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Apple Plans Cheaper Nano-Based iPhone
bigkahunafish writes "It seems Apple is planning a cheaper version of the iPhone possibly based on the iPod Nano. This phone would be priced below $300 making it more affordable than the $500-600 iPhone. This should bring Apple phone technology into the hands of more users, though this cheaper phone could have more limited functionality. From the article: 'Sales of the [original] iPhone are expected to be limited to a small percentage of the market due to its high price tag, particularly in the United States where 85 percent of consumers tend to spend $100 or less on cell phones. But analysts forecast that a cheaper phone from Apple, which leads the digital music player market, could pose a much bigger threat to long-established phone makers such as Nokia, Motorola Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Ericsson, owned by Sony Corp and Ericsson.' I just hope they don't make a phone based on the iPod Shuffle."
Wow, it's THAT small?
It's got only one button. Press it and it dials one of your contacts at random.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
... or wait... that's always the dilemma with Apple; they're so tight-lipped you don't know when the latest-and-greatest happens until it's already on shelves. Got burned on my MacBook, so I think I'll be waiting.
@cyg
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
I expect Apple to fill those holes pretty quickly. But, it's going to take V2 HW to fix some things I'd want like external storage and bigger internal storage.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
The iPhone shuffle jokes. They aren't funny.
...they need to have another iPhone that isn't out yet we can have at least one post a day about.
"Nano-based" is pretty much the dumbest way you could've put it. It's going to be based on the current iPhone, but it'll just be a cheaper, physically smaller, and more feature limited device; similar to the way an iPod nano compares to a full size iPod.
Ooooh, I see, Apple has filed phone related patents that utilize a scroll wheel, just like the iPod nano. Never mind that every other iPod(minus the shuffle) also has a scroll wheel.
Any
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
This is how Apple is going to change the pricing model used in the cell phone market. Before, when you drooled over a new phone, you knew that if you waited 1-2 years, you could pick it up for next to nothing. The RAZR, for instance, was about $300 when it came out...one year later, it was $99. I've heard several of my colleagues say that they will get their iPhones in two years when they are $50.
I've explained to these colleagues that there is no way this will happen. Apple's products never become cheaper, they just release new "generations" and keep the price about the same. They fill the gap with less functional products. This method is true for their desktops (Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini), notebooks (MacBook Pro, Macbook) and their iPods (iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle); it only stands to reason that it will be true for iPhones, too.
And since the batteries aren't replacable in the iPhones, after two years, you won't want to get a used one. This locks their customers into the current $500-$600 units forever, as you wouldn't want to buy a used one in 1 1/2 years.
Will this work in the cell phone market? I'm not sure, but I'm certain that there will never be a "free iPhone with 2 year activation" type promotion.
I am not sure about my stand on the iPhone, but regardless, it seems much better to wait for the 2nd or 3rd generation of a product from Apple. The 1st generation products, although 'new and hip,' seems to have quirks just as many other companies products. As another comment stated, with Apple always being secretive about product releases, a person who is burned once by a new/better product coming out the day after they purchase theirs, tend to be a little gun shy.
You insensitive clod!
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Punctuation isn't just for making smileys.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
So it's a rotary-dial phone, then?
And they will sell like hotcakes.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It makes sense for Apple to expand its phone product range, since it is now a phone manufacturer.
What if they succeed and sell tens of millions of units?
Then a computer company would be one of the world's largest phone manufacturers.
That would make the telecommunications industry a lot more interesting. Currently, it is dominated by phone type companies.
There seems to have been a lot of hype over this. I can't work out why everyone's so obsessed though. A built in mp3 player is a nice idea but that's been around for a while. It also seems to have limitted PDA type functionality but it's hardly the first.
Are people that obsessed over the new type of touch screen?
The Nano just doesn't have enough internal volume for phone electronics plus a battery that'll give decent battery life.
Until slashdot decided to strip out all of my formatting, it looked quite nice.
I'd assumed that since it looked fine under preview that it'd go through the way I'd formatted it....
Gotta love the "html formatted" default... now where's my hammer.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
They want to release an LG KE850. It's a good lesson in marketing how Apple can be hailed as innovative for taking an LG phone that won design awards and making some modifications.
It's the package..
