MediaFile

The war between Apple and Adobe, which revolves around the use of Adobe’s Flash software on devices like the iPhone and iPad, has simmered down to a low boil, but it certainly hasn’t gone away. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen turned up at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, and the first question out the gate from the interviewer was about — what else? — Apple.

Although Narayen said the media is doing its part to help fuel the spat, he sounded anything but conciliatory:

“There’s a war happening for developers … Adobe has always been about helping people create content for multiple devices, multiple platforms … Apple and Adobe are on different sides of that point of control.”

He continued: “We’re all about a multi-platform, heterogeneous, open ecosystem. And that’s what we’re going to be focused on. And Apple will continue to like to keep that closed and proprietary… so let the games begin.”

And what about that juicy rumor that made the rounds a few weeks ago? Microsoft was said to be talking to Adobe about potentially buying the company, news that sent Adobe’s stock jumping.

Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, is unveiling an app for the iPad that will allow its digital TV customers to watch shows and movies wherever they are.

The Xfinitiy TV app is both a TV guide and mobile video player according to Comcast, and will enable customers to use the iPad as a remote control, search for their favorite cable shows to watch on TV, On Demand, online or on the iPad.

Cable companies, grappling with increasing competition from Johnny-come-latelys like Netflix and Sezmi, are very keen to seek new ways to provide better value to customers for  ever-rising cable bills. The ability to watch what shows you like, when you want – even when you’re on the move — might be one way to provide that value and avoid the mythical or real threat of ‘cord-cutting’.

Aliph, one of the most successful venture capital-backed consumer electronics start-ups in the U.S., has carved out a lucrative niche for itself making the high-end Jawbone mobile phone headset. But the company is launching a new product that will take it in a new direction, just in time for the holiday shopping season.

The company on Thursday unveiled the $199 Jambox, a Bluetooth wireless portable speaker which does double duty as a speaker phone. Aliph hopes it will become a must-have accessory for owners of iPhones, iPads and billions of other Bluetooth-enabled devices.

“This is the first step into a whole new world beyond headsets,” said Aliph CEO and founder Hosain Rahman.

It’s become a time-honored tradition: Start selling an Apple gadget and brace for the throngs of eager consumers.

For Verizon Wireless, the big day was Thursday, as the nation’s largest wireless carrier for the first time began to sell the sleek iPad tablet PC.

But by the looks of the store in downtown San Francisco that Reuters happened upon on Thursday morning, things were clearly not following the traditional script.

Hewlett-Packard, at long last, has released the tablet computer first glimpsed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January, and it is a decidedly different take than what we’ve seen so far in the tablet space. Basically a business netbook sans a keyboard. That’s a far cry from Apple’s iPad — and maybe that’s the point.

The initial reviews of the HP Slate 500 are starting to trickle in and they are something of a mixed bag. There is plenty to debate, to be sure. The device sports Windows 7, Wi-Fi but no 3G, and has no app store link-up. But it features a digital stylus pen, has a relatively fast processor and plenty of room for storage. And then there is the little matter of that hefty $799 price tag, which has surprised more than a few people, given that the iPad starts at $499.

HP is not even pretending to be targeting the same buyers as the iPad. And a more interesting HP vs Apple showdown is likely to come next year, when HP releases the webOS tablet that everyone is curious to get a peek at.

You might think from listening to most of the world’s iPhone, iPad, i-everthingelse enthusiasts that Steve Jobs and Apple can do no wrong, but not everybody is in agreement. 

In a bout of clear anti-i sentiment, Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, scorned the notion that her company should follow in Apple’s footsteps with a service similar to iAd, the mobile advertising platform Apple unveiled this year. 

 ”That’s going to fall apart for them,” Bartz said in an meeting with Reuters reporters Wednesday. 
She suggested that advertisers will balk on Apple’s efforts to exert full Jobsean control over the ads. She kindly conceded that Apple’s effort is “ok for experimentation.” 

The organizers of the US Open pride themselves on using technology to help tennis fans enjoy the sport more both inside and outside the stadium.
But, as far as iPad is concerned the tournament’s tech love affair only goes so far, as the grand slam organizers appear to have banned the device from the stadium itself.
Some visitors to Arthur Ashe Stadium learned about this the hard way; by being turned away from the gates when security guards found them carrying the offending gadgets.
Given that the event organizers take space on their website to boast about their iPhone app, it was not immediately clear why its bigger cousin the iPad should be forbidden.
One security worker explained to a disappointed fan of both tennis and the iPad that the ban was due to concerns about  terrorists.  “They’re  using iPads to detonate things.”
Really?  A US open official was not immediately available on Wednesday to verify this was the tournament’s official stance.

Hidden in the security section of the visitor’s guide to the US Open website is a list of items prohibited from the event including computers and laptops as well as video recorders.

But the irony was not lost on tech reporters and executives attending the game on Tuesday night because US Tennis Association has been reasonably forward looking when it comes to technology.  The event’s tech boasts include an augmented reality iPhone app that IBM developed for the USTA. That  app promises to warn you about the quickest bathroom lines or   off what’s happening in other courts if you point your phone  in the right direction.
You could also enjoy the action of simultaneous matches by flicking between video streams on devices such as iPad.

Apple is, of course, absent from this week’s video game extravaganza, the  E3 Expo in Los Angeles. The company just doesn’t do trade shows.  But its presence looms over the event.

Apple has managed to create a whole new gaming market with the iPhone since its debut in 2007. There are tens of thousands of games available for download via Apple’s App Store, and it’s an open debate as to how much the iPhone’s success has hurt the traditional hardware makers, namely Nintendo and Sony, which both make portable gaming devices.

Nintendo is making a big push to differentiate its portable gaming platform with it’s new 3D-enabled DS, which offers a glasses-free experience.

One of the aspects that gets lost in discussions about the wonders of digital readers and tablets is how they might change the shape of  advertising.  Thankfully this morning a Time Inc. panel about tablets sparked a conversation about how ads could be built in new ways on digital devices – especially the iPad — and how publishers can benefit.

Sports Illustrated is thinking pretty deeply about these issues.  As one example it  previewed a very cool Gatorade.  The ad had traditional elements like video  and readers could choose different “branded”  Gatorade bottles.  For example by selecting the Michael Jordan bottle,  users could have the choice of viewing old clips of Jordan in action or pulling up nutritional information.  One could easily spend a lot time playing around with the ad.

As Sports Illustrated Editor Terry McDonell put it: “Advertising will become content.”

Sure, you already peeped the next version of the iPhone months ago, thanks to that hapless Apple engineer’s fateful beer-haus outing.

But Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs filled in many blanks about the gadget on Monday during a nearly two-hour on-stage unveiling of the iPhone 4 in San Francisco at the Apple developers’ conference.

Herewith, the key features of Apple’s latest smartphone, as well as some of the other noteworthy nuggets that Jobs ticked off at a rapid-fire pace during his presentation.