Thanks to a change in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, Adobe has decided to abandon the iPhone app building technology included in Flash CS5.
Adobe says it’s not planning on “any additional investments in that feature” after CS5 because of section 3.3.1 of Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement:
Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
This section indicates that tools such as that in Flash CS5 are forbidden when developing apps for the iPhone and it appears to make it pointless for Adobe to provide the feature according to Adobe’s Mike Chambers:
While it appears that Apple may selectively enforce the terms, it is our belief that Apple will enforce those terms as they apply to content created with Flash CS5. Developers should be prepared for Apple to remove existing content and applications (100+ on the store today) created with Flash CS5 from the iTunes store.
The feature will still ship with Flash CS5, but is there much of a point in using it?

iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 2 slipped into the iPhone Dev Center earlier, but unless you’re a developer and really need to test apps, it’s best to skip this extra buggy beta and just keep playing around with the first.
I realize that you’re curious—after all iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 1 was full of new features—but Beta 2 is a bit of a letdown. Aside from the annoying inability to take screenshots, Beta 2 actually left me struggling to do simple things—like using the Camera app.
For whatever reason, the Camera app freezes and doesn’t save pictures, the on-screen keyboard refuses to pop up when I want to add my email account to the phone, and third-party apps go nuts.
Yes, this is all expected with a beta build, but many of us are prone to putting such things on our devices for the sake of trying them out and discovering new features. When it comes to iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 2 though, skip that step unless you have to and just keep playing with the first beta.
Or let us risk our iPhones—and patience—to find the new features for you and leave your iPhone happy with a public OS build.

Well, I guess this settles it as far as the authenticity of Gizmodo’s iPhone 4G scoop Monday. The definitive piece of evidence: a letter from Apple’s top lawyer, formally requesting the safe return of the wayward next-generation iPhone — the one left on a Redwood City barstool last month by a young (and surely red-faced) Apple software engineer.
Gizmodo posted the letter late Monday, and the missive — while firm in tone, and signed by Apple General Counsel and Senior VP Bruce Sewell — stops short of making any legal threats, at least for the time being:
It has come to our attention that GIZMODO is currently in possession of a device that belongs to Apple. This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple. Please let me know where to pick up the unit.
Gizmodo Editorial Director Brian Lam replied cheekily that the lost, radically redesigned iPhone was “burning a hole in our pockets” and that he was “happy to see it returned to its rightful owner” now that “we definitely know it’s not some knockoff.”
The news came just hours after the bloggers Gizmodo described how a 27-year-old software engineer at Apple (who is named and pictured in the post, by the way) managed to leave the precious iPhone 4G prototype — disguised to look like an iPhone 3GS — on a barstool at the Gourmet Haus Straut, a “nice German beer garden” in Redwood City, about 20 miles northwest of Apple HQ in Cupertino. (Engadget had blogged over the weekend that the phone was lost in a San Jose watering hole, leading to some initial confusion.)
Having downed a few brews, the hapless Apple engineer eventually rolled out of the bar, according to Gizmodo, absentmindedly leaving behind the next-generation iPhone (which he’d been field testing, the post said). Hey, it happens. (If I had a nickel for every time I left a credit card at a bar … ) Another man in the bar ended up taking the phone home, peeled off the protective jacket the next day, and realized he had a windfall on his hands.
And as we all now know, “weeks later, Gizmodo got it,” says Gawker Media Inc.’s Gizmodo — leaving out a key detail that Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, filled in later for the Associated Press: The company paid $5,000 for it.
What followed, I’m sure, was a scene similar to the wonderful sequence in the BBC version of “State of Play”: The editors huddled with their lawyers, the crucial evidence (a suitcase of documents in “State of Play,” an iPhone in the case of Gizmodo) on a table before them, trying to suss out whether they should write a story or call the police.
So, is Gizmodo in trouble? Hard to say, but the L.A. Times tech blog checked in with UC Irvine law professor Henry Weinstein, who says Gizmodo is probably in the clear: “Journalists generally do not get prosecuted for being in receipt of stolen documents, as opposed to the person who received the documents and turned them over.” (It’s worth noting that Gizmodo claims the iPhone in question wasn’t stolen — merely “lost.”)
Now, Apple may find some other way to punish the Gizmodo guys (who are fast becoming the Merry Pranksters of tech bloggerdom) — perhaps a different legal route, or it may freeze out Gizmodo in terms of access to Apple reps and review samples. Then again, Apple reportedly had already snubbed Gizmodo by refusing to give it an advance review iPad, so … sounds like Gizmodo’s iPhone scoop may have been sweet revenge for the spurned blog.
And c’mon: Here’s Apple, perhaps the most infamously paranoid company of all time, complete with triple-secret security zones, blackout curtains hung over conference room windows, flashing red warning lights, prototype devices chained to tables, and all that — only to suffer the (arguably) worst security breach in its history because some poor guy left the next iPhone on a barstool. The irony is just too rich.
Of course, this is all inside baseball (albeit a fascinating game of inside baseball); in the end, we’re left with what appears to be an enticing new iPhone, with a revamped design (flat and shiny on the front and back, trim aluminum sides, thinner but a bit heavier), dual cameras (with a front-facing lens for video chat), a bigger battery, and what appears to be a higher-resolution display. The design may change between now and the final shipping date — after all, the phone Gizmodo snagged may only have been a prototype — but still, there’s little question that the iPhone as we know it is poised for some big changes.

