Anyone know the status of the Lala app for iPhone?

[Silly Rabbit]

If you're new to Lala.com, it's like iTunes in the sky. Er, cloud. Among other things. (IE you can "rent" tunes for 10 cents each meaning you pay your 10 cents & can play them as often as you wish through Lala. You just can't download them or burn them to CD. But if you do want to d/l them or burn to CD, you can also purchase them through Lala.) I've Googled & there's been talk for over a year about a Lala iPhone app. Even as recent as March of this year & by "reliable" sites such as Engadet (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/28...as-iphone-app/) But so far, no iPhone app or word on when it will be avaiable, that I can find. Anyone here at BH who may have the inside scoop?

(Yes, I know about Pandora & I like Pandora, too. But what I don't like about Pandora is you can't specify songs you want to hear - only your starting one. At least from what I've seen.)

[RobbM]

I'll bet those people at Lala have been paying attention to the OS 3 blueprint and have realized that in-app commerce is in the works. They're waiting for that to be official so they can offer purchasing like you detail, SR.

[Silly Rabbit]

That must be what's holding them up. But darn it, I wish they'd get it up & running b/c the other thing I forgot to mention is that you can upload your own MP3 collection to Lala. So it's like having your entire MP3 collection with you, wherever you have an internet connection. Problem with the non-mobile site is it requires Flash...which the iPhone can't play...yet...AFAIK.

[RobbM]

oooh... Flash. If the standard browser site uses Flash encoding to stream music, it may be quite some time before we see an iPhone version of this app.

[Hook]

oooh... Flash. If the standard browser site uses Flash encoding to stream music, it may be quite some time before we see an iPhone version of this app.

So it seems, according to Ed's sources.

[Silly Rabbit]

Boogers. Since there's been talk of an iPhone Lala app since 2008, I was hoping they were working on something (for the iPhone app) that didn't use Flash.

[RobbM]

"Boogers"??? Don't hurt yourself there, SR. (Of course, I've recently been saying "Nerts", which I believe comes from Henry Blake from MASH.)

Not to change the subject, but if Flash can run on other phones, what kind of technical difficulties could be preventing it on the iPhone? Its an ARM processor, for cry-eye! And the OS is based on Unix, which has been around for...what?...a thousand years? No. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple came out with its own method for handling Flash content. Nerts to Adobe!