MacRumors

The Wall Street Journal is currently conducting an exclusive interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen regarding an open letter posted earlier today by Apple CEO Steve Jobs sharing his thoughts on Adobe's Flash technology and reasons why Apple has not included support for it on iPhone OS devices. Video clips and the full interview will be available later, but the Journal is currently providing live updates of the interview in progress.

In his opening comments, Narayen noted that Adobe believes in "open content", stressing that its Creative Suite software is designed to work on a number of different platforms and that the company remains committed to its vision that its software should be able to help people work across multiple operating systems. Narayen also noted that Adobe products, presumably referring to Flash, will be fully supported on the next version of the Android smartphone operating system, as confirmed by Google vice president Andy Rubin earlier this week.

In addressing Jobs' claims of technology issues with Flash, Narayen called the comments "really a smokescreen" and pointed to over 100 App Store applications created using Flash. Further countering Jobs' assertions, Narayen blamed Apple's operating systems for Flash-related crashes and called Jobs' claims of Flash hampering battery life on mobile devices "patently false". In general, Narayen also claimed that Flash issues highlighted in Jobs' letter are rooted in Apple's proprietary nature that prevents Adobe from innovating as they'd like.

Narayen again returned to his claim that Flash is an open standard, calling Jobs' claim of it being closed "amusing". Adobe's view of the world is multi-platform, allowing it to provide developers with tools to easily deploy their content across many devices and platforms, a concept that may not to Apple's benefit in trying to lock customers in to its ecosystem.

In conclusion, Narayen noted that customers have the ultimate voice in the dispute, and he believes that multi-platform solutions like Adobe's will win out.

Engadget reports that despite Apple's plans for iPad Wi-Fi + 3G pre-orders to be delivered tomorrow in the U.S., at least one lucky customer has had their shipment slip through the cracks and be delivered a day early.

While no details on hidden differences between the 3G and Wi-Fi-only versions have been noted, the one image posted is clearly of a 3G-capable model as distinguished by the black plastic strip visible along the top edge (to allow for cellular signal access) and the status bar noting a connnection to AT&T's 3G network.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is reportedly looking to charge up to $1 million to companies interested in participating in the company's forthcoming iAd mobile advertising platform. Those companies looking to be launch partners could be looking at sums of up to $10 million.

Apple is making waves on Madison Avenue with its price tag, which comes with initial demands for greater control over advertisers' marketing campaigns.

"It's a hefty sum," says Phuc Truong, managing director at Mobext, a mobile marketing business owned by Havas SA whose clients include Sears, Choice Hotels, Amtrak and Volvo. "What Apple is trying to do is certainly above and beyond what's been done in the past."

The rumored premium pricing agrees with previous comments made by ad agencies who have received pitches from Apple's iAd team, and confirms that Apple will be targeting major corporations for participation in the program rather than smaller entities frequently seen in mobile advertising in many apps on the iPhone today.

According to the report, Apple will be charging one cent per banner displayed and two dollars per interactive ad viewed.

Apple is planning to charge advertisers a penny each time a consumer sees a banner ad, ad executives say. When a user taps on the banner and the ad pops up, Apple will charge $2. Under large ad buys, such as the $1 million package, costs would rack up to reach $1 million with the various views and taps.

The report also notes that Apple itself will build the ads over the first few months in order to ensure proper functioning and aesthetics. But Apple does have plans to release a developer kit that will permit ad agencies to create their own ads down the road and submit them to Apple for approval.

While some ad directors have expressed reluctance at giving up control of ad creation during the initial stages, it hasn't stopped a reported landslide of interest from agencies, who have participated in numerous pitch sessions from Apple's iAd team around the country and have begun gearing up with ideas for their campaigns.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today posted a lengthy open letter offering his "Thoughts on Flash" in an attempt to clear up some of the controversy over Apple's relationship with Adobe and its unwillingness to incorporate Flash capabilities into its iPhone OS devices.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe's Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven - they say we want to protect our App Store - but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

Jobs then proceeds to lay out six aspects to Apple's argument against the use of Flash:

- Openness: Flash is a proprietary product, making it a closed system. While Apple also offers proprietary products, it believes that all web standards should be open. Jobs points to Apple's support of open standards such HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, as well as its own contributions to open source projects such as WebKit.

