I stumbled upon this Slashdot article, about Smokescreen, a Flash player written entirely in Javascript and which can…are you ready for this…run on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. In your face mr. Jobs!!!

Take a look at the demo, it’s very impressive.

I’m quite sure that by the end of the week Adobe will buy RevShock, the company that developed this player.

Last week I got my hands on a Macbook for the first time and I must say I’m quite impress with it. I’m not an Apple fanboy that likes everything that has Apple’s logo on it. I bought once an iPod and that’s it. No iPhone, no iPad, no Apple stickers on my car. I don’t usually spend money on technology just for the sake of it. But the Macbook is different, I haven’t decided yet, but so far I think it’s almost worth the money

This is my opinion on it, compared with my other laptop, a HP running Ubuntu.

What I like

Let’s start with with the positive aspects:

• Great look and feel, Apple’s designers pay attention to every single detail. And it shows.
• Mac OS Snow Leopard, as it’s such a nice kitty
• The touchpad interaction. Multitouch is the best technology ever. It feels so confortable.
• Out of the box codecs and functionality. A lot of applications just work on Mac OS without the need for additional tweaking.
• Better support from manufactures. If you’re using a Mac you’re posh and trendy and obviously willing to spend a lot of cash on technology, so companies try their best to provide you with working software, working drivers, working codecs and so on. It’s not like you’re one of those Linux freaks that compiles everything from scratch.

What I miss

There are some things I miss about my Ubuntu box:

• The package manager. I miss it the most. It’s the best, just a sudo apt-get install and you’re there. Here things are more complicated, with downloads, accepting terms and conditions and even paying for the software you’re using
• The directory structure. I know it’s a weird thing to say, but I’m used to /usr/bin and /home instead of /Applications and /Users.

What I don’t like

As nothing is perfect, here we go:

• Cmd+tab cycles through applications, not windows. This one scores a perfect 10 on the “annoyance-meter”. Especially when you have application with multiple windows. You have to Cmd+tab to the desired application and then start Cmd+~ between windows.
• The two fingers zoom on the touchpad. It’s fucking annoying, especially when you zoom my mistake. And you don’t even get a good degree of control. This isn’t all that annoying as it can be turned off.

Final verdict: as I said in the beginning, it’s almost worth the money. I’m not sure about this, but I think that my next laptop will be a Macbook Pro.

Adobe has finally did it. Flash on the iPhone. Flash won’t be available in the “traditional” way, as a browser plugin, because this would allow users to bypass the Apple Store when delivering application for the iPhone, as one could simply browse the web and play flash games instead of downloading (and pay for) them via the Apple Store.

But still, will be a major blast for Apple, as there are thousands of Flash/Flex developers out there that will start writing apps for the iPhone. And since ActionScript is much easier to learn than Objective C, a lot of newcomers will take up Flex in order to code for the iPhone, thus increasing the number of iPhone developers. Adobe also scored some major points with this move, as, let’s face it, we won’t be hearing of “Sliverlight on the iPhone” any time soon.

A+ for Adobe and Apple

PS: I hope they will resume work on the Flex Builder for Linux, which now seems deserted. as its “latest release” was in August 2008.

Nowadays, a lot of the battle between technologies takes place in the field of marketing. It all started with Apple’s “Hi, I am Mac/Hi, I am a PC” commercials.

(more from that came here). This investment in marketing boosted Apple’s market share, biting from Microsoft’s, mainly in the youth market.

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