Apple today released via the iPhone Dev Center its second beta version of iPhone OS 4 and the associated Software Development Kit (SDK) for developers to use in creating and updating applications. The initial versions of iPhone OS 4 and the SDK were released earlier this month alongside Apple’s media event to introduce the features of the next-generation operating system.
iPhone OS 4 will bring a number of new features, including various services supporting multitasking, email enhancements, and greater access for third-party application to built-iPhone functions such as calendars, photos, and camera controls. In all, Apple notes that iPhone OS 4 brings over 1,500 new APIs for developers to use in their applications.
Apple is expected to publicly release iPhone OS 4 to iPhone and iPod touch users “this summer”, although early models of those devices will not be compatible with the new OS and even some newer models will not be able to take advantage of all of the features. iPhone OS 4 will come to the iPad “in the fall”.

Apple has updated their online store to reveal that the 3G version of the iPad will begin shipping by May 7th. Apple launched the Wi-Fi version of the iPad on April 3th in the U.S. The company has reported that they have sold over 500,000 iPads since that time and have subsequently delayed the international iPad launch until the end of May.
The May 7th date appears to be for new iPad 3G orders as those who have pre-ordered the 3G model were promised delivery by late April. Several readers who pre-ordered the 3G iPads note that their order statuses still indicate a “late April” delivery.
Update: Apple has also sent out emails to those who pre-ordered 3G models, reassuring them that their orders will ship in late April.
Thank you for your recent order of the magical and revolutionary iPad 3G.
We would like to confirm that your order will be shipped in late April as communicated at the time you placed your order. You will receive a confirmation notice when your order has shipped.
You can get up-to-date information about your order, including shipping status and tracking number, at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus

Save time and money with our favorite secret tricks for Google, Facebook, YouTube, eBay, and several other sites you already use.
Think you know all of the tricks at your favorite Internet sites? Think again.
Even if you’re on Google, Facebook, and YouTube every day, you might not be tapping those sites’ full potential. Read on to speed up your Internet abilities, unlock new features, and find a new favorite tip or two.
Google Gimmicks
Search within a site: Narrow down your search results to a single site. Type (search query) site:(domain); an example would be entering: video card tips site:pcworld.com to find pages only at that location. You can even limit results to within sections of a site, as in this example: twitter site:pcworld.com/businesscenter.
Search for file types: Maybe you want to track down a certain document that’s a PDF. Enter your usual search string plus filetype:pdf to find only those pages. This method also works with PostScript (ps), Office docs (doc, ppt, xls), Rich Text (rtf), Plain Text (txt), and more. You can find a list of searchable file types here.
Exclude results: Include a minus sign to exclude certain results. Suppose you want to find news about Apple unrelated to the iPad. Type Apple -iPad. You can also combine the previous tips, such as Apple -iPad -site:apple.com and Apple -iPad -PDF.
Get local details: Forget manual time conversion; just enter time [city] (as in Time Tokyo) to get the current local time. Or try weather [city] for a forecast. For more local details, try [city] map, movies [city or ZIP code], and [restaurant name or cuisine] [city or ZIP code]. This works for a few other regular search strings, like Weather [city], stock quotes, and more–check out Google’s full list.
Make conversions: Swap units of measure, such as measurements of volume or distance; this works for converting different currencies, too. Try [number and unit] in [new unit] such as 7 inches in cm or 30 Euros in USD.
Bing Bonanza
Find links to files: Find pages that host or lead to certain file types, such as music. Enter [search term] contains:[file type] such as Wilco contains:MP3 to find MP3s from the band Wilco. Try this kind of search with many other file types, such as WMA, PDF, AAC, DOC, and nearly anything else.
Remove the background image: Bing sure is cute, but its big photos can be distracting. Visit http://www.bing.com/?rb=0 for a plain, gray version of the site.
Save searches as RSS feeds: If you want to stay on top of hits to a search query, turn it into an RSS feed. After loading your results, append &format=rss to the end of the new URL, and view it in your favorite RSS reader.
Fix Your Facebook
Hide application notices: Are you sick of Farmville, Mafia Wars, and other Facebook apps cluttering your feed? Mouse over the entry, and click Hide. You’ll block those alerts from your wall.
Invite a list of friends to an event: You don’t have to manually click a bunch of friends to send event invitations. Instead, create a list first. Click Friends in the left column, and use Create a List on top to pick certain friends. When making an event invitation, click the Filter Friends tab to show only the list. Click Select All.
Hide content from certain contacts: Keep your mom and work acquaintances from seeing messages intended for your inner circle. Click the lock privacy icon, and choose Customize.
From there, you can hide the post from specific people, or show it only to your entourage. For more on Facebook’s privacy settings, read “Protect Your Privacy With the New Facebook Settings.”
Cut to the core: The Lite version of Facebook strips away most of the clutter in the main design. It’s great if you’re on a slow Internet connection, browsing on a netbook, or just want to avoid the usual mess.
Browse to lite.facebook.com to give it a try, and click the link at the top of the page to toggle back to the full site.
Twitter Tweaks
Schedule tweets: You can set up a schedule for your Twitter account, so posts can go up while you are asleep, or–heaven forbid–are away from your gadgets.
This way, you’ll be able to tweet across time zones (so your international followers won’t have to scroll all the way down to hear from you, perhaps), and keep your Twitter account active when you need to focus on a project.
Many sites offer this feature, including HootSuite, SocialOomph, and Twuffer. I like Twuffer for its simplicity, although the others have additional features, such as Facebook support.
Get deals by following companies: Some of your favorite companies might post deals to Twitter. You’ll have to sort away businesses that spam followers too often.
If you really want to step up your hustle, make a new Twitter account specifically for landing freebies so the spam won’t get to your real one. Keep it all straight with a twitter client that manages multiple accounts, such as Tweetdeck. Also, check out “How to Win Prizes on Twitter” for more tips.
Learn about current events: Look for your local Happen.in feed, which charts Twitter chatter based on your location.
If a bunch of people in the same area post “bridge out,” Happen.in will repost the details so that you keep on track of regional events and trends. The Twitter Website includes similar functionality in the right-hand column. Adjust those Trending settings to set it for your area.
Expand URLs: Shortened links could send you to a funny YouTube clip, a popular article in the New York Times, or a site designed to riddle your PC with malware. Use a Greasemonkey script (a Firefox add-on) and just hover your mouse over the cryptic URL to see the full version at the bottom of the window.
If you’re in a different browser, try pbtweet or read How to Use Greasemonkey Scripts in IE, Chrome, and Safari for more details.
Texting Tips and Smartphone Secrets
Toggle mobile formatting: Many Websites detect your mobile browser and offer up a mobile version of themselves with bigger fonts and simpler formatting. If a site doesn’t do this automatically, try putting m. or mobile. at the front of the Web address (URL), as in http://mobile.pcworld.com.
If you want to swap a mobile site into its full, PC design, look for a link at the top or bottom of the page.
Get e-mail as texts: You can have email messages sent to your phone as texts, which can be convenient. Maybe your RSS reader can forward content as e-mail, and you want to be alerted to updates in a rarely used feed.
Enter your 10-digit mobile phone number prefix and carrier suffix, such as 2223334444@txt.att.net. Here’s a list of other carriers. Also, read “10 Killer Texting Tricks” for more SMS goodness.
Send text messages from AIM: Your PC can send texts to a mobile phone for free. Within an AIM client, send a text to the number with + and the country code prefix. For example, a San Francisco message might be directed to +14151112222.
eBay and Craigslist
Mind your eBay reserve: Tiptoe through starting prices when auctioning off an item to save money. If you’re pricing something near eBay’s thresholds of $1, $10, $25, $50, and $200, cut back by just a cent to save yourself a little cash, which can add up for high-volume sales.
If you list something at $199.99 for example, eBay charges $1. For a $200 starting price, eBay charges $2. For more information, check out the eBay Fees page.
Spell poorly: If you’re buying hard-to-spell product, try searching for misspelling or common typos (“playstaion”), or enter * as a text wildcard such as “playst*”. (eBay will find hits for one or more additional characters.)
You might stumble over auctions that others haven’t found–which means less bidding competition. If selling, enter a few of those errors into your listing to snare misspelled searches (though probably not in the title–you don’t want to disappear from the correctly-spelled search results).
Search Craigslist with RSS: Keeping an eye out for a free leather couch on Craigslist? Save yourself from searching every 10 minutes by setting up an RSS feed for the search results by entering your search within Craigslist and clicking the RSS button in the lower-right to add it to your RSS reader of choice.
Entertainment Extras: YouTube, Hulu, Flickr, iTunes, and Xbox Live
Download YouTube and Hulu: Watch online videos away from the Internet by downloading them to your PC. The simplest methods usually work best for noncommercial video, such as random YouTube home movies. But at press time, I got StreamTransport to save videos even from Hulu. Play clips back with VLC.
Watch high-quality YouTube: Bump up the resolution in supported clips. Just click the number and arrow in the play bar; it’s likely 360p by default. Pick a higher number for the best quality.
Link straight to part of a YouTube clip: Instead of sending people to the beginning of a clip, you can create a link that plays from a spot in the middle that you choose. Just add #t=[number]m[number]s to the end of the URL, such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf6IQgFxpIA#t=00m11s to begin 11 seconds in.
Initiate console game downloads: Microsoft’s Xbox Live site might seem superfluous on a PC. However, you can queue up downloads and activate purchases through your computer, and when you log in back on the console, they’ll transfer automatically.
Upload to Flickr through e-mail: Instead of manually uploading photos, you can send them through e-mail. This can work well from an old mobile phone to quickly send pictures from a PC. In the Emails & Notifications tab of the Account options, click Create an upload-to-flickr email address to configure the feature.
Search and link to iTunes content in a browser: The iTunes store lives in its own application, but you can access specific apps, songs, searches, or anything else with a URL. To search, try http://itunes.com/[search term] such as http://itunes.com/evernote. If your search comes up with a single result (as in this example), you’ll jump to that page within iTunes. To copy a direct URL to an iTunes store page, right-click an item within iTunes, and choose Copy Link.

Seems more people are becoming convinced that the iPhone 4G images leaked by Engadget over the weekend are indeed legitimate. In fact, the report that the pictured product is actually a Japanese counterfeit has been retracted and was itself a false claim.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber now believes the images are real and that the next generation iPhone looks like the images depicted. Gruber also adds a detail that he has heard that the new iPhones will have a “fancy glass” back.
Multiple sources familiar with the next iPhone have confirmed to me that the back is made out of some sort of fancy glass — and looks pretty much exactly what’s pictured at Engadget. That’s not the only reason I believe Engadget’s unit is legit, but it?s one.
He points to a 2006 Apple patent application which describes the use of Zirconia as a durable and radio-transparent material that might be used.
A portable computing device capable of wireless communications, the portable computing device comprising: an enclosure that surrounds and protects the internal operational components of the portable computing device, the enclosure including a structural wall formed from a ceramic material that permits wireless communications through.
Now, if you do believe that these images do represent the next generation iPhone, one interesting detail noted by an Engadget commenter is that it appears to allow for a user removable battery.

You’d think iPads might be banned by schools because they distract students, but George Washington University and Princeton University have both put the kibosh on them because their Wi-Fi networks are way overloaded since the launch.
Bandwidth overload is a problem we’ve all encountered, but you’ve got to really feel sorry for those students trying to access internet—for proper school reasons—from their laptops, but are booted off because all their peers have now got ‘Pads.
Princeton University has blocked around 20 per cent of iPads from being able to access the network, and George Washington doesn’t support any Apple products, apparently. Cornell University’s information-technology director Steve Schuster said they had similar problems when the iPhone launched, but is “working to ensure the iPad does not have devastating consequences to our network.”
This comes after an entire country banned the iPad: Israel has found that the iPad’s Wi-Fi broadcasting works at higher levels than is normally accepted in Israel.
Commenter Cintax has pointed us towards this Princeton report, which explains the problem they have with iPads on campus (22 of the 41 iPads, to be precise) are related to DHCP client malfunctions, which causes interference with other devices.

If you want to get past Apple’s unpredictable App Store censors, it’s simple: Just go win a Pulitzer Prize, and/or inspire an online revolution.
That seems to be the message being sent by Cupertino this week in a very public iPhone app rejection fiasco. Word broke on Thursday that Apple had rejected a cartoon app created by Mark Fiore, a cartoonist who recently made history by becoming the first online-only journalist to win a Pulitzer. Fiore received the award for animations he’d published at the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Fiore’s iPhone app, however, was reportedly shot down by Apple because it “ridicule[d] public figures” — you know, as most satirical political cartoons tend to do. But the story didn’t end there: The general silliness of a ban on political satire, coupled with Fiore’s high-profile honor for that same genre of work, led to a public outcry over Apple’s actions.
And that public outcry has seemingly now led to Apple rethinking its ban.
Apple’s Pulitzer Rejection Reversal
Fiore, according to an interview published in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, received a call from Apple shortly after his story started receiving widespread attention online. The Apple representative, Fiore says, suggested he resubmit his app.
“I feel kind of guilty,” Fiore tells The Journal. “I’m getting preferential treatment because I got the Pulitzer.”
To be fair to Fiore, it’s probably more directly the public attention than the Pulitzer itself that caught Apple’s eye. But the honor, no doubt, illustrated the validity of satirical work in the eyes of the real world — the eyes, that is, outside of Apple’s carefully guarded walls.
Apple’s App Store and Political Cartoons
This wasn’t Apple’s first clash with politically charged App Store content. The Cupertino team put the kibosh on an app featuring the work of Mad Magazine cartoonist Tom Richmond last fall. Richmond’s app, entitled “Bobble Rep,” featured bobblehead-like caricatures of U.S. senators and representatives. Apple eventually reconsidered its rejection following a similar wave of online outrage.
Other authors have faced struggles, too, ranging from a guy who made a caricature-driven election game to a developer who created a cartoony countdown clock for the end of the Bush administration. But with the advent of the iPad and its focus on redefining the way we receive information, the concept of content-based censorship — particularly when the guidelines are so murky and inconsistent — is more troubling than ever.
“Suddenly Apple’s control freak approach threatens the development of the very technology it is supposed to be innovating, by placing restrictions and outright rejections upon the content that would be consumed via [its] devices,” Richmond writes on his blog. “Apps for publications and newspaper content won’t be very useful if [the iPad] only lets us see stuff that Apple and Steve Jobs thinks we should see.”
For now, it appears satire and politics will remain a wishy-washy, gray area within Apple’s app world. Not to fret, though: Bodily functions are still A-OK.

JERUSALEM – Israel has banned imports of Apple Inc.’s hottest new product, the iPad, citing concerns the powerful gadget’s wireless signals could disrupt other devices.
Customs officials said Thursday they have already confiscated about 10 of the lightweight tablet computers since Israel announced the new regulations this week. The ban prevents anyone — even tourists — from bringing iPads into Israel until officials certify that they comply with local transmitter standards.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission allows devices with Wi-Fi capability to broadcast at higher power levels than are allowed in Europe and Israel — meaning that the iPad’s stronger signal could throw off others’ wireless connections, Schubert said.
“If you operate equipment in a frequency band which is different from the others that operate on that frequency band, then there will be interference,” said Nati Schubert, a senior deputy director for the Communications Ministry. “We don’t care where people buy their equipment. … But without regulation, you would have chaos.”
Some Israelis successfully got the popular devices into Israel before the ban.
Amnon, a software developer who legally brought an iPad into Israel but asked that his last name be withheld to avoid potential government repercussions, said he and other high-tech businessmen need the iPad to develop new applications for the device.
“There are several hundred people in Israel who make their livelihood developing apps … and there are going to be companies that suffer, because they can’t deliver the services they’re supposed to be delivering,” he said.
The iPad combines the features of a notebook computer with the touch-pad functions of the iPod. It went on sale in the U.S. on April 3. Apple this week delayed its international launch until May 10, citing heavy sales in the U.S.
Israeli officials said the ban has nothing to do with trade and is simply a precaution to assure that the iPad doesn’t affect wireless devices already in use in Israel.
Although Israeli standards are similar to those in many European nations, Israel is the only country so far to officially ban imports.
Schubert said he expects the problem to be resolved as Apple moves closer to the international release.
In the meantime, confiscated iPads will be held by customs — for a daily storage fee — until their owners depart the country or ship the gadgets back to the U.S. at their own expense.
Apple’s chief distributor in Israel, iDigital, declined to comment on the Communications Ministry’s decision, and messages left at Apple’s headquarters in California were not immediately returned.