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iPhone Rumour Round-up
Coffin Black writes "Apple only has to look askance at a piece of hardware and people are falling over themselves to slap an 'i' all over it and slavering about how cool the theoretical gadgetry is gonna be. So the iPhone may not even exist — beyond a 'just once more thing' gleam in Jobs' eye — but already the column inches are stacking up. Think the iPod is dying? Never fear, says this columnist, it's merely evolving from one form into another (clue: from portable to mobile). This writer, meanwhile, is sticking the boot in early — she says she won't be buying an iPhone, when it of course finally makes it onto the shelves... Though she does add: "If Microsoft created a Phune (a phone and a Zune in one, geddit?), I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole either but that's a different story."" We also covered this story a couple months back.
Like the author of the article says, you don't want a phone that you need to plug in every day just to listen to 2 hours of music. You don't want the phone to run out of juice when you need to use it as a phone.
Other than that, I think the sleek styling that Apple applies to their products would be a great relief from all the tiny, too-ill-featured mobile phones on the market today. If the author would just use a little concealer, she could probably stop looking like a raccoon.
1. Something happens to the phone. You lose the MP3 player, camera and storage device while it's getting fixed.
2. Something happens to the camera, you lose the phone, MP3 player and storage device while it's getting fixed.
3. You get the idea.
Task Mangler
I used to think having a mobile phone that played MP3s would be a dumb move. The iPod has a neat interface, easy to update from itunes, a mobile that plys MP3s would be a pain in the ass to use (my old phone did have the capability, but it was rubbish at it, in order to play a song or album you had to spend 5 minutes burrowing around in a dozen menus trying to find the buggy copy of realplayer to play stuff).
Cut a long story short, I bought a Nokia N80 (bought it because it was a wifi capable smart phone with a great screen, not because of the MP3 playing aspect) and my girlfriend bought a nokia 5300 (because she liked the look of it and it was free).
Neither of us use our ipods anymore. The N80 plays MP3s fine, when you start playing them the player pops up on the active standby so you are always one click away from having control over the player, and the 5300 has dedicated buttons on the case to play music. It's as handy to use as your average MP3 player. There are plenty of hacks to get them recognised by iTunes and auto-synced, and it's one less device in the pocket.
just look at the photos of the 5300, they show off the little rubberised buttons for playing music. The price-tag on it was so low that buying it from a carrier means it's free. It made me totally rethink my position on the uselessness of convergent devices.
It's obvious from the number of people I see regularly with earbud wires hanging down from their ears. Also how many people can claim not to listen to their car audio system, whether it's a CD, an MP3 player linked through it, or terrestrial and satellite radio?
Personally, I think the cell phone companies missed the boat when they skipped audio transmission and aimed for video transmission. From a X-ware point of view, the bandwidth required is much smaller for audio than it is for video. At the risk of losing money from sharing an idea, here's what I think a better idea would've been:
Assume all of your music is in an electronic format and stored to an inexpensive media center device. Currently to take it with you you have to offload it to another portable version of this same device. Instead of offloading it stream it to your cellphone. Your cell can then plug-in to your car or home theater system or be portable player. Playlists would be generated at the media center or cell phone destination, your choice. No commercials, no interruptions without your approval (you decide to take a call or not). No edited content. No burning to CD or offloading. Just simple portability of your music which is still all in one place.
My employer uses a Windows mobile smart phone for its callout pager. Not only is it the worst mobile phone I've ever used, but is close to the worst PDA I've ever used. Configuring the thing is a friggin' nightmare. Network settings are held in four different places.
Stupid females...
Brilliant! I'm sure that piece of commentary will be SURE to get you laid!! Now if you could only get out of your mothers basement....
From the article:
I've spent hours of my life convincing iTunes I should be allowed to play songs I either ripped from lawfully bought CDs or purchased from Apple itself on my laptop or my iPod.
First off, I've *never* heard anyone complain about DRM problems when playing music they've ripped because... uh, well, iTunes doesn't put DRM on that. And while I really dislike DRM (yes, even Apple's, you thought I was going to say theirs is tolerable weren't you?), Apple's is extremely easy to work with. When you download a track, it works in iTunes on the computer you downloaded it from. It works on the iPod that you transfer that song to. And it works on up to four other machines as well (someone can clear up the details if I got the number wrong) with some brainless simplicity - when you try and play a DRM encumbered file, it asks you for your iTunes Store username/password to authorize playback. What exactly is difficult about any of that??
I don't really want an mp3 player that is connected to any network beyond my own computer and home network. That's how much I hate the idea of DRM and music industry tracking of what I listen to. It's only a matter of time until the portable media player includes books (both audio and written), news articles, etc., and I really don't want unknown parties aware of what I read or what news I digest.
I'd much rather the media player manufacturers concentrate on quality, capacity, battery life, and usability features (eg: I listen to my mp3 player during my 25km trip to work and home every day, and I'd like detachable controls that I can stick on my handlebars so I don't have to fish in my pocket to skip a song or change a channel.
The only exception to my desire to stay off the grid when it comes to my music player is satellite radio. If they could come up with a really good Sirius receiver built into a video mpeg player, I'm there.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ok, Phune is kinda dull, but you insult me, personally, with the way you opened your comment. You need to go take a class or see a counselor... something...
If Apple built an iPhone, would they develop the phone chipsets themselves? Or would they licence from a 3rd party that already knows how to build these things?
If so, who would sell to them? Are there any mobile phone manufacturers that licene their chipsets to 3rd parties?
convergence: grab treo off charging station, walk out door.
sans convergence: grab cell phone, mp3 player, walk out door, walk back in door to get organizer, almost walk out door, realize you'll be sitting on the train for 45 minutes, walk back in to look for gameboy or a book, walk back out door.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
What about the rumors that Apple will record your phone calls and sell them on iTunes for 99 cents to $4.99, depending on the level of intimacy?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Forced drm checking over the the network is big no-no at $.10 a k-bite
Uhhhhh?
I read books and listen MP3 in my cell phone and there is no way the cell phone companies know what do I read or listen.
I do however, agree on the batterie life issue.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
That's the beauty of the SIM Cards isn't it?
I can take the SIM Card of my phone and put it on the new Apple phone and the phone company can't do anything to stop me.
(Except that there is not Apple phone yet.)
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.