Find out what happened...when AdamBitTheApple.

Jobs: Thoughts On Flash

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

As some of you may know, Apple and Adobe have been trading licks concerning Flash not being available on Apple’s mobile devices.  The back-and-forth has gotten a bit childish and the press has only reported one-liners and here-say mostly.  For the average consumer, and even the tech enthusiast, it’s seemed like a blur of jabs and right-hooks that haven’t really told us anything useful.  Steve Jobs has now decided to try to clear things up with a public letter.  Even if you’re not a fan of Apple products, it’s a good read, and it’s also nice to see him trying to cool the boiling waters around this subject.

Enjoy!

The XKCD Webcomic Reader iPhone App Shootout!

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
ALL

The contenders.

Welcome, welcome.  Read, enjoy, and please leave comments.  Everybody has comments.  Comments are like…well, I won’t follow-through with that joke, but I will say everybody has one.

Ok, so a week or two ago, a friend sent out a tweet that said “there’s an XKCD iPhone app!!”  I decided this was a must-have-app.  I needed to add this app to my collection of almost 140 apps.  (Yes, I have a problem.  I know this and I’m currently avoiding therapy for it, thank you.)

So, off to the App Store I went and what did I find out?  I found out that there are a total of seven, yes SEVEN, XKCD iPhone apps available, and each of them are free.  Well, with that many free apps all created for the same purpose, I figured somebody on the interwebz had the geeky forethought put together a big ol’ app shootout to find out which was the best one.  I was wrong.

For once, somebody else hadn’t already thought to do this.  “Serisouly?” I thought, “nobody has done this yet?  For XKCD of all things!??!”  I couldn’t believe it.  So, I decided to do my own shootout review.  It’s my first review, so please be gentle if things aren’t as finely-polished as they could/should be.

In all truthfulness, you would not believe the PITA that this turned out to be.  Once I downloaded all the apps, many of them had different app icons and/or names than they showed in the App Store.  And since Apple was nice enough to let a few of them be named the same exact damn thing it was a bit tough sorting it all out.  And I couldn’t just go into the About page in some of the apps to sleuthly figure out which one was which, because some of them didn’t even bother with such time-wasting flimflam as info about the app.  It seems they let just anybody develop for the iPhone….although I basically already knew that.  :)   (a short tip for anybody who might take on such a task in the future: leave your iPhone plugged into your computer while reviewing, and just check/uncheck apps as you’re reviewing them in iTunes. especially when many of the apps are named the same, etc. word.)

Ok, enough back-story.  In case I don’t mention it in each review, most of these apps allow you to view comics in portrait mode AND in landscape mode, unless otherwise noted.  Enjoy, and I hope this giant shootout review helps you decide which XKCD iPhone app you like best.  If not, then I’m a horrible failure…. ;)

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