“Apple and Adobe have long been rivals, after Apple refused to allow Flash coded websites and videos to play on its iPhone and iPad devices.

dobe has snuck one in the back door, creating a work around that converts files from Flash to a more Apple friendly format called Http Live Streaming.

The catch is that the Adobe never asked Apple’s permission to bring Flash to Apple tablets.

The fix is also hugely expensive.

Users who want to see their Flash content converted for an Apple format will have to pay Adobe a fee US$4500 ($4344).

For now, it looks like iPad users are stuck viewing a lot of blank spaces on their favourite websites until Apple and its rivals work out some kind of solution.”

As usual with technology based articles from News Limited sources, they’re wrong in many instances. Flash Media Server has always cost thousands, so ‘users’ (who I’m assuming they mean content distributors) won’t have to pay to view content on their device.

The bad blood between Apple and Adobe started when they joint developed the PDF format, which Apple provides and uses without license fees to end users. Adobe however, saw an opportunity to exploit the vacuous minds of office gimps, and quickly pushed to make their software user friendly (see: for stupid people), and now many governments around the world solely use and rely on PDF format, wasting tax payers money on license fees of extremely high costs, merely because they’re too daft to be able to word process or use any of the plethora of free and superior alternatives out there.

Flash video is already in web standard video format, it’s merely the memory hogging program that is both a secrity breach and a system efficiency destroyer. MPEG4 using the h.264 encoder is created by default, but the way Adobe process it is using bloatware programs instead of hardware. All non-adobe formats can be decoded by a GPU at the chip, where as Flash has never been designed for full motion at NTSC or PAL settings, even far below a base level 24 fps.

iPad users aren’t stuck viewing a lot of blank spaces. Most content providers have updated to HTML 5, bringing an end to the Adobe controlled rich media distribution system that intellectually challenged media production houses have forced us to tolerate for years. The costs of these outlandish licenses Adobe charge comes back to bite the user in the arse by inflating overheads and of course all corporate expenditure directly affects end product cost.

Apple not allowing Flash on it’s products is great and empowering news for the consumer though. It means that the tens of thousands of dollars in license fees companies have to pay per terminal won’t be charged, and content distribution will be easier, more efficient, and most importantly, perfect for mobile devices.

Using bloatware soft decoding instead of hardware at the GPU chip burns through system resources and battery power, draining the potential power of our devices for greater usability.

With version 4.5 they have added HTTP Live Streaming for iOS devices, which will serve the exactly the same video file but in an HTTP wrapper rather than a Flash wrapper. It’s not “bringing Flash to Apple Tablets”, it’s not “sneaking one in the back door” and neither Adobe nor anyone else has ever needed Apple’s “permission” to stream HTTP video. The only fudging is that HTTP streaming should be the default method, with Flash being a fallback. We already serve h.264 with a Flash front end now, and iOS devices just grab the video referred to in the HTML. It’s not rocket science.

That being said, I can also be a bit of a dolt and in this case was entirely slow of faculty. I discovered iTunes U, I entirely forgot Americans abbreviate university to U (outside the US the common abbreviation is ‘uni’) and expected the U to be oriented around the selfishness of Web 2.0 with everything being self centered, my, u, etc included.

I was surprised to find that it has a mass of lecturers from various uni’s around the globe! My days will no longer have lulls of boredom within them, it really has a mass of interesting lectures to download and listen to from all around the world.

I can’t help but be amazed that I can gain insight from uni lecturers from the middle east, or listen to student workgroups from Russia discussing and covering any number of topics.

So, if you have an iPhone or iPad, I highly recommend cashing in on this free cache of information and wealth of knowledge. This is what the Internet was designed and meant for, it is absolutely brilliant and humbling in a way to see the milestone if where it has, with the help of the sage like prophets of technology and the digital church of awesome, come full circle.

Get downloading and get educated. It’s cool to be smart now, when the dumb kids realized all us nerds are what makes the world go around and that they bask in the technology and science brought about by their victims of bullying and the shunned geeky types in the world.

Expand your mind and you will also expand your future and potential as a human being.

Apple made the announcement late last night, two days before it was officially due to begin taking international orders for its breakthrough entry into the touchscreen tablet market.

All six models will be available to the market on outside the US on May 28 – three wi-fi, three 3G – and surprisingly, Australians will also be able to immediately access Apple’s iBookstore, with titles available for download immediately.

Prices for the iPad in Australia are as follows:

Wi-Fi models:

16GB: $629

32GB: $759

64GB: $879

Wi-Fi + 3G models

16GB: $799

32GB: $928

64GB: $1049

The device will also go on sale in eight other countries from May 28: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

Since its US launch on April 3, the “revolutionary and magical” machine, as Apple calls it, has created daily fodder for the media, right from its first day on sale when teenager Justin Kockott bought three of them, just so he could trash one and post the destruction on YouTube.

Kenny Irwin put his in a microwave and sealed it in resin.

It’s currently for sale on eBay and bidding this weekend pushed past its $575 sale price.

It’s been made into a skateboard, accused of coming up short when it comes to streaming video and its possibly drawn Apple into a court case after the company chose not to support Adobe’s Flash multimedia platform. Although that being said given the proliferation of PDF and the extortionate costs to use Adobe formats, it serves them right for being gluttons and shows a lot of balls on behalf of Apple.

Apple’s legendary ability to generate publicity has seen it shift a million iPads in 28 days in the US, selling twice as quickly as Apple sold its first million iPhones. Developers have created more than 5000 new apps for iPad that take advantage of its multi-touch interface, large screen and high-quality graphics. Demand for the “magical” device was so intense that its worldwide release was delayed, but the announcement it will available so soon will come as welcome relief for Apple’s Australian fanbase.

It was originally expected to take at least six weeks from the order date to arrive, with the iBookstore app not available until next year.

Publishing organisations have hailed the device as a possible saviour for newspapers as demand shifts from print to digital, and the iBookstore announcement comes on the heels of Google’s announcement that it will opens its online bookstore Google Editions, by the end of June.

The devices will be sold at Apple stores and Apple resellers and will be released in other countries including New Zealand and Singapore from July.

This is also clearly the end of the Amazon Kindle and it’s crappy black and grey LCD screen. :)