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Apple May Bring a Non-iPhone To Verizon Wireless
The Narrative Fallacy writes "According to BusinessWeek, Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple to distribute two new iPhone-like devices that are not iPhones. (Apple has created prototypes.) AT&T's contract with Apple, which has not been made public, is believed to cover all models of the iPhone, but only the iPhone. So if Apple builds something that isn't an iPhone — and perhaps doesn't even make cellular calls — they won't be violating their exclusivity contract with AT&T, which runs through at least 2010. One device is a smaller, less expensive calling device described by a person who has seen it as an 'iPhone lite.' The other is a media pad, said to be smaller than a Kindle but with a bigger screen, that would let users listen to music, view photos, watch high-definition videos, and make calls over a Wi-Fi connection. (And read books?) Apple could use the prospect of an iPhone-esque device as leverage to prevent Verizon Wireless from introducing the Palm Pre, or at least to delay its introduction on Verizon's network. 'The media pad category might go to Verizon,' said one person who has seen the device. 'We are talking about a device where people will say, "Damn, why didn't we do this?" Apple is probably going to define the damn category.'" Reader stevegee58 writes with word that Verizon may be playing both ends against the middle. Marketwatch reports that Microsoft and Verizon are in talks to develop a touch-screen mobile phone that would run on Windows Mobile.
T&T's contract with Apple, which has not been made public, is believed to cover all models of the iPhone, but only the iPhone.
I don't mean to be nit-pickey, but somehow, the meaning got lost in the translation.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
This sounds an awful like what Jobs did when he decided to kill off the clone makers after he came back as CEO. They had a license for OS 8, so he just changed the name to OS 9.
When will people learn? They'll get a few mouth-breathing Zune buyers in their Walmart sales channel, but no real success. Want success? Be cooler and cheaper than the iPhone - does it really cost $95 a month for all that stuff? I think not.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The Palm Pre needs to come out first for that particular plan to work.
You miss the point. All it's saying is Apple can make a device strikingly similar to an iPhone but at long as it's not called "iPhone" it's not required to be on AT&T.
I'm not sure that's really "funny" as it's been modded. Anti-Trust measures WERE being considered against Apple in some jurisdictions, on the basis of Apple's iTunes DRM.
When Apple dropped DRM those calling for anti-trust prosecutions basically lost any grounds on which to fight. The iTunes Music Store doesn't lock you into an iPod anymore...you can play what you buy anywhere and your iPod can play tunes purchased from anywhere. iPods are a bit locked to iTunes in terms of loading data onto it, but there's lots of ways around that and Apple's not the first company to only support one piece of software for loading music...
Now, on the VIDEO side there's still the DRM issues to content with/resolve in a legal sense but that's as much a reality of the HDCP lobby as it is anything to do with Apple.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
The back story here is that verizon is switching away from CDMA. they are expected however to maintain CDMA for voice and phase in the new network for data. Apple has said they are not eager to develop for CDMA since it has no future.
So if apple came out with a data device, say a netbook, for verizon it could run on the new network and not bother with CDMA.
makes total sense.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Wow, except lots of people read slashdot, and no one gives a crap about your shitty blog!
Firstly, let's hang up the old rumor mill and improve the S/N ratio.
Secondly, roughlydrafted.com has a pretty insight into why this is probably not going to happen.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
> *That is, of course if you don't want to do things that Apple says that you can't do such as emulators, using "undocumented" features, or
> "obscene" applications, but that is what jailbreaking is for, right?
That, or just getting a phone which supports Windows Mobile, Symbian or Java apps.
I don't know about that track record. So far Microsoft efforts on consumer electronics have been successful when MS is willing to take heavy losses (Xbox: -$7 billion over the lifetime of the Xbox and Xbox 360) or not as successful (Zune: small profit for a year then losses). No I am not counting keyboards and mice which are not quite as complex as consoles or MP3 players. Even in the realm of mobile phones MS is losing money and marketshare. MS started in the industry back in 1999, and even with a 8 year head start, Apple has overtaken them in marketshare within 2 years.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
One of my CS professors in college said something I wrote down, because it was a great quote, especially since he has a very thick Czech accent. Here's the quote, with all grammatical mistakes intact:
"When you pick up phone at your house, it just works. You don't wait two minutes to boot up, then it gives you blue screen of death."
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This whole things reeks of making-stuff-up!
It'd be more like if Ford had a contract with a certain steel company to produce all steel for the Mustang until 2015, and Ford one day announces that they're making a new car that has exactly the same components as the Mustang, but isn't officially a Mustang, so they aren't contractually obligated to keep the same steel supplier.
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Apple isn't a monopoly though, the competition just plain sucks. Ok, so there are some pretty nice MP3 players that aren't iPods, but they are few and far between, and even then many don't have the features that an iPod does, and then there's no MP3 player that comes close to the iPod Touch (aside from game/music hybrids like PSPs and the GP2x). For smart phones, Windows Mobile plain sucks (seriously, you shouldn't have random freeze ups and vendors shouldn't be forced to create another OS on top of WinMo in order to make it usable), Android, while nice and usable (and will undoubtedly be better in the long run) just doesn't have the polish of the iPhone OS in April of 2009, Symbian doesn't really excel in anything, and BlackBerry is devoid of innovation (but I can't really fault Blackberries for that, they after all are more an ultra-reliable corporate phone rather then a geek plaything).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The Palm Pre needs to come out first for that particular plan to work.
Palm needs to break their exclusivity agreement with Sprint for that particular plan to work.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
or the Mac Phone.
It would be interesting if the phone was based on the old Apple Newton device. Apple could claim IP back to the Newton before a lot of these "Smart Phones" got invented.
It only makes sense as Microsoft used Windows CE in their smart phones, that Apple recycles the Newton into a Newton phone. You got that IP there, and it can be modified to run on ARM processors, and it pre-dates the iPhone.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Buy a Blackberry?
Actually, the iPhone has all of those except tactile keyboard, copy/paste, tethering, MMS, and Ogg support. If you count the upcoming release of the iPhone OS, you'll only be missing a tactile keyboard and Ogg support.
Seriously, why do people get so hung up on Ogg support? Less than 1/10th of 1 percent of digital music listeners even know what it is or care to use it, so why should Apple support it? DRM free AAC is good enough quality and unencumbered enough to use (unencumbered as in Apple pays for the license so wtf do I care?).
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
How does using m4a lock anyone out of the iTunes Store? Virtually all of Apple's competitors support it in one product or another, which Apple has done nothing to prevent. How is it remotely an anti-trust issue?