Strike 1) Apple makes it
Strike 2) Price
Strike 3) Cingular/ATT only
Strike 4) Soldered in battery
Strike 5) Security issues
All in all, it really never had a chance to live...
(there, as it should have been originally)
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Bi-Directional Synching, .pdf, .xls, & .doc reading and browsing is needed and you don't have to lug the Mac Book around all the time anymore.
Then the iPhone "pays" for itself.
I've had mine for just over a week, and I don't regret the money to get these features in a phone I can read in the bright sunlight.
Stop posting conjecture by "market analysts". No matter how you spin it, this is not news for nerds or stuff that matters. It's someone trying to rally interest in Apple stock.
No sig for you!!
I can tell you are a brilliant businessman. iPhone has fucking exceeded Apple's sales expectations.
... is to STOP selling it as a phone and start selling it as the broad featured portable computing device that it is. At $500 it's way too expensive for being a phone with a few added features but, it's not too expensive to be a nifty, feature rich portable computing device that happens to include a phone.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
My biggest complaints are that I cannot simply send an image to my machine without using iPhoto, or access files for storage and such particularly over Bluetooth. Not being able to use it as a modem is pretty crappy as well!
That aside, it is a cool phone. Although I would not have purchased an iPod as a separate product, having one is not bad. But again, I purchased an iPod Shuffle instead of a flash drive, and am sort of bothered that I cannot use a $500 product to do the job of a $25 flash drive.
GPS would have been nice as well...
Read the article. The features they describe are ones we read about here on slashdot (apple design patents). Ones for rotary gestures and such. This does not mean it's an iphone or a nano. I'll note that if you have watched the multi-touch demos from that guy whose famous for them (what's his name?) and who consults for apple, his MENUs are not bars but sectored circles and you call them up with a spiral gesture. Another apple design patent was for senstitive places around the edge of a screen that are flush with the screen. That is to say physical buttons associated with the edge of a screen.
Those kinds of details could help reduce the screen area needed to support a full-featured phone and perhaps get it dow to a nano-sized thing. Too small to be a real internet broswer device but large enough to pan through a contact list.
anyhow those design patents have been out there for a long time. SO some ones discovering them does not make it news or mean there's a new product.
On the other hand apple needs a response to the two sided phone/music players from samsung. those are ipod-nano killers since even though they are larger than a nano, you could argue that the music player is actually smaller as long as you planned to have a cell phone in your pocket anyhow. A nano sized phone would kill that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"..could pose a much bigger threat to long-established phone makers such as Nokia, Motorola Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Ericsson.."
Yes, it will steal some market share from the phone makers, but we should all assume that they aren't idiots. What they all have in common is great income and plenty of money to spend on development. Why would they just watch Apple steal everything from them? It's one thing to conquer the mp3 player market, but significantly harder to conquer the mobile phone market.
I am one hundred percent certain that at least a couple of these companies will bring out very competitive products very soon, possibly this year. I also have no doubt that Apple will continue to develop great products, but I just don't see the same iPod era in the cell phone market like so many people think.
Full Tilt
As one waiting for the second generation, expecting better connectivity speeds without Wi-Fi, better compatibility with Exchange Push and Active Sync, Voice Dialing, and more, this news pisses me off. Let the cheap bastards by Razr's and LG Chocolate phones, dammit.
Apple could discover that by creating an iPhone that does EVERYTHING, many people would be happy to leave the laptop in the bag and carry ONE device with them, and pay almost what you would pay for a decent laptop.
Who would not pay $999 for an iPhone that did everything except scratch your balls(assuming they could fix that later in software)? Listen up, Apple bitches, I want a phone that works WELL with Exchange, works WELL on the Internet when there is no Starbucks for miles around, and I want a phone that I can dial without taking one or both hands off the wheel! Add THAT to your current 8G phone, and I can personally guarantee you 500 unit sales at a $999 TOMORROW!
Goddammit.
Leave the poor bastards to fuckin CRICKET, and give us something we can USE!
The distance between the human ear and the human mouth is pretty well fixed... how can they make a one-piece phone much smaller than the iPhone? I just don't see it. Maybe a miniature version of a candlestick phone, with two pieces connected by a cord. Or perhaps a tiny Shuffle-like mouthpiece and a separate, tiny bluetooth earpiece?
