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 are throwing Flash out for other options. Every day, more people begin using their mobiles instead of their computers… every day people drive themselves insane by grumbling at websites that use Flash. So why is the transition so slow? Ask the website you’re reading, we don’t really know.

Facebook is one of the worst offenders in the anti-Flash campaign. Many websites are using the excuse that it would be difficult to offer the features of their Flash video players with HTML5. Facebook can’t use that excuse: it’s video player is probably the worst looking, least feature-rich video player on the web. Play, pause, volume and fullscreen. Wow. There is no reason for Facebook to still be using Flash for their videos when one developer could code the same player in HTML5 with very little effort. Boo!

Thanks to the new Facebook Video Player for iPad… I can watch videos on my favorite web browsing device. There really is nothing else like browsing the web on your iPad and my Facebook addiction is a little more than healthy. The app helps out by bringing up the regular Facebook website and allows you to browse like you would normally. Whenever you run across a video of your college roommate passing out while he’s walking down the street, just tap the video TITLE and the video will play. You cannot actually tap the video as that will just bring up a Flash error. Once the video opens, you can add it as a favorite for later viewing. The interface is a little awkward and not very intuitive, but it works and that’s what we really care about. The developer will be including a help video in the next version. In general, it’s really quite slick and definitely a sanity saver for the people (like me) who are obsessed with Facebook.

We did ask the developer about upcoming features and improvements for the app… this is what will be coming in the near-future releases:

• French, Italian and Turkish language support.
• Video Thumbnail Support: you’ll actually be able to click the thumbnail instead of the title.
• Help Video
• Video Download Manager: will allow you to save movies for offline viewing.
• Advanced Search

With those features, this app will be the easier way to watch Flash Facebook videos on your iPad. If you’re an avid Facebook junkie, this app is a must-have and definitely worth the $2.99 for the iPad version. You can also hop down the road a bit and grab the iPhone version for $1.99

Sorry for the default pictures, my iPad crashed and dumped the ones I captured. :/

One thing that we’ve noticed since the introduction of the iPad App Store: app prices are ridiculous. We’re not saying that developers don’t deserve to be paid for their efforts, but the trends that are dominating the App Store need… to… stop… now. There are a few different ways that we’re getting screwed, so here goes.

Most everyone was expecting apps to go “universal” so they could run on your iPad or your iPhone/iPod touch. Our worst criticism of the iPad App Store is that most developers decided to avoid that model completely. There are a few who decided to go universal with their apps — one being Oceanhouse Media, the developer responsible for the Dr. Seuss books and one whom we’ve written about in the past — and to all of you who have gone universal… we THANK you.

Other developers, including the ones who build the games in the graphic to the right, have decided that we have to pay for the same content twice. Take a look at the graphic — click it to make it larger — and you’ll notice that developers are choosing to double their app prices for the iPad. Most developers are going more than double… we’ve seen some apps that started at $0.99 and are now selling for $9.99 on the iPad. That’s outright ridiculous.

Let’s look at Fieldrunners… we paid more than the current $2.99 iPhone pricing for the app to begin with and have purchased all of the expansions for more playability but yet, we still have to pay another $7.99 for the exact same application. Granted, the iPad app has prettier graphics, but there’s no difference in the gameplay: no more spaces, no more towers… nothing. They do have a new map listed as coming soon, but they’ll probably charge us to play it when it’s released. Awesome.

If we were to upgrade all four of those applications, we’d spend $50 between the iPhone and iPad versions… and that doesn’t include the in-app purchases. Let’s make it $60+. Four apps > 10% of the device cost. Not okay. We’re unfairly attacking Fieldrunners here. Most developers suck just as bad as Subatomic Studios. PopCap, we really expected better from you… in fact, we expected better from all the developers. We definitely expected better from Apple.

As Paul points out in his post on Engadget, developers are not solely responsible for this BS. Apple still hasn’t given us a way to properly demo an app that we’d like to purchase. Sure, developers can do a free version and make their money in-game, but that business model gets annoying. We, just like everyone else, would like to see a demo of the full apps we’ll be purchasing (please make it mandatory for all paid apps). If we can’t see what it’s going to do, we’re definitely not going to spend $9.99 to find out. $0.99 was a reasonable waste if we don’t like the app… but $9.99 is going to keep us from buying a lot of apps.

