To use a tired analogy, the iPhone is to phones as a BMW coupe is to cars: Sleek, innovative, and superior. Meanwhile, the Windows Mobile device I’m using is more like a Ford Escort: Yes, it will get you there, but not in style.

Upon using the phone the first few days I did indeed notice that my battery seemed to drain quicker than normal.  At first I thought “My god, the rumors were right! The battery life is much worse”.  However after I really thought about the current use of the new iPhone and then compared it to the previous iPhone I realized that the comparison was completed skewed.

A couple of key factors all changed at once:

1. The new phone has 3G: The higher data rate is definatly nice but it certainly, and expectedly uses more power.  This should be expected to anyone who is familiar with the differences between EDGE and 3G.

2. Third Party Apps are now available: The introduction of third party applications is wonderful and as I expected it has increased the usefulness of my iPhone and naturally increased how often I use it.

3. Mobile Me is introduced Although not everyone has mobile me, it is another service that has recently has been subjected to my increased attention and use.  And another internet based service that gets used that didn’t get used before means another reason my iPhone usage has increased.

When I was previously comparing the battery life of my first iPhone to my new iPhone 3G I was tending to forget about the new features that were causing me to use my phone more actively than before.

Having realized that I loaded up my previous phone with the 2.0 software, loaded up the same applications I have on the 3G and started using it.  Sure enough, the battery was certainly getting drained far faster than before.

I get the feeling a lot of people are not considering those factors when reviewing the iPhone 3G’s battery life.

One of the most common traits with Flash is its overall misunderstood nature with the general public and even most developers/designers.  In his article, Kontra argues that one of the main reasons Apple wouldn’t allow flash on the iPhone is because they would lose control of the UI and on top of that, that flash doesn’t support the multi touch api’s built in to the iPhone.

Man this guy is off his rocker… And no I don’t mean that mis guided attempt at a phone Motorola put out a couple years ago.

Before I go into detail on why he is wrong, remember this… If a flash site was made to be viewed on the iPhone’s specific screen size (making it a web app for the iphone), it is no different than any other web app that already exists for the phone whether it is made with HTML, CSS, Javascript, or all of the above.  They all utilize the same Cocoa touch api’s.

For the sake of arguement I will assume for that a flash plugin was made for the iPhone, even though in reality this has not occurred.  If a flash web based application was made for the iPhone it would operate as any other web app does.  For instance clicking a text field in a flash app would still bring up the iPhones keyboard and so on.  The thought that some how using flash would mean that basic iPhone UI controls would no longer work, like drop down lists and text inputs, and suddenly the flash developer would choose how the user typed is ludicrous.  The iPhones built in api’s for webkit tell the phone when to bring up the iPhones built in keyboard.

The idea that some how flash takes away Apples control of the UI is ridiculous and just shows the authors lack of knowledge in terms of browser operation and flash.  Any iPhone web app takes away Apple’s control of the UI.  Its up to the web designer to ensure that their website maintains those standards flash or not.  The platform used by the designer makes no difference.

Kontra also mentioned that basic controls like dragging and zooming around the page would no longer work.  Once again, Cocoa touch is what dictates webkits viewing controls.  No object rendered with in the page can take away those controls from phone.  Flash is not some mystical territory where the laws of reality no longer apply.  Its simply another web object, it is under the control of the browser and the browser is under the control of the system its running on.

While I agree that the iPhone will not likely have flash anytime soon for performance reasons.  The idea that flash somehow takes away UI control from Apple where other web apps didn’t makes no sense what-so-ever.

The long:  I will be writing that soon…

You can be sure to hear from me once the keynote has concluded.

If you aren’t already familiar with AIR I suggest taking a gander at Adobe’s page.  In short, it enables some of the functionality you love about local apps on your system (drag and drop, save to the hd, etc) with your web apps.

As a web developer I think AIR is a wonderful product but there are a lot of misconceptions about it that I would like to clear up.  The most recent of which that I can recall was Leo Laporte on Windows Weekly.

While viewing and discussing Adobe’s latest web app Photoshop Express, Paul and Leo were commenting on how it was a nice rich web app.

This must use AIR!

Leo deduced...

Well.... no.  And this isn’t the first time I have heard individuals view a well produced web app and think it had something to do with Adobe AIR.  Believe it or not Flash is very powerful and applications like photoshop express are accomplished with flash and flex.  AIR is merely a possible tool to bring that application to the desktop, a appropriate step for such an app but currently is not its current distributed form.

To be honest part of the angst that has pressured me to post on this is Silverlight 2, Microsoft’s next version of its Flash clone.  While Silverlight 2 is a wonderful upgrade to Silverlight 1, its hardly a flash killer.  And some of the built in features of the developing program Blend are hardly revolutionary.  Even though the press would have you believe that Silverlight 2 is the next best thing to sliced bread.

All in all, Flash and Silverlight will continue to do what they have always done, be a fantastic medium for some web apps.  And when done right, will do things no amount of Ajax could ever pull off.  However, many other web apps will be much better suited to be coded in HTML & CSS.  And because of that will have less issues with accessibility and search engine optimization.

I love Flash, and the introduction of AIR lets me call myself a sudo cross platform desktop developer.  And if the ubiquity of Flash ever increases to 100% I will be glad to code more of my sites in Flash instead of using it as accents in my current designs.

But AIR is nothing more than an extension of Flash’s potential, not the source.