.mp3 players). Instead, in both the older and newer Shuffles, Apple came out with a slick piece of industrial design that looks and feels like a quality product in a new category, not a cheap-and-cheesy version of an existing product, or a slightly-tarted-up version of a score of competitors' products.
And I'm not sure I see how they can make the thing more than incrementally cheaper.
They can't make the screen smaller without turning the iPhone into something like an ordinary cell phone. And then you don't get any of the breakthrough advantages of the iPhone user interface. It would just be a Motorola ROKR with an Apple logo and, possibly, better iPod functionality.
So far, Apple has been consistently good in avoiding the temptation to put the Apple brand on something that Apple fans like me would perceive to be a cheap piece of crap.
The iPod Shuffle is a good case in point. Before it came out, everyone was speculating that it would have a tiny, i.e. unusable screen (like some of the competitive
I'm darned if I see how they can make a much smaller, cheaper iPhone without falling into that trap.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Can we please, please stop with this astroturf? Pundits don't know what's going to happen to the iPhone, you don't know what's going to happen to the iPhone, it's probably likely that Apple don't know what's going to happen to the iPhone beyond a couple of OS fixes. The two things that are interesting about the iPhone are the interface and the fact that it runs OS X. Period. It might get more interesting as it develops but at the moment it's a crippled phone on a crippled network that is probably going to prove to be the biggest tech disappointment of 2007. This time next week it will 'iPhone could add two inches to your manhood' or 'iPhone could enable owner to travel in time and space' at this rate.
So when you say it never had a chance to live, you are referring to for yourself right? Because the "package" seems to have worked out just well for all the hundreds of thousands of iPhones Apple has sold so far with the first model...
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
After RTFA, it sounds to me like this guy has found info that suggests Apple will turn the iPod Nano into... an updated iPod Nano. So there is a new casing coming down the supply chain and a patent for a "multifunctional" device. To me that sounds like Apple is going to update the Nano to incorporate some of the gee-whiz iPhone UI features while leaving their high margin, incredibly popular iPhone unchallenged, but saying that doesn't get your name in the papers.
"This should bring Apple phone technology into the hands of more users..."
:D
Not very many. They're forgetting that people who are currently locked in with contracts with other providers won't just go and buy an iPhone right away. Couple that with people who don't live in AT&T's serviceable area and brand loyalty (I'm never leaving Sprint) and their sales will never truly explode like the iPod has. Only making a deal with AT&T will limit their market. So really, Apple should loosen up just a little bit in order to market it via Verizon, Sprint, etc. I could, quite frankly, care less if I had an iPhone with a Sprint logo on it.
I like how they decided to make a new model iPhone after all the rabid fanboys have gone and spent like $600 to have it on launch day.
/* No Comment */
iPod Nano: 4GB and 8GB models
iPhone: 4GB and 8GB models
Both use flash memory for storage.
From my perspective as a 80GB hard-drive based iPod owner, which iPod exactly is the iPhone based on if it isn't already the Nano?
though this cheaper phone could have more limited functionality.
Wow. Ya think?
Why not? Openmoko neo1973 has about the same features, atleast according to the web site. Touch sensitive screen that can be manipulated using the finger, Runs Linux, Not bound to any GSM Vendor, BT 2.0 etc., Can someone point me to an article that compares these?
"Another analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray said he expects Apple to bring out iPods that resemble iPhone, which features such as a touch-sensitive screen, later this year. Such products would help stop iPhone eating into iPod sales. 'We believe the iPhone reveals much of what the iPod will soon be,' Munster said in a note to clients, 'iPods with some of the touchscreen features of the iPhone should lessen the impact of cannibalization.'"
Hold on a minute. In the first place, why would Apple we worried about a $500 or $600 iPhone "eating into iPod sales?"
That sounds like the sort of poisonous big-corporation bozo thinking. People that care more about their division than about either a) the customer, or b) the company as a whole. Like old-time GM, where Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac worried more about each other than about, say, high-quality foreign cars. It's the sort of thinking that leads to artificially holding back new products in order to "milk the cash cow" and extract the last dollar from the older product. To rationalized product lines with exactly seven price points.
