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.

Using A Macbook From An iPad With iTeleport

Since I saw the first real photos of the iPad and its gorgeous screen, I wondered how many developers would start developing VNC clients for it. I mean, back then it was pretty clear that the iPad’s screen was perfect to access your computer remotely, and it’s more than clear now that we’ve tested a bunch of applications to do so.

I’ve downloaded and tested many VNC clients for the iPhone and the iPad, and I think that many of them show good ideas and possibilities, but most of them fail in the most important aspect: providing a stress free and easy way to just show your computer’s screen on a mobile device, and interact with it. They overwhelm the user with tons of useless features but, fortunately, iTeleport is nothing like that.

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Communal Computing

Craig Hockenberry over at his personal blog:

“My iPad has a lot of personal information on it: email, business documents, and financial data. When you pass it around, you’re giving everyone who touches it the opportunity to mess with your private life, whether intentionally or not. That makes me uneasy.

[…]

I can envision several ways to solve this problem: either with a traditional login screen or with something new like folders that require a passcode to open. I have no doubt that your designers can find something elegant that gives me peace of mind as I share my iPad with friends and family.”


Will iAd become a developer Gold Mine?

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this morning that Apple plans to spend over $1 Million buckaroos on advertisements (iAds) this year. Advertisers are gonna have to pay top dollar to even think about delivering content to Apple’s users, plus create Apple approved experiences that aren’t (putting it lightly) garbage. But what does this mean for App Store customers and developers?

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Steve Jobs Posts His Thoughts On Flash

The man has spoken. Steve Jobs himself has in fact posted his thoughts about the Flash platform in a pretty long “open letter to the community”, available here.

The post is interesting and worth checking out in its entirety, but just to sum up Steve’s thoughts:

“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.”

Steve’s main concern is that Flash is a closed platform, with crappy performances on mobile devices and that can seriously cut the battery life of Apple’s devices. Overall, it seems like the whole letter is focused on mobile devices rather than desktop computers:

“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.”

and

“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.”

Now the situation gets very interesting. We’ll wait for a response from Adobe now.