WWDC '08 Sees Slimmer, Improved, 3G iPhone 804
Many of us have been watching Apple's WWDC 2008 keynote unfold live. There are many exciting tidbits, but most of all is the announcement of the 3G iPhone. Featuring an even thinner profile, black plastic back, metal buttons, flush headphone jack, improved audio, GPS support, and improved battery life, this is bound to make quite a few people stand up and take notice. Update 18:54 GMT by SM: Best of all it looks like they really took the price point to heart, 8GB iPhones are now $199 and a 16GB model will be available for $299, coming to an Apple store riot near you on July 11,2008.
Biggest news is... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:5, Insightful)
8GB iPhone $199 + $59.99 * 24 = $1638.76
I think the touch is the better deal.
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if the network is subsidising the phone, there's no way you're walking out the store without the contract set up and the phone registered to it.
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:5, Interesting)
And now, for $199, you can buy an 8GB 3G iPhone, which is a pretty sweet iPod plus a phone, internet connectivity, 3rd party apps, or you can buy an 8GB nano, which is just an iPod with a tiny screen and a wheel. I understand that this new iPhone price may be subsidized by the carriers, and that it probably locks a customer into the 2 year contract even more than they were with the old iPhone, but still, there's something about seeing these prices on the website that just doesn't sit right. Not to mention that the 8GB iPhone is now $100 less expensive than the 8GB iPod Touch, which has less hardware built into it... (by the way, does the Touch get GPS, too?).
I'm still expecting either price cuts or big storage increases on the Flash-based iPods. In any case, if I were in the market for a new iPod, I'd wait a little longer before I buy.
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:5, Insightful)
It also looks like it will be a lot harder to buy one without signing a contract up-front.
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason the iPhone originally cost so much more than we're used to seeing phones cost, is because it was not subsidized by a 2 year service contract.
Now that they've lowered the price, can I still walk into the Apple store and buy a new iPhone and walk out without signing a contract.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Looks like the lower price comes from carrier subsidy. They're no longer available to buy direct from the online Apple Store. You have to do it in a brick and mortar store, or on the O2 or Carphone Warehouse websites (which haven't been updated yet, Boo-urns), which I suspect means signing up for a contract before you get your hands on one.
Still no word on UK pricing either.
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:4, Informative)
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone?mco=MTE2NTQ [apple.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The question is, can you walk into the store and get an iPhone for this price, without having to sign a 2 year contract.
Now that they've lowered the price, can I still walk into the Apple store and buy a new iPhone and walk out without signing a contract.
I'm not sure if you're thinking about buying the iPhone without a contract and "just using the iPod" functions, but you cannot do this. You may be able to hack it, but Apple will probably make it a hassle. From Ars Technica's review [arstechnica.com] of the original iPhone:
Re:Biggest news is... (Score:4, Funny)
True, but the AT&T contract involves the mortgaging of at least one gonad.
Re:Biggest news is... AT&T increased monthly c (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, am tremendously unhappy with this kind of temporal data plan recursion. Even if it is innovative, infinite pricing schemes relying on iterations of the present I find to be unacceptable!
Price... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Price... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Price... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Price... (Score:4, Funny)
Can hardly beat the prices (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can hardly beat the prices (Score:5, Funny)
Our British friends still spell "for" the same.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can hardly beat the prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I remembered my trusty Garmin:
$5/month for the painfully inaccurate ClearChannel traffic info.
$215 for the traffic receiver (granted, you can find a C550 with it included for less if you shop around).
$160 for the travel guides.
$100-$150 every time you want to go to a new country.
$70/year for the map updates.
Granted, you don't need to buy all of those. But every one of them involves Garmin prying your wallet open for something that's free on the net/Google Maps and thus free once you have paid your $70 monthly net access on your iPhone.