That's not the way every company works (remember Digital introducing the MicroVAX II, knowing perfectly well that it wasn't going to "cannibalize" higher-end VAX sales, it was going to vaporize them?) And there's good evidence that it's not the way Apple works. A case in point would be the replacement of the iPod Mini, which was a popular, successful, and well-liked product, with the Nano. There's no evidence at all that Apple was worried about the Nano "cannibalizing" sales of the Mini!
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The divide between the haves and have-nots will only become deeper, when this new iPhone is released. A struggling coffee-shop owner will not be able to afford the $600 gadget, and so will have to settle for the limited functionality of the cheaper one.
All the while, the leaching MAFIAA shills prosper suing the single (grand-)mothers for copyright infringment, which is not even theft.
Or something...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
iPod: HD based, $249 for 30 GB.
iPod Nano: Flash based, $249 for 8 GB.
iPhone: Flash based, $499 for 4 GB, or $599 for 8 GB.
Finally, I'll be able to blame those 4am morning phonecalls (when i'm pissed drunk) on my iPhone Shuffle.
...I'm thinking that a lot of people who bought the iPhone as soon as it came out might be angry if a cheaper version of it comes out that still does a lot of the same things.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
ipHalf
Why people must have the most doo-dahs and whiz-bang features on a phone is beyond me. It makes and receives calls, super. Honestly, when I shop for a new cell it's always the cheapest quad-band I can find. Spent $70 on my last phone ...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Actually, they went with AT&T... err, Cingular... err, AT&T....
--Richard
But I thought that the iPhone as it is now, is too "nano" for my storage needs.
I was waiting for Generation 2.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I don't see how you could make a smaller touchscreen phone without a stylus, and even if you could, what would be the point? You wouldn't be able to read email or surf the web on an iPhone Nano, even with intelligent zoom-in, so that kills nearly half of the perks of the regular iPhone right off.
It has been interesting to watch the other shoe drop on the iPhone. At first I figured the catch would be that the cost of service would be insane. Then it came out that the pricing was very competitive (catch: it's on the cheaper EDGE network). Thing is, I was looking for the way normal cell phone service providers screw people (namely by overcharging for services). ATT's bargaining position as the last place carrier was weak enough that we may be seeing the dawn of a whole new paradigm of affordable service and expensive hardware. The cost of the replacement service, plus the loaner iPhone that you'll need if your cell number is your only phone, is about 20% of the cost of the device. What I find surprising is that analysts were shocked by this. A regular service provider would rather sell a cheap replacement battery to avoid having to subsidize a replacement phone. A hardware provider would rather sell you a new $500 2nd generation iPhone than a $40 battery.
The big question now is who wins the battles over the missing features. For example, ATT wants to charge current insane rates for more ringtones, while Apple wants to include the best possible featureset to make the initial sale (which, I would imagine, is where most of their profit in this endeavor comes from) more attractive. If Apple can pull out some big wins (e.g. end the practice of charging $2 for the ability to use a 30 second clip of music you already own as a ringtone), and can continue to deliver a device that's worth the cost, this could be a good thing for customers. (One hopes that the 2nd generation iPhone comes with support for faster networks and integrated GPS amongst other things, which would make it worth the upgrade for current iPhone owners.) Or we could be looking at an excuse for other service providers to decrease their subsidies of phones (still cheaper out of pocket expenses than an iPhone!), which would be bad for all of us.
So, this guy, like in Taiwan, like, told me something like, that some company is making metal cases for Apple and stuff, and this is going to be like, some nano-based iPhone. You know, like it's TRUE!
STOP POSTING RUBBISH RUMOURS!
Oh and by the way, if the iPhone is successful, YES there will be follow-up and other models. Look at the iPod. What's new here?
It was funny the first time I made it when the iphone was still just a rumor. But you're right, its so lame now. I'd much rather here a thousand " In soviet Russia phone, I's You" jokes than another iphone shuffle joke. Its dead, like all of the people in korea that still use email. Give it a rest slashdot, beating it to death won't make this one any funnier.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I just hope they don't make a phone based on the iPod Shuffle.
Jokes about calling random numbers aside, I've long wanted such a gizmo. Just give me a phone with voice dialing and audio prompts - no screen - and I'd be happy. It would be totally tiny, have minimal buttons for volume/mute/start/end, a built-in USB plug (per classic Shuffle) for no-cables charging and visual access from any computer. Include the iPod Shuffle guts as the MP3 player.
