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The poop slinging continues, as Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen accuses Steve Jobs of being a liar. You can see him being grilled and responding to Jobs' harsh words on Flash in this interview with the Wall Street Journal:
After Steve Jobs announced that he thinks Flash sucks, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch replied with a blog post that we're interpreting as "Yeah? Well, we're taking our ball and going home!" Of course, he called it "moving forward" instead:
Moving Forward
This morning Apple posted some thoughts about Flash on their web site.
The primary issue at hand is that Apple is choosing to block Adobe's
widely used runtimes as well as a variety of technologies from other
providers.Clearly, a lot of people are passionate about both Apple and Adobe and
our technologies. We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work
together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a
terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.However, as we posted last week, given the legal terms Apple has
imposed on developers, we have already decided to shift our focus away
from Apple devices for both Flash Player and AIR. We are working to
bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the
mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP),
Microsoft, Nokia and others.We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android
smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a
general release in June. From that point on, an ever increasing number
and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which
we hope will provide a great landscape of choice.
That's what happens when Apple doesn't want to play. [Adobe—Thanks, Marc!]
According to sources familiar with the matter, Microsoft has cancelled Courier, the folding, two-screen prototype tablet that was first uncovered by Gizmodo.
We're told that on Wednesday, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer Microsoft execs informed the internal team that had been working on the tablet device that the project would no longer be supported. Courier had never been publicly announced or acknowledged as a Microsoft product.
It appeared from the leaked information last year that a Courier prototype was probably near to completion. The combination of both touch- and pen-based computing was compelling. Perhaps the strong launch of Apple's iPad, currently the only available "mobile tablet" from a major vendor, caused Ballmer to reassess the commitment of Microsoft in a soon-to-be-crowded market.
We contacted Microsoft, who confirmed that Courier will not go into production. Microsoft Corporate VP of Communications Frank Shaw told us:
At any given time, we're looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It's in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.
It is a pity. Courier was one of the most innovative concepts out of Redmond in quite some time. But what we loved about Courier was the interface and the thinking behind it—not necessarily its custom operating system.
In fact, it makes sense for Microsoft to continue to trim away splinter versions of its core operating systems and focus on Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 unity across all its devices. Hopefully some of the smart thinking we have seen in Courier will find its way into Microsoft's tablets, whether they're powered by Windows 7 or Windows Phone 7.
If we hear anything more, we'll let you know. As always, feel free to contact me if you have additional details.
Reader Aaron Vader has sent us an email announcing that Lala.com will shut down on May 31. If you are a Lala user, your credits will be converted to iTunes credits. Does that mean that streaming iTunes.com would launch soon?
It's hard to say. WWDC 2010 comes right after Lala's shutdown, but it's unlikely that Apple would make such a consumer-oriented announcement in an Apple developers conference. Especially when iTunes coming into the streaming arena is something that definitely needs a show-n-tell presentation by Steve Jobs, explaining why their strong commitment to the idea of "owning the music" is compatible with the idea of just streaming it.
Or perhaps Lala would just shut down, and that will be the end of it. Or maybe it would get incorporated into the iPhone and iPad product lines, as an exclusive app. Anything is possible.
For now, however, we only know that, on May 31, Lala is dead, baby. Lala is dead.
