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. :/

Think of it this way… if I buy the default 16GB iPad WiFi, Apple’s profit is $200. If I go for the fully-loaded 64GB iPad 3G, Apple actually profits $440.

Wall street will love this device. Apple’s stock price has been slowly but surely increasing since this information was released. If this device takes off, we expect to see ridiculous amounts of profit from Apple. Ridiculous.

Source

We learned about some pretty incredible revisions of software for the iPad as Steve made the announcement. The fact that Apple finally put iWork (Keynote, Pages and Numbers) on the Cocoa Touch platform is great for people looking to use the device for business. The iBooks application will definitely begin to dominate the eReader market. Mobile Safari will truly take over as iPad users’ browser of choice. The Calendar and Address Book apps are beautiful: it looks like Apple invested a lot of time into their development. We also can’t forget that we’ll have the advantage of the App Store with the iPad, while other devices have little to no software expandability.

Even though the iPad software is somewhat expandable (it’s still limited by the app approval process), it doesn’t have a whole lot to offer in hardware features. We’re seeing too many accessories to even take them seriously: the fact that Apple has more than 5 accessories tells you that something is a little off. Using the dock connector as the sole connection is very limiting… I would have loved to use video out and plug in an external device like a camera or USB jump drive at the same time. Currently, it appears that — even with the USB port accessory — we won’t be able to use external USB devices, with the exception of cameras. The video out only converts to component, composite or VGA: aren’t we living in the digital age? Couldn’t we have DVI, HDMI or even MiniDisplay Port? Okay fine, the port situation is bad; what about the rest of the hardware? We don’t know as much information as we’d like because there aren’t many iPads in the wild just yet… but we know that it has “custom-built” SOC that uses a Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a Mali GPU. We also know that it will only have 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities: will still find this strange due to the new chip capabilities Toshiba announced in early December.

Our iPad reaction is still very mixed: we can’t really say that it’s the device we were expecting, but for some reason, we still want one. Apple obviously wanted people to realize the software potential during the Keynote… they spent over an hour talking about what it can do instead of what it is. I love the idea of having the iWork productivity suite on the device and plan to use it for Keynote presentations as soon as possible. Let’s look at it as an eReader: recent studies have suggested that Kindle owners typically want more from their devices. They don’t want just a book… they want features, flexibility, expandability — they want the iPad.

We would typically write off a product like this if it wasn’t from Apple. Their ability to define “revolutionary” is revolutionary. Even if the tech world completely rejected a device, it would still do very well in the consumer market — because it’s an Apple product. The price is perfect: it has netbook and tablet manufacturers redesigning their business models as I type. It offers just enough bang to be appealing, and it has better software than most devices on the market… combined.

Our final verdict: if it weren’t for the already exploding App Store supporting this device it wouldn’t be worth the money. However, the App Store exists, and Apple’s currently devoting a lot of time and resources to software development. If you are one of the people looking for something between a smartphone and a laptop, this may be the perfect device for you. If it doesn’t thrill you quite yet, just wait until the second revision. It may be a year before we get to see that device, but the hardware will be better and could theoretically have a camera with video chat capabilities. Yeah, we’re stoked.

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 they have the money to do it.

Before and after shots of the iPad promotional video:

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 to be released along with the announcement of the iPad on Wednesday. We expect the iPad software in the presentation was left at 3.2 and we may see Flash when it’s upgraded to 4.0 sometime in the near future. We may not see iPhone OS 4.0 until the WWDC event in June, but we don’t expect that Apple’s announcement really covers everything that this device can do. We’re also still unsure about the power of the processor: it’s 1GHz according to Apple but that doesn’t mean much. The iBook G4 had a 1GHz processor in an early revision. Could it play flash? Sort of. But one thing we can say is that the graphics power appeared to be very good and responsive during the keynote. That makes us think this device is perfectly capable of running Flash, but we won’t know until someone from the press gets to play with one and run some benchmarks.

Update:

Mac Rumors is now reporting that the New York Times actually doctored the website for Apple’s promotional video. This information comes from and undisclosed source. Take it as you will, but we tend to believe it.