I use the classic Shuffle all the time for select music (there's only about a half-dozen CDs I want to listen to at any time), info transfer (usually have about a half-gig of data on it), and other than headphones no cables are needed (built-in USB plug). Considering how tiny the actual phone part of a cell phone is (minus battery, screen, mic, speaker, and extra gee-whiz gludge), and how the Shuffle was further miniaturized, surely a very usable audio-only phone could be built into the classic Shuffle design.
Maybe the market wouldn't be huge, but there is a market.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Apple will release a better, smaller version of a current product at some unspecified later date. In other news, tomorrow's sun will be a bright ball of fire, and the cars of the future will have four wheels.
They wouldn't have gone with Cingular... err, the new AT&T.
What a moronic comment. From my own experience I know that AT&T has great coverage in some places and sucky coverage in others. Same goes for Sprint and T-Mobile. I have no experience with the other carriers, but I doubt they are any different.
They could save money by eliminating the screen.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
then from your own experience the NSA also knows how good your coverage is
Did you read what I wrote? I did not say that Apple would not do this. In fact, Apple does this with every damn product they make. Apple Plans Cheaper Nano-Based (by which I assume they mean "smaller," because everything else makes no sense at all) iPhone? No shit? We knew that the day Apple announced the iPhone. It's not news.
...though this cheaper phone could have more limited functionality. What - like you can't make phone calls? iPhone is extremely limited as it is.yes it is :-)
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There were two reasons I spent almost $200.00 and signed up for a two year contract on my Razr. First was that my LG phone was a piece of crap. Half the people I called couldn't hear me very well, and the display was always getting fuX0red requiring a reboot (who would have thought twenty years ago you would need to reboot a phone?). I sent it back under warrantee and it was replaced by one with even more problems. Disgusted, I swore never again to buy an LG anything, and decided I wanted an American phone, especially Motorola. We had Motorola radios in the USAF in the early '70s and they were sturdy to the point of near indestructability (yes, I realise military grade electronics are sturdier than consumer electronics) and I never saw one malfunction.
Secondly it would easily fit in my pants pocket. However, when I get on the "internet" with it it's the "phone internet"; I haven't been able to find Google on it. Also the screen is pretty damned small for surfing, and the phone keys don't lend themselves to typing. My daughter has a T-Mobile phone that has a big screen and keyboard, but the thing's as big as a brick (and she broke the screen carrying it in her purse).
I looked into the iPhone, but couldn't find its dimentions. Just how big/small is it? Will it fit in my pants pocket, or will I need to get a girlfriend (yeah right) to keep it in her purse for me? Will it be able to surf all the places I can go on my PC?
And if it's too big, how small is the iPod nano? TFA doesn't say. Will it be able to go anywhere on the net my PC can?
Thanks in advance
-mcgrew
Being anti-apple isn't being a troll. I consider it to be a sign of intelligence.
Posting anti-apple isn't flamebaiting. It's warning others of the problems of all things apple.
Modding an anti-apple statement down is being a troll. More than likely, it's an Apple employee doing it.
If we could see the asshats who are modding, and respond to them, we'd know who the apple employees were.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Check out this sneak peak of the iPhone Nano.
Celebrate the finer things in life
The Guardian reported that in the UK, Vodafone had baulked at a couple of the demands. These were that a percentage of the revenues generated by the user should come back to Apple, and that there should be restrictions on what content could be accessed.
"Apple is understood to be demanding that its European mobile phone partners hand over a significant proportion of revenues generated by the iPhone and restrict the content that users can access."
So, the really interesting point about the device now becomes apparent. The business model has been so far, that you took service from whoever you wanted, using whatever phone you wanted, and you accessed whatever content you wanted. We are now seeing an attempt to get to a totally different model. To use a phone, you are obliged to sign up to a music download store, whether you are interested in music, or music from that store, or not. Then you are obliged to sign up to one and only one network. Finally, you can't access the content you want unless the phone supplier approves of it. And for all of this, you pay not only for the usage of the network, but you also end up paying a fee to the phone maker for the privilege of undergoing all these restrictions.
Now, people will write back and say, you don't have to buy it. No. And that is not the point at all. The point is not primarily about Apple or the iPhone. The point we should be paying attention to is, what happens and how will it feel, if this becomes the standard business model in the mobile internet and service arena?
