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iPhone Interest Still Going Strong
Only $220 to Make an iPhone. Bomarc writes to tell us BuinessWeek is reporting that according to a recent analysis the new iPhone only costs Apple in the neighborhood of $200 ($220 for the 8-gigabyte model) to manufacture.
iPhone User Review. Alexandros Roussos writes "It has been an unforgettable week-end for the first iPhone buyers and MacScoop will now put the focus on one of them who provided to a complete review of Apple's very anticipated gizmo."
Mistakes in the iPhone Interface. Rakesh writes "I love the iPhone. It 's here to stay as my primary cell phone. But I've come across a bunch of things that make me think Apple rushed at the end to get this thing out there. Here's my list of the top 10 mistakes Apple made with the iPhone interface."
iPhone Security Roundup. An anonymous reader writes "Although some security researchers noted problems getting their iPhone activated, others wasted no time tearing the new device apart. Seth Fogie, from Airscanner, reported passwords can be found for the device from running strings obtained from the backup images through a password cracker. Robert Graham, from Errata Security, writes about Safari and Bluetooth bugs on their blog."
iPhone Hardware Details. abdulzis writes "Engadget has the scoop on the iPhone's hardware specs through a leaked firmware. 'Sascha at Gear Log seems to think given the recently discovered Samsung chip in the iPhone, perhaps the processor in question is a Samsung S3C6400, a recently-produced 667MHz ARM1176JZF-based CPU that seems to fit the bill.'"
It's been out for what, a day or two? Longer? I wouldn't have expected it to die out so soon. Especially because it's an Apple product and they really rule at building up some hype.
Big difference, unless you'd be happy with a big 'ol bag of iPhone parts.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
*drool*
I'm sorry, did you say something?
+5, Truth
That does not include essential and unavoidable licenses which in the GSM world push the BOM by further 30-40$ (depending on volumes). Add to that licenses related to digital media playback (encoders, decoders) and the phone BOM approaches 300+. That is all before the cost of developing the software. So while the margins are very "applelike", they are nowhere as obscene as the article suggests.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Are you kidding me? It's been three fucking days!
Has society's attention span gotten so short that we are surprised when news reports on a high-profile new product spans past the Friday it was introduced through the weekend following its introduction?
Or are we just surprised that the iPhone has managed to steal a few seconds of airtime from the whole Paris Hilton thing?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Where is the article that does the in-indepth coverage of:
1. First iPhone user looking at porn
2. First iPhone user sitting on toilet and surfing web
3. First iPhone user to get laid because of it (those with significant others don't count).
4. First person to have an orgasm just by touching it (it being the iPhone you sicko)
I bought the iPhone, but I don't own apple stock. I am happy the iPhone is doing well. I hope it spurs the industry to have a spurt of innovation. .. obviously it fails with zero sales.. and then they assume nobody wants to web browse on the phone and stop innovating.
.. why didn't the other manufacturers come out with a decent one?
It seems that other manufacturers "test the waters" by making a half-ass web feature enabled phone
Come on, a high res screen for web browsing and touchscreen.. we've been wanting that for a while
Because we are Slashdotters, we have watched Star Trek and already own a device that does everything the iPhone does. :-)
Granted it doesn't have a cool logo and look as pretty, but as geeks we aren't supposed to care about such things!
They've already sold more iPhones than there are active Slashdot users.
The prediction is they will move 10+ million by the end of the year.
That's who cares. It's tech. This is a tech news site. It's the biggest thing techy to happen in the past week.
He's modded flamebait because he was baiting flame.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
They are a vocal minority. The phrase I heard recently to describe everyone else was "circle-jerk". That's never something I'd ever even considered and I promised myself that I'd use the phrase again.
It's not that people like me want to see it go down in flames. Quite the contrary, I've been waiting for a device like the iPhone for many years. My problem is that I got that device two and a half years ago and I'm still happy with it. I welcome the competition in the market and I value Apple's UI design highly so hopefully they will drag the entire industry forward with them. I've been a mobile early adopter since GSM first came out, so to hear that another large, respected manufacturer has entered the industry is fantastic.
