April Apple Fantasy Merger: Adobe

(Each month we weigh the pros and cons of a particular potential merger for Apple. Please note the "fantasy" part of this speculation: Many times the mergers mentioned couldn't or wouldn't be realistically possible. But put all that aside and enjoy this month's edition of Fantasy Merger.)

For this month's edition of Apple fantasy merger, I went with an old standby: Adobe. Why? well, because frankly time may be running out on this merger rumor. There was a time when controlling Photoshop may have seen like a golden ticket to allow Apple to grow an even larger share of the creative community. However, with the release of Aperture, and most recently the 2.1 Aperture update supporting 3rd party plugins, the feature gap between the two programs continues to shrink.

However, there is one other Adobe property that might just make it all worth it for Apple: Flash. Flash has been widely accepted as the standard for internet media. Sure QuickTime (and Windows Media) provides a far superior picture, Flash, thanks to it's near-100% install base has become the streaming media format of choice for Youtube, Metacafe, and just about every other online video site.

And if you follow iPhone news, it would be hard to miss the back and forth struggle of bringing Flash to the phone. Some people think it's the missing piece to completing the feature set of the phone, while others see it as a nuisance. Yes, the code can seem bloated. But imagine what Apple could do under the hood... While all web video is slowly migrating to the h.264 open standard, think of the interactive possibilities if Flash and QuickTime became one. You could create interactive slide shows with iPhoto, giving people the ability to add their own features. You could make the full feature set of Photoshop available online for manipulation and adjustment of the pictures. As we move past disc-based media, the winner in online content might be the first format that allows for stunning playback and ease of purchase, as iTunes and QuickTime already do, coupled with the authoring tools, and universal install base Flash provides.

There would still be a big "get" for Apple in the creative market as well. While they would acquire Premiere, a Final Cut Pro competitor, they would also get After Effect, which is far and away the most popular/most used effects software for video production.

Apple could make even greater in-roads in the consumer market with the Flash/QuickTime combination, while simultaneously bringing another important product into their pro software portfolio.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments,

From Within The Loop: An inside look at Apple

From time to time I'm going to give you an inside look at Apple from Within The Loop. Having spent some time at "The Mothership" I have some tips, advise, and insight to share with all the tDL readers and viewers.

This installment of From Within The Loop: Cafe Macs.

No one likes working on an empty stomach, and Apple employees are no different. Cafe Macs is centrally located and is open for breakfast and lunch. Offerings vary from day to day, but you can always find fresh made-to-order sushi, brick oven personal pizza, a fresh salad bar, pasta station, the grill, and my own favorite the built to order burrito.

Burritos vary from breakfast to lunch, but I recommend both. The tortillas are giant . . . much larger than your "standard" tortilla. For breakfast you have your choice of eggs, breakfast meat, and fresh veggies. Lunch is where it gets really exciting . . . behold the burrito bar. Thousands of combinations. I'm convinced you can eat a different burrito every day for lunch for a minimum of five years and not eat the exact same combination once.

Now you may be asking how do I get my hands on such a burrito. It's going to be difficult. The only access to Cafe Macs is through the corporate doors. The only way through there is if you are an employee or are accompanied by one. The good news is, if you do get the chance to eat there, you'll have the inside track.

Do get:

1. The Burrito

2. Brick oven pizza

3. Sushi

Don't get:

1. Hamburger / Cheeseburger

Review: Ms. PAC-MAN for the iPod

It seems like the iPod would be ripe as a platform to breathe new life into old/classic games. Namco tried with Ms. PAC-MAN, but came up a little short. Here's our video review:

iPhone gaming: Top Five Unanswered Questions

The iPhone SDK is out there, (And actually it just had an update today.) and we know a lot of people are working on a lot of great applications, many of which will be games. Unlike the launch of a true gaming console at CES or the heyday of E3, this is the rare instance in which millions of the "console" have already sold, and no one quite knows what will happen with games. And so we present (in no particular order) the top five unanswered questions about gaming on the iPhone.

1. Is the hardware up to the challenge? Or more precisely, how much of the hardware power will Apple allow to be unleashed? According to specs from Roughlydrafted.com, iPhone specs include a 620mhz processor (underclocked to 412mhz), compared to the 67mhz ARM processor in the DS, and a 333mhz processor in the PSP. Of course as anyone from the PowerPC days knows, processor speed is only a small part of the story. The iPhone also has four times the RAM, and much more than ten times the storage capacity. However, it is after all, a phone. How much of this hardware can be maxed out for gameplay? How much of that RAM needs to be ready for use by mail, iTunes, Safari, etc? How hard does Apple want to push the hardware, and was this in mind when the phone was designed? After all, some have questioned whether Apple ever wanted to put out an SDK to begin with.

