Apple
Why do Apple fight against Flash
There has been a lot of buzz about why Apple refuses to support Flash on its upcoming iPad. Most discussions focus on Flash being resource-intensive, but few consider a different angle.
Flash operates as separate code, meaning it can be used to upload dynamic content. This could include updated links and prices for products or even entirely new advertisements. Consider the thousands of "How-to..." e-books available. Many of these guides recommend related products—ranging from affordable tools to high-end professional equipment.
For a traditional book publisher, selling a paper book generates revenue only once, and Apple takes a cut of that sale. However, if publishers could embed Flash-based ads in e-books, they could sell ad space multiple times, creating an ongoing e-book ad market. That sounds appealing—for publishers, at least. But not for Apple.
From Apple's business model perspective, Flash isn’t just a piece of uncontrolled code—it’s a Trojan horse that threatens Apple's share of advertising revenue. And it's not just about Flash ads; HTML, JavaScript, and other web-based ads present the same issue.
That’s why I’m eager to see how Apple handles advertising within iPad books and magazines. Will they contain static, non-updatable ads? I’ll be watching closely.
iTunes 9 with a Home Sharing bug
These days Apple came with some new stuff. First of all, we all were happy to see Steve “vertical”. Jobs has a liver transplant and he shoots a pipe that he’s doing well.
Apple announced some new product updates: new iPods and new v.9 iTunes. Although it wasn’t extreme new in core, new iTunes has some great improvements.
According to Apple’s long-term play to became an Amazon within a multimedia market, the new iTunes provide customers with an iTunes LP (iTunes Extra) containing not only music, but a bunch of multimedia content (pictures, video add-ons, lyrics) that finally makes buying that pieces of aluminum, covered with plastic coming with paper inserts worthless. In its way, Apple is one of those who is real “green” and that’s great.
Another iTunes improvement announced is a Home sharing, that allows sharing your iTunes stuff to up to 5 PCs (or, sure, Macs). Generally, it isn’t something very special – previous iTunes versions allowed to share and play remotely iTunes content among PCs that are connected. The basic improvement is, actually, is the ability to copy that content, see and use playlists from another computer.
Unfortunately, here we came to a blot on a landscape – it’s buggy. While trying to connect my two major PCs I’ve found Home Sharing disappearing just after turning it “on”. Spending some time manipulating with different account settings the only result I’ve got is that now I work fine on a Tablet, but fail on a Desktop. Sure it should work properly, but in case iTunes Home Sharing has a bug, I wish it would fail in the opposite way. Well, Google search came with a bunch of posts claiming the same. Hope Apple will come with an iTunes bugfix ASAP.
There is some other stuff that should be noticed. The latest keynote became available at apple.com with a significant delay – all those who wanted to see it have already found it published by 3-rd party sites. Sure, it wasn’t HD, it was ripped into pieces but it’s all in the timing. Coming back to apple.com yesterday I finally found keynote announcement and tapped to play its HD version. Unfortunately, I’ve got the only sound with an on-screen QuickTime logo. Funny thing is that it is a brand new QuickTime that comes with iTunes 9.
It seems like Apple came with a buggy stuff. Just a tiny off topic – try to click “MacBook Pro 17′” at Apple’s home page. Hope I’m the only person to get “Page Not Found”. That’s OK, I will go through it, sure, too. The only hope it will not become a rule for Apple, the company that I do sincerely like for its UI’s and design, to be buggy in every aspect.