Hasta La Gadget!

This week Adobe released version 5 of its Creative Suite software compilation. CEO Shantanu Narayen has naturally hit the interview trail to promote his company’s wares, but the biggest news from him is actually a delay of sorts. We’d previously heard that Android, WebOS and BlackBerry versions of Flash 10.1 would be available in the first half of 2010, but Adobe’s chief now places delivery to those platforms in the second half of the year. At least consolation may be found in his teasing of new Flash-enabled tablets — most likely to be running Android or Chrome OS — which we’re told to expect to see within the same time frame. As to the question of Apple’s holdout from Flash nirvana, Narayen describes it as a business rather than technology decision, which “hurts consumers” and will ultimately be judged by people voting “for the experience that they want through their wallet.” Can’t really argue with that. Skip past the break for the full interview.

Update: The blog of Adobe’s Lee Brimelow gives us a likely reason for the delay: Flash Player 10.1 for Android has just entered private beta, as has AIR 2.0, with public betas on the way. Devs can sign up to be notified about both right here.

Continue reading Adobe CEO: Flash coming to Android, WebOS and BlackBerry ‘smartphones and tablets’ in 2H 2010

Adobe CEO: Flash coming to Android, WebOS and BlackBerry ‘smartphones and tablets’ in 2H 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Apr 2010 06:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s already done a lot right with Windows Phone 7, and it’s not even out until late this year. But after today’s announcements, there’s one lingering question: How can Windows Phone 7 possibly catch up, in terms of apps?

To be clear, the problem is as follows: When Windows phone 7 launches later this year, it will face the same Catch-22 as any new app platform does: Without an audience to sell to, why would developers invest in creating complicated apps? And if a platform doesn’t have these great apps, why would people switch to it?

It’s something I’ve been wondering about since the day we found out that Windows Phone 7, despite a February unveiling and a March developers’ announcement, won’t actually ship until the end of this year, and which I was hoping might be cleared up today. It wasn’t.

We only have to look as far as Palm to see that getting apps off to a slow start can be severely detrimental—even fatal—to a platform. But a comparison to webOS, or even Android, doesn’t do Windows Phone 7’s situation justice. By the end of this year, the platforms WinPho 7 will be competing with—namely iPhone and Android—will be even more deeply entrenched with users than they are now. And the same goes for developers: The 30,000+ apps in the Android Market are trending skyward, and the 140,000+ apps in App Store aren’t showing any signs of slowing down, not to mention the iPad apps that are about to flood the index. Now, I know sheer quantity of apps doesn’t mean everything, but it means something—the iPhone’s got a better selection of great apps than Android, and Android’s got a better selection of great apps than webOS or BlackBerry. So, come holiday season 2010, smartphone buyers will have a choice between phones with a vast library of apps to do just about anything you can think of, and Windows Phone 7.

So what can Microsoft possibly do? I didn’t know, so I asked Microsoft Developer Division VP Scott Guthrie, How bring people to your platform?

It’s a lot easier to build a Windows Phone app compared to, say, an iPhone or Android App now. Ultimately developers are interested in, can I build cool apps? Is it easy? How painful is it? Can I make money?

To a degree, he’s right. Microsoft has seriously lowered the entry barriers for Windows Phone 7 app development, setting development tools free as of today, and demonstrating on stage how simple it is to create an app from scratch. (Guthrie himself created a barebones Twitter app in real real time in front of the audience.) And yeah, the launch partners announced today are pretty great.

I think this event, and this conference, hopefully catapults interest, and based on the success we’ve had in the last three weeks, in terms of getting some of these partners interested… I feel pretty confident we’re going to have a pretty wide range of apps available at launch.

And they will! But you know who else had fantastic launch partners? Palm. Gathering a bunch of high profile names on short notice is a PR coup, but it’s not a long-term salve.

The real question is, how do you lure developers away from established, surefire moneymakers, like the App Store, or increasingly, the Android Market? What do you say to an iPhone developer right now, when you don’t have a product in consumers’ hands? Joe Belfiore:

If I were sitting here face to face with an iPhone app developer now, I’d say, I think we’re worthy of consideration. I think, hopefully, if people have seen the user experience we’re building, and seen some of the reception and reaction that’s happened, with real people in the real world looking at what the story is, that at minimum, it piques their interest and says, this looks like a smartphone platform that’s going to have some degree of success.

