As many of you know, Steve Jobs has publicly lambasted Adobe Flash.  He even wrote an open letter to explain how much he hates the ubiquitous technology that is used on 75% of the world’s websites and 98% of the world’s PCs.

Sadly, the majority of Steve Jobs’ reasons make little sense to most of us.  Jobs bashes Flash for not being open, yet comes of as highly hypocritical.  The Flash core is in fact open source, and the SWF specification is open, so literally anyone can make tools for Flash development and publish on the web in Flash format without giving a cent to Adobe.  Apple, on the other hand, is the king of the “walled garden” business model.  Every iPhone and iPad application must pass through an arbitrary process of selection, in which perfectly good apps are rejected for no apparent reason.  Apple also directly prohibits the use of third party development tools, requiring that all programmers join the $99/year developer program.  As usual, Apple comes off as highly egotistical and hypocritical. (continue reading…)

The HP Slate is slated (sorry, couldn’t resist) to offer more versatility, more power, and a lower price than the rumored Apple slate; it’s truly a do-it-all device.

On January 27, Apple will likely introduce a new tablet product. For the past two years, rumors have been circulating the internet about what that device might consist of. Many speculate that it will be an “enlarged iPod touch,” running a derivative of the iPhone OS. Others suspect it might be a “tablet Mac,” running a stripped down version of Mac OS X. This “middle ground” area that lives between the laptops and smartphones we use every day is a brand new market, and many companies have been working hard over the past year to define it.

When Apple entered the smartphone market with the iPhone in June 2007, it was already a fairly mature market. Four years prior, Microsoft had launched Windows Mobile 2003, a huge release that offered a full touchscreen smartphone experience with multi-tasking, robust email and music support, and syncing for music and TV shows. That same year, Palm launched the Treo 600, a remarkable device that offered an incredibly seamless solution for consuming media, email, and other content on the go. BlackBerry devices had been offering a refined mobile email experience for several years. Essentially, the iPhone entered a market that was already defined, and brought new levels of media consumption and refinement to the table, while lacking real applications, games, copy and paste, multi-tasking, and MMS (features that have all been added besides multitasking, which is expected to arrive with iPhone OS 4.0). (continue reading…)

In an expected product refresh today, Apple released a slick range of revised iMacs, MacBooks, and Mac Minis.  However, the products look largely indistinguishable from their predecessors, and many might be surprised that Blu-Ray remains absent from the Apple lineup despite its prevalence in the consumer electronics market.

More interesting, however, is how Apple appears to have directly copied Microsoft in two keys areas: Multi Touch input devices, and the home server concept.

According to Apple, the Magic Mouse is “unlike anything ever before,” and is “the world’s first multi-touch mouse.” However, there is no doubt that these claims are completely fabricated.

As you will see in the video, Microsoft has been developing a variety of multi-touch mice and input devices in the past several months, not to mention the fact that Windows 7 includes support for Multi-Touch displays. In the past several weeks, nearly a dozen PCs and displays have launched sporting multi touch technology.

See more Microsoft multitouch mice in action on Engadget.

The fact that Microsoft has clearly had Multi Touch mice in development for some period of time, combined with the fact that Apple recently lost the rights to the “Mighty Mouse” moniker, spell trouble in the area of input devices for a company that prides itself on being the first to demonstrate new technologies.

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Apple has recently released a support notice documenting difficulty operating the iPhone 3G S in hot environments, including normal outside use in 95 degree weather.  Older iPhone models and the iPod Touch are not specifically mentioned.

Undoubtedly, the iPhone has extremely high-end processing power for a mobile device, but it’s not alone.  Many smartphones are stuffed with bluetooth, Wi-Fi, high speed processors, HD video decoders, and have no known cooling issues of this sort.

However, let’s keep in mind that any electronic will overheat and malfunction if left in a car on a sunny day or exposed to other sources of great heat.  As the heat inside a computer or other electronic increases, the processing speed decreases as data “overflows” from improperly functioning silicon circuits.  This results in reduced performance, and in some situations, permanent damage.

This announcement from Apple should remind us all to watch where we leave valued electronics that can be damaged from heat.  However, don’t be afraid to pull your cellphone out on a hot day to make a call, as this sort of use rarely causes problems.  Is the iPhone 3G S an exception to this rule, a device only to be used in air-conditioned buildings?  We’re not certain.  The real question is, how will Apple warrant heat related problems in their devices?