Iron Ink Media: Inked Up

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.

Here is an entertaining list of what not to do when constructing your iPhone app. It makes sense and they give examples for each:

Be Slow and Stingy: Wired Product Reviews (2.5 stars, 3,724 ratings) gets high marks for good reviews and video when users can find them, but the app gets slammed by users for poor loading times and a dearth of new content. Crashes and reviews not loading properly are frequent complaints from users. In our own experience, we have tried loading reviews in some of the product categories in this app and given up.

Don’t Pay Attention to the Competition: Sports Illustrated quietly came into the app store a couple of months ago with its news and sports scores app (2.5 stars, 867 ratings). Many of the users who actually did discover that their favorite sports brand was here were sorely disappointed by poor updating and buggy behavior. While some users simply like having access to the magazine’s great writing and imagery, the majority of reviewers say they are let down. The big problem for SI is that their main competition, ESPN, has hands down some of the most popular applications across the App Store.

Overpromise, Under-deliver: CBS promises “personalized TV” in its TV.com streaming media applications (2.5 stars, 7,929 ratings) and instead gives most users TV the way we remember it in 1957. With only a handful of shows available in full episodes, a weird collection of brands (CBS, CNet, CW, Showtime) and a lot of promotional trailers. Without clear utility or a reliable and rich content experience, this is a tube TV still waiting to warm up.

Keep Making It Worse: The jury is still out on whether the magazine branded shopping apps we have seen in recent months really are getting traction with users. Many suffer from tepid and few reviews. Lucky At Your Service (2 stars, 1,228 ratings) got slammed by some reviewers who actually like the early iterations of the app and then felt betrayed by cluttered and buggy updates. Complaints about crashes and slow downloads abound, and the reviews have not rebounded even as the app reaches Version 3.0.

Without any help from Apple, Adobe has developed iPhone tools that allows Flash developers to come up with native Flash applications for the iPhone.

Adobe announced on Monday that their next version of Flash Professional will feature an option for developers to export their Flash code in a format that will allow it to run as a native application on the iPhone. Neat!

“We believe these apps are good for Apple and good for the iPhone,” Adrian Ludwig, a product marketing manager with Adobe’s Flash Platform group, told reporters on Monday. “We have no reason to believe that Apple won’t love this.”

Adobe would love to offer the Flash Player for iPhone, but says they would need more help from Apple to do so. Why wouldn’t Apple want Flash for the iPhone??

More from PCWorld.com:

It’s not the Flash Player for the iPhone that many are hoping for, and the applications won’t be able to browse the Web in the way that programs running in Flash Player can. But it does mean that Flash developers won’t have to rewrite their applications from scratch for the iPhone, which should expand the pool of applications for Apple’s device.

While the official release for iPhone MMS is still set for September 25, some users are getting access early. According to CNET,

Reports began cropping up Sunday on Twitter and later in a ZDNet article stating that some users are now able to use MMS on their iPhones. According to those who have early access, the feature hasn’t gone away yet, suggesting that it may be more than a test.

For those of us who didn’t get early access, the update will be released later this month through a software update that will be loaded when you sync your phone with iTunes.

Copyright Apple, Inc.

Ok so check this out. We aren’t exactly sure what this new Google Wave means for iPhone application development because the programming portion of Iron Ink Media doesn’t blog and he won’t tell us why this is so great for programming. But still, this looks neat as hell and we think you should check it out.

This is great. I think Marc is going to get a new toy. Here is the iPhone stencil kit, which allows developers to sketch out their apps and get an idea for how they will look. It’s $16.95 and we think it’s great.

It comes with:

* One iPhone UI Stencil
* Zebra mechanical pencil
* 2 Design Commission stickers
* Downloadable .PDF letter-sized paper template

Apple has its little hands in everything these days. But the one area it has only just begun to explore is casual gaming. According to Forbes,

Apple appears to be preparing an all-out assault on the handheld gaming market, moving to snap up gaming industry insiders from Microsoft to go with its growing team of graphics-chip specialists.

News that Apple has poached Richard Teversham from Microsoft’s Xbox business this week is only the latest sign Apple has gotten serious about the gaming business.

Other new hires include Bob Drebin, chief technologist at Advanced Micro Device’s graphics group and the creator of the Nintendo Gamecube’s graphics processor; Mark Papermaster, former IBM chip designer; and Raja Koduri, former chief technology officer at Advanced Micro Devices.

What does Forbes think this means for iPhone gaming? One, a better camera and multi-media capabilities. Two, a faster processor for better looking games. And three, a netbook or tablet with a larger screen.

Apple has starting working on a new chip for the next-generation iPhone and seems to be assembling an in-house design team. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company recently added Raja Koduri, former chief technology officer at Advanced Micro Devices Inc., to the mix. Some Google-stalking also pulls up dozens of job postings for chip-related positions. But what does all of this mean for the consumer?

Apple could use the internally developed chips to sharply reduce the power consumption of its hit iPhone and iPod touch devices, and possibly add graphics circuitry to help its hardware play realistic game software and high-definition videos, people familiar with its plans say.

And, Apple now gets to keep even more of it’s technology a secret by not having to outsource the chip design work to other vendors. Sneaky but smart.

It’s that time of year: Apple rumors abound. OK, let’s be honest… when is it not that time of year? Regardless, the latest info Apple “experts” are talking about is video capability coming to the iPhone. PC World reports:

Reitzes [ Barclay's Capital analyst Ben Reitzes] predicts that a device designed with a video camera on the iPhone’s face and back will replace the current iPhone. The front camera would support video chat, while the regular iPhone camera would work as a video recorder to rival the Flip line of camcorders. This predicton is also supported by yesterday’s rumors that the new iPhone OS 3.0 has extended video editing support.

Reitzes also predicts that Apple will increase iPhone production (we agree), and will make more than one model of the phone. One of those will be a netbook-like model (yeah, we’ve heard that before) and another, with less features, will be released to the Chinese market.

Bottom line: We’ll have to wait until June for the Worldwide Developers Conference to know for sure.

Adrants.com gives us a report on what’s being talked about at the SXSW show.

Saturday’s session at SXSW 2009 on Emerging Trends in Mobile gave audience members food for thought and panelists a run for their money.

The heavily international crowd (which included an estimated 25 percent non-American attendants) seemed to be, from a show of hands, a well-informed group with a good number of mobile developers in attendance.

Topics ranged from better device-charging solutions to developing for devices that come closer to standard Internet browsing every year. All in all, it was given that WAP technology is dead, fully Flash-enabled devices are the next step, image recognition capabilities and more detailed location-based information are crucial, and the idea that you’d have to actually plug a device into an outlet for any reason is becoming increasingly laughable