I'm a little late up to bat on this one, but I noticed this weekend that Google seems to be doing a fine job of sweeping the legs (Cobra Kai!) out of Apple's announcements. I mentioned a couple times last week that one of the primary shortcomings of Apple's new "iPad" was the lack of flash. This severely restricts content viewable by the device, many online news sites rely heavily on flash for their site content.
The reason for this lack of flash was fairly obvious: battery life. The iPad (and iPhone) rely on AT&T's 3G network for internet connectivity in any non-wi-fi locations. 3G internet browsing chugs battery life, and so it makes sense that by restricting flash, Apple decreases by a large percentage the amount of content a website will have to download to be viewed.
Unfortunately much of the video content on the web is also streamed through flash. There is a fix on the iPhone to watch Hulu, but it requires downloading the complete video before starting to play it, as opposed to just streaming it. For now, though, Apple is hesitant to add Flash to its mobile devices.
Google, on the other hand, released Android 2.1 on the Nexus One phone. Android 2.1 carries Flash 10.1 embedded! The Android 2.1 release is expected to trickle down to the Droid in the next couple weeks. At which point, I will write an app that starts streaming video anytime an iPhone is nearby.
Also this week, Google released their first multi-touch enabled version of Google Maps for Android, which is super handy. It is expected that the 2.1 rollout of Android for the Motorola Droid may include more multitouch capabilities than the iPhone!
_
Monday, 8 February 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment