Hasta La Gadget!

Adobe’s making a serious play for the app space today, and it’s not limiting itself to phones — its new Air cross-platform runtime environment is designed to toss apps on your smart televisions and tablets as well. Air 2.5 supports accelerometers, multi-touch gestures, cameras and microphones, GPS data and hardware acceleration in a variety of silicon. What’s more, the company wants a piece of the action, so it’s going to help developers bring their Air 2.5 apps to market by partnering with the stores themselves, and charging a mere 30 percent to take care of your hosting, billing and app store approval — though we’re informed the service will be free for the first year if you sign up today. The newly-christened Adobe InMarket won’t help you get into the iTunes App Store, as you might expect, but it should assist with the Intel AppUp store… and perhaps a pair of brand-new marketplaces from RIM and Samsung as well.

Remember when Samsung said it had a single platform for TV and phones late last week? We think this was what the company was talking about, because we have Adobe’s word that the Samsung SmartTV will run Air 2.5 apps when it launches in early 2011. Air will also come standard in RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, but it’s not just for fun, productivity and games there — Adobe told us that the PlayBook’s entire UI is built on Air. We’re not sure quite what we think of Adobe’s role as encapsulated software middleman in the TV and tablet spaces, but we suppose that’s what the firm’s been doing on desktop PCs for years — after all, what’s Adobe Reader but a free way to open licensed PDFs? You should find the Adobe Air 2.5 SDK available on the company’s website today, and a full press release after the break.

Continue reading Adobe announces Air 2.5 for TVs, tablets and phones, launches Adobe InMarket to package apps

Adobe announces Air 2.5 for TVs, tablets and phones, launches Adobe InMarket to package apps originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pick your poison: Vodafone Netherlands? T-Mobile UK? A shop associated with Orange? Or heck, how about RIM itself? All of the above have started teasing the BlackBerry Bold 9780 recently, RIM’s oft-leaked upcoming replacement for the Bold 9700 — so it seems like this will be a pretty wide-scale deployment around the globe (as most of RIM’s launches tend to be). We’ve yet to see any leaks via American carriers, but we’d say it’s safe to argue that AT&T (and perhaps T-Mobile, too) will be signed up to take delivery of these things before too long. As a refresher, the 9780 is basically a 9700 with a better camera, more RAM, and BlackBerry 6 preloaded… so if you love your 9700, you’re probably going to love the 9780 even more. Timing is unclear, but one carrier — Vodafone Netherlands — has proclaimed that it’ll have ’em in early November.

Update: Video review with smooth dutch delivery (subtitled in english) posted after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]

Continue reading BlackBerry Bold 9780 starts leaking all over the place (update: video)

BlackBerry Bold 9780 starts leaking all over the place (update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 04:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steve, Steve, Steve. You really stirred up the pot this time, didn’t you? You couldn’t just leave well enough alone? Peter Oppenheimer and Tim Cook were doing perfectly well, running down Apple’s triumphant numbers during the earnings call early this week, but you had to jump on the line and poke fun at the competition.

Google’s Andy Rubin was the first to respond to Jobs’s comments that the whole Android openness thing is overrated. TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth also came to Android’s defense, after his company ended up becoming fallout in Jobs’s assertions. Both men responded on Twitter, naturally.

We all knew it was just a matter of time before a Research in Motion executive hit back at Jobs over his comments. After all, the Apple chief kicked off his statement with a little friendly BlackBerry bashing,

[Apple’s sales figures] handily bea[t] RIM’s 12.1 million BlackBerrys sold, in their most recent quarter ending in August. We’ve now passed RIM. And I don’t see them catching up to us in the foreseeable future.

They must look beyond their area of strength and comfort, into the unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company. I think it’s going to be a challenge for them, to create a competitive platform, and to convince developers to create apps for yet a third software platform after iOS and Android. With 300,000 apps on Apple’s App Store, RIM has a high mountain ahead of them to climb.

You had to know that Steve wouldn’t get away with putting his five minute, competition-slamming manifesto out into the ether without some snap back from the competition. We’ve already heard responses from TweetDeck and Andy Rubin, and now RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie has issued a statement in response to Jobs. Here it is:

“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 – 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter. Apple’s preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM’s August-ending quarter doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn’t take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple’s Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders. As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story.”

Sort of a big one, but we figure RIM at least deserves some equal time. Interesting that RIM is fighting Apple’s assertion of surpassing their handset shipments, we’ll have to see how that one settles once we get some “official” numbers from an unbiased third party. Meanwhile, let the mudslinging continue!

RIM’s Jim Balsillie hits back at the Steve Jobs rant, Apple’s ‘distortion field’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You already know most of the spec sheet delicacies that RIM has in store for its PlayBook, but here are a couple more details to complete the picture. The PlayBook will indeed match the iPad in having 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants available, and will also come equipped with a pretty huge 5,300mAh battery. That’d be a generously proportioned cell for a full-sized laptop, we imagine it’ll turn the PlayBook into quite the endurance champ. Beside those tidbits, there’s another video appearance by the tablet that we weren’t allowed to touch just after the break. You know you wanna see it.

Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook 64GB variant confirmed, strapped to a 5,300mAh battery (video)

BlackBerry PlayBook 64GB variant confirmed, strapped to a 5,300mAh battery (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 06:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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