We’re not sure what to think about “Things.” It looks like a complete waste of money. $9.99 for the iPhone app, $19.99 for the iPad and $49.99 for the desktop version. $70 bucks is a lot of money to stay organized with one app. Cough.

What can we learn from this? Doubling your app price is stupid. Charging your loyal customers twice for the same thing is stupid. Thinking we’ll support your ridiculous prices is stupid. Get the hint?

We like most of the developers out there, but you’re going to get bad reviews and fewer sales if you leave your prices where they are now. The iPad isn’t a “premium” device. It’s supposed to be mobile computing for the masses. Suck it up, lower your prices, write good software and let us buy it from you.

Apple has become drunk with power… so drunk, in fact, that they honestly believe their users will put up with anything they do. What will it take for all of the Apple fanboys to get pissed off, or are we forever pathetically committed to a company that thinks it can control our every move? I’m surprised that we haven’t hit the point of revolution already.

Take for example this past week’s removal of boob apps from the App Store: the totals for app removal are well over 5,000 at this point. Anything that references boobs, or has any sort of “sexual” content within the app has been removed from the store. Apple essentially decided to remove anything that could possibly turn us on. How can they really determine what turns us on? Even after this removal, we can still find applications with half naked men washing cars — this definitely doesn’t turn us on but could still be considered offensive material in some circles. They supposedly received so many complaints about the content in the store that they commenced operation “App Store Boob War.” In this war, we’ve run into a lot of civilian casualties, but somehow we’ve missed the all-important, ever-offending targets. Someone explain why an innocent clothing company’s app can be removed for showing swimsuit apparel but the Playboy and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit apps still remain in the store unscathed by the barrage of policy changes?

Phil Schiller, exercising his usual damage control, tried to explain that “well-established” applications have remained in the App Store because… they’re well established. This tells us it’s okay for big brother Apple to approve applications with tremendous capital and political pull but the small guys get screwed. Anyone else see issues with that? That doesn’t show us the freedom we’ve come to expect from a capitalist country where the small guy can make it big. No, that’s a dictatorship. We might as well be living in China where the government thinks it’s okay to filter our ability to access online content. Isn’t that what Apple has done here?

Let’s go back a few months: Apple has consistently denied companies access to the App Store because of possible conflicts with their current or future offerings. To name just a few, Google Voice and other applications of the sort were denied access because Apple believed it would cause customer confusion. VoIP applications were initially barred from using AT&T’s 3G network. Sure, one could argue that the 3G restriction had more to do with AT&T than Apple, but Apple is the one who’s ultimately doing the banning. Back even further, Podcaster was an application that wanted to give us better control over our podcasts: it was denied access for duplicating a functionality that didn’t even exist in the iPhone OS at that point. Apple wanted to offer a service like it in the future, so they killed it and all of the effort the developer put into the application. What’s to prevent them from claiming duplication of our great ideas if there’s never been any previous documentation? They have the last say; we have nothing.

What about the Jailbreak community? The general argument for Jailbreak is this: people want to get more out of their devices so they Jailbreak it in order to do with it as they please. Shouldn’t we be able to do that without modifying the stock software? Shouldn’t we be able to use the hardware we purchase on any carrier by default? Even if we spend the extra money to buy an iPhone out-right, we still have to unlock it for use with T-Mobile in the U.S… other countries have it a little easier. The unlock process is never an easy task: we’re always playing cat and mouse to keep our devices running the latest software and remain unlocked.

Apple also tries to stupid-proof all of their devices. By doing so, they lock down features and innovation that could easily result in the next big advancement of the iPhone OS. Themes are a pretty big request among the Jailbreak community as well as tethering (for AT&T customers), stronger parental controls and easier access to information with apps like IntelliScreen. IntelliScreen and better parental controls could easily make their way into the next version of iPhone software, but theming is probably another stupid-proof restriction that Apple hasn’t implemented because they don’t know how. That’s what we ran into with copy and paste; they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make it work with an “Apple” interface. Even now, we find ourselves trying to copy things that won’t copy: partially developer issues but there’s definitely not a global copy and paste interface for the iPhone quite yet.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg… we could seriously go on for another 1,000 words re-hashing the idiosyncrasies of the iPhone OS, but we’ll stop and move on to some possible solutions.

