Many consumers are surprised that the iPhone still has no internet-video player. Adobe has a tight grip on this technology on mobile devices and it’s unbelievable that Apple and Adobe still haven’t reached an agreement. “Why?” is a reasonable question to ask. Unfortunately, it appears that the only man with an answer to that question is Steve Jobs himself. When asked, no other spokesperson or employee of Apple could answer the question.

Luckily, with the release of the SDK prone to come by the end of February, many sources believe that Adobe will be able to develop the flash player at that time. But the question still stands, why has Steve Job’s been delaying the process? Is there some underlying issue here? Unfortunately, with no official statements being made, us bloggers are left to be the ones to speculate. With so little sources, even the author of the article quotes Andru Edwards over at the Gear Live blog.

My opinion? Apple has something in the works, most probably a video player of their own creation. This would be quite the feat because almost all videos online are flash-based. This would also be a surprising move because Apple and Adobe have a history of a strong relationship, caused by both of their products driving the sales of the other so solidly. Really, all we can do is speculate and wait to see what happens.

[Source: The Wall Street Journal 02/21/08 P. B3]

written by Simone Renee \\ tags: Adobe, Apple, iPhone, iPhone SDK

1.1.3 Firmware is still relatively new, however we’re already reading rumors and hearsay about the release of 1.1.4 in the near future.

This is all well and good… More important than 1.1.4 (to me at least) is the soon to be released iPhone SDK. Perhaps 1.1.4 will accompany this… But we’ll have to wait to find out for sure.

Most of the 1.1.4 speculation is revolving around 3rd party iPhone app developer Tiny Code. They’ve recently pulled their apps from installer.app due to ‘legal reasons’. Their site was also updated with this message:

“Tiny Code no longer produces fixes or applications for firmware 1.1.3. We can’t say much, but we are working with Apple and with their SDK for the next firmware release and SDK applications and we shouldn’t be missed for long. We will no longer update our Installer.app repo for legality reasons and you should see us soon on iTunes.”

Something has to be up here. As you’ll notice, the Tiny Code website now redirects to the iPhone Dev Center.

Visit our friends at iPhoneFAQ and iPhoneSaviour to read more on this.

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: 1.1.4, iPhone, iPhone SDK, Tiny Code

A new version of Safari is reported to be coming in the next firmware update for iPhone. As well all know the desktop version is in beta at the moment…

Some of the new features reported to be included sound quite interesting. It should render non-standard fonts much better, giving it better scaling and rendering action. Sounds good to me, I only hope this doesn’t slow processing / rendering down at all. 60% of the time I want a fast load all the time. Ok that doesn’t make sense and was a terrible Anchorman reference… But I think you know what I mean.

The new version may also translate HTML boxes in real time. This could prove very interesting to developers. It would allow them to give users the ability to scale, rotate and move elements on a page. Cool, but we’ll see where this one goes.

It in all likelyhood will be an HTML 5 capable browser. So, more multimedia elements and controllers will be available to embed on a page.

The exciting part of the new safari may be in a database browser tool. It will have support for the SQL storage API. With this you could theoretically store web page applications right on your iPhone.

We’ll see how many of these features translate over to a new Safari built for iPhone. Should be coming down the pipe shortly!

What is your take on Safari for the iPhone? Love the experience? Or are there some areas you think it could be better? Obviously it is leaps and bounds ahead of the browsing experience on other hand held devices… I simply hope Apple keeps pushing forward to stay well out in front.

[via iPhoneFreak]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: iPhone, iPhone SDK, Safari