2. What will happen with battery life? Again, related to just how much of that raw hardware power Apple wants to unleash. The processor is already underclocked by more than 100mhz, presumably to save battery life. And as mentioned on this blog previously, battery life can be slightly shorter than expected already. What happens when you have 3D graphics running all the time during game play, as well as accelerometer input, etc? Look for a surge in 3rd party battery solutions to give gamers more juice.

3. What happens when the phone rings? When you're playing most consoles and the phone rings, you can ignore it, or glance over at your phone and take the call. It's presumable that gameplay will pause, and a dialog box will ask you whether to take the call. Given the concern over Apple's limitations on running apps in the background though, will you lose your game/saved data? This seems like an unlikely scenario, yet the SDK limitations could be interpreted to show this as a potential problem.

4. Can your music be integrated with gameplay? Already some games for the iPod allow you to continue listening to your iTunes while playing. Will Apple's restrictions around music, ie. not allowing developers to access iTunes, limit this capability on the phone? And more importantly, will it limit the creation of exciting new games that could integrate the users media already stored on the device? Imagine a 3rd person shooter in which the tv in one of the settings is playing your favorite music videos. Personalization could be taken to a whole new level, or it could whither on the vine.

5. What about wifi/bluetooth? Three cell phones ago, I enjoyed playing Battleship with a friend via bluetooth. Yes it was nerdy to sit there at the same table and play on two different phones. But it was also fun. The bluetooth functionality of the iPhone is limited right now, to put it kindly. Devices like bluetooth-enabled cars, with integrated address books are unable to communicate with the phone. Will we see more support of bluetooth standards in general, or will developers have to create their own solutions? And even if they can, will Apple give them access to the system calls and underlying OS to make that possible? The same questions surround wi-fi. Will iPhones be able to communicate directly with each other? Will a wifi network be required?

Clearly those five questions lead to many, many more. What are your predictions? Let us know in the comments.

iTunes Movie Store: I am McLovin' BUT I'm not for keeps

When Steve Jobs announced on January 15th the addition of movie rentals to the iTunes Movie Store AND that all major labels were onboard I was extremely excited.  I saw this as the rebirth of iTunes and it's companion product, AppleTV.

I anticipated being able to rent any movie I wanted and if I really liked it I could simply purchase it.  I even went so far to think that I would be able to purchase the movie within 48hrs of watching it.

As it turns out my vision for the rebirth of the iTunes Movie Store has been far from reality.  There seems to be no method to the madness anymore.  Three different scenarios appear on the movie store: some titles you can only purchase, others you can only rent, and if you're one of the lucky ones out there, you'll have the option to do both.

I can understand that a new release may be available to rent before it's available to purchase.  I cannot understand why a new release may never be available to purchase and why there isn't some indication of this.  There is no way of telling if a title will eventually be available to purchase.  Would it be so difficult to add a line of test saying "available to purchase on . . .".  For now it seems that we'll have to guess and keep our fingers crossed.

But what about older movies or movies that were available before the rental feature went live?  For example, I can rent OR buy Kickboxer 4 (and who wouldn't want both options).  I know that I have both of these options because it's listed as "View Movie" on the Action / Adventure genre page.  The original Die Hard . . . only available to rent.  I'd like to have been at the meeting where the decision was made that View Movie would make sense and consumers would equate that to Rent or Buy.  This is just plain bad.  For a uncomplicated store, it's becoming more and more difficult to navigate, but what about the product pages?

One of the great features on the Music Store is the ability to see what other people purchased who also purchased the album you're looking at.  This feature has carried over, but now it's just inaccurate.  Some may say it's semantics, but I don't care.  If you're looking at the movie Independence Day (only available to rent FYI) you can see that "viewers also bought": The Fifth Element (a favorite of mine), The Matrix, Batman Begins, X-Files, and Aliens.  The punch line is that all of those titles are only available to RENT.  Apple seems to think that rent is synonymous with buy or the past tense, bought.

If you've been watching tDL Live, on Monday night at 9pm eastern, over the past few months I've been ranting about Superbad only being available to rent.  As it turns out I'm not the only one who is confused and unhappy about the state of the store.  Little_Man says, "...I highly reccomend u to buy this".  Sorry Apple, Little_Man is sending business elsewhere.  Joe Awesome says, "This movie, was the best comedy I've ever seen.  But the downside is that I want to buy this movie."  I agree Joe Awesome.  Unfortunately you can't, and Apple won't tell you if you'll ever be able to.  From comments on the first page of reviews alone, Joe Awesome and Little_Man are in good company . . . why can't we buy it?  More importantly why can't we tell when / if we'll ever be able to.

I'll save you some time . . . Don't visit the support page on Apple.com, it won't help.  Until further notice . . . Keep those fingers crossed.