Because Apple apparently wanted to wipe it to prevent the software from being usable/visible. Once you wipe it, the configuration for FindMyPhone is wiped too (the device has to be linked to an account in order to be found).

It's better to lose hardware that can only be looked at than lose the hardware and the software, which would reveal a lot more about features. Gizmodo couldn't even say what the screen resolution was, because all it does it ask to be re-imaged with software Gizmodo doesn't have access to install.

Apple never leaks prototypes into the wild for promotional purposes. If anything, the phone was stolen. Apple likes buzz, but is not going to benefit from two months of "don't buy an iPhone until this new one comes out."

Adobe slips mobile Flash Player 10.1 to second half of 2010

Thanks for clarifying that you think Flash is not a problem on a multitouch device like the iPad because it works just fine on your non-multitouch Pocket PC device, as long as you have a joystick type controller to move around the mouse cursor.

The point is that existing Flash content assumes a mouse pointer because it's all designed to work on a Windows PC. That makes it a poor choice as a mobile platform.

Even as a lowest common denominator platform, Flash isn't capable of being deployed on the iPhone, the iPod touch, and the iPad, nor RIM's Blackberry. The Flash experience on Macs and PS3 and Wii and various other platforms that Adobe supposedly supports Flash playback on are similarly poor.

So unless you want to just drag a proprietary binary from the desktop to a mobile device and then kluge up the hardware to work like a mini-puter running Windows without any consideration of what makes a mobile device useful, Flash isn't any better than Windows Mobile.

Inside the iPad: Adobe Flash

The story here is that Newsweek found a dozen people who can provide anecdotal accounts of individuals not being successful while selling software in the App Store. Because while Apple turned the mobile software market from a failure to an astounding success, it's important to keep in mind that not everyone who makes a half-assed attempt to get rich quick via the iPhone will be snorting coke off hooker's asses in Cancun within a few weeks (just the approval process takes longer than that! Plus you have to save up for years to buy a Mac, and then scrounge up $99 for a certificate. That's all simply well out of the reach of most developers who want to get rich quick in mobile software.)

This is all newsworthy because Apple has sold a couple billion apps in its first year, and explaining away the success of the App Store is critically important for Apple critics. Casting a cloud over Apple's software store also helps provide some relief to the struggling stores run by competitors, and distracts away from the problems affecting Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

That's also why the problem of Apple's successful trajectory with the iPhone is a core issue for Gartner, plenty of one-man consultant groups who shill for competing platforms and carriers, and of course, all of this is newsworthy to Slashdot because it offers some opportunity for negative discussion about Apple.

The idea is that "iTunes LP" would serve as the non-song content you used to get when you bought an album: the beautiful LP cover, lyrics, and other stuff. But upgraded to the digital era.

The problem with this non-story is that Apple isn't selling iTunes LP extras, it's giving it away when you buy the regular album associated with it.

It was a defensive move to prevent the labels from inventing their own proprietary format instead. iTunes LPs are just self-contained websites built using web standards: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Apple created a JavaScript framework called TuneKit to allow these "self contained websites" to interact with iTunes, playing content etc.

The same format is used to deliver iTunes Extras, the same bonus format for movies. Essentially, both are designed to make extremely easy to author bonus content that labels and studios (including indies) can use to add value to their existing work.

Obviously, Apple doesn't want to launch the new format with a bunch of crap, and taint it with mocking commentary that equates garbage or wierdo music with the format. So it launched the new format with iTunes 9 using a dozen big music acts and a similar number of recent movies. There has been the typical hysterical fit from poorly sourced, half-right "tech news" pieces that claimed Apple hates indies and will charge $10,000 (!) to develop the titles.

This is clearly all uninformed bullshit because there's no way Apple would develop content for third parties for just $10,000 a pop. Not even a professional authoring artist would do these for that kind of budget. Compare the free involved with authoring a DVD or BluRay disc, or creating all the artwork for a band's website or a multimedia CD-ROM.

Slashdot picked up the story and keeps trying to bump it up into the air because it sounds bad for Apple. The reality is that this is the best possible album format design anyone in the FOSS community could have hoped for. It's open, you can built it yourself, and kids can even apply some remedial HTML skills to remix their own content downloads. It's the web with a minimal business model.

New iTunes LP and Extras built using TuneKit Framework, aimed at Apple TV
Why Apple is betting on HTML 5: a web history
Apple plans to open iTunes LP for independent labels

No worries, this is not about putting any sort of Flash-anything on the iPhone.

It's only about using the next Flash developer tool release to convert Flash apps into iPhone apps. They're using LLVM to compile ActionScript (Adobe's proprietary version of JavaScript) into ARM code, resulting in a standard iPhone app. There's no Flash runtime involved (nor could there be). So there's no problem with shoveling this into the App Store, apart from meeting basic quality requirements.

So this will turn shitty Flash game-lets into shitty iPhone apps. Not really news, apart from the fact that Adobe is scrambling to line up every phone vendor but can't get its Flash runtime on the phone that's soaking up half of the world's mobile Internet traffic.

HTML5 assault on Adobe Flash heats up with ClickToFlash

You're referencing the app store or what? That's not the issue here, but if you are, you should consider that the app store is functional, for developers and for users, in a way that "other phones" are not.

If you prefer ideology over functionality/availability/commercial viability, then knock yourself out. But spare us the "ought" conversation and hypothetical moralizing propped up against a failed world view.

If being "open" solved all problems, we'd be all using Linux PCs and using OpenMoko handsets. We might also be living in a communist paradise. Unfortunately, none of those things work well enough for most people to actually use.

It wasn't an analogy. Provisioning is a basic concept that underlies the marketing features of both Parental Controls and Managed Preferences. It relates to access permissions.

You can think of everything in terms of "what you want" as a customer, but the reality is that mobile providers want to give you a specific packages of options. If they only sell one size to fit all, then people who don't need it all would still have to pay for it all.

You wouldn't want to pay for a site license to Photoshop just to edit pictures at home. You might even want to get by with Elements. Those are options.

Same applies to mobile providers. Maybe you don't want to pay for everything. Maybe you're a company and don't want or can't support everything. That's the problem provisioning solves.