Verizon iPhone 4 cannot be unlocked

This post will put all of the rumors to rest: you will not see an unlock for the Verizon iPhone. We’re sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the complication involved with the Verizon iPhone unlock is two-fold: it’s completely illegal, and every unlock would require carrier-specific adjustments to succeed. If you were to follow @MuscleNerd and @pytey on Twitter, you too would have come across this information. The conversation started with MuscleNerd tweeting this: An “unlock” of next week’s iPhoneVZW is more than just custom code exec… it involves per-carrier CDMA adjustments. Pytey chimed in right away to explain that this is outright illegal: A non-sanctioned iP4VZ ‘unlock’ would require an ESN/MEID from a donor phone with service. This technique is a US federal crime. That’s not awesome. We don’t assume that everyone will understand that, s0 let us break it down for you. We can unlock AT&T iPhones because they are GSM — they use a SIM card to talk to the carrier. The AT&T SIM card can be removed and replaced with a T-Mobile (or an international carrier’s) SIM card. The current unlock only changes how the phone can communicate with the SIM card… it [...]

The HTML5 plot thickens… Apple bans Flash

Apple has decided to stop shipping Flash pre-installed on their devices beginning with the newly released MacBook Air. No one was really sure what to expect when news broke that the MacBook Air didn’t come with Flash out of the box. There were a lot of cool things to ship along with the MacBook Air: the higher resolution displays, the USB restore drive, the solid state memory… but those pale in comparison to the potential political statement they’re making by removing Flash. Was it an oversight? Was it deliberate? Apple answered that question with an official statement from spokesman Bill Evans: We’re happy to continue to support Flash on the Mac, and the best way for users to always have the most up to date and secure version is to download it directly from Adobe. Following those words, Bill went on to say that they would leave the software out of all future Macs citing the necessity for the user to install the software and keep it up-to-date. Apple claims it will be easier for their customers to do it themselves. Really? That’s not the Apple we’re familiar with. Apple’s main technological purpose is to take complicated devices and dumb [...]

Steve Jobs posts “Thoughts on Flash”

In the typical Steve Jobs manner, Apple posted an article detailing his thoughts on Flash this morning. They didn’t add the letter to their typical “Hot News” page… instead they have a link to the article directly on the Apple.com homepage. I was very interested in Steve’s actual perspective on Flash, but realistically, there’s not much we haven’t already heard Steve say at one point or another. After the break, we cover Steve Jobs’ main points and add a little bit of our perspective into the mix. We also interviewed Jason Carr, a prominent PC developer, and asked his opinion on Steve’s letter. His answers may surprise you. So click the “Continue Reading” button and get the whole story.

Facebook Video Player for iPad

The name really says it all. Facebook Video Player for iPad is a new app from Kemal Taskin & Elma DIGIT@L. This app is — I mean this seriously — one of my favorite apps on the iPad. I guess I would consider myself a Facebook junkie but my wife is a lot worse so I don’t feel that bad. Love you, babe. One of the biggest complaints about the iPad, iPhone and/or iPod touch is its lack of Flash. I’ve been brainwashed into thinking that Flash sucks by Apple (in truth, it really does… at least on the Mac) but so much of our lives are spent viewing Flash. This is not by choice. This is by some stupid necessity because of dumb industry standards. We’re really happy that the industry is responding well to the iPad and other Apple products. Countless websites are going flash free for HTML5 alternatives that are just as powerful and completely compatible with the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch… and in return, they’re compatible with many other mobile devices. Contrary to popular belief, Flash has not become a standard for the mobile industry: very few phones have it. It’s no wonder that websites [...]

Hulu making videos available to Cocoa Touch

We already have a YouTube app that makes our lack of Flash a little less painful, but many of us are getting a lot of video content from Hulu lately. We don’t rely on it to serve up all of our videos — we find ourselves navigating the TV networks’ websites on a semi-frequent basis — but having the option to play shows directly from Hulu would definitely be nice. The fine folks over at TechCrunch have supposedly spoken with people deep in the business who claim that Hulu is already working on a non-Flash version of their website for the iPad€¦ but it should easily work with the iPhone and iPod touch too. We see no reason to believe that this compatibility upgrade would be limited to a large screen. In fact, we’re seriously doubting the fact that this is an iPad-inspired move at all. Hulu’s CEO specifically said that they’re “big believers” in the mobile industry and they’re not pushing out updates for a single device. It’s a smart move, especially since all of their video is already encoded in H.264. The only Flash on the site is the actual player and ads€¦ but we’re not really worried [...]