Can existing users upgrade? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can existing users upgrade? (Score:4, Informative)
The only way Apple might be involved is in verifying your existing iPhone account at purchase before handing you the box. This seems likely, given the price and the fact that they're obligated to honor their exclusivity agreement (and AT&T, for all its other missteps and poor decisions, has been doing a decent job with providing iPhone customers with service and value-added perks [including rapid expansion of their previously pathetic 3G network]).
Not upset about iPhone 1.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew from day 1 that that price would come down on future versions. The Apple Lisa was $9,995 in 1983 which is around $21,000 today in 2008. That was the baseline model. As technology grows, things get cheaper. If you haven't picked up this, then perhaps you shouldn't buy technology products. You didn't "have" to buy an iPhone, and you should have seen this coming. You shouldn't also buy such a phone if you can't afford it.
At the same time, they are upgrading the firmware on the older phones still. My current one still gives me all the battery life I need for reasonable use. I am in a major city (Boston) with wifi almost everywhere. I don't drive, and thus the GPS is a non-feature.
Anyone that acts "upset" over the new features, and price drop, needs to grow up.
They didn't add any killer features for me. If they had added even something like the (much rumored, but obviously a lie) video chat functionality or something insane then maybe I'd have thought otherwise. Funny how those rumors/lies got around.
Re:Denial aint a river, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)
I count the money as "spent". It's not an investment piece and I feel that I've gotten my money worth just in its use. Again I needed a new phone and a new iPod anyway. The iPod was going to be $300 or so and a new phone around a hundred. Well worth it. However I should disclose that I wrote it off as a business expense on my taxes.
No one should have bought a $400 phone in this economy without being able to count it as "gone" without massive financial impact. I did see a lot of people buying this phone that shouldn't have and couldn't afford it- stupid idea.
This is about having proper expectations when you purchase technology. Also a device (should) do the same features that it does on day one and provide similar value. My Commodore 64 still does what it did in 1983, and still provides that value regardless of what else is out there or on the current pricing of them.
Where's the meat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Where's iChat or am I supposed to keep spending like $0.15 a text for SMS. Speaking of SMS, where's the damn MMS?
How about spam filtering on the mail client. This is supposed to be "just like the desktop OS X" so how hard can it be to upgrade the mail client to more completely resemble the functionality of mail.app on the desktop?
No discussion of how the 1st gen phones will handle location.
Nice one month slip on the OS and app store.
So as a 1st generation owner, the only major upgrade in my day to day is the ability to get 3rd party apps. Hopefully 3rd party apps will fill in the gaping holes.
A little adblock would be super helpful too...
Sheldon
Re:Where's the meat? (Score:5, Informative)
The keynote did have a discussion of a standalone IM client, not based on SMS. It won't run as a background process, but rather rely on a new push service that Apple (and carriers I guess) are adding with the 2.0 firmware rollout. The push service is intended to be used for lots of things, not just IM-ing, and will be available through an API to all 3rd-party devs.
First-gen iPhones can already do some locating-aware stuff off of the location of cell towers. It ain't great - accuracy is to within a hundred feet at best in my experience, but it is good enough for some location-aware applications. It can already be used to tell you the nearest restaurants, etc., just not give you realtime directions, geotagging, etc. Why do you suddenly expect that the rollout of a next-gen iPhone would suddenly mean an upgrade in the hardware of your current iPhone? New hardware with new capabilities is the march of technology.
Improvements to the software will come out on a continuing basis. In addition to getting 3rd party apps (which as you say can fill in a lot of missing capabilities), firmware 2.0 on first-gen iPhones will give support for a lot of enterprise stuff (I don't know if that applies to you), support for iWork and MS Office file formats, push-everything, and access to MobileMe (all your stuff is in the cloud, and accessible from anywhere, and pushed to all your devices).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No one ever said this was the desktop mail client. That was the MobileMe web app. I'll give you that spam filtering is good to have, but server-side has always been the "better" solution.
