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iPhone Doesn't Surf Fast Enough for Jobs
ElvaWSJ writes with a link to a Wall Street Journal interview with Steve Jobs and AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson. As you can imagine, they're pretty enthusiastic. Just the same, they address the possibility that the iPhone will slow internet access on Ma Bell's cell network. "Mr. Jobs acknowledged that the company's new iPhone won't surf the Internet as fast as he would like on the network, called "Edge," but added that the device's ability to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots would give consumers a speedier alternative for Web browsing. For his part, Mr. Stephenson said the iPhone represents a broader push by AT&T into Wi-Fi services, including, potentially, mobile Internet calling. The two men also discussed the iPod's "halo effect" and reflected on the origins of their corporate partnership."
Since AT&T was supposedly the only provider who would agree to Apple's list of detailed demands, it's likely they had little choice but to accept their network. It's not like other providers were lining up for a chance at it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Simply put: it ain't 3G. That's going to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for iPhone. It's one of the reasons why I won't be buying one, despite the fact that I drooled over the iPhone initially.
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But 640kbps ought to be enough for anyone?
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"Since the Mac in 1984 brought us the mouse and bit map displays and folders and icons, there really hasn't been much except for the evolution of that in the last 23 years."
Nice to see Apple continuing the fine corporate tradition ov copying other people's innovations and claiming them as their own.
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You had a commercially available computer before 1984 that had a mouse and a bit-map display and folders and icons? Or you got one in 1984 that wasn't from Apple?
I was afraid we wouldn't see a single iPhone advertisement...I mean article today...my fears have been relived...
AT&T has an HSDPA (3G) network, but there are two issues with it. (1) It's not widely deployed (a few dozen cities, compared to EDGE, which is everywhere that AT&T offers cell service). (2) Although the network is quite fast, the chipsets that support it presently consume too much power. Apple apparently wants a lower power chipset so that battery life of the iPhone isn't adversely affected.
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Those had been shelved by Xerox and it was the deal Apple made with Xerox that allowed them to create a product. They DID bring it to 'US'. 'US' being the consumer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"I love the smell of Wi-Fi in the morning. Smells like....bandwith."
I'm amazed AT&T or any cell company would allow a cell to enter their market that has built in wifi. Won't this cut into their profits? Since anyone can go to McD's and check their email instead of having to pay their provider for the online minutes.
Why did not apple buck the whole system and offere the iPhone as a unlocked device only.
that way you could get your choice of service, your phone is not held hostage by unscrupulous Service providers, and it would have forced a change in the way cellular companies abuse their customers.
a win,win,win situation.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What is up with Jobs selling nonexistent features?
Ringtone business gets a tease:
Mr. Jobs: One might imagine a lot of things down the road.
Mr. Jobs: There's a lot of things you can imagine down the road.
But you can forget 3G in revision one:
Mr. Jobs: No, we just don't comment on future stuff.
I also got a kick out of this:
Mr. Jobs: There's often times a Wi-Fi network that you can join whether you're sitting in a coffee shop or even walking along the street piggybacking on somebody's home Wi-Fi network.
Theft of service, it's the Apple way!
And you stopped reading because?
I won't make any apologies for Job's well known asshole tendencies (but supposedly those are much more subdued since NeXT, guess winning does fix everything?) but all he is doing here is stating what really happened. Were the primitives and direct inspiration for the Mac gui borrowed from Xerox? Damn straight. They borrowed from other places too, but they had the foresight to slap it all together and shove it out to the masses. This is how humanity works people, we build on what others have done and sometimes we take an idea that seems trivial to one person (gui inside xerox that was never intended for consumers) and wring it through the brain of another person and out pops a whole new shift in perspective.
I'm sure in his heart, Jobs sincerely believes this is the biggest interface breakthrough in 23 years; you or I may not agree. If you pay close attention to Job's words he actually doesn't take credit for anything that Apple didn't do. Anything they co-opt and bring to market is always a "we" or an "us".
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With all the hype over people getting sued and arrested for using someones open AP, I wonder if the iPhone autoconnects without user intervention or if it requires some manual selection. If auto this could cause legal problems as the user would be according to recent suits "stealing bandwith and computer fraud by illegally accessing an another persons network" I dont agree with it, but that appears to be the direction we're going.
