Not Apple
Microsoft just burned Adobe
Apr 30th
Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, just burned Adobe and everything that is Flash by supporting Steve Jobs’ claim that HMTL5 is the future. Woah.
We seriously don’t know what to think about this statement. We had some serious doubts that Apple, by itself, would be able to bring the world away from Flash and into HTML5 but we were just smacked across the face with a statement supporting Steve Jobs… from Microsoft. It appears that Microsoft is really trying to build its browser into something that doesn’t cause web designers to cringe and shudder. They’ll be fully compatible with HTML5 after they release Internet Explorer 9… and if you read a little more into the blog, you’ll notice that they’re doing a lot to make IE 9 standards-compliant. Web designers will finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief.
The last paragraph of Dean’s post says this:
Today, video on the web is predominantly Flash-based. While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers. Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web.
He’s really nailed our main reason we hate Flash: why do we need a plugin to browse the web? We shouldn’t, right? It appears that all of the major browsers will be supporting HTML5 and all of the other “standards” relatively soon. Dean’s last sentence may say that Flash is still important but that doesn’t change the fact that the article’s theme is this: HTML5 will be better than Flash. We definitely hope so.
Via MacRumors
HP buys Palm for 1.2 Billion
Apr 28th
This doesn’t exactly qualify as Apple-related news but it’s big enough that we felt a need to mention it. Today, HP released this announcement on their website saying that Palm has accepted a buyout for 1.2 Billion US dollars. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise to us: we’ve been waiting for the demise of Palm for a long time. HP was never rumored to be courting Palm, nor were they even in the “top prospects” of the companies many news sources viewed as viable purchasers… but they won out in the end. Jon Rubinstein is expected to stay on the team even though management is moving to HP’s control.
For quite some time, Apple has been sitting on Multi-Touch patents and just recently went after HTC and Google over what could potentially be some pretty serious infringements. Tim Cook, the COO of Apple, initially threatened Palm with such legal pursuits. Our ultimate point is this: we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple went after Palm and their new parents in a new legal battle. We’d be surprised if Apple was actually being nice to Palm… but before the acquisition, Apple could have Jason Chen’d Palm without batting so much as an eyelash.