1st gen iphones will handle location just as they always have - a little location button in Maps with cell tower and wifi triangulation. You'll need the lat
Re:Where's the meat? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That's a short list... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're finding yourself breaking a lot of glass iphone displays... well, I can't imagine how you treat your phone, but I'm sure that you'd be breaking plastic ones twice as often.
And now the small print... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And now the small print... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Smartphones are bloody expensive? Most people don't have any reason to care about smartphones? If this was from Nokia or Microsoft the only people who would care would be the yuppies who can actually justify the cost?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not knocking what you're doing, you're buying a product that meets your needs. But you're knocking a product that meets other people's needs. I'm in operations, and the ability to do more things remotely makes my life easier, to the point that I'm willing to pay to get more free time.
Data services may be a total waste for you. But since they're a total waste for you, you don't seem to want anybody else to have them either. What, everyone should
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Lighten up, Francis. Some of us want to have fun and aren't dead yet.
Re:And now the small print... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I see a comment like this, I feel compelled to point out that this is the TOTAL amount. 99% of iPhone purchasers ALREADY have a cell phone with a certain amount of minutes and messages, so the only ADDITIONAL costs are the price of the phone (duh) plus the DIFFERENCE in cost between their current plan and the new one. I had a $39.99 ATT plan so I'm only paying $20/month more for the data (and it's worth every penny, btw) so for me it was $249 (rfb. 4 GB phone right after the first price drop) plus $240/year--that's only $729 over two years. If I would have waited until 7/11/08 to buy, that would be just $679--almost a THOUSAND less than your number.
Also, if I would have bought a 3G iPhone, I would have not spent $130 on a used GPS a few months ago. And for some people this replaces an iPod as well. Hell, I could literally sell a handful of gadgets that I own and pay for the whole thing.
PLUS: Figure there's a whole bunch of people who will buy new phones (who cares if it's a new contract, I've been with ATT/Cingular/ATT for over ten years anyway; if I were to replace my iPhone with a new one (probably won't, not sure yet) I wouldn't even blink at the thought of two more years) so there will be a whole bunch of used iPhones all of a sudden, and they'll all be selling for less than $200, maybe as low as $100. I imagine that if you buy and activate a used iPhone, you are not bound to a two year contract. (Anyone know for sure?) You may not even be required to purchase a data plan.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And now the small print... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hah! (Score:3, Interesting)
Will over seas iphone be unlocked by law and will (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Will over seas iphone be unlocked by law and wi (Score:3, Informative)
GSM is much better than CDMA because of its interoperability.
Insert SIM card & talk.
Some overseas iPhones will be sold unlocked (France I know for sure), but unlocking the phone is so easy, I don't see why it should be a problem if it's sold unlocked or not.
Re:Will over seas iphone be unlocked by law and wi (Score:3, Informative)
Last I heard, unlocked iPhones were being sold in France, but they're significantly more expensive than the locked iPhones. When I crunched the numbers a few months ago, I think the cost came to over $1,000 USD (probably even more now, since the dollar is still getting weaker compared to the euro).
In addition, Apple won't provide support for iPhones outside their country of purchase, so if anything goes wrong with it, you'd have to make an international trip just to get it serviced.
Perspective people. (Score:5, Funny)
Before everyone goes on a diatribe about what the new iPhone doesn't have or what it doesn't do, remember the long history of the iPod. The first iPod isn't anything special compared to the last several generations. If there are features that you would like to have or features you don't like, just wait and a newer version might address it. It's funny watching the intensity of fanboys and naysayers. If you don't like it, don't buy it. In summary here's the history and the naysayers.
2001:
.
Apple: Introducting the iPod: 1000 songs in your pocket.
Naysayers:"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." Seriously who's going to buy this? It is Mac only, uses Firewire, and costs $400!!
