Hasta La Gadget!

Sure, you might have to be at Adobe’s MAX conference to actually hold a PlayBook in your hand… but RIM’s offering us all the next best thing by turning a beta version of its PlayBook simulator loose on devs way, way in advance of the tablet’s release — ostensibly in the hopes of drumming up a beefy third-party app catalog in time for retail. On that note, we’ve spent a few minutes playing with the simulator today, which is delivered in the form of an ISO that can be loaded as an operating system installer for a VMWare virtual machine on either Windows or Mac. There’s seriously very little to see here so far, but you can play with the on-screen landscape keyboard, confirm the presence of inertial scrolling in text areas, and get a quick look at how the status and app bars work. Speaking of apps, there aren’t any — not a single one — but it’s way early, and that’s obviously where RIM hopes you come into play with that million-dollar software idea of yours. Follow the break for a video walkthrough!

Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator Beta hands-on

BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator Beta hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM’s PlayBook just got real — quite literally — at Adobe’s MAX conference today. Granted, out-of-the-box Flash and Air support are being billed as a big deal for the PlayBook, but it still seems a little strange that the company showed non-functional dummies running video loops encased in Plexiglas at its developer conference just a few weeks back, only to let Adobe show the good stuff at its own event here. There is some logic behind it, for what it’s worth: Adobe and RIM have announced availability today of an Air SDK targeting the PlayBook’s QNX-based platform with deep hardware integration, giving devs plenty of ramp-up time considering that the tablet won’t be available until early next year. Kobo was among the companies on-hand to talk about the sheer awesomeness of the dev environment, and the general attitude toward the PlayBook’s ease of development seems to be a positive one; we all know how important third-party apps are to a mobile platform’s success at this point, of course, so we’ll need a few thousand more Kobos on board to leave these guys with a happy ending. Check the full demo from the MAX keynote stage after the break.

Update: RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis — who was up on stage with Adobe’s Kevin Lynch for the demo — announced that devs who get PlayBook apps approved into App World will get a free PlayBook. Not a bad incentivizer, if we do say so ourselves.

Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook demoed in the flesh at Adobe MAX, Air-based SDK launched

BlackBerry PlayBook demoed in the flesh at Adobe MAX, Air-based SDK launched originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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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 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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