revenue != profit

I went WiFi only for the iPad 2. The only downside from my iPad with 3G is that "Find my iPad" isn't as precise on location, and requires being on a WiFi spot to work. So if it's stolen, it's going to be harder to recover.

Data wise, the pay as you go plans for iPads were nice and convenient. I could turn it off for a month or two, then turn it back on if I was traveling. Now I just tether to my iPhone, officially. Handy thing is that a recent iOS update enabled bluetooth tethering. WiFi tethering is ok, but requires me to dig my phone out of my pocket to turn on. With Bluetooth, the iPad is able to connect to the iPhone and turn on tethering on it's own.

Interesting poking at that file. My iPhone 4 with the app clearly shows all the travel I've done in the US. The WiFi one also has some locations in Taiwan too. Going to have to build out a full map to see what other interesting spots show up, as I'm not exactly sure why it would show several spots overseas. Unless the file was being built up even prior to me receiving it and doing a restore.

All depends on what you define as "eating their lunch". No one Android phone has come close to matching one iPhone model in sales. And Android is only slightly ahead when looking at the whole world smartphone market. Android is slightly further ahead here in the US, likely due to the AT&T exclusivity that has now ended. Overall phone market, Apple is not in the lead units wise (nor is any smartphone), but profit and revenue wise, Apple is ahead.

This also ignores the software side. It's not Android vs IPhone. It's Android vs iOS. The iPod touch sells well, as does the iPad. Android has very few devices in the music player or tablet space that sell well, and even fewer with the full Google experience including the marketplace. As a software developer, iOS still provides the larger market share possibility.

The good thing is that no matter how you look at the numbers and decide who is "winning", no one is truly dominating. Consumers get to see an honest battle and competition going on with mobiles. Unlike the desktop OS wars of the 90s where Microsoft illegally obtained their monopoly status.

It's been messy for sure. Nokia has enjoyed suing anyone they can, forcing the newer mobile companies like Apple to countersue. Same for Kodak, and I thought I remembered RIM suing a bunch of others over wireless email.

Then you have Apple going after HTC, Motorola and now Samsung due to Android. Microsoft is being their normal selves, and even Oracle didn't want to be left out. What a mess.

Has there been any hacks for Blackberries to bypass the security somehow? I've never looked too deeply into how RIM's security differs from other companies.

The video you linked to shows the phone being jailbroken, thus bypassing a lot of the security as expected. Seems for now my iPad 2 is safe (since no jailbreak methods have worked), but any other iOS device is vulnerable, even with the latest 4.3.2 firmware.

I don't know what stuff Apple was pulling

From Day 1, Apple has had parental controls that can disable the ability to make any App Store purchases on the device. And by default the phone would ask for the iTunes password whenever a new app was downloaded. The problem initially is that in app purchases didn't require a password every time. Apple has since corrected that.

Outside of that, Apple has done nothing. App developers are the ones putting in the in app purchases and promoting them in a way that children were getting to them. There may be some liability since Apple does have a curated app store, but it's going to be hard to prove intent that Apple was in any way doing this intentionally.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” says Shantanu Narayen of Adobe. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.” - February 1, 2009

Apple did work with Adobe. Adobe failed to deliver after 3 years. Apple put their foot down and said "We aren't waiting any longer, we are going to move on". Yes, it's a painful move right now with so much Flash content, but it's becoming less and less painful by the day. Just as it used to be painful when the web moved from one "standard" to another in the past. I doubt anyone here would defend the old Real media methods, nor Windows Media and Quicktime. So it puzzles me why people defend Flash with statements like "The whole war against Flash is futile". Was it futile to try and banish Real's crapware player? Nope. Same goes for the security issue ridden performance hogging Flash runtime.

I should also point out Microsoft stopped distributing Flash with Windows well before Apple did on the Mac side. Many Linux distributions don't include it either. So at this point, it's up to consumers to make the choice on every platform. The sooner people start saying no, the sooner we fix the actual root of the problem, instead of extending proprietary methods for showing video online.

I pointed out why it is Adobe's fault earlier (along with a workaround), so I'll expand on something different here.

You state that you don't care if it's proprietary or not. By not caring, you allowed the situation to happen. Adobe is one company, with one proprietary solution they now own (thanks to buying Macromedia) and continued to spread, hitting a high percentage of the desktop market. The iPad is not a desktop computer, it's a new class of mobile device that relies on different architecture for it's CPU. Because Adobe has a proprietary solution, only Adobe can do the work to port Flash to the new setup. And they failed to do so in the 3 years they were given, at a quality level Apple felt sufficient.