What annoys some of us is that it's being presented as revolutionary. It's not. It might be, if it takes off and in the future changes most peoples outlook on phones. It took the iPod to bring mp3 players to the masses but it wasn't really an evolution change in technology. It was more marketing and design, such as the white headphones serving as a constant "join us, it's great!" advertisement.
The iPhone seems to be advertised to be a leap forward. Now, it may not be Apple doing this, there is a lot of grassroots support for it as is clear based on the volume of news around it, and they may be generating this meme that it's all powerful. The problem is it's not. It would be a downgrade for me. From what I hear it has the same UI problems as the first smartphones. Having to write down numbers for example as there is no cut and paste or hyper-linking of phone numbers in text. Lot's of little quirks have been ironed out over the years; I've been running homebrew ROMs on my mine, so I've seen it at it's worst and at it's best. From reading about people using it, some of the UI is an improvement but it needs work in many places.
This is what annoys us. Sure, for most people the iPhone is a leap forward and it's sure silenced most of the "a phone is just a phone" crowd that I have discussed this with on many previous occasions on Slashdot whenever there is a story about new phone technology. So, for the majority of people, great! Enjoy it. Having the internet in your pocket is awesome, as is the lack of needing to carry around a separate media player. The integration of SMS and email is also very handy. Google maps is great, though personally I prefer things like TomTom that keep the data locally. And so on, there are so many things you can do with a device with this.
Just stop making it sound like you are the first to be doing it! :-)
I didn't buy into all the hype but my boss came in today with it and after setting it up on our WPA wireless network, getting his mail running to our servers via IMAPS, etc. it is a VERY nice device.
The EDGE network blows. But, browsing off of it from our wireless network is a breeze. The screen is solid and I was amazed at the clarity of the screen with fonts, images when zooming really close. After setting it up on the network, it does need a few things.
1. ActiveSync or something to sync to our mailserver so the user can get contacts, calendar and mail.
2. IPSec VPN ability - maybe Cisco will get a client in this?
3. Open Office documents (Excel, Word)
4. Open PDF docs.
I am sure this will get better as it goes. But, far far better than I would have expected as a first gen device. It does make my Treo 700p look poor.
Not here it isn't.
Deleted
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/embedded/aa714410 .aspx
Says about $90/device for Windows XP Embedded.
For Qtopia, it is somewhat less but I can't find any info on TT's site about the actual pricing. It is about $200 for the SDK. I *think* I saw that it was about $20-$30 per device some time ago. Much cheaper than Windows.
Of course, you could just hack X+Gnome and be 100% "free" (not really for free, costs money to hack the thing for a phone). But I guess some other WM would be better than having Gnome there.
As for Apple Stock, it actually fell 0.6% today to $121. Their P/E ratio is about 38 which means even if they have a 30% jump in profit, that means their P/E ratio will drop to about 29. That is still relatively high. Companies like Microsoft and IBM have their P/E ratios at about 21 and 16 respectfully. Currently there seems to be a 15% anticipated increase in profits for next year over current year. If that does not materialize, Apple stock will drop.
Apple may be a better company to invest in today than MSFT though. I'm not sure if the price is warranted though (they'll need to double their earnings to be at the same price as MSFT is right now)
Microsoft has been making OS's for decades, has insane resources, and spent many years getting vista out the door. They also promised the moon and a half for Vista back in the early longhorn days, and delivered something with a way-trimmed down feature list, and it still didn't work all that great for a lot of people. Sure, many complained, but many are also using Vista and being happy with it.
Apple is making their first mobile phone ever, and while only the foolish expect it to be perfect, there are already tons of people talking about how much better the interface is than any other phone they've ever had. Many of them are also sharing what they see as the flaws in the device. And while I have no doubt that many of those people waiting in line were hardcore Apple fanboys, they're probably closing in on one million phones sold already, and I doubt there are that many Apple fanatics in the US.
To sum it up, MS needed around five years to put out a mediocre new version of their flagship product, after tons of feature cutting and multiple embarassing delays. I don't know how long Apple had been working on the iPhone, but it came out the day they said it would come out, and people seem to be genuinely impressed by it.
Apple has made it to where they are primarily by developing products that its customers think are great. MS has made it to where they are by developing products that are just good enough (and some wise business decisions). The two companies are judged differently, sure, but only because each has earned its reputation.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I don't see why they needed to spend any money on advertising, with all the free news coverage they've been getting.