2002;
Apple: iPod 2.0: Touch sensitive scroll wheel. Now compatible with Windows. Up to 20GB
Naysayers: Okay, more space than a Nomad, but no wireless. Firewire only. Still expensive. Easily scratched
2003:
Apple: iPod 3.0: UI Redesign. Now USB compatible. Up to 40GB
Naysayers:Still waiting for wireless. Still expensive. No video or photo capability. Really I need something smaller, maybe flash based. Easily scratched. Still expensive
2004:
Apple: iPod mini: Smaller version of iPod. 4 or 6 GB disk based. iPod 4.0. UI Redesign. Clickwheel. Up to 40GB. iPod 4.1: now with color and photo capability. Up to 60GB
Naysayers:Still no wireless. Still expensive. No video. Maybe a phone/iPod combination would work. Easily scratched. Still expensive
2005:
Apple:iPod Shuffle: Ultra-portable iPod. Up to 1GB. iPod mini v2: New colors. iPod nano: Flash based. Color. Replacing mini. Up to 4GB. iPod 5.0: Now with video. Up to 80GB
Naysayers:No screen on the shuffle. Small video screen on the iPod. And it's not a touch screen. Replace the profitable mini, are they insane? The nano scraches too easily! Still no wireless. When is Apple going to make an iPhone? Still expensive
2006:
Apple:iPod Shuffe: Even smaller. Metallic shell. Up to 2GB. iPod nano: New scratch-resistant metallic shell. More battery life. Up to 8GB.
Naysayers:I can't use the new shuffle as a USB stick! Still no wireless or widescreen or touchscreen. No iPhone. Easily scratched. Still expensive
January 2007:
Apple:iPhone: multi-touch, widescreen iPod + mobile phone + internet browser + wireless
Naysayers:I wanted the phone part to be separate. It's only on AT&T. It's not 3G. I can't buy music wirelessly. It's frickin' expensive.
September 2007:
Apple:iPod Touch: iPhone without the phone. iTunes Music Store built in. iPod nano: New form factor. Video. Up to 8GB. iPod Classic: Metallic shell. Up to 160GB
Naysayers:iPhone is still only AT&T and not 3G. iPod touch is only 8GB and 16GB. And it's frickin' expensive.
February 2008:
Apple:iPod nano: new colors: iPod shuffle: new colors. iPouch Touch: 32GB available
Naysayers:iPhone is still only AT&T and not 3G. iPod Touch and iPhone are still expensive
June 2008:
Apple:iPhone 2.0: 3G, GPS, Slimmer, faster, more apps. 8GB $199. 16GB $299
Naysayers:iPhone is still only AT&T. Still expensive!!
Fast forward to the future . .
2020:
Apple:iPod femto: Size of a business card, but thinner. Direct neural interface. No charging, uranium battery last 5,000 years. Up to 500TB. iPhone X: Instantaneous, realtime language translation. Up to 20PB
Naysayers:Should be 1PB. Neural interface is only in HD and not Extreme-HD. Should have used plutonium batteries that last 10,000 years. iPhone isn't 6G. Language translation only covers "major" languages and not Swahili. Still expensive.
2021:
Apple:iPod femto: Plutonium batteries. 1PB. iPhone XI: 6G. Language translation now includes Swahili.
Re:Perspective people. (Score:5, Funny)
NOT slimmer (Score:5, Informative)
Steve just sent "hit squad" to your address (Score:3, Funny)
Re:NOT slimmer (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also possible that "slimmer" meant the average depth over the entire area of the device. Think of how much thinner something seems when the edges taper off compared to something the same maximum thickness but uniform thickness over its area. And remember, Apple cares a great deal about aesthetics.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Adobe's implementation of Flash is remarkably inefficent, and Adobe notoriously refuse to release the player for any non-x86 platform (apart for legacy support of MacPPC, which is pretty grim even compared to the other, better-supported versions).
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for flash on mobile platforms. You'd probably have mo
Quick, big picture analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple listened to developers and enterprise customers in nailing the iPhone feature list. No objections or gripes here.
The 3G iPhone pricing is very un-Apple in being very attractive and without an obvious price premium. In fact, it is priced for mass-market consumption right now. That means there will be millions out there a year from now. And the ecosystem/market will flock to this high-profile platform, in turn creating even more pull.