Apple cannot and should not restrict iPhone content. Period. They need to loosen the developer handcuffs a bit and realize that there will eventually be porn on the iPhone whether they like it or not. They just need to figure out a way to implement it without causing problems for the conservative audience. We’ve already suggested that they create a separate adult store for those applications, but it seems like we’ve just been spitting in the wind. We can have R-rated boob movies in the iTunes Store but we can’t use the word “boob” in an application. We can download explicit tracks that call women hoes and bitches (I mean no offense) in the music store but if someone curses in your social app, you could be banned. We can watch sex on TV with our iPhones but we can’t show women in bikinis. Whatever happened to checks and balances. Our government has to have them, what about companies that take dictatorship a little too far?

We realize that AT&T and Apple are undergoing investigations with the FCC due to the interesting drama surrounding Google Voice… but they can only do so much. They won’t ban carrier exclusivity, they won’t force Apple to be more accepting with apps and they definitely won’t get porn on the iPhone. So what’s the point? It seems like we keep getting back to porn, but that’s not our main point: we want the iPhone OS to be an open platform. A platform that fosters innovation instead of hindering it.

Part of that hindrance is the lack of structure within the App Store approval process. Developers are afraid to be innovative because they never know what will happen when they press the submit button after completing their application. Even if they’ve read the SDK with a militant eye, their app could be denied for any reason… it’s usually followed with a vague description for repair and resubmittal. The next reviewer could claim more faults that were never expressed in the first review and their app could be stuck in limbo for weeks if not months. Why would any self-respecting developer put themselves through that kind of shame? Because Apple is extremely popular and, in many aspects, worth the risk if you have something that will sell. It’s that attitude that has made Apple into this dictator, and it’s the haphazardness that has turned many developers away from the platform. There needs to be a pre-approval process for developers: it wouldn’t be too difficult to implement and it may prove to bring more developers to the platform who are willing to be innovative.

Control isn’t everything; Apple seems to be bending over for AT&T. After what is almost a year, we still don’t have access to tethering in the U.S. with AT&T’s 3G network. We finally have some breakthroughs with the introduction of video streaming and VoIP over 3G, but that’s not enough and has not always been the case. Strong-arm Apple needs to get off the ground and go to bat for its customers against AT&T. They’re obviously not living up to the agreement that Apple theoretically put in place before signing contracts… or maybe Apple was too desperate to get a partner (at the time) that they didn’t include specific articles like tethering in the contract. We can’t really comment on the 3G data here — we’re firm believers that any network would have issues handling the iPhone traffic, even Verizon. Either way, carrier exclusivity is NOT the way to go if you want to keep your customers happy.

Okay, step off the soap box… We also have to realize that Apple is only in its third revision of the OS. Realistically, there weren’t that many changes from 2.0 to 3.0 either. Other mobile operating systems like Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Blackberry OS have had years to perfect their devices and figure out all of the issues that Apple encountered within the last couple years. Does that mean Apple should deny us the customer experience we’re looking for? No, but you could attribute the lack of “awesome” to their inexperience and tremendously quick growth.

When the iPhone came out almost 3 years ago, it appeared to be the best phone on the market and forced many other developers to improve their operating systems… and they did. They’ve answered Apple’s challenge and have come up with better user interfaces, some that put Apple’s non-multitasking, page-sliding OS to shame. All the while, Apple’s user interface has remained largely unchanged since its initial launch back in 2007. Yes, we have native applications; yes, there’s a search function; yes, there are countless other features that improved the user experience, but those “new features” have been available on other devices for years. So when does Apple stop playing catch up with the other devices? When does the real innovation start? When will the current restrictions be removed?

Right now, it’s looking like hell will freeze over and pigs will fly before Apple’s dictatorship is overthrown.

Please remember that the statements below are generalities (We’re not obsessed with porn nor do we have any opinion on the matter).

Since the App Store launched back in 2008, we’ve heard countless stories of “overtly sexual” content being rejected and then approved. Most of this is due to policy changes in the App Store approval process — the policies really haven’t been defined well and seem to change on a daily basis.