- "The Full Web": One of Adobe's arguments is that a lack of Flash compatibility prevents Apple mobile devices from accessing "the full web" because 75% of video in that format. Jobs counters that almost all of this video is available in the more modern H.264 format and viewable on iPhone OS devices. He also points to the YouTube application and a list of other sources all offering video in iPhone-compatible formats. With respect to Flash-based games, Jobs concedes that the iPhone is unable to play them, but notes that there are over 50,000 game and entertainment titles on the App Store, many of which are free.

- Reliability, Security, and Performance: Jobs points to a Symantec study showing Flash having one of the worst security records last year and notes that Flash is the #1 reason Macs crash. While Apple has been working with Adobe to address these issues, the problems remain. Jobs also claims that Apple has yet to see Flash performing well on any mobile device, something it has repeatedly asked Adobe to demonstrate.

- Battery Life: Long battery life essentially requires hardware decoding of formats such as H.264, but most Flash website continue to use older decoders that must run in software, crippling battery life for mobile devices.

- Touch: Interactive Flash content is mouse-driven and not easily compatible with Apple's touch-driven iPhone OS. Jobs argues that developers who need to rewrite their Flash websites to support touch anyway should look to more modern technologies like those supported by Apple.

- Flash as a Third-Party Development Tool: Jobs outlines Apple's arguments against allowing developers to create iPhone applications using Flash or other third-party development tools, citing sub-standard performance and a reliance on those third parties to adopt changes and improvements. Apple wants developers building directly on iPhone OS for the best experience possible.

Our motivation is simple - we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins - we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Jobs concludes by noting that Flash was developed during the era of PCs and mice, but today's low-power, touch-based mobile devices require new standards and technologies.

Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Just one day before they are due to arrive in customers' hands around the United States, iPad Wi-Fi + 3G pre-orders are finally beginning to see mass shipping confirmations from Apple. As noted yesterday, shipments had been staged in various locations around the country, enabling the rapid delivery times.

Several customers have reported that their orders are shipping via standard overnight service, with delivery scheduled to occur before 3:00 PM. Those who have not pre-ordered but are looking to pick up a 3G-capable iPad can attempt to secure one when they go on sale in retail stores at 5:00 PM tomorrow.

Adobe has released a preview release of the 10.1 Flash Player for Mac OS X that supports H.264 video hardware decoding on Mac OS X 10.6.3. Apple recently released information to allow 3rd party developers to take advantage of this hardware support.

Hardware video decoding allows Flash Player to offload H.264 video decoding tasks from the CPU to deliver smooth, high quality video with minimal overhead, improving video playback performance, reducing system resource utilization, and extending battery life.

The new version of Flash Player, code-named "Gala", requires one of the following graphics hardware: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M. For those unfamiliar with their specific graphics hardware, this blog post details the computers which are supported:

- MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009
- Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009
- MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008
- iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009

Mac Pros are not presently supported. The blog post goes on to detail other conditions that hardware support may or may not be available at this time. In the preview release, you can recognize when hardware decoding is in use as a small white square will appear in the upper left corner of the video.

This new feature is expected to make it into the final shipping version of Flash Player 10.1.

Early anecdotal reports in our forums show significant improvements in Flash video playback.

Despite including internet tethering as a feature in iPhone 3.0, U.S. AT&T customers have yet to have the feature enabled. Engadget got a comment from AT&T about the absent feature. The response cites high traffic usage that could hamper network performance:

iPhone tethering has the potential to exponentially increase traffic, and we need to ensure that we're able to deliver excellent performance for the feature - over and above the increases in data traffic we're already seeing - before we will offer the feature.

Tethering is the process of using your iPhone as a wireless internet modem for your other devices such as your laptop.

Chosun reports (via AppleInsider) that Apple's next generation iPhone will use a 5-megapixel camera provided by LG Innotek.

The electronics component maker began producing the sophisticated cameras at its plant in Gumi this month and will mass produce them starting in the second half of this year.