I suggest not at all. As little, in fact, as if we were to be controlled in our use of our PCs by Microsoft. Buy only the hardware brands that Redmond tells you are permitted. Access only the sites that Redmond approves of. Load only the software that Redmond permits. Or Cupertino.
We must devoutly hope that this model turns into a huge business flop, not because we like or hate Apple, but because the model in itself is inimical to intellectual freedom. The present one, use what you like to do what you like, is infinitely preferable from the point of view of freedom of information and expression. Just as the present CD/DVD model is infinitely preferable to the iTunes model: buy what you want, by whatever browser or at whatever walkin store you want, pay by whatever credit card you want, take it home and play it on the player of your choice, made by whoever you choose to buy players from. This too will turn out to be about intellectual freedom, when it comes to buying ebooks and enews.
It is related to Apple and its values and strategy, in the sense that this has always been what Apple was about. But the important thing is not to be critical of Apple in itself. It is the model that is wrong. Of course, the company is very wrong too. But long as it stays below 5% of everything, who cares? Its when its model starts to dominate that we should become disturbed and enraged, or when it tries to extend its controlled and restrictive model to areas of intellectual life that are presently free.
Then we need to educate, and to resist.
6 months of hype and commercials before the product is released had a bit to do with that.
There could also be a "nano-based" phone though.
At the time when the iPhone was just a scary story, Apple was granted several patents that hinted at a cell-phone in development. This was later vindicated when the iPhone was announced, but most people failed to notice that the revealed patents had no relation to the eventual iPhone released.
In particular, the key patent was for a new extruded casing technology like that used to create nanos, but made from cubic-zirconium crystal for greater radio transparency. Viewed together, the various patents that were noted just previous to the iPhone release, seemed to indicate a mass-produced, extremely cheap (possibly even "throwaway"), cell-phone with the same chicklet form factor as the iPod nano.
It's possible that Apple will still release this product as a mass-produced, dirt-cheap unlocked phone simply to flood the low end of the market. together with the iPhone this could easily lead to Apple taking the lion's share of the *total* cellphone market by the end of 2009.
I am really hoping for this myself simply because my personal preference design-wise is for transparent casings on computer products (it's just more honest). I had several transparent Palms, Pocket PC's, etc. and all my cellphones have had transparent cases. The only way this is ever likely to happen with an Apple product is if they adopt these "crystal" cases for iPhone nano.
"Analysts forecast" does not equal "Apple plans". What a stupid title. Zonk, stop posting.
In my experience, verizon has better coverage in more places than any of those carriers and I always liked the fact that I could bring my phone in to a shop and get it fixed pretty easily. That said, verizon only sells phones which are very tightly locked down and wont provide a feature unless they can force you to pay through the nose for them. They never would have accepted apples terms on the iPhone, it has too many features that can be used without verizon making money.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I love how the article takes the patent for the click-wheel iPhone and uses that as a jumping off point for their speculation on an iPhone-Nano.
1) Patents are IDEAS not PLANS. You patent things so other people can't do them. Even if you don't want to. You file patents to block all possible competitors to your products. Even if the patent covers something not as good as what you have. No competition in the marketplace is better than inferior competition.
2) It is widely known that the click-wheel idea was tested and explored BEFORE the current iPhone interface was decided upon. So, the patent doesn't represent a PLANNED product but instead a discarded idea. It is an attempt to recoop some of the R&D costs of the failed idea.
3) And the other part of the article is blindingly obvious. Technology will get smaller and cheaper. Or at least for the last 30-50 years it has.
Steve, that's not necessary. Cheaper versions of iPhone will come from China pretty soon.
(Comment signed by a proud owner of an $50 iPod Nano clone)
"Apple Plans" you say?
More like "some analyst with no more trial balloons left on the the iPhone plans to gin up interest in their analysis"
I think there are evil dogs in the forest causing random failures on my hard drive. When is that going to be front page news? Cuz it'[s about as connected to fact as this post.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It's got 4GB or 8GB of Flash memory, much like the Nano. It's not hard drive based like a full-blown iPod. It's like the Nano's memory + full iPod screen + multitouch + wifi + phone.
