MacDirectory Magazine

Spring-Summer 2010

MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.

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FEA TURE So maybe it is WW3 after all? Steve isn’t a good enemy to have. Just ask any Mac magazine. And war with Adobe Jobs has also declared war on Adobe, refusing to support Flash on the iPad. He argues that Flash is buggy and such a CPU hog that memory life on the iPad would be 1.5 hours instead of 10 hours if Flash were enabled. Jobs added, “Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.” Jobs continued, “They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it.” This isn’t just Steve letting off steam. The market agrees: Adobe laid off 600 employees in 2008 (8 percent), and another 680 in 2009, citing the weak economy. The advertising industry has not been buying Creative Suite 4 for two reasons, according to analysts: budget slashing, and dissatisfaction with the product, which is widely perceived to be a resource hog. Yet Flash is deeply entrenched. While iPad customers are waiting for HTML5, they’re going to be looking at a lot of plain white boxes where Flash is supposed to be. One thing is for sure: Nobody, ever, again, can call yours truly the only person in the world who doesn’t think much of Adobe. Thanks, Steve! I owe you! Are they the Allies or the Axis? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, ZDNet’s Larry Dignan has a different slant. Rather than Steve declaring war on Google and Adobe, he speculates that Google and Adobe are combining forces against Apple. If true, so what? Both Adobe’s and Google’s products are moribund. We think Apple can take them on. Apple has ammunition up its sleeve — including secret dual-platform application building technology that already embraces most of the underlying technology of Creative Suite. Not to mention that Apple could release OS X for all Intel computers anytime it wished to — or help Microsoft get search right. Speaking of the iPad . . . . I don’t get it. A supersized iPod that can only make calls over Skype? Why would somebody who could afford an iPad want to make low-quality calls? No camera? No videocam? Another gadget to carry? The real problem is portability. Ultra-thin, flexible, foldable displays have been under development for several years. When they’re ready, it will be possible to make an iPad that can fold to half the size of an iPhone. That’s when I think this kind of device might become popular. I’ll scream if I hear one more time how much easier the iPad is going to make reading the paper at breakfast. What happens when you spill your coffee on the paper? It blots it up. Can an iPad do that? Suppose you’ve got a large family. Just how many people can share an iPad? Can you split it up into sections? As for reading your iPad while commuting — not in any American city. You’d own your iPad for about five more seconds. Whoever dreamed this one up goes to work in a chauffeur-driven car. And when was the last time these people checked signal quality for wireless or cellular in a train tunnel? Yes, exactly. And then — no multitasking. On an Apple product. In 2010. When you can buy a full-fledged Dell laptop, for less, that will run Snow Leopard with a little tinkering? Maybe I can’t see the forest for the trees? David Pogue says that techies will hate the iPad and everyone else will love it. In the interests of balanced commentary, let me channel Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal(and Apple’s favorite reporter), who confidently states the iPad “has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop.” Let’s check back in a year, Walt, to see who was right. In the meantime, as we go to press, it’s reported that 300,000 iPads sold the first weekend. I can’t help being thrilled for Apple. MacDirectory 61

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