This is Microsoft’s struggle: To convince developers that, despite a release date of late 2010, minimal hardware announcements, an entirely new platform and user experience (which most of them will not experience on hardware before launch), they should invest time and money in Windows Phone 7. They’re making the literal act of developing as simple and inviting as possible; they’re giving developers a massive lead time to develop, and get familiar with the tools; they’re garnering as much hype with the public as they can.

But what Microsoft can’t do is will Window Phone 7 handsets into the public’s hands. They’re going to have to earn that, and they’re going to need developers’ help. And as excited as they—and we—might be about this thing, the earliest we could hope for Windows Phone 7 to have the kind of app power it needs to be competitive with the smartphone giants—who, by the way, aren’t going to be sitting still for the next year—is the middle of 2011. That’s the Windows Phone 7 problem—and it’s out of Microsoft’s hands.

Ever wonder about the man behind the insane amount of ASUS products we cover? We do too, which is why we jumped at the chance to sit down with ASUS CEO Jerry Shen here at CeBIT. Our lengthy discussion covered just about everything you can imagine, but we’ve clipped some of the highlights together for you in the video below. We’re particularly taken with his excitement over Windows Phone 7 and his disinterest in the smartbook category. As for that EeePad or future tablet? You’ll have to watch to find out…

Continue reading ASUS CEO talks tablets, smartbooks and Windows Phone 7 Series phones

ASUS CEO talks tablets, smartbooks and Windows Phone 7 Series phones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Unwittingly snapped by a sandwich shop paparazzo, Panera Bread iMac Man took center stage in our corner of the internet for one day in December. More pictures surfaced, but our questions remained unanswered. So we got in touch.

Well, actually, he got in touch with us. Going in, we knew only what we could see: he uses his iMac in Panera Bread; he plays lots of World of Warcraft; he’s a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, dressed in a plaid shirt. His photos were viewed by over 100,000 people on our site, and countless more elsewhere. He is Panera Bread iMac Man.

We now know that his name is James, he’s a cheery fellow, and he works as an administrator at a large non-profit. Here’s what he had to say, when I talked to him over a sandwich at his local Panera Bread. Ok ok ok, my phone. But still!

Why do you bring your iMac to Panera bread? This could also be phrased as, what do you have against laptops?

I’ve got nothing against laptops! At my age, I appreciate the bigger screen. The same dollars would not have gotten me a laptop with screen that size. I got an iLugger to carry it around; I grew up with the original mac, so I’m used to the weight.

I don’t have an internet connection at home, so I use Panera’s. At that particular Panera, I can drive my car, park it underground, and walk right up without exposing the iMac to any weather.

Do the people at Panera give you a hard time? Did they accept your computing habits right off the bat, or did it take time?

No, no. What [the photos] don’t show, is that all around me are people with computers. There’s usually about 50/50 on Macbooks, iBooks, and PCs.

What level is your World of Warcraft character?

I couldn’t see from the screen which one that was, but I have three characters—two level 80s, and an, oh, I guess one level 14.

How’d you get into WoW?

The reason I started playing WoW was because of my niece’s son, who was 9 years old, was playing at the time. I started playing in self-defense.

Are you enjoying your marginal internet celebrity? How did you find out you’d been snapped and posted online?

I was looking though MacSurfer, and saw the title. I sent the link to my buddies, and I was like, “that damn photo makes me look bald!”

It comes as a shock, though. About six months ago, a guy walked over to me, and he had done a sketch. He asked, “is this OK?” Now I have it framed, sitting on top of my counter.

Thanks for talking to us, James!

Want to blast some BRAVIA Internet Video Link content from your PS3 to your million-inch Sony-built 3D OLED TV this year? Well, you’re half in luck. Sony’s bringing the Internet Video Link service to the PS3 (which seems to us to provide little that isn’t already possible on the PS3, but who are we to judge?) but won’t do any new OLED TVs this year. The problem is, naturally, cost, but hopefully 2011 will bring better things in sizes larger than 11-inches — LG won’t have a 30-incher until 2012 at least, and that seems too long to wait. Sony COO Stan Glasgow, in his interview with Sony Insider that turned up these nuggets, also is refreshingly non-bombastic about 3D. He points out that Sony’s doing 3D-capable TVs for essentially zero price differentiation, with separate glasses and emitters that can be bought after the fact, and calls the 3D channel rollout “complex.” But who knows, perhaps he’s just never seen enough of Taylor Swift in 3D to know what he’s missing?

Sony’s COO says no new OLED TVs in 2010, BRAVIA Internet Video Link is coming to PS3 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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