I'd actually buy an iPhone if it came down to $200-300, and wasn't locked into AT&T.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
No, decreasing subsidies of phones is GOOD for all of us. The pricing in the USA is absolutely idiotic when based around contracts. Just sell the units as units, make the phones commodity (that's the beauty of GSM) and let the service providers just sell service.
"This phone would be priced below $300 making it more affordable"
Starting to worry about OpenMoko competition already?
-- nevermind "does it run linux", how about "does it run your applications?"
Introducing iPhone shuffle. Life is random.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Lessee - the iPhone is a bit more than a phone, and the iPhonano is a bit less than an iPhone. What does that make it? Is it still a phone? It's still too expensive; my K750i has cost me £60 over 12 months, I've never run out of minutes or texts, and it's all mine. WTF do I want with a little white plasticy fashion accessory? I'm not Derek Zoolander.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/06/29/apple-kit teh-saiz/
This opens up a totally new meaning to nanotechnology. Considering all the hype around the iphone, next time I will hear someone talking about some nanotech breakthrough (new type of nano-sized materials), I will immediately think of it as something that originated in the Apple Nano. As for us, materials scientists, we just have to acknowledge that Apple was truly revolutionary in nanotechnology. Without the iPod Nano, it seems there would have been no nano-technology. Sigh.
That's what she said.
I hope they do make a phone smaller than the iPod Shuffle. In fact they could build the entire device into the erabud headphones and do away with the wires. You don't need a scree or keyboard to control a phone. Not if voice control is perfected. Some day the phone could disappear.
uh oh - apple employees at it again...
I need to start going over the the apple forums and start modding all the pro apple stuff troll....
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Awwww what's the matter?
Am I picking on poor wittle Apple too much?
Shut the fuck up, crawl back under the rock, and wait 3 million years in the hope that your descendants will climb the evolutionary ladder before they crawl back out....
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Give it another week or two for the units to start failing, being taken over, hacked, or the screens to be scarred.
Then we'll see.
Right now it's Apple fan-ass'ism that's driving it.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
There are few things that are as much fun as baiting Apple fan-asses.
Mock Apple, it's products and they crawl out of the cess-pools to mod you troll, flame-bait, whatever.
Whatever, I really don't care. It's fun, and I'll continue to do it.
Karma to nuke.....
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Awww - I can do this all year?
How about you?
Keep going Mr. Apple Employee....
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
As I said, this is fun...
Is that all you've got?
Come on - actually respond, don't just hide behind the mod button...
Come out of hiding, and let the world see who you are...
Is that you SJ?
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
So? Why do I care?
Keep posting you fucktarded comments. Eventually your whole account will be modded into oblivion while I can do this all year without any problem. Eventtually your karma will be so low your starting score will be -1 fucktard then you will have no choice but to slit your fucking wrists fucktard. So why not do us all a favor and end it all by finding a really sharp razor, running a hot bath, and slitting your fucking wrists fucktard.
...and just make a nice camera-phone-mp3 player, without additional data fees, and I, for one, will buy one.
I was playing with the iphone yesterday, and the display is just too small to make it really usable as a web-browser. A nice gimmick, sure, but I don't think I would actually use it.
It's the back-end cost that I don't like about the iphone...let me keep my current Cingular account(29.99 +taxes & fees), and give me a nice shiny, full display iphone/pod/camera... I would buy one for $200-300.
Of course you can retard, you're doing it anonymously....
See - there's a difference. I don't mind sharing my opinion, but I let people know who I am.
You on the otherhand, continue to hide behind your momma's skirts (or maybe you're just wearing them)....
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I actually own an iPod mini and use iTunes. It isn't too bad. As for being tied into iTune, that statement is false. Rockbox, an Open-Source firmware replacement for the apple iPod. With the update you can copy your music using it as you would any normal USB drive.
http://www.rockbox.org/
The Macintosh doesn't require for you to use their Operating System, and it is their OS so they have every right to run it on their own system. I don't see anything wrong with a Macintosh, it isn't my cup of tea. It is like Coke vs Pepsi vs RC. I may prefer Coke(Windows) while someone else may like Linux(RC) or Mac-OS (Pepsi). It is a matter of taste or functionality.