The current iPhone 3GS offers only a 3-megapixel camera at this time. There had been earlier rumors in 2009 also placing a 5-megapixel camera in the next iPhone, but those rumors pinpointed a different supplier.

Apple is expected to unveil the next iPhone at WWDC in June.

HP today announced that it will acquire Palm in a deal valued at $1.2 billion. The deal brings Palm, struggling to reinvent itself as a smartphone company after being a major player in the PDA market, into the fold with HP, a traditional computer company that has yet to make a signficant foray into the smartphone market.

HP and Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.

The press release notes that Palm's chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein, who previously served as a key Apple executive and is credited as being one of the primary minds behind the iPod, is expected to remain with the company.

News that Palm was looking to place itself up for sale surfaced earlier this month as the company's stock dropped on poor earnings results and analyst price target cuts to as low as zero.

Palm recruited a number of Apple executives and engineers in an attempt to reinvent itself under its new webOS operating system. After the launch of the Palm Pre in January 2009, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook directed veiled threats at Palm regarding Apple's multi-touch intellectual property. The two companies further engaged in a cat-and-mouse game over the Pre's ability to sync media directly with iTunes.

Mashable reports that Apple may be planning for the next-generation iPhone to go on sale immediately after an introduction at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) scheduled to begin on June 7th.

Over the last two years, Apple has revealed both the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS at WWDC. However, the release of the actual iPhone hardware has traditionally come a few weeks after the announcement. Our sources say that Apple may break that tradition this year by shortening the timetable.

An AT&T block on employee vacations for the month of June has suggested that we may see a launch sometime that month, but most observers expected that it would come later in the month.

Today's report notes that while Apple may be planning for an iPhone launch coinciding with WWDC, other factors may yet make the goal impossible. If the report's sources are correct, however, Apple will be moving the iPhone launch up as close as possible to that date.

Apple's WWDC scheduling for this year remains somewhat of a mystery. Early hints suggested that Apple might have been planning a late June timeframe for the conference, but Apple delayed announcement of the conference details well beyond its usual February or March window. Speculation has surfaced about whether Apple has been working behind the scenes to move up the conference and the next-generation iPhone launch after an Apple employee lost a testing version of the device in March. The device surfaced early last week in the hands of Gizmodo.

In 1987, Apple produced a concept video demonstrating a future computer called the Knowledge Navigator. The tablet-like device offered the user a natural language interface, video conferencing, multi-touch display and access to a global network of information.

While seemingly the product of an overactive imagination, Apple's recent acquisition of Siri brings Apple a lot closer to that vision than ever before. Siri reportedly was born from the CALO artificial intelligence project which sought to fulfill a call for a "a cognitive computer system should be able to learn from its experience, as well as by being advised."

Apple's value in acquiring Siri appears to be focused on this personal assistance technology. Siri describes their technology:

Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) represent the next generation interaction paradigm for the Internet. In today's paradigm, we follow links on search results. With a VPA, we interact by having a conversation. We tell the assistant what we want to do, and it applies multiple services and information sources to help accomplish our task. Like a real assistant, a VPA is personal; it uses information about an individual's preferences and interaction history to help solve specific tasks, and it gets better with experience.

In fact, Siri's Chief Technology Officer Tom Gruber uses Apple's Knowledge Navigator video in his keynote and describes it as a "brilliant piece of vision work":

Gruber demos Siri and how it can accomplish tasks using a conversational interface and apply context to provide useful and personalized interactions. He also walks through what's possible today and how close we are getting. Given Apple's acquisition of the company (and presumably Tom Gruber), the talk is of particular relevance to Apple's future plans.

In addition to details posted last month by Apple on how 3G data service will be managed on Wi-Fi + 3G iPad models due for launch this Friday, AT&T has now published a fact sheet (PDF) offering additional information on iPad data service.

AT&T notes that its "monthly" domestic service plans actually consist of 30-day cycles that will automatically renew unless the customer elects to cancel his or her contract-free service.