The stock is down today about 4%. Why Jim Cramer is saying "sell on the news" is beyond me. AAPL is going to be a lot bigger and more profitable a year from now.
There is no technology risk here, so sit back and watch one of the great technology markets of a lifetime unfold.
What's Missing (Score:3, Informative)
* No expanded capacity. I had hoped for 24Gb or 32Gb models
* No improved camera. I had hoped for more megapixels, maybe a flash, or at least better controls and options and editing
* No mention of copy/paste. Come on! Copy/Paste!
* No mention of rotatable keyboard, across all aps
* No MMS. Come on! Multi-media messaging is standard on most phones sold now!
* No mention of email search. Contact search is great, but let us search through everything. Pervasive search!
That said, I'm still buying one
Re:EBay is happy! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:EBay is happy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Tech gets cheaper over time. I'm more pissed that I once spent $50 for a 30-pack of CD-R blanks and only had eight or so work after waiting half an hour to find out the burn failed, only to now be able to buy discs that burn in a minute for fifteen cents apiece with 99% reliability. At least my 1.0 iPhone worked properly at launch and continues to do so
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When buying gadgets, you have to evaluate the value proposition as of the moment when you hand over the money. Holy shit, has this been a nice phone. When the 3G model is released, I will be lining up like a stereotypical fanboy, because the 1.0 hardware's ownership experience has been an exceptionally good one.
Re:EBay is happy! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't feel bitter at all about this. I knew when I bought the first iPhone that there would be another version a year or so down the line. It was just common sense. But I didn't want to wait, so I paid a premium. Thats not a big deal for me.
If I can get one for $200 with my current plan, though, I'd be really tempted to get the 3G.
Re:EBay is happy! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:EBay is happy! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used a Windows Mobile phone for the past 2.5 years. I started tracking my usage of the features. e-mail and web browsing are the two features I use the most. Both are horribly flawed on Windows Mobile.
Pocket Outlook is great, as long as you're only connecting to Exchange servers. Switch to IMAP, and the server configuration determines the usability, because Pocket Outlook does not support IMAP namespaces properly. The mail server from which I get my mail uses namespaces, and Pocket Outlook locks up when I try to get mail there. I had to do stupid hacks (forwarding mail off, at first, and later using a proxy to re-write requests.)
Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) is a different beast. It's crap, even for a mobile browser. Simple pages will render fine, but anything even moderately complex will not work. When I first started using my phone, I just did everything through Google's gateway. That's really not how I want to use the web. Later on, I started using my phone to copy down interesting URLs for perusal at home. The browser on my phone became little more than a portal to IMDB and Wikipedia.
Opera Mobile is a bit better, but you pay for it, and it's still got rendering issues with some sites.
What's great about the iPhone, in my opinion, is the support. Even though it has a real web browser, popular websites fall all over themselves trying to put together a version of the site optimized for iPhone's screen. When there isn't an optimized version, you can view the full version (albeit slowly--hopefully 3G will help address that) and zoom specific portions of the page that you want to look at. For me, since what I really want is a data device (I could do without the phone part, honestly), the better the browser and mail client, the better the device. I've tried all the major phone operating systems, and by far, Apple blows them away. RIM does come closest, no doubt, but the web browsing experience just can't compete.
Re:EBay is happy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EBay is happy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would I feel stupid? I've had a great phone/iPod/EDGE web-surfing gadget for a year, and have enjoyed it thoroughly. Once the new one is available for sale, I'll have a great phone/iPod/3G web-surfing gadget which I'm sure I'll enjoy just as thoroughly, and my wife will inherit the EDGE version (her old Motorola U6 is long overdue for a replacement anyway).
What makes you think I would expect innovation to come to a grinding halt just because I've spent a bit of cash on a gadget? I bought the iPhone with the understanding that it would be replaced with a newer, more-feature-packed model sooner rather than later (taking into account the almost-annual new-iPod release cycle).