I don't know much about the iPhone but I highly doubt Cingular/AT&T is the worst, if you have tried Sprint PCS then you may backtrack on that statement. With Sprint I can barely go within a building without dropped calls. Heck I could have full signal strength and have a dropped call because the signal strength drops down to zero.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
From the Unofficial Apple Weblog:
- now-says-no-to-near-term-nano-iphone/
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/10/jp-morgan-retracts
The real elephant in the room is the fact that I just spent $600 on my friggin' iPhone and it can't do some crucial functions that even $50 handsets can.
Heck, it doesn't even have a can opener, and any $20 multi-tool has one of those. WTF?
...and see who you end up talking to. iPhone Shuffle.
sometimes, nothing.
Then the iPhone "pays" for itself.
I've had mine for just over a week, and I don't regret the money to get these features in a phone I can read in the bright sunlight. Any Symbian phone can read/EDIT/WRITE
iSync does syncing of course.
I couldn't resist when I saw expression "it pays for itself". No, it is a very expensive phone/pim/photo features enabled iPod and nothing else. As there is no 3rd party SDK, nobody will be able to sit and write a real C application too. As the owners/fans of phone/iPod apologises for Apple instead of demanding those features on a $600 device, there could be NO SDK at all.
I am not forgetting to say how IDIOT Nokia was not to code a freaking "PC Suite for OS X" for over the years of course. Windows people were drag/drop installing their applications to Symbian stuff for years while OS X people (like myself) were stuck with bluetooth support.
While hitting both sides, a laptop replacement is a Symbian or even WinCE device, not iPhone. Especially for companies/government.
If you want a Nano-style phone--slim, metal case, good music player--get a Sony W880i. Bonus: it runs Java apps and it supports 3G.
Right now, in the US, when you buy a phone, you get the options dictated by the service. We have no phone transportability. Wy have mystery-meat restrictions (Sprint will cancel you if you call support "too often").
Having the options dictated by the phone manufacturer will at least give us the choice of picking a phone from a company that's forced the options we want through the carrier. That's not as good a deal as I hear you get over the pond, but it's better than we have now.
Chang's analysis was absurd. There will be no iPhone Nano for years if ever.
Kevin Chang, iSuppli and The iPhone Nano Myth
Reuters broadly reported JP Morgan's Kevin Chang forecasting the imminent arrival of a smaller cheaper, version of the iPhone dubbed the 'iPhone Nano.' The problem: not only is there is nothing backing up the iPhone Nano prediction, but it makes no sense at all. Even JP Morgan has distanced itself from the initial report.
They smelled like hot cakes!
What difference does $200 make on a phone when they still force you to cough up $100 a month for the subscription?
I know that I'm the heretic here, but...
I don't need all this fancy shit. I won't get an iPhone because I don't need all this fancy shit. For a phone, I just want a phone, though a pic phone might be ok just so I can get a pic of various weird shit I see once in a while.
I don't want SMS, I don't want IM. I want to be left alone unless you -really- need to talk to me. I don't want "Hey, I just hit a par -3!" I don't need to bluetooth songs; I can hum to myself nicely. I don't need video on a damn phone. Ok, voice dialing while driving is a plus.
I don't need all this crazy shit everyone wants! If you suddenly tossed all of the "it doesn't have X" back 20 years they'd have a heart attack. Like I said, I don't have a need to be techno man with a Batman belt. I'd rather be less of a geek to be able to be more part of my family.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
how do you find the lack of keyboard?
So what about going to a pothead college and having glam shots on a website makes your wife a philosopher? Is it something she does with your lazy, fat cat? Some sort of now-you-see-it/now-you-don't quantum indeterminacy schtick? I don't see any evidence on that website of anything but vanity.
See - there's a difference. I don't mind being an anti-apple troll with no facts, but I let people know who I am by trolling them and being such a fucktard.
You on the otherhand, continue to point out how fucktarded I really am There, fixed it for you, so now go shoot yourself dead fucktard.
You described yourself by modifying my comment, and making it your own..
Good job.
Either way, I believe you shot yourself, and thank goodness....
I REALLY wouldn't want you ruining the gene pool....
No, I'm not talking the blue-jeans, I'm speaking of DNA transfer - aka SEX, of which It's obvious you've never had, nor ever will.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Did you notice that your comments were modded to zero?
This which doesn't subtract from your karma, as it's zero, it just doesn't add either.
Did you notice mine stayed at 1? This adds 1 to my karma.
So please, continue...
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?