"Bigger than the GPL3 license?"
In a mall, stop and ask 20 people which they're more excited about GPL3 or the iPhone.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Well, considering how every story posted ends up having a Windows vs Linux vs OS X discussion brought up in the comments...
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
On a different forum that I post on I brought up an (I like to think) interesting (if speculative) point. The iPhone is OS X people, and its totally under Apple's control, they can do whatever they want with the hardware they have by releasing software upgrades... and in a lot of cases the hardware is there, they just need to release the software. The bluetooth isn't physically limited, its limited by software, so syncing can be added. A whole bunch of other goodies can be tossed in using the Apple Updater that comes with iTunes. Which brings up another interesting point to ponder, Apple took teams away from Leopard so that the iPhone would be somewhat stable and usable for its release, and most of its bigger core functions are in place. Which isn't to say that everything that was supposed to make it in by June 29th actually did make it. I imagine we'll be seeing quite a few updates in the close future, and probably a few new features from the Apple and the Google side of things that were supposed to be on the phone originally but didn't make the cut or ran out of time. Personally, I believe Apple has vested too much interest in the iPhone to leave it (software or hardware) in the state it is in at the present time. And we'll probably see numerous (and better) revisions in the months to come. If, however, that is the case, it makes me wonder about Apple's release schedule/marketing strategy.
Let me guess. You also can't understand why consumers will still pay money for Windows when they can have Linux for free.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Your observation is fairly, well, obvious, but important to state -- the iPhone's OS is called "OS X 1.0" (it sends back crash reports through iTunes that someone's already dissected, of course), and it clearly has the same heritage as Mac OS X, just like Windows Mobile has the same heritage as other Windows. Windows Mobile has a lot of the same API as "real" Windows, but, well, it's hardly identical, and the crash reports show intriguing differences from iPhone OS X to Mac OS X (and intriguing similarities).
This is important to note, if nothing else, for those who go around saying things like, "If it's OS X, I should be able to load Mac applications on it." Yeah, we'll get back to you on that after you load World of Warcraft on your Treo, Einstein.
With current phones, from a capability point of view, they all do things that seem like they are from Star Trek, I fully agree with you on that. Where they all fall short is in the interface. That's what I mean by it actually *feels* like using something from Star Trek, and not just "has the capabilities" of something from Star Trek.
Essentially, doing something on a standard smart phone (or cell phone in general) takes quite a bit of effort. That's why most people don't do much beyond calling, taking photos, and SMS/MMSing. As geeks and technology enthusiasts, most of us here on Slashdot enjoy doing those things enough to overcome effort required--sometimes we enjoy it so much that we even completely ignore the effort, or count it as "part of the fun". With the iPhone (and all things Apple, in general), the effort is so minimized that the interface becomes almost invisible.
Take the task of multi-party calling. Pretty much every phone can do it, and I've done it on every phone I've ever had, but I've *only* done it when I really, *really* wanted to, because the interface was so limited. The process usually involved multiple, "are you there?"s because you're never quite sure who exactly is on hold, who is connected, and who you might have accidentally hung up on. With the iPhone, even though it's the exact same feature, it's so effortless that I am sure I'll use this feature more during the next year than I have on all my past phones combined. The same goes for web browsing, email, etc. With the iPhone, the actual *experience* of using it--every one one of its features--is fun and easy. With all other phones, it's quite impressive to *have* all those features, but using them can be called *many* things other than "fun", and beyond the first time, "hey, this is cool", a large portion of those features will go unused--not because they are not worthwhile features that one might want to use, but because they aren't worth the trouble.
The iPhone is the first phone (or device in general) that I've used that has me feeling confident about leaving my notebook behind, and *that* says a lot.
It's all about the experience. I suggest playing with one at an Apple Store (an AT&T store will do in a pinch). 5 minutes trying out Safari, the iPod, YouTube and the phone features will convey far more than my post possibly could. Even if, after that, you don't think the iPhone is worth $600, or that the features don't match your needs, or that you're going to wait for 3G, or any other number of things, I'm pretty sure you'll know exactly what I meant by my Star Trek comment.