Some of it's voice mail features required the carrier to change it's network. If you just put it on the market as an open device, no carrir is going to botherto spend the millions to change their network.
Of course, if the iPhone does become the next iPod, then other carriers will start to make changes to support those features. Then APple will open it to other carriers.
This is very Jobs. Get his foot in the door, then eventually be the hippest cat in the whole room.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
> If I were running an AT&T competitor right now I would be wondering why Jobs didn't approach me with this opportunity and what I could do to earn his approval. I wouldn't want to be left behind
z on-iphone_x.htm
Unless, of course, you're Verizon who had the balls to stand up to Apple. Right decision in the end or not, at least they stood up for their business.
If someone came to you and said:
1) We want you to agree to sell our product, sight unseen.
2) You have to cut all of your partners out of it.
3) We will tell you whether the phone can be replaced if a customer has a problem.
4) We want a percentage of service revenue.
- does that sound like a good business decision to you? You're going to alienate all of your other partners (i.e. Best buy, Walmart, etc..) You're going to alienate your customers (Sorry, we'd love to replace your handset Mr. Big-Important-VIP-Customer, but Apple said no. Can't help you.), and worst of all, you open the door for *EVERYONE* to take a piece of your service revenue - why wouldn't Motorola/LG/Samsung/etc. ask for the same deal? (You did it for Apple - either split revenue with us, or no RAZR2 for you.)
I agree - I think it would've kicked butt if VZW had the iPhone. A real 3G network (EV-DO) would complement iPhone wonderfully, as would a real voice network (GSM quality is crap. CDMA not only covers more area per tower, but it has a better vocoder as well.)
But can you blame them for turning it down? I would have, given the way Apple approached them.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-01-28-veri
Seems that there are credible reports coming in that in the last 24 hours AT+T have increased EDGE speeds to >200 k bits/s. This should be good news to all AT+T EDGE users:
r s-seeing-sudden-boost-in-edge-speeds/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/28/atandt-custome
As we know, increased means they probably removed some artificial cap....
I wonder how many days will go by until the drop the speed again? I guess there will be a halo effect of new iPhone buyers showing their friends - "hey look at this I can browse the web" - just for the sake of it....
nice how the rest of his response was cut out... "Mr. Jobs: You know every (AT&T) Blackberry gets its mail over EDGE. It turns out EDGE is great for mail, and it works well for maps and a whole bunch of other stuff. Where you wish you had faster speed is...on a Web browser. It's good enough, but you wish it was a little faster. That's where sandwiching EDGE with Wi-Fi really makes sense because Wi-Fi is much faster than any 3G network. What we've done with the iPhone is we've made it so that it will automatically switch to a known Wi-Fi network whenever it finds it. So you don't have to go hunting around, resetting the phone, flipping a switch or doing anything. Most of us have Wi-Fi networks around us most of the time at home and at work. There's often times a Wi-Fi network that you can join whether you're sitting in a coffee shop or even walking along the street piggybacking on somebody's home Wi-Fi network. What we found is the combination is working really well. When we looked at 3G, the chipsets are not quite mature, in the sense that they're not low-enough power for what we were looking for. They were not integrated enough, so they took up too much physical space. We cared a lot about battery life and we cared a lot about physical size. Down the road, I'm sure some of those tradeoffs will become more favorable towards 3G but as of now we think we made a pretty good doggone decision. "
>> Watch. When every other person you pass on the street has iPhone, you hillbillys with your half screen half keypad dumb phones will be the laughingstock. Ah! You mean Sheeple? Laughing at me? I dont mind that.
Someone needs to tell Zonk that removing one vowel won't reload Slashdot on his iPhone any faster.
Here, let me correct "it's" to the possessive "its."
It will surf teh interweb, answer email, make calls, play MP3's, wash your car, clean your house, spank you off. FINELINE PRINT: Product may not work as advertised. In order to benefit from our huge technologically advanced vertically intergrated technologically advanced technology, users must first purchase an advanced proactive neurally intergrated vertically horizontal network card from our vertically implemented horizontally vectored service provider.
Infiltrated dot Net
So Jobs should have appended, "...except, of course, for the Xerox Star. We all remember the Xerox Star right?"
