First of all, the update was free. Formerly Apple has charged iPod touch users for major OS revisions, but I was able to install it at no charge to my 3rd generation iPod touch. Secondly, the features like wallpapers and multitasking are easy to use, as long as you actually knew how to use you iOS device before. Two taps on the home button brings up the app switcher, and a tap-hold on any open app will allow you to completely “close” the app. Wallpapers are customizable for both the home screen and lock screen; when you choose a new wallpaper you can set it to either screen or both, it’s all so easy.

Pandora excites me for more than just the background play. Apple make the audio background service tie into the iPod music software, which means that the iPod controls on the lock screen and home screen work just as fine as if using the Pandora app. But the ultimate tie-in for me? My headphone remote now can pause the music. I know that sounds so minor, but working every day listening to Pandora gets a little irritating when I always have to pull it out of my pocket to pause the music when I need to have a conversation.

There are other enhancements as well, but in the meantime I am just glad that I have multitasking. It really makes a difference in ease of use.

Are we being serious, folks? You want Flash, the bane of Internet design and functionality for over a decade, and you want it on your mobile device that badly? Granted, Flash provided features that were not commonly available in most browsers or media players in the beginning, but it has been superseded now by much better browsers and programs (dare I drop the word “apps”?) that perform those functions much faster and much better. And let’s not forget that the primary use for Flash on most websites today are those hideous, annoying advertisements that get in your way, make your page load slower, and require me to use tools like Adblock Plus in both Firefox and Thunderbird (for RSS feeds) just to save my sanity. You’ve got to come up with much better reasons than games and video sites like Hulu to convince me. May I point out a few flaws in this reasoning?

Oh yes, Hulu is fun because you can watch that episode you missed last week (at least for us Americans, so international users have even less reason to want Flash.) It uses Flash as it’s sole means of operating, even when using their dedicated desktop applications (just right-click in the player if you don’t believe me.) “We want Hulu on our iPhones!” say the legions of Flash-worshiping minions. And to be honest, I would love Hulu to be on my iPod touch. But let’s look at the situation here from the correct angle: rather than adapting the delivery system, being Flash, to work on the iPhone, shouldn’t we rather request that Hulu adapt it’s content to function correctly outside of Flash? Copyrights and other issues would need to be considered for sure, but it does not make sense to have a middle-man controlling the content when the iPhone OS is fully capable of decoding video itself. YouTube has been on the iPhone from day one without the need of some arbitrary plugin. No, it does not run inside the browser or in the Facebook app (iTunes link), but it works and it works well.

Pandora is another great website that is unfortunately crippled by Flash. I love creating my own stations and listening to old favorites as well as new discoveries. But in contrast to Hulu, Pandora does not have an equivalent “web radio” feature built natively into the iPhone OS. Luckily Pandora (and its competitor, Last.fm) have released apps for the iPhone OS and even other mobile operating systems like Android and Palm’s webOS that allow a user to listen on the go. If fact, I prefer the mobile app because the advertisements are just as prevalent but less annoying, besides being able to move about the house or workplace. Considering the Pandora Radio app (iTunes link) can usually be found in the Top 100 free apps on the iTunes App Store it appears to be a better solution than waiting for Flash to come to the OS.

The Flash supporters wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if there weren’t a few other points besides media to their argument, so let’s look at the other major complaint: games. Web games were the reason I ever discovered Flash (and its neglected, somewhat forgotten sibling Shockwave) and for a long time I loved playing those games. I don’t have as much time as I used to, but every now and then I like to try out one of Download Squad’s suggested “Time Wasters”. I will concede that I have played a few that I have thought, “Wow, I’d love to play those on my iPod anytime I want!” But think for a moment about your favorite games that use Flash and then think about the control system they use. That’s right, a keyboard and mouse. Not quite what we have in mind on our mobile device.

Before anyone says, “You have a touchscreen, you don’t need a mouse!” or, “There’s a virtual keyboard available,” think back to how you control the games. I have two examples of this huge flaw, and both of them come from Download Squad’s Time Wasters feature. (If anyone knows great, inspiring games, it has to be Download Squad.) The two games are Continuity and Starlight.

Continuity is an amazingly simple but truly fun experience. My description won’t do it justice but you move tiles on the screen which represent your playing environment with the goal of obtaining all the keys to open a door somewhere in one of the tiles; it may sound easy, but it is not. Now, the primary input device is a keyboard. In order to successfully navigate the tiles, you usually need at least two keys pressed at the same time, and the tiles zoom out when you need to rearrange them. Let’s look at how this would work on an iPhone: if the game ever loads with a decent speed, I have to popup the keyboard somehow (not sure how you would do that in Flash considering it comes up for text inputs only) which will take up half of the screen space in either orientation and which currently has no arrow keys. Before taking into account any other issues, that alone would hinder this game from being played. I will concede that the iPad has a keyboard accessory that could provide these functions and not take up screen space, but that is all moot when you consider that there is an iPhone OS version of the game being developed. Funny, I recommended that Hulu create an iPhone OS-specific app before…

Now take a look at Starlight. This game basically is a filed of star rotating on a single point in a 3-D plane. You use the mouse only to rotate the screen. Once the stars are aligned to a certain constellation, usually a famous figure or everyday object, you proceed to the next round. There are no buttons to press or click, so this makes it really impractical on an iPhone. Since Mobile Safari interprets movement as page scrolling, it would never be input into the flash game. And even if it were, the iPhone and iPod touch screen size would make it difficult to play still. If it ever were to be playable on the iPhone OS, we’d either have to make serious changes to the way the OS interprets hand gestures or the game itself would have to be adjusted to use such a setup, thus negating the reasons to not develop an iPhone OS version.