Had the web already been using an open specification for video on the web instead of Flash, Apple would have been able to work to make that specification work on their iOS devices day one.

It's for this reason I have been moving to just rid myself of Flash on all platforms. I do not want to be part of the statistics that indicate my machine can run a proprietary solution on what is supposed to be an open web. By having Flash installed, or even the Click to Flash plugin, my machine is counted. The sooner we as consumers drive up the percentage of non Flash capable browsers, the sooner web sites adapt. Apple sees it this way too, and has stopped shipping Flash on new Macs (since it also clears them of taking responsibility for the security nightmares Flash brings to the table). Now while it is true the open standards path hasn't been responsive in addressing video demands, the history of it is in the past. I want to move to change the future today, by promoting standards and hopefully seeing others do the same so that the standards organizations start moving quicker.

You can work around the Flash video issue for now with Skyfire on iOS devices. It's not great, but it's something. (Yes, iOS browsers do exist beyond Safari)

As for the apps, it would depend on what they do. Some may not be touch aware and simply wouldn't work. Others may need a more powerful processor then the ARM chip in the iPad and other mobile devices. It's all a crapshoot right now. Apple did attempt to let Flash on the iPhone initially, by coding in support for browser plugins and everything. The fault for Flash not being on iOS is Adobe's, not Apple. Apple set a minimum quality bar that Adobe never passed in 3 years of attempts, and Apple finally put their foot down.

From All Things D in 2007 prior to the iPhone launch but after the announcement:
Q: If the iPhone’s Web browser is so good, why can’t it play video on Web sites I visit?

A: At launch, the iPhone version of the Safari browser is missing some plug-ins needed for playing common types of Web videos. The most important of these is the plug-in for Adobe’s Flash technology. Apple says it plans to add that plug-in through an early software update, which I am guessing will occur within the next couple of months. However, a separate program included on the iPhone can play a limited selection of videos from YouTube, and the phone can play videos you purchase from Apple’s iTunes store, and certain videos you create yourself.

And this was still in the works even in 2009:

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” says Shantanu Narayen of Adobe. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.” - February 1, 2009

Adobe failed to deliver. Apple moved on. And Google embraced it as an attempt to have one more checkbox feature over iOS devices, leading to poor experiences for Android owners trapped in a platform battle. Google normally pushes for an open web, except for Flash.

An open web benefits everyone. It also allows everyone to tackle the challenges that come up. Right now, no one has access to change Flash beyond Adobe. So you are forced to get the annoying pieces with the useful pieces.

Remember when popup windows were annoying? Because they were being called via open web standards, instead of a proprietary plugin, browser makers were able to address the issue pretty quickly. Well, except Microsoft since their team was asleep at the wheel then. The point is though that we didn't have to wait on one company to address the annoyance.

I don't want to get rid of Flash just because my iOS device doesn't support it, nor do I have any comments to address your open web vs open OS as I don't find it relevant here. I want to get rid of Flash because it annoys me elsewhere. It slows down my desktop browser, adds another security risk, and is a poor way to get video. I actually preferred older Quicktime and Windows Media methods since the player UI controls were standard, and generally worked. I stumble across tons of Flash players that have poor controls, won't resume if paused for a while, and seek poorly. And the only company that can address this is Adobe. If people were using HTML 5 video, I could chose a better browser if one annoyed me.

So the solution to fixing an infestation of proprietary software into what is supposed to be an open web is to just keep using the proprietary software? And the reason is because some web developer picked a proprietary method of embedding videos, and shouldn't be bothered to change them? Do you feel the same for all the web developers who picked the proprietary Real Video solution a while back?

Apple blocking Flash is one of the best things to happen to try and get a proper open way of doing video on the web. Real, Quicktime, and Windows Media were all past attempts we are glad failed now. Flash took over for a while, but it's time to go join it's proprietary buddies of the past.

Browser detection though is the wrong way to do it. Detecting capabilities is the right way. This has been true since I did web development as a job, and this was back when "DHTML" and "Push" were the popular buzzwords.

Doing browser detection leads to failures like Engadget.com. They feed HTML5 video just fine to an iPad or iPhone, but not to Safari on a Mac lacking Flash. Automatic fail on proper web design there.

It's also annoying how many sites don't serve up HTML 5 content when Flash is missing on the desktop. Engadget is one good example of this. Load up a story with Engadget made videos (such as the recent Playbook review). iPad and iPhone get playable videos, Safari on a Mac without Flash is told to install Flash.

I need to try getting rid of Flash again here soon, I didn't get the workflow set up fully last attempt, and gave in eventually. Time to start actively contributing to lowering Flash's desktop market share.