Apple removes fake Flash ads from the iPad promotional video

Remember the speculative post we wrote about the fact that the iPad is showing Flash content in Apple’s promotional video? Well, it’s been replaced with a non-Flash version that shows the infamous blue lego. It appears as though we’re never going to see Flash on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch… especially with Steve’s comments from the Apple town hall meeting. We’re not terribly disappointed with Apple’s decision to avoid Flash… we’re more disappointed with the fact that most sites are using it to display their content. Flash is notoriously buggy and a resource hog. Why watch low-quality hosted content instead of high-quality local content? The mere fact that we have instant access to thousands of TV episodes and movies will create a demand for hosted content: no one has a collection as large as the internet. We really hope to see services like Hulu, the TV networks, and even YouTube move away from Flash sooner rather than later. From a technical standpoint, Apple is completely correct: Flash sucks. But they also shouldn’t ignore the fact that it’s the current standard… they should be aggressively moving a different direction, working with companies to support different media playback: we all know [...]

The future of Apple according to Steve Jobs

Mac Rumors has a great post outlining some things that Steve said to the Infinite Loop Apple employees this past week. Two independent sources have confirmed that the following bullets are topics that were discussed in the town hall meeting: Steve was very candid about their relationship with Google. He explained that Apple didn’t get into the search business, Google came into the phone business. He’s obviously not very happy about the situation and as a result… we’re going to get better software and hardware for the iPhone. Supposedly, we’re going to see updates so aggressive that Google and its phone OS, Android, won’t be able to keep up with the pace. Steve specifically called Adobe lazy, and that’s the main reason they’re not supporting Flash on the iPhone OS. The Mac Flash client has been notorious for being… well, garbage. We’re sure that Apple is afraid that the iPhone client would be even worse. According to Steve, the majority of reported desktop/laptop crashes are caused by Adobe’s Flash. He also went on to boast about the advent of HTML5, saying that no one will be using Flash in the near future… the world is moving to HTML5. CTA actually [...]

iPad may have Flash after all… Updated: nope.

That or Apple is doctoring their device videos. During the keynote presentation on Wednesday, the iPad ran into several infamous blue legos of death. That means the device they were using for the presentation was not running Flash… this is not debatable. However, several sites have come to report that the promotional video of the iPad shows Flash content. The picture to the right is from the iPad video on Apple’s website. In it, the iPad is browsing a website that displays a food ad on the left. That ad is actually Flash and could not play on a iPhone or an iPod touch. What does this mean? There are many different possibilities, so let’s break them down bullet style: The iPad in the presentation could be an older prototype than that used in the iPad promotional video. Apple may have decided that the device should not run Flash in earlier testing due to instability. Apple is doctoring the iPad promotional video to make it a little less obvious that it doesn’t run Flash. Apple shot the promotional video with a 4.0 alpha release that includes Flash. The last bullet is our favorite because we all expected iPhone OS 4.0 [...]

iPad doesn’t appear to support Flash playback

Some disheartening news came about during Apple’s event today: it doesn’t look like the new iPad will support Flash any more than the iPhone (not at all). Several times during today’s keynote, we saw the blue lego with a question mark — evidence that the machine is not currently running Flash. One of the greatest criticisms about the iPhone is its lack of Flash playback in the mobile Safari browser. I don’t personally miss flash as it causes more issues that it’s worth. It’s a resource and battery hog so I say good riddance with my iPhone. But on a device like this, why wouldn’t it be there? First, the hardware should be able to handle it. I’m not saying it’ll playback HD Flash videos perfectly, in fact, that might suck terribly… but it should at least be able to handle some quality of Flash. Second, the software has gone without Flash for far too long. That’s one of the biggest issues with the closed eco-system like the iPhone OS: you can’t do with it as you please. For example, a lot of TV networks are using the Move Media Player for their episode playback… it can be integrated into [...]