So, what can it do? To put it simply, it’s a glorified iPhone with a better processor and more capabilities. Here are the specs worth noting:
• 9.7 inch display with a 1024-by-768 screen resolution.
• 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB capacities.
• 1GHz Apple A4 processor (Built by Apple’s PA Semi).
• Built-in Accelerometer.
• Ambient light sensor for better battery life.
• Wireless N and 3G capabilities (3G only in the higher-end models).
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology.
• Digital Compass, assisted GPS (cell tower and wifi location).
• TV and Video outputs (requires adapters).
• 10 hours of heavy usage. 30 days standby.

So what makes this machine worth the price tag? It uses the same apps as the iPhone and sits directly between a smartphone and a laptop on the portability scale. More portable than a laptop (probably — more on this later) and more powerful than an iPhone. Could it be a complete laptop replacement? Yes, if you have a desktop to do your real work on.

I keep thinking back to who could really use this device the most and it always directs me to students. Just think about it: a lot of schools already have implemented iPhones and iPod touches into their lesson plans… those devices are awfully small and don’t allow you to do real “work.” The iPad would be a reasonable price to add to admission fees for students to stay connected around campus (most have wifi) and have all of the iTunes University abilities built-in. Schools wouldn’t have to sign onto AT&T contracts because it has a Wifi-only version. Just think, a whole campus completely mobile and able to access their school work, class projects, email, presentations, etc with a device that would fit in a hand bag. That doesn’t even include the possibility that textbook publishers will be publishing to the iPad. It’s perfect for textbooks. P.E.R.F.E.C.T. Even McGraw-Hill’s CEO said that they’ve been working with Apple to bring their books to the iPad. After thinking about it, I really see this device changing the education market more so than any other.

I see tremendous amounts of potential, but I also take a step back to think about what isn’t perfect about the iPad:
• Just like other iPhone OS devices (they should really rename that now… maybe Cocoa Touch OS?) the iPad cannot display Flash videos or any Flash content whatsoever. This isn’t a deal-breaker for me because I honestly despise flash, it’s a processor hog and it’s incredibly difficult to work with.
• It only has a dock connector and no other connections besides the headphone jack. I can understand Jonathan Ive’s desire — from a design standpoint — to simply the device as much as possible, but one connector means ridiculous amounts of adapters. As of this writing, I’ve heard of several: a power adapter, docking station for the keyboard (what happened to bluetooth?), a display adapter for TVs AND a separate display adapter for monitors (VGA only, really?), an SD card reader, and even a USB adapter.
• Yes, the iPads are factory-unlocked and can be used with any GSM sim card… but they won’t work with T-Mobile’s 3G in the US (1700MHz) or any other network that uses a different part of the spectrum for their data. The iPhone only supports UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz) and GSM/EDGE (850, 900,1800, 1900 MHz). So, T-Mobile’s out if you’re looking for a fast connection. Other countries may fair better.
• It STILL doesn’t multitask with applications. It’s perfectly capable of multitasking as far as the hardware is concerned, so why wouldn’t it be enabled? That I cannot answer. It boggles the mind.
• Where’s my effing camera? Seriously, Apple knew that their customers were hoping for a rear and front facing camera that would allow us to video chat and other nefarious possibilities (The ‘net has been discussing it for a long time). We were given no respect.
• No digital video out. So much for connecting our HD movies to our televisions. If you’re going to do that, they’re gonna run through analog signals. What’s the point? The device isn’t even widescreen (4:3 instead of 16:9) so why have HD videos on it in the first place?
• My biggest complaint: it only runs the iPhone OS. Yes this operating system will evolve with time, but it’s not there yet. To limit such a device to the iPhone OS really limits what a developer can do with the device. Apple very strictly monitors what goes in and out of the iPhone OS and, in my opinion, limits a developer’s creativity by doing so.

The end verdict is this: yes, I want one… am I jumping out of my seat to get one? Not really. This device had the potential to change how we see mobile computing forever… I think it made it halfway to fulfilling that potential. Universities will love it for its versatility, tech gurus will despise it for its uniformity. I suppose if they made it “perfect” in the first go-round… they wouldn’t have anything to add later. Look at the iPhone, it was revolutionary, but it wasn’t really until the second generation (iPhone 3G) that it became the phone everyone wanted. Hopefully I’ll be able to sell mine and get the next generation without losing too much money