According to an Associated Press article citing Jason Reindorp, Zune’s director of product marketing, the device has sold “just north of two million” between its debut in November 2006 and May 2008. Apple has sold roughly 76 million iPods during that same period, more than doubling the installed base of iPods since the Zune’s debut.

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Flash has plenty of enemies and obstacles, but it also enjoys wide deployment and familiarity. Two areas where Flash can offer real value is in displaying and packaging video on the web, and in serving as a Java replacement for developing applets. Here’s a look at how Adobe is working to defend its strengths in the face of competition, and how its efforts to open the Flash specification in the Open Screen Project play into these efforts.
Continues: Flash Wars: Adobe Fights for AIR with the Open Screen Project

While widely deployed as a web plugin and among the few web technologies that have become a household word, Adobe’s Flash has more than a few substantial enemies that would like to see it replaced, cloned, or erased.
Additionally, Flash faces a number of significant obstacles that are its own fault. These also erode Adobe’s position and have helped force its hand in opening the Flash specification. Here’s a look at the external competitors of Flash, and how Flash has hurt its own chances to establish itself as a web platform in the future.

Continues: Flash Wars: The Many Enemies and Obstacles of Flash

Rene Ritchie presented Flash cookies as another thorn in the Flash platform for users, as described in the article Flash on iPhone: Video Dream or Privacy Nightmare? - Phone different

Pitted against Microsoft’s efforts to crush Flash using its own copycat Silverlight platform, open source projects seeking to duplicate Flash for free, and Apple’s efforts to create a mobile platform wholly free of any trace of Flash, Adobe has scrambled to announce efforts to make Flash a public specification in the Open Screen Project.

Will it help get Flash on the iPhone? Here’s the first segment of a three part series with a historical overview of the wars between Flash and Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Google, and the open source community, the problems Flash faces today, and what future Flash can hope for as an open specification.

Continues: AppleInsider | Flash Wars: Adobe in the History and Future of Flash

Incidentally, Flash was the subject of the first article I wrote on RoughlyDrafted: Flash in the Plan

Technorati Tags: Apple, History, Software

Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl podcast invited me to join Bob LeVitus and Steve Kruschen on his weekly show this week. I rattle on for some time about Apple’s purchase of PA Semi and the portability of Windows versus NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X; PowerPC vs Intel x86; the vaporware of Copland, Gershwin, and Taligent compared to Vista, Windows 7, and Singularity; and Apple’s success in a slow economy. You can hear for yourself and subscribe to the Tech Night Owl RSS feed at:
The Tech Night Owl LIVE with Gene Steinberg

May 1, 2008 episode:

http://www.techbroadcasting.com/podcasts/nightowl_080501.mp3

Earlier episodes I’ve participated on:

Mar 20 08
Jan 31 08
Jan 3 08
Nov 8 07
Sep 20 07
Aug 9 07
Jun 14 07
Apr 26 07
Mar 1 07
Jan 11 07

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, Mac, Microsoft, Software

The next generation of iPhone appears set to claim exclusive access to advanced graphics core and video decoding technology, thanks to a secret licensing deal between Apple, mobile graphics leader Imagination Technologies, and Samsung, the iPhone’s ARM “system on a chip” manufacturer. The result may be an ideal platform for handheld gaming and high definition video playback.
Continues: Apple’s bionic ARM to muscle advanced gaming graphics into iPhones

Today’s growth in mobile messaging and computing devices bears some similarity with the explosion of desktop personal computing in the early 80s described in the previous segment. The difference is that today there is no big equivalent to IBM threatening to enter the market; all the existing, leading competitors in mobile devices are already large and established companies.

Unlike the 1981 IBM PC, which pushed the unremarkable x86 processor and Microsoft’s copycat software ahead of superior technology, mobile devices today are being sold on their actual merits in terms of hardware and software. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone working to shoehorn the square pegs of x86 processors and Microsoft Windows software into the round hole of mobile devices. Here’s a look at the state of chips in mobiles, and how PA Semi expands the options for Apple in the mobile market.

How Apple’s PA Semi Acquisition Fits Into Its Chip History
Why Did Apple Buy PA Semi?

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With the deluge of data hitting users in the modern age, managing piles of information has become increasingly important but also more difficult. Evernote is on its way to both the Mac and the iPhone, and promises to simplify the effort needed to catalog, tag and organize web clippings, text and handwritten notes, photos, emails, audio clippings, and more, making it easy to search and review all those bits later without having to think too hard about how to do it.
Continues: Evernote for Mac, iPhone to make managing information overload easy

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