wonderfully for low-end games and for corporate presentations and such. I recently had a look at Pizza Hut and Dominoes corporate Flash offerings, and while they work, you can hear the grinding noises going on in the background as they try to do the best they can and keep you interested.

We're an iPhone developer as well, and at this juncture are in agreeance with Jobsie I'm afraid. I'm actually working at this coalface, not observing from afar. I'm not sure why you mention Hitler. Yes, Apple wants its users to have as unified an experience as they can offer - because fewer problems mean better performance of the platform in general. This has always been mis-understood by most, as some prefer to work in an environment where anything goes, and good luck to them.

[acropolite (Phil)]

I found another few good ones, if you're a technophile with a short memory, SchemRef is an excellent app that shows resistor colour codes, capacitor codes, Led series limiting resistor and an Ascii code chart( very handy at times). mSecure is a neat password storage app, comes complete with PC backup software.

If you have a collection of DVD's, MovieScan will allow you to catalog, it even scans barcodes and retrieves cover icons etc where possible. I found the Barcode scan to be of minimal use as most of my Australian Movie title barcodes aren't listed but most of my Music DVD collection scanned and entered directly from the barcode.

The retrieval rate for manual entry is pretty well 100% for Icons and decriptions, if the Title is entered exactly as it appears on the cover of the DVD.

Moviescan is very handy, in the event of loss through theft or fire I have a list of all my collection, plus I have on more than one occasion bought a duplicate DVD's I already have the title, having the collection on phone will prevent that.

[stephenb (Stephen)]

Originally Posted by avandonk

Thanks for the advice all. I ended up getting a prepaid phone with a screen almost as big as the iphone. I really only want a phone that makes phone calls. If I want to do some heavy stuff I will use my i7 920with 12GB of ram. I got very suss when after I asked 'could I buy the iphone up front and forget all this contract stuff?' The young bloke was flummoxed 'no one does that!'. He could not even offer me a price.

Bert

Whatever works for you. Yes, those young sales staff are sometimes all hot air.

Mine plan is a $49 plan with Optus. I pay $6 per month for the phone - over 24 months contract. With that I get $330 of included calls (voice, SMS texts etc), and 250MB of data to access the internet. I use the Optuc App to check my daily usage and I have never reached anywhere near half of my limits. I use it now more than the home phone. Which is becoming a waste of money. I know I could have found a cheaper plan but this one is convenient for me.

Back on track... I have the following Apps....

- Sky Voyager
- MoonPhase
- Soho
- Astro Cast
- Weatherzone
- NASA
- GPS Motion X
- Astronomy (an astronomy quiz/trivia game)
- Astronomy Jigsaw puzzle
- Geocaching
- Unit Converter

- ABC
- Rage (Rage playlists)
- Tunein Radio - The best internet radio in this country
- eBay
- Optus My Account
- PayPal
- Shift Worker
- Wikipedia



Stephen

[iceman (Mike)]

I recently downloaded "Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior". Very cool fighting game

[Kevnool (Kev)]

Originally Posted by Octane

Kev,

You can ring people on an iPhone. But, you can do a whole lot more, like read IIS on the dunny.

H

Your a funny man H
Cheers Kev.

[Kevnool (Kev)]

Here we go has it got the rural tick ?

I cant buy a phone because of the gov phone which is so cheap to ring.
Cheers Kev.

[AdrianF (Adrian)]

Just discovered SpaceGeek. NASA live TV on your phone plus more.

Adrian