There were several little incubator projects or outright commercial failures for GUI's in the early 80's. Macintosh was the one that brought it to the world. They are the ones that got it right. That gives them some pretty significant bragging rights.
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
More bullshit from AT&T:
e ct-lightspeed-and-the-jedi-mind-trick/
Mr. Stephenson: If you think about wireless broadband networks, EDGE is the only ubiquitous nationwide broadband network deployed today. It's a 300-plus kilobit type service. We're selling in the tens of thousands every single month of smart phones that operate on nothing but EDGE. The service experience is really, really good and what you're going to see with the iPhone is the caching technology that Steve and the Apple guys have developed here makes the EDGE experience even better. Between the Wi-Fi and the EDGE coverage, this is a really good experience.
High latency, low bandwidth broadband. Huzzah!
Sprint's EVDO network is deployed as widely as AT&T's EDGE network (not even all of AT&T's GSM network is EDGE). Worse, Sprint's EVDO revA network is deployed in most metropolitan areas, nearly all interstate highways, and nearly all tourist areas.
For AT&T, Edge is "all the speed you need", up until they deploy HSDPA, in which case that will be, "all the speed you need". Just like this: http://www.nyquistcapital.com/2006/03/30/att-proj
Mr.Stephenson said that AT&T's field tests have shown 'no discernable difference' between AT&T's 1.5 Mbps service and Comcast's 6 Mbps because the problem is not in the last mile but in the backbone.
Ridiculous
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
But you forgot:
5) Look at what we did for the music industry
Which means that Apple redefined the entire business. Any label that turned down Apple when they came calling about iPod/iTMS has either wised up and jumped on the bandwagon too late or had better spend the last few dollars they are about to make on shutters to cover their windows when they vacate their buidling.
The future is plain enough for anyone with vision to see. iPhone will be the new word for cell phone. 5 years from now when you walk into a hospital you won't see "No cell phones" signs, you'll see a graphic of an iPhone with a circle and a slash through it, just like you do now for iPods (oh, I'm sorry, 'music players' to you few remaining holdouts).
Sure, Apple might eventually relent and let other carriers join in the revolution, but likely AT&T will always receive preferential terms. And probably inside access to the partculars of how to make their network use iPhone's industry leading hardware to its fullest.
But no, I'm not surprised they turned it down. The US cellular industry could be used as a model for how not to be visionary and instead rest on your laurels and hide behind regulation. But the time will come when consumers demand change, and they'll be driven to do so by iPhone.
EVDO is 3G, and it's available across the US. And my EVDO phone's battery lasts a lot longer than 45 minutes.
The US is 3G ready - it's Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile who aren't.
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Actually, this seems to be the case quite often. Going from something like the Xerox Star to the Apple Lisa and the Mac is quite a feat (and Apple actually hired lots of people from Xerox, instead of just lifting their ideas). The first few versions of Windows, on the other hand, were just Macs with half the features cut out.
What part of "revolutionary user interface" did you not understand? He isn't even talking about the "touchscreen capabilitites" or "playing music" or "viewing the web." He's talking about how the touchscreen is used, how your play music, and how you view the web.
Yeah, my P990i does have a touchscreen, does view the web, does play music. That doesn't mean the iPhone's UI isn't revolutionary.
(in iPhone-user-friendly plain-text.)
iPhone 'Surfing' On AT&T Network Isn't Fast, Jobs Concedes By NICK WINGFIELD and AMOL SHARMA June 29, 2007; Page B4 [nowides]
In an interview on the eve of the iPhone launch, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs and AT&T Inc. CEO and Chairman Randall Stephenson addressed concerns that the device will have slow Internet access on AT&T's cellular network.
Mr. Jobs acknowledged that the company's new iPhone won't surf the Internet as fast as he would like on the network, called "Edge," but added that the device's ability to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots would give consumers a speedier alternative for Web browsing. For his part, Mr. Stephenson said the iPhone represents a broader push by AT&T into Wi-Fi services, including, potentially, mobile Internet calling. The two men also discussed the iPod's "halo effect" and reflected on the origins of their corporate partnership.
The iPhone's first real chance to prove itself will begin Friday at 6 p.m., when the public is finally able to get its hands on the product. If it's successful, the product -- a cellphone combined with entertainment and Internet functions, all of them controlled by finger taps on a touch-sensitive screen -- could force changes across the wireless industry, forcing cellphone makers to respond with new twists in their own hardware. Already, eager fans are lining up at AT&T and Apple stores around the country to buy the device
Excerpts from the interview follow:
* * *
WSJ: Steve, on the eve of the iPhone launch, we wonder if you might compare it to others you've been involved in -- the introduction of the Macintosh, for instance -- both in terms of the consumer anticipation and your own feelings about the impact the product will have in the market?
[Steve Jobs]
Steve Jobs: One of the things we feel is this is the biggest breakthrough in user interfaces in 23 years. Since the Mac in 1984 brought us the mouse and bit map displays and folders and icons, there really hasn't been much except for the evolution of that in the last 23 years. This is a revolutionary user interface [on the iPhone] -- multi-touch, direct action. It's pretty remarkable. I'm very excited.
I remember the week before we introduced the Mac. We knew every computer would work this way once we had the Mac. You couldn't talk about 'If,' you could debate about 'When.' That's how I feel about this. I feel this is the direction mobile devices are going to have to go. I don't think it's a matter of if, it's a matter of when. The first and most breakthrough one of them is going to be on the market tomorrow.
WSJ: One of the interesting things for people about the iPhone is the bundling of data and voice into one service plan. We've talked to some other smartphone manufacturers in the last couple days who say that would be great if that were extended to other devices because it seems like it would ensure that out-of-the-box people aren't getting an experience where they're pressing a button and something doesn't work. Is that something that you are looking at extending to other phones in the AT&T lineup over time?
Randall Stephenson: It depends on the handset itself. With this particular device, to not have an inclusive data package with a voice package would be almost irrelevant, right? This is a data and a voice product. It's nonsensical to sell a rate plan separate. As you see devices migrate towards this type of device, I fully expect you'll see rate plans migrate towards that as well.
WSJ: What do you both envision being added over time to the iPhone, in terms of access to ringtones through Cingular's (now rebranded AT&T) platform and maybe through some other manner, like turning your iTunes songs into ringtones?
Mr. Jobs: As you may know, iTunes is now the number three distributor of music in the U.S., ahead of Amazon and Target and behind Best Buy and Wal-Mart, and obviously the largest online distributor of
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Oh noes!! Please don't withhold the RAZR2 from us!! Our customers will die -- all three of them!!
Well OK, the RAZR sold more than three units. I assume. Anyway, the curent economic model between the cellphone manufacturers and service providers sucks. It leads to stupid shit like feature-blocking. I want my cellphone provider to provide service. And usable information about that service. My cable company didn't sell me a TV. My ISV didn't sell me my computer (and if they did I'll bet it wouldn't be one that I wanted.) Sure, I wish the iPhone was usable with all carriers, but it isn't. Yet. One step at a time.
Oh, and P.S. When the RAZR came out it cost $500 as well WITH a service agreement; $800 without. Just saying.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
GSM is the old TDMA-based standard: the physical (radio) layer, the signalling layer that runs on top of the signalling layer (SIM card, authentication, etc).
UMTS is also known as 3GSM: it's designed to support various radio interfaces, WCDMA being the most common. TD-SCDMA is another, developed by China IIRC.
To a user (that is, a user of a GSM/WCDMA device), the difference between the two should be the improvements in WCDMA/UMTS over plain GSM/GPRS/EDGE: better handoffs, more voice bandwidth, less quality drops, less latency, simultaneous data and voice, etc., and then the one downside: decreased battery life. The decreased battery life, unfortunately, is apparent on all CDMA-based devices; it inherently uses more power than its TDMA counterparts. (I miss the days of 8 hour *real* talk time)
UMTS makes incremental upgrades to GSM. GSM SIMs are compatible in UMTS devices, but newer USIMs have more security features. WCDMA and GSM air interfaces can be run from the same infrastructure and calls can be handed between them. The same features and feature codes are available.
Data access via GPRS/EDGE and WCDMA works essentially the same in software.
To support both, no duplication is needed. The same software can be used (with minor improvements to handle the new parts of WCDMA), and most WCDMA chipsets have GSM integrated as well. In the USA, GSM and WCDMA run on the same frequency bands (so far), so no new antenna is needed to support 2.1GHz.