What would you recommend to folks considering the iPhone 3G? That they hold off on buying it, because it's eventually going to be replaced by a cooler model anyway?
Re:EBay is happy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's a hint. If you keep holding out for the next-great thing, you'll never have anything to show for your efforts.
Re:This is also likely to... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This is also likely to... (Score:5, Insightful)
early buyers impress girlfirends & got "laid" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In that case, prepare for "much abuse" to be aimed in your direction when a newer, snazzier iPhone is released in 2009.
I think you should hold off on your purchase in anticipation of the next model. In the meantime, maybe you can fashion your own smartphone by duct-taping a Palm V, a Creative Zen and an old Nokia together. Think of what a rebel you'd be then!
Re:Verizon (Score:5, Informative)
Oddly enough, one program, "Loopt" is available on both providers, but I cannot find it in any of the App listings on Vz's website.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Verizon (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a symptom of a larger problem.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I am unwilling to purchase an XBox 360 for whatever reason, opting instead for a PS3, is that really my problem? No, if it's anyone's it's Microsoft's.
Re:Verizon (Score:5, Funny)
"Unwilling"
No it isn't.
Rubbish.
Nonsense.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The data service will still be limited to verizon only phones. Sorry but if your stuck on Verizon your screwed. AT&T suks but at least they use GSM. So you can switch to t-mobile in the USA.
Re:Verizon (Score:4, Informative)
No, EV-DO is a flavor of Qualcomm's CDMA2000, not GSM. That article is simple talking about Verizon upgrading their EV-DO network to the newer and faster Rev A version.
What is happening though is Verizon will be switching to a GSM technology called LTE for their 4G network. So maybe with the next iteration of the iPhone will be available on Verizon. But until then, I'll stick with my HTC 6800 and a network that actually has 3G coverage.Re:Verizon (Score:5, Interesting)
AT&T definition of worldwide coverage (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Verizon (Score:5, Informative)
As for Verizon "opening up" their network, that's a funny variety of newspeak. It is still more closed than any GSM carrier. Verizon's variety of "open" means that they are publishing specs and setting up a certification lab so that 3rd party manufacturers can make devices compatible with their network. You can't use any old CDMA phone and use it on Verizon, it has to be Verizon certified.
Compare to GSM, where you can take any unlocked phone, put in a sim-card from any GSM carrier you like and off you go. There is no need for the phone to be $cell_carrier_x certified, it is sufficient that the phone complies with the GSM spec.
The CDMA family is:
CDMA (2G) - CDMA2000 (2.5G) - EV-DO (3G) - UMB (4G)
The GSM family is:
GSM (2G) - EDGE/GPRS (2.5G) - UMTS (3G) - HSDPA/HSUPA (3.5G) - LTE (4G)
Re:Verizon (Score:4, Informative)
W-CDMA, despite name similarities, has nothing to do with CDMA-2000 which is a standard developed by Qualcomm mainly used in the US market.
Re:Buttons? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:2 hours (Score:5, Informative)
Snow Leopard (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:2 hours (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully they'll have a separate "upgrade from Leopard" SKU that they either won't charge for, or that will be a much smaller price than the usual price.
Re:2 hours (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple support doesn't help any either. At one point they actually told me that a problem I was experiencing was a bug and that I should have to come up with a workaround, and still charged us an incident for such a lovely revelation. I am having issues getting our new Leopard workstations to connect to the Tiger open directory(another Apple product!) and the support guy hasn't done anything in the past 3 weeks to really help, despite the massive amount of money we are paying Apple.
Leopard wouldn't bother me so much if we weren't FORCED to use it if we want new hardware. We are starting to replace our aging powermac G5s(which still work for the most part, but as the hardware ages we are running out of spares) and settled on the shiniest Mac Pros that came out in January. However, as part of the deal we were forced to use Leopard, you cannot install Tiger on these machines. So instead of focusing on what our customer needs, we have to deal with an endless Apple bug parade or just stick to aging hardware. There is no middle ground. Apple makes fun of Vista customers going back to XP, but at least they have the option! If I could run Tiger on my macbook or the new mac pros at work, I would in a second but Apple is so arrogant that they refuse to let me do so and instead have to put up with their bullshit.