I do understand that not all Flash games require any input besides the click of a mouse (or tap in the case of iPhone OS) but in that case why have it be Flash-based? There are much more intuitive, simpler and OS independent alternatives for such simple games. Until Flash has some legitimate function that can not be easily or, more importantly, better implemented in the OS, there is no point in having it ported to iPhone OS.

Finally, I’m going to repeat a lot of the claims used by the opposition to Flash: HTML5 makes Flash unnecessary, no one wants those resource-hogging advertisements on pages, and websites that require Flash for “design reasons” should not exist in the first place. I do believe Flash has a place in the world, and that place is on real computer. If Adobe truly wants Apple to rethink their situation, they’ll have to do much better than post screenshots of blue blocks, most of which are either advertisements, improperly configured video streams or ridiculous Facebook “apps”. (Come on, Farmville? I’m already trying hard to remove all traces of it from my Facebook feed, I really don’t want to be able to run on my iPod.)

One of my recent passions has been the most low-tech innovation of the past three years: netbooks. In theory, netbooks should never have been successful: paying close to the same price as a normal laptop for inferior hardware? The old me would have said, “No way, Jose,” but after actually owning one for a year and becoming immersed in the the Mac netbook scene I have a whole new understanding and appreciation of function-over-specs.

One huge problem with netbooks is that they really are limited in their modern capabilities. For example: Adobe’s Flash Player software, commonly used on YouTube and online games, is just barely functional on most netbooks. Soon newer models with new processors and video technologies will lure a lot of current netbooks to ditch their old model for an upgrade.

So what’s a person to do with an underused netbook? Here’s a few ideas to keep you netbook in practical use beyond just the normal e-mail and web browsing.

1. Portable Video Player
You know those little portable DVD players that you can buy at most retailers? They are usually junk unless you start getting into the $150+ range. By that point you can almost pay for a decently-discounted netbook! So why not make your netbook a non-DVD video player?

Despite the diminutive specifications, netbooks make formidable video players. (Well, except for Flash video, but I digress….) Even when encoded in high definition, most popular netbooks are more than capable of playing most video files.

Use video conversion software, such as the excellent Handbrake, to convert your DVD’s to MP4 files. They’re smaller and easier to transfer over to a netbook. Heck, you could even use your netbook and an external DVD drive to do the conversion. (That will be slower, but you won’t be using up valuable resources on a more powerful computer.)

There are two more major advantages to this setup for parents. How many times have your kids grabbed a DVD with slobbery, food-encrusted hands, while scratching it across a hard surface? There’s no physical media to worry about with a netbook video player. And what about those forty+ cartoons that the kids can never leave home without? Now they’re all stored on the hard drive, without the need to swap discs mid-trip.

2. Teleprompter
(I got this idea from a system utilizing an iPhone, as reported on Make: Online.)
Giving an important presentation? Creating your own video podcast? You’ve got yourself a great prompting system waiting for you on your desk.

Unlike conventional laptops, netbooks are usually really small and light. This makes them ideal for setting in peculiar places, like on a shelf. Using a presentation program such as PowerPoint or OpenOffice you can view your notes in large words (as compared with an iPhone teleprompter) without having to shuffle papers. This is especially important for podcasts, no one wants to see a stack of papers on the screen.

This idea really comes into fruition if you use a netbook with a webcam; you can record your podcast with the same screen that you are reading your script from.

3. Really Expensive Wireless Adapter
This one was almost too ridiculous to mention, except it is exactly what I have been using for Xbox Live the last month or two.

While most modern technology have 802.11 technology built-in, there are still some useful products that don’t. Notably, the original Xbox and the current Xbox 360. Yes, you could buy a dedicated wireless adapter, but both consoles’ options are fairly expensive. And sometimes you need a quick temporary solution for a desktop computer in a remote spot of the house. You’ve got a netbook that isn’t getting used much, why not put it to work?

It’s really simple; just set your operating system to share the wireless connection with your wired ethernet port; Windows provides a fairly simple check box for this. It may not be as simple, elegant, or beautiful as a dedicated adapter, but it gets the job done.

Another related trick is for travel. I visited a hotel last year that used powerline networking, which required an adapter in the hotel room. The adapter only had one ethernet port, but we had two computers. We simply hooked one to the adapter, set Windows to share the ethernet’s connection with the wireless, and connected via ad-hoc. No need for a router, we were both able to surf the web off one ethernet adapter.