There are a lot more markets with AT&T 3G than the Apple fanboys and AT&T haters like to admit... When ATT 3G appeared in this region (oct 06), they built out 3G first in the biggest city then proceeded to build it out in the two next biggest cities & outlying areas by December. It took Verizon over a year to get that far. The major cities without AT&T 3G are due mainly to FCC licensing issues, and I have heard that they have secured licensing in many of those markets and will be launching 3G soon.
Basically, I'd guess that at least half of the population that will buy an iPhone has 3G available in their area.
It's surprising that AT&T here has done a better job than your carrier. HSDPA coverage is the same as GSM coverage throughout my market... not only are the core metro areas & highways covered, the populated outlying areas are too.
A friend of mine has the same device and he has execllent 3G service.
You're confusing 3G with W-CDMA. EDGE is a GSM "upgrade". A significant portion of US cell users are on CDMA networks (Verizon/Sprint/...). For 3G those users are using EVDO, which "degrades" to 1x. You can think of EDGE and 1xRTT as 2.5G, at least relative to data transfer rate.
So the progression is something like this:
2G -> 2.5G -> 3G -> 3.5G -> 4G
GSM -> Edge -> W-CDMA(UMTS) -> HSPA -> LTE
cdmaOne -> 1xRTT -> EVDO -> EVDO Rev A -> UMB/OFDMA/WiMAX
Sprint has already rolled out EVDO Rev. A in some locations, which is "bitchin fast" for both download and upload.
I've had an EVDO Rev. 0 card in my laptop for a few years, and while I wouldn't say it is quite as fast as WiFi, it is really great and I get 5 hours of battery life.
In conclusion, your statement that the country is "EDGE ready, not 3G" is inaccurate in several ways. Not meaning to flame.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
If you want faster surfing on EDGE or GPRS, get Opera Mini. It slims down the HTML and graphics substantially before it gets to your phone. It breathed new life into my Sony Ericsson P910 (GPRS only), making it faster in use than Pocket Explorer my wife's EDGE phone with the AT&T network. The inability to use alternatives like Opera Mini is part of why I'm not as excited about the iPhone as I thought it would be.
Since the Mac in 1984 brought us the mouse and bit map displays and folders and icons, there really hasn't been much except for the evolution of that in the last 23 years.
That would be either "The Xerox Star Office System" in "1981" or at least "Lisa" in "1982", Steve.
GSM spec for 4 timeslots (the almost universal configuration, and the only feasible "real world" configuration, maxes at 236.4kbps. With 8 timeslots the theoretical max is 473.6kbps.
So if you'd been sold on "EDGE is 300-700kbps", you'd be looking at a pretty clear case of deceptive advertising.
On the other hand, Verizon Wireless has horrible customer service, cripples their phones (to the extent that, for instance, you can't even get your pictures off of them and onto your computer without using some proprietary service), doesn't use GSM...
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Not having Flash is a feature.
Apple yanked all of the Flash from its corporate website and redid it all in standard Ajax using scriptilicious and other plane jane tools, demonstrating that anyone can. It's even more interactive and functional (check out Apple.com search) and no proprietary plugin for Flash required.
Adobe isn't happy about it, but do we really need to convert the web from open HTML into closed FLA? Apple even convinced Google to start putting all of its FLA On2 videos on YouTube into standard H.264. That makes is much easier to deliver standards-based hardware acceleration for mobile devices that optimizes YouTube type sites.
With this kind of progress, the web is headed back into open territory after a long captivity in proprietary hell. That's good for Linux users, DIY site builders, and levels the playing field in hardware.
The web shouldn't be hostage to anyone's plugin just to render pages, particularly a plugin tied to a proprietary and industrially uncommon video codec that doesn't appear to have any hardware acceleration features. Anyone can license H.264 or get cheap dedicated processors.
Internet Explorer on the desktop PC doesn't make any attempt to support CSS3, and doesn't even try hard to do 2005-era CSS. The Pocket version is even further away from being remotely useful for the modern web.
It's not really the bandwidth, it's the latency. T-Mobile's EDGE runs about 700-1000ms ping times for me. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. I generally get 60-80kbps, which isn't horrific. Hell, I've even watched YouTube videos on the EDGE network. Not something I'd do a lot, but it is doable.
If they could get the latency down, EDGE would be a lot less annoying.
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