“Wobble iBoobs” was an app that originally popped up in the App Store quite some time ago and was shortly followed by the real problem apps: all of the stupid “pasties” apps that show everything possible without nudity (no nipples). We’re not sure who turned on the switch for porn, but we do know that the amount of “pasties” apps were getting well into the double digits. Some stupid, new app showed up on the top downloads nearly every week.

Maybe the sheer number of crappy porn apps caused Apple to tighten their belts and lay out stricter rules… maybe they were pressured by your mother (yeah, she saw you). Who knows? Apple has responded to this barrage of internet news coverage with the following statement:

“Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content we review them. If we find apps that contain inappropriate material we remove them from the App Store and request the developer to make any necessary changes to their apps in order to be distributed by Apple.”

We’re not sure we buy that. There’s been some pretty heavy banning in the App Store this week, and we’re sure that mom didn’t start complaining on Monday.

Click the read link… it’s worth reading the rest of this, we promise

The biggest issue here is this: After nearly two years, Apple has yet to figure out a way to filter content without completely censoring it. Parental controls, age verifications — there’s always going to be a way to circumnavigate those features… so will they just remove sexual content completely? No, that would be harder to achieve than an unbiased article at Cracked. What about all the movies that feature R-rated content or even nudity? What about explicit tracks available from the iTunes Music Store? Even some of the TV episodes are considered mature. Shouldn’t Apple remove every ounce of “inappropriate” media from our lives?

Apple is fighting a never-ending battle here. It’s not up to them to control what content makes it to our devices; it’s up to us to decide what we do and do not want to see. Selective approvals make Apple look like Joseph McCarthy who made false accusations with little to no evidence. Adding a porn section to the App Store wouldn’t blacklist Apple: with special age verified access and a place for all of the stupid boob apps, it would probably make a lot of people very happy. Removing the applications — no matter how dumb they are — places everyone in the wrong position(s). Apple wants to make money; people want to pay for porn… what’s the problem?

Realistically, Apple needs to sit down and rewrite the approval process from start to finish. If an iPhone App Review employee is having a crappy day, they could haphazardly reject 3 months of a single developer’s time and the next amazing iPhone app. That’s not okay. What’s wrong with proposals? Why couldn’t you explain what you’re looking to do and have Apple pre-approve it? This has been suggested for over a year now, but Apple hasn’t made a single step in this direction causing many developers thousands of dollars. We could go on, but we’ll leave that for an editorial. Apple, fix it.

Source

Not too long ago, Apple introduced web-based browsing for songs and albums found in the iTunes Store… then they added 30 second streaming previews to that same interface. One could easily begin to wonder why we’d need the store integrated into the Application if Apple keeps this up — yes, they kept it up. A few days ago, people started noticing their App Store links directing to a web-based app preview before sending them to iTunes. By copying the link to an app (or album, video, etc.), you can send people directly to iTunes if you use HTML. Most developers use the copied links for their “Available on the App Store” button, and we use them for all of our app reviews.

Confused? There’s more: all of those links will now do two things… open a preview of the linked item in your web-browers and open it in iTunes. Seems a little glitchy to us. The old App Store linking capabilities appear to have disappeared. If you simply copy the link from the iTunes Store and paste it into your web-browser, it works just fine. The most common form — embedded in text or image HTML code — is where things get crazy. We don’t need it to automatically launch iTunes… at all. Couldn’t we just view it in the browser? Then we wouldn’t have to warn you that your computer will do weird things by clicking a link. We don’t really have to warn you, we’re just being nice.

One of our favorite iPhone app available on the App Store is Guitar Toolkit. Click the link; it’ll send you to the preview page — and then open iTunes. Yay! We can look at it twice! It does the same thing with music too. Unfortunately for us and developers who link to their App Store content, it looks stupid. Hopefully we’ll see this fixed soon.

Speculation is running rampant with these new additions to Apple’s website. Web-based iTunes store rumors have been around for quite some time, but Apple’s recent purchase of LaLa could mean a browser-based iTunes platform that allows you to play purchased music anywhere on any machine by logging in. Think of it as iTunes meets Pandora.

As a side note, all of the links on “apple.com/itunes” still take you to the application itself. Odd.