iPhone OS 4: New Name, New Tricks

Apple has officially changed the name of the iPhone operating system from iPhone OS to simply, the iOS. There is no doubt that the new OS’s features and specs are worth playing around with, but we found a few nifty tricks that most users would certainly want to try out.

First off, locking the screen’s auto-rotation feature; now this feature may not seem like much of a big deal, but if you try viewing an image from a sideways perspective, you will get the point. Thanks to the ever-convenient auto-rotate feature, the screen will automatically adjust to whatever orientation you choose. This happens whether a user likes it or not –by locking the screen, you will be able to read and view iPhone content without the screen flickering left and right because you suddenly shifted positions.

Another nice new control feature is the change in the UI for the camera. Users can now have a small focus box that will allow you to have a sense of design composition in your images (or simply for making sure that some details do not get blurred out). Users simply need to tap on the screen and select a location for the camera to focus.

For people who have plenty of apps and features on their iPhone, the update all is a nice touch –unless you have hundreds of apps to update. For some, this new feature is a major time saver, but others might want to manually update on a per-app basis. In this case, make the most out of the multitasking and run multiple update instances.

Sadly, even for iPhone 4s that have been released locally, the setting for most seems to have been defaulted to US English. While there is nothing really wrong about this, it is rather annoying to get corrected when using the Queen’s English. In this case, be sure to change the global settings to reflect local needs.

Tags: Apple, Apple-iOS, Apple-iPhone, Apple-iPhone-4, Apple-iPhone-OS, Apple-iPhone-OS-4, apps

Long Roads Ahead: Adobe and Flash Today

According to Steve Jobs, HTML5 is the future of video on the internet. Though it is hard to determine right now if he is right, his decision to block out Adobe Flash support from Apple products is slowly taking its toll on the developer of the most famous digital image and video editing software in the world.

For many, the fact that the iPad, the iPhone and the iPod Touch lack Adobe Flash support is a problem for Apple and Apple users. In that sense, it is Apple that lacks the necessary content support needed by users. In application, this means that browsing many websites on the iPad touch screen tablet will result in many pages appearing with large empty gaps in spaces where Flash content should be.

Many are already resigned to the fact that Apple devices will not have Flash support; however, the recently released iPhone OS 4.0 SDK License Agreement is making a severe blow towards Adobe. According to the agreement, developers may no longer use third party software like the Flash compiler. This has rendered Flash Professional CS5 as unusable and in turn, has discouraged many developers from purchasing the software.

According to reports, Adobe’s shares have gone down by 3.6 percent.

Naturally, the folks at Adobe have plenty of work to do in order to keep Flash as the standard of web video and to meet the many demands of the internet. While many do not believe Steve Jobs’ claim that Flash is too slow, they still have to meet Steve Jobs’ requirements if Flash is ever to be supported by Apple.

Some people have stated that the reason for Jobs’ dislike of Adobe stems from the company’s decision to support Microsoft instead of Apple several years ago.

Read more about Adobe and Apple at Business Week.

Tags: Adobe-Flash, Apple, Apple-iPad, Apple-iPhone-OS-4, AppleiPhone