Iron Ink Media: Inked Up

Apple is suing phone manufacturer HTC for infringing on about 20 patents. Apple says that the Taiwanese company is using protected patents related to hardware, user interface and underlying architecture.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, said Tuesday in a statement. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Our guess is that Apple is right. Of course, we have no legal background nor extensive information on this.

Ok everyone, listen up. If you haven’t played Assassin’s Creed II for PS3 or XBox 360 or whatever, it’s probably a good idea for you to do so. Forget having a life or whatever, just go get it.

So we were just perusing some iPhone news and saw that Assassin’s Creed II: Multiplayer launched today for iPhone. And it’s free for the first 48 hours! After that, it jumps to $2.99. That’s not insanely expensive, but hell, it’s more than free. So go download it and check out the iPhone version of this sweet game.

Then urinate away the next four hours of your life playing it.

We’ve heard people crying for a while now. “Why can’t I get Flash on my iPhone?!” And Adobe said that Apple is being stupid about it and Apple said that Flash is lazy and unstable and on and on. But, MacDailyNews.com posts some interesting comments from Morgan Adams, an interactive developer.

So why isn’t Flash good for mobile devices?

It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem.

Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what.

It seems like there is a reason that iBoobs got kicked out of the Apple app store. It would seem that Apple has some new rules that are really clamping down on anything remotely adult oriented. The app store is family friendly and that’s the way it’s going to stay apparently.

So, here are the new rules that the developer of iBoobs got directly from Apple:

1. No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)
2. No images of men in bikinis! (I didn’t ask about Ice Skating tights for men)
3. No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)
4. No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs (yes – I am serious, we have to remove the silhouette in this pic)
5. No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned
6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing!! (I doubt many people could get aroused with the pic above but those puritanical guys at Apple must get off on pretty mundane things to find Wobble “overtly sexual!)
7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but …)

According to an Adobe blog post, some seven million iPhone users have tried to download Flash for the iPhone.

“A little while ago I blogged about our new iPhone page at the Flash Player download center, the same site where hundreds of millions of users download and upgrade Flash every year,” says Mark Doherty, Flash Platform dude at Adobe Systems. “We were amazed by the numbers of hits received from iPhone OS devices, from users seeking the Flash Player to play back rich content from their favorite sites. Users that, before we created the special page, had no idea that Apple do not want them viewing the Internet as they see it today.”

It’s clear that iPhone users want Flash on their phone. As it is now, a small blue square shows up in the middle of the area where Flash would be on websites. It’s annoying.

But Apple CEO doesn’t want to embrace Flash because he thinks Adobe is lazy, Flash is all sorts of buggy and that the future of the internet will be HTML5 anyway.

Still, c’mon. Just get us Flash for now. We don’t care about the future.

If you’re obsessed with all things Apple, particularly the iPhone or iPod touch, you can now go to the next level… with iPhone bedding.

I would like to think that this was designed for young kids, but I have a feeling it will be purchased by grown men who don’t plan on bringing anybody back to their place.

Rumors have been circulating blogs and Twitter for months, but today they were confirmed as Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple iPad tablet computer at an invite-only event.

From Engaget.com

Like other Apple devices, the iPad will run on a 3G network, have Wi-Fi capabilities, and be compatible with iTunes and the app store. Content publishers are hoping the tablet will be an opportunity to increase subscription revenues.

While Jobs calls the new product “a truly magical and revolutionary product,” other people are skeptical that consumers will agree. The tablet computer in general is not a new product. In fact, you can trace the idea back to at least the 1990’s. But so far no tablet has gained wide acceptance in the market and really taken off. Apple is hoping that with the popularity of the iPhone interface the iPad becomes the first success story.

According to a couple reports out of Korea, the next generation iPhone is scheduled to be released in April. The new iPhone is expected to have a dual-core processor (in a phone? Wow), video chat, improved graphics, OLED display and *gasp!* a removable battery.

The reports refer to the new iPhone as the “4G iPhone” or “iPhone 4G,” although it’s believed that the G refers to “generation” and not 4G as in the network.

Stay tuned.

While I don’t think anyone will dispute that the iPhone user interface is much better than Windows Mobile, it was until recently lagging behind Windows Mobile in terms of overall users. Well that is no longer. According to a recent comScore survey, the iPhone now has some nine million users as compared to seven million for Windows Mobile.

So take that, Microsoft.

The iPhone also leads the world in mobile web presence, accounting for about half of all mobile web traffic.

Wow! Go, iPhone!

AT&T is getting fed up with people using up too much of their bandwidth on the iPhone. The company says that only 3% of iPhone users take up 40% of the bandwidth and it is a problem for areas with heavy iPhone usage such as Manhattan and San Francisco.

AT&T’s head of consumer services, Ralph de la Vega, said that a different pricing system could be coming to discourage people from hogging bandwidth with things like streaming audio or video. This would be “to either reduce or modify their usage so they don’t crowd out the other customers in those same cell sites,” he said.

We can’t see this endearing AT&T to Apple and could very well hinder a chance at getting a new exclusivity contract.