Furthermore, Apple seems to not realize that the rest of the world doesn't always work like they do. For example, look at Java. Apple was over a year late on getting Java 6 on the mac, and now it only exists for Leopard 64-bit intel users. WTF? It can run on Windows 2k for crying out loud! There are many more examples of Apple's hubris, but that is one of the best imo. It prevents us from going to Java 6 because we haven't replaced everything here with 64 bit intel Leopard machines....
The situation with Apple of late kind of reminds me of the ending of Animal Farm, when the rest of the animals couldn't tell the difference between pigs and humans. I am starting to not see the difference between Apple and Microsoft....
kernel panics (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Finally, I want one (Score:4, Insightful)
damn glad I did too. with built in GPS, better battery life, real apps.
I just feel sorry for the 6 million original iPhones that are about to hit ebay. Then again if Apple sold 6 million regular iPhones with version 2 coming out in a month in 70 countries just how many more will they sell? the 10 million iphones sold is going to be a drop in the bucket. i would almost expect 12 million units shipped by the end of the year.
Re:Finally, I want one (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I bought an iPhone last September for 299 and it is my favorite tech purchase in the last 5 years or so. So ~$2 (one for the hardware, one for the $20 my contract is over my old one) a day for something I use and enjoy every day is fine with me. Actually, it paid for itself the first day I didn't feel the mobile phone interface rage my previous LG, Motorolas and Blackberries gave me.
Re:YEEEEAH! (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe Apple has something here that will turn the smartphone market on its ear.
Re:YEEEEAH! (Score:5, Informative)
Several? Lets say you get a normalish plan and with taxes ends up costing you $100/month. So over the course of 2 years you spend $2400. This plan would include something like 900 minutes, unlimited nights/weekends, unlimited data, and 1500 texts. The Sprint everything plan is $99/month and that's before taxes (although it does include unlimited minutes). Can you show me any other cell phone with unlimited data that's cheaper than I've listed here?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Haha- so as long as I'm gonna have a cell phone, it might as well be an iPhone. I'll pick mine up when I get back from Mozambique in February 2009- maybe MWSF will see another update
Re:fp! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quick! (Score:4, Informative)
Further, can you ge an unlocked version (even if subsidised with a contract would be great), I refuse to pay anything for a phone if I cannot switch SIM card in it. I live in the UK, have my parents in Sweden and my girlfriends family is in Belgium and I am going to the Netherlands a lot for work.
So, tell me, even though the EU have done a lot of work in capping the roaming fees, they are still way to high, and especially for data transfers, why would I get an iPhone. I would really want one, but without front facing camera and reasonable options to ge an unlocked phone (I dont mind signing a contract in my country of residence), why the heck would I get one.
Frankly, I will not get the iPhone until those items are fixed on the todo list.
Re:Quick! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quick! (Score:5, Informative)
There is hope yet.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
With everything they could be reporting on you'd think there would be something more newsworthy. People come to sites like Slashdot to read about this sort of thing, but to have a news service report on a product release is a bit ridiculous.
I'm sure Apple's marketing department is ecstatic over all this free advertising. I can only imagine how daunting it must be for potential competitors of all sizes. The
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's news simply because the audience cares. Genocide in Darfur has a much more profound effect on human lives, political stability, moral substance, but in the end while I might disapprove of it, I don't
Re:Already? (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPhone has an awesome screen and a great UI, but even this fixed version will probably fall again short of the N9x series outside of the US, where ppl don't usually have wide-spread WiFi, or unlimited 3G access, or care about PC syncing. Pity, here's waiting for WWDC 2009 again...
Keynote Video (Score:4, Informative)