Once you sign up for iPad 3G data service, you can add to or cancel your domestic plan at any time - no penalty. For domestic plans, if you do not cancel, your service will automatically renew every 30 days to provide a more seamless data experience on an ongoing basis. For example, if you activate service on May 9, your service will automatically renew 30 days later with the same plan. If you do make a change, a new 30-day window begins.

Users on the 250 MB plan will receive alerts when they reach 20%, 10% and 0% of their data limit remaining. Customers who reach their data limit for a billing cycle can either wait until the end of the 30-day cycle when it automatically renews or change to an unlimited plan, which will begin a new 30-day cycle at that time.

AT&T's iPad data plans are priced at $14.99 (250 MB) and $29.99 (unlimited) per 30-day cycle and also provide free access to the company's network of over 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots.

Robert Scoble reports that Apple has purchased Siri, a company that has developed a free personal assistant application for the iPhone and iPod touch. Selected as the Most Innovative Web Technology in a contest at this year's SXSW festival, Siri offers automated personal assistant services by integrating a rapidly growing number of third-party services such as OpenTable, FlightStats, and Google Maps with voice-recognition technology from Nuance Communications.

Scoble discovered evidence (PDF) of the deal through a notification given by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announcing an early termination of the standard waiting period for corporate mergers to allow the transaction to proceed. Mashable and ReadWriteWeb are also confirming that they have heard about the acquisition from their sources.

Update: Silicon Alley Insider reports that a Siri representative has confirmed Apple's acquisition of the company.

Update 2: The Wall Street Journal quotes a Siri board member and investor as calling Apple's offer a "no-brainer".

"The offer from Apple was of a scope and tenor that it was a no-brainer to accept it," said Shawn Carolan, a managing director at Menlo Ventures and a board member at Sirti [sic] since it raised a Series A round of venture capital in 2008.

With U.S. pre-orders for Wi-Fi + 3G iPad models set for delivery on Friday, many customers have been anxiously waiting for information on the shipping status of their orders.

Since yesterday, dozens of MacRumors forum members have been noting that their order statuses have updated to "Prepared for Shipment", revealing that shipment is imminent. There have been a very small number of reports of customers receiving shipment tracking numbers, although few screenshots or other confirmatory evidence have been provided to support claims that significant numbers of the iPads are moving into shipment status yet.

Many customers were expecting movement on their orders to have occurred earlier in the week, given that pre-orders for the Wi-Fi iPad models began shipping over five days before their delivery date of Saturday, April 3rd. The reason for the later start on shipments for the 3G-capable models appears to be due to the shipments already being stocked at distribution points around the United States.

A reader of The Loop contacted Apple on Tuesday worried that he hadn't heard anything about his shipment. He was told that the Wi-Fi + 3G are already in warehouses across the country.

Unlike the iPad Wi-Fi that shipped directly from China to customers, the 3G model will ship from within the U.S.

Customers in a number of other countries are scheduled to see the iPad launch late next month, with Apple set to provide additional information and pre-ordering details on May 10th.

Apple today announced that this year's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) will take place from June 7th through 11th at San Francisco's Moscone West convention center.

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is the premier technical conference for developers innovating with Apple technologies. Over 1,000 Apple engineers will be at Moscone West to present advanced coding and development techniques that will show you how to enhance the capabilities of your applications with the revolutionary technologies in iPhone OS and Mac OS X.

As always, the conference will include technical sessions and hands-on labs for attendees, as well as other special events. Registration for the conference is priced at $1599, with tickets for the conference having sold out increasingly quickly over the past couple of years. Given the short lead time on ticket sales this year, developers will likely have to move quickly to secure a spot in the conference.

Apple is widely expected to introduce its new iPhone hardware during a keynote address at the event, although the device has already received considerable publicity since Gizmodo published details on one lost by an Apple employee in a California bar.

Update: A number of observers have noticed a heavy emphasis on iPhone OS in this year's conference, from the headline banner featuring App Store application icons to the elimination of Mac OS X as a category in the Apple Design Awards. As Daring Fireball's John Gruber notes, the iPhone OS emphasis strongly suggests that Mac OS X 10.7 will not be previewed at the conference.