Flash isn’t multi-platform. It’s Flash Player or nothing.

You might have read a little essay by a certain Steve Jobs (whom I presume was cozied in a black leather chair with his iPad) which pertained to the death of Flash on Apple’s mobile devices. It was strict, thoughtful, and carefully worded in such a way as to close all holes against Apple’s decision. In my eyes, the message wasn’t written to be a damning statement against Adobe, a company that develops incredible products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom. Rather, this was written as a final message to the public that thoroughly explains Apple’s position on Flash. It’s a statement that should have allowed everyone to move on.

Yet when approached, Adobe’s own Shantanu Narayen stepped forward once again to combat Apple’s tyrant ruler, naming Jobs’ statement as a “smokescreen” to multi-platform innovation. Like Jobs, Narayen is incredibly passionate about his product and the betterment of the world community. While Jobs and Narayen are polar opposites, whom is right in this matter?

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4,870 iPad Apps In The App Store

Distimo reports that there 4,870 iPad apps available in the App Store: 1,433 are Universal applications and 3,437 are iPad-only apps. The report also shows the good growth these apps went under the past weeks, and there are also other interesting stats about price points and categories. You can download the report for free here.

Too bad most of these apps are still crap, and the great ones are still to be released. (with a very few exceptions, of course)

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Textie, Free Texting from Atebits

Since when Twitter announced the acquisition of Twitter for iPhone and Mac, we all started wondering where the hell was Loren Brichter. Did the Twitter folks kidnap him and put him in front of an iMac telling him “Do code”? Who knows, but it’s been a nice surprise to find out that Atebits (Loren’s company) and Borange have released a new application for iPhone and iPod Touch called Textie, which allows you to send free text messages to anyone in the world running the same app.

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Compartments, Simple Home Inventory. Review & Giveaway!

I don’t know too many people who keep track of home inventory. As we gather things throughout the years, the only times we deal with our stuff en masse is when we move. It’s usually only then do we come across that ol’ cowboy hat tossed in the attic, or grandpa’s military rifle. If something were to happen to your home (god forbid a flood), you’ll want to have your possessions indexed so you can recover from the damages. Compartments from LittleFin Software is a simple solution for keeping track of everything you drag home. Read more

Lala Is Shutting Down, Apple Gets Ready for iTunes.com

Originally discovered by Techcrunch last night, Lala is shutting down on May 31: subscriptions are closed, and current users will be refunded with iTunes Store credit.

Well, knew that this was gonna happen - but it’s interesting to see it happening one week before the start of the WWDC: every sign is pointing to Apple warming up iTunes.com (which is still being redirected) as their online music streaming service, set to become the most important competitor for services like Spotify, Groovershark and Pandora.

Anyway, we think  that there will be so much more about iTunes.com rather than just music streaming. Hopefully we’ll know more at the WWDC.

Microsoft Confirms Support for HTML5, But Adobe Is Moving Forward

Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer project at Microsoft, confirmed (again) their support for open web standards and HTML5 as the technology of the future.

In a blog post:

“The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.”

Pretty self explanatory, and it’s good to see Microsoft trying to do things good for IE9.

On the other hand, it’s Adobe that’s moving forward. They don’t seem to have a proper answer to Steve Jobs’ letter, for this reason they’ve stated (one again) that Apple is blocking their “widely used runtimes”, and so they’re moving forward - to other platforms.

Adobe cares about quantity (number of people who use Flash) more than quality (of Flash).

I think this is standing still, rather than moving forward.