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What If Apple Made A Cell Phone And No One Cared?
PreacherTom writes "Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora penned a note saying that Apple is readying a music phone — and a separate, combination video and music phone. He expects Apple to introduce the devices in January at Macworld, a conference for Mac enthusiasts where the company typically debuts new products. At least one of the phones will offer Wi-Fi connectivity and both will become available in the March quarter of 2007 ... but will anyone care?"
Well, now that we've established that this guy knows what he's talking about...
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
No, not really. The Motorola ROKR had iTunes, but it was never Apple-Branded, nor designed or manufactured in any part by Apple.
My DAP plays... music. Accessories include: nearly any pair of headphones, any speakers that can plug into a 1/8" jack, a standard mini-USB to USB cable. Cost $50. My DAP is better than any iPod. Interface includes such complex buttons as Play/Pause and Vol Up. Hurray SanDisk!
Not entirely true (not that it affects your point). In the UK people commonly buy a plan together with a subsidised phone. You can also buy a phone without a contract/plan, which you'll need to pay for a year's service on. It's often cheaper to pay for the plan for a year instead of buying the phone outright - uou might pay £180 over the year and £80 to get the handset you wanted or £349 for the same phone without a contract - and you get bundled calls and SMS with that contract.
It's kind of suspicious how badly the numbers add up.
No, the Macbook Pro.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
You actually pay for your own upgrade...
Every time you upgrade the lock you into a minimum 12 months.. sometimes 18 months. The rental over that period is usually far more than the price difference between the upgrade and the wholesale price of the phone (often more than the retail price) - so you simply pay over the next year.
People who don't upgrade are paying for their upgrade even though they didn't get one - however they can leave for another company whenever they want, which is quite useful.
Uhh, on both of the LG cellphones I have used, I could change the ringer mode by holding the bottom left button. The bottom right button locks the phone (I learned that the hard way). Both of these were ~$80 (the oldest one did not have a camera; the newer one has a camera), so a more expensive phone should CERTAINLY have this!
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Not that it's entirely related, but at least in Canada and Japan subsidized cell phones are also the norm.
But can it play music from the iTunes Music Store?
But can it interface with a car stereo, and have the car's controls work? An iPod can, but every other DAP can't because automakers are standardizing on the iPod's dock connector and control protocol.
But does it include an easy way to find the song you want to play? Can it synchronize its playlists with your desktop jukebox program? Can it use "smart" playlists?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
How the hell do you "cheat" at making fast software? "It's against the rules to use that fast graphics algorithm, we agreed!!!"
...for you. Surely it depends on the metric used. Looking for ubiquitous platform, that doesn't break software (ala apple) or drivers (ala linux), a platform you can run 10-20 year old binaries, and therefore be likely to run your binaries in another 10-20 years?
"MS is about the worse OS there is"
"Stable" means different things to different people.
You don't like windows, and that's fine. It's okay to not like something. It's okay for something to not be useful to you. But recognise that's what's going on.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Piqued. Your interest is piqued.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Build up an iTunes collection and you're stuck with Apple players, for life.
OK, it's time again for the Obligatory iTunes Anti-FUD Post.
Remember, kids, iTunes != iTunes Store. If you put your own ripped (or pirated) music into iTunes, THERE IS NO DRM AND NO LOCK-IN. Sorry to shout, but it's amazing how often this point is ignored, misunderstood, or obfuscated, no matter how often it's repeated.
iTunes and DRM only mix when the music is *purchased* from the iTunes Store. Even then, it's trivial for even Joe Sixpack to defeat the DRM if he senses that the end of iTunes is near: burn and rip, or use a hack such as QTFairUse for better quality.
iTunes is perfectly capable of dealing with non-DRM music in any format QuickTime can handle, which includes AAC, MP3, WAV/AIFF and Apple Lossless natively as well as Vorbis and FLAC with plug-ins. (The iPod can't handle the plug-in formats, but if you use Vorbis and FLAC you probably think the iPod is "lame" because its interface isn't confusing enough. [Just teasing!])
Most professional film editing stations are Macs. Many Flash Designers use Macs. Apple does bill Macs as great for creative work; does Windows ship with something like Garage Band or iWeb? Okay, there is MovieMaker.
That is probably because Adobe has (I think) not released Universal Binaries for most of its suites, so they are being run through Rosetta (PPC emulation).
Updates took a long time for me as well; however, you do not have to automatically update the Mac at that moment, and a mac is much less likely to be 0wn3d by a worm/virus/WMF exploit/etc. than a Windows box.
Where? The only red thing that I saw in the Apple store was a red iPod nano, which cost $199, and Apple states that they will donate $10 to AIDS relief. Here is the math:
10 / 200 = 1 / 20 =
While 5% is not exactly a lionshare of the profits, it is much better than the
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
insightful? shoot me now.....
This was a(n unfunny ) *joke*
Acid House saves Souls
I live in Japan. YOU wanna complain about lock-in? I'm stuck using phones no one else in the world has ever heard of, that are friggin' huge, friggin' heavy, and whose features are so locked down to prevent me using them without more money that I've been thinking of just giving up. When I first moved over here in 1998, I was blown away by the coolness of the phones. But the US has long since pulled ahead in hardware and service, while we over here in the land of the rising sun have our trousers falling 'round our knees from our giant telephones with tons of features we can't access. Don't complain!
Oh, and I'm gonna look at that remote. "Except the USA" is a little too sweeping a statement for my liking...
This is the problem with the US. This phone, as decent as it is, is ANCIENT (in cellular terms) - it was introduced to the rest of the world at the start of 2003, and it's still being sold in the US as a current phone. It's been discontinued elsewhere for nearly 18 months.
uhh my Cingular 8125 plays music and video's great and does skype and the head phone for it has the hands free built into it. When the phone rings I push the little button and the music stops and I have a phone call. Then when I hang up music starts again.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink