Apple Announces iPhone 4

In a keynote presentation today at WWDC, Steve Jobs officially unveiled the iPhone 4. It's powered by an A4 chip, has a glass front and back, and has stainless steel around the edges, which turns out to be part of the antenna system. The new iPhone uses what Jobs called a "Retina display," running at 960x640, or 326 ppi. The battery is also bigger, with a corresponding increase in battery life. The iPhone 4 supports 802.11n, has two mics for noise cancellation, and a three-axis gyroscope, which allows rotation and precision that accelerometers can't match. The iPhone 4's camera is using a 5-megapixel backside illuminated sensor, which Jobs said does better at low-light photography. It also records 720p video at 30 frames per second, with tap-to-focus. In addition to this, they've created an iMovie app, which allows users to easily edit videos on their phone. Several live blogs of the event, with pictures, are available. The device ships in the US on June 24. Apple's product page has been updated with specs and a video. Read on for more details.
Update: 06/07 18:34 GMT by S : Steve's "One More Thing" this time around: FaceTime, live video chat from one iPhone 4 to another. It is Wi-Fi only at the moment, but they're working with carriers to expand that in the future. Jobs says the iPhone 4 OS is being renamed "iOS4," since it isn't just focused on phones anymore. The release candidate will be made available to developers today. He demonstrated multitasking, a unified email inbox, and folders for apps. In the App Store, you can expect to see an iPhone version of Netflix soon, as well as Guitar Hero and FarmVille. Jobs also announced that iBooks, the ebook application for the iPad, would be getting a few upgrades. Users will soon be able to make notes, and a bookmark button is on the way. It will put bookmarked pages into the book's table of contents. iBooks is also gaining support for viewing PDF files. On top of that, it won't be just for the iPad anymore; it's coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch as well, and it will sync between devices.

Comments

Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Re:Lame

[WilyCoder]

OP was referring to a really old slashdot joke.

No humor? Less relevance than a fruit fly? LAME!

Re:Lame

[vbraga]

This is from the summary about the launching of the original iPod, if I recall correctly.

Re:Lame

[paiute]

No teleportation. Less space than the Library of Congress. Lame.

Re:Lame

[zill]

Less space than the Library of Congress. Lame.

This can be easily rectified.




I call dibs on burning the John Adams building!

Re:Lame

[DinDaddy]

Don't you go posting links to that damn goatse picture now.

Re:Lame

[Nikola Tesla and You]

Less space than a nomad. Lame.

I must have more mobile porn at my disposal! You never know when you need it...

Re:Lame

[stephentyrone]

-1 Wooooosh.

Re:Lame

[Skuld-Chan]

You know whats hilarious is the current ipod has wireless and more space than a nomad ;).

Re:Lame

[increment1]

The particular article being referred to is: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/Apple-releases-iPod

The "Lame" comment was appended to the submission by Slashdot editor CmdrTaco, in what some would now consider a bit of a misjudgment.

Re:Lame

[failedlogic]

You're not being fair here. The LoC is a moving target. I've done some surveys and everyone seems content with getting a complete copy of the LoC as of 1901. Seems they agree they don't need anything past that.

Re:Lame

[mdwh2]

And it's not a misjudgement. He didn't say "the Ipod won't be popular", he said he thought it was lame. People call Windows lame all the time...

Not that the popularity of one product has any relevance to other products which aren't market leaders.

Re:Lame

[lemoon]

No teleportation? OMG! Im totally fascinated. I have to say, Apple is amazing! steve jobs! you are the man!!! I'm still shocked at how much the ipad can do...and now this? how do you do it! good job! Before the new iPhone released, I have read many reviews about it, it totally stunned me, such as this one listed the most impressive features of it: http://www.ifunia.com/iphone-column/a-review-of-apple-iphone-4g-hd.html

No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[0100010001010011]

One of the nuggets they slipped in there was that it was a Quad Band phone. Previously it only worked on AT&T's 3G frequencies.

One can hope.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[kwalker]

"Quad Band" means it supports 850/900/1800/1900 MHz frequencies, and all of those are GSM (voice) frequencies, not 3G (HSDPA/USM) frequencies. Unless it says 1700/2100 MHz for data access, T-Mo won't work. It's probably 850/2100MHz USM/CDMA which is what AT&T uses.

(Says the guy who owns a factory Nokia phone which only gets EDGE because of the above issue).

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[0100010001010011]

On their specification Page.

UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

sonofabitch.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[H0p313ss]

On their specification Page.

UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz) GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

sonofabitch.

Geeks the word over experience a simultaneous nerdgasm

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[Plekto]

My guess is that they want to sell this in Europe and Japan as well, so those frequencies are all but required. But whether it will be unlocked/available for U.S. customers remains to be seen. So I see two possible scenarios:

1: You have to buy a Euro-spec version for full price (similar to certain high-end Nokia models) but can then run it on any network.
2: Apple tells AT&T where to stick it since the moment they allow every carrier to have it, their sales will almost double. AT&T is a deal-breaker for a lot of customers.

I'm betting on #2 happening real soon. They are exactly like Sony in that way - predictably greedy. And, yes, despite the fact that I don't like Apple as a company, I'll buy one the second I can get it to work with T-Mobile.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[demonlapin]

No 1700, no T-Mobile.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[longfalcon]

i thought i heard t-mobile was rolling out 2100mhz as part of the HSPDA+ rollout?

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[Andy Dodd]

How is AT&T a deal breaker for a lot of customers? The only other option is T-Mobile, which is not an option if you actually want your phone to be able to do basic things like receive and make calls.

Despite claims of a roaming deal with AT&T, for at least the last half of 2008, no T-Mobile SIM would function anywhere near where I live, the nearest coverage (along a major New York State freeway, soon to be I-86) was 15 miles to the east. Meanwhile, AT&T has 3G coverage in my town. It's so bad that if you swap a T-Mobile SIM into an unlocked phone, turn it on, turn it back off, and put the AT&T SIM back in, the phone's IMEI will be blacklisted by the tower for about 15 minutes.

T-Mobile phones still are unreliable in Ithaca, NY, a town where AT&T has had solid 3G coverage for a few years.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[Magee_MC]

AT&T is a deal breaker for me. They only have roaming coverage in my state, which means that I don't have the option to get an iPhone.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[Plekto]

That's the rub, though. Half of the U.S. has working T-Mobile and half has working AT&T. Where I live, I'm lucky and get both, but it's common to have only one work reliably where you live. Plus, AT&T, knowing that they have a lock on these phones does charge a lot of money per month. And the fact that they cap you at 2GB, then charge $10 a GB after that, feels usurious. There is a 5GB option, but at $60 plus phone service and fees, it's essentially $100 a month. T-mobile charges a little more($40), but it's 5GB and unlimited if there's a hotspot. No phone service is required if you just want it to be a net-connected PDA type device.

Even a little competition would see the pricing drop by 30-40%, I bet. And that's the main reason to want to also have T-mobile as an option. By adding T-mobile, AT&T customers will also see lower prices. win-win scenario. Well, except for AT&T, which has been raking in a lot of money from this deal for several years, now.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[kilfarsnar]

...2: Apple tells AT&T where to stick it since the moment they allow every carrier to have it, their sales will almost double. AT&T is a deal-breaker for a lot of customers.

I'm betting on #2 happening real soon. They are exactly like Sony in that way - predictably greedy. And, yes, despite the fact that I don't like Apple as a company, I'll buy one the second I can get it to work with T-Mobile.

AT&T is the deal-breaker for me. If I could get an iPhone on Verizon, I'd do it.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[demonlapin]

The graphic in this article explains why pretty clearly. 2100 is for communication from tower to phone, 1700 is phone to tower.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[MightyYar]

T-Mobile, which is not an option if you actually want your phone to be able to do basic things like receive and make calls.

As an urban dweller, T-Mobile reception is just fine. Hell, I even got by with Sprint service! I'm now living a whopping 1 mile out in the 'burbs, but I still get okay service. If I were in the sticks, I'd get Verizon... but it's not an issue in the city.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[adolf]

The only other option is T-Mobile

Perhaps you've heard of CDMA?

Around here, GSM coverage is mostly absent once you get away from small cities or major roadways. CDMA, meanwhile, works just fine, with reasonably-fast 3G coverage even out in the middle of Amish country.

For me, it's not even so much that AT&T is a deal-breaker, but that GSM (in general) is.

So, I guess I'll just stick with my Droid and actually-unlimited (for now, at least) data package.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[abhi_beckert]

The 2nd and 3rd generation iPhones both supported HSDPA, the largest network in australia uses it. So I highly doubt the next model will ditch it.

Though from what I've seen, it only does 7Mbps HSDPA. We have 24Mbps HSDPA on just about every cell tower in the country, and metro areas are being upgraded to 48Mbps. :(

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[Binkleyz]

T-Mobile has one thing that none of the other carriers seem to, which is UMA support.

While I agree that they seem to have the smallest network footprint among the three or four "Major Carriers" in the US, the fact that I can use WiFi instead of the cellular network overcomes pretty much all of those concerns for me.

For example, when I'm home (in a rural part of Chester County, PA), my cell signal from T-Mobile is only around 1 bar (of 5), but as I have a WiFi network at home, it doesn't matter at all. Also, I travel overseas quite a bit, and the fact that a call from, say, France, is treated as a local call (so long as I'm connected via UMA) overcomes just about any reticence I'd have over using T-Mobile.

The real shame is that none of the other carriers seem to offer this option, and the majority of the T-Mobile phones no longer offer it either. I've stuck with my Blackberry mainly because of its UMA compatibility. If any of the Android phones (notably the Nexus One) or the iPhone offered this, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[Andy Dodd]

iPhone doesn't support CDMA at all.

And so far, in my experience (I live right on the border of a very rural area in the Southern Tier of New York), I have seen little to no deltas between Verizon service and AT&T lately. There used to be huge deltas (thanks to Verizon inheriting Frontier Cellular's network, which specialized in rural coverage in NYS), but not these days.

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[adolf]

I recognize that your UID is lower than mine, but that doesn't mean I just fell off the turnip truck. :)

Of course the iPhone doesn't support CDMA, but it is an option -- all Apple has to do is integrate a radio for it instead of their GSM kit, like just about every other vendor of phones does for the US market.

Of course, they won't be doing this as long as there is contractual exclusivity with AT&T, since (obviously) AT&T is a GSM network.

And, simply, it's a deal-breaker for me, since CDMA works here and GSM mostly doesn't.

Locally, history tells the story:

Back in the day (~20 years ago) there was Airtouch and Cellular One and Sprint, available here in usable form.

Sprint became 360 Communications and then sold their AMPS and early CDMA resources and towers to Alltel.

Cellular One left the market locally.

Airtouch was absorbed by Verizon, as was Alltel.

Eventually, AT&T started building out their network so we could use it some places. Eventually, we got a Sprint PCS tower. Eventually, right before the Sprint merger, we got some semblance of proper iDen service. All of these eventualities were at least a decade late, IMHO: In particular, AT&T's coverage map didn't start changing colors for this area in any favorable way until about a year ago, after Verizon was forced to divest some of the Alltel resources they had recently acquired.

It's an ugly enough situation, choice-wise, that recently half of the Sprint stores have closed up shop. There is no local vendor for AT&T except non-specialized places like Best Buy. And, yet, there's a Verizon or Alltel retailer every few blocks on the main roads, moving phones like hotcakes (and yes, it's absurd that they are conceptually the same thing).

Glad you've got choices up in NY, but in my corner of Ohio things are different, and it's CDMA or bust for folks who wander off the beaten path. :)

Re:No Verizon but.... T-Mobile?

[macs4all]

Yeah, because everyone knows that T-Mobile's 3G coverage in the US is SO much better than AT&T's.

I do agree, however, that everyone's 3G coverage is pretty abysmal, except Verizon's. Too bad they REJECTED the iPhone, eh? That has to go down in history as one of the most boneheaded, short-sighted business decisions of all time.

Gizmodo

[yakatz]

Anything about this being the same as the Gizmodo prototype?

Re:Gizmodo

[mgpyone]

yes, I think so

Re:Gizmodo

[oodaloop]

It does have the same form factor, namely the flat back and squared off aluminum side, same as the iPad.

Re:Gizmodo

[DinDaddy]

Supposedly stainless steel, not aluminum.

Re:Gizmodo

[fotoguzzi]

I seem not to understand.

Re:Gizmodo

[DJRumpy]

Almost forgot. 3-Axis Gyro in it (not sure what applications that will be good for, but it looked interesting in the demo).

Oh, and 9.3 mm thick. They claimed it was the thinest smartphone in the world.

Re:Gizmodo

[initdeep]

It's called Gorilla glass, and even the lowly Storm uses it (and has since introduction).

Only apple can get away with touting this as a "new" feature instead of a "new to us" feature and have people think its awesome.

Re:Gizmodo

[natehoy]

Folks have been wondering why they would put such a seem on the phone, and it appears the reason is due to usability, rather than style.

Yes, that wood seam two bee the case.

Re:Gizmodo

[oji-sama]

Actually, they didn't claim it was 'new', except for the fact that the glass back was new. It's the same glass they've been using since the first gen iPhone, but with the oleophobic coating (front and back).

From Engatget's coverage:
11:50AM "We developed a glass that's 30 times harder than plastic."

Re:Gizmodo

[cmiller173]

Didn't he start out with "I don't know if you've ever seen this."

Re:Gizmodo

[sbeckstead]

Except that I don't think they are the same, and I'd like to see your sources please.

Re:Gizmodo

[Culture20]

From Engatget's coverage:
11:50AM "We developed a glass that's 30 times harder than plastic."

From Gizmodo's coverage:
11:50AM "..."

Re:Gizmodo

[iocat]

It also has FOLDERS!!! Now that's a stunning achievement! Maybe by iOS7, you'll be able to nest folders inside of one another!

Re:Gizmodo

[Macka]

Microsoft have been doing that for years. Windows New Technology anyone?

Re:Gizmodo

[santiagoanders]

What the hell is a seem?

Competition is a good thing

[eaddict]

None of which would have happened had Android not shown up.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

None of which would have happened had Android not shown up.

You're right! It's good for Android that Apple is around. :D

Re:Competition is a good thing

[vivek7006]

720p HD video recording is great. I wonder how this will affect Flip-HD pocket camcorders category.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[AnonymousClown]

I disagree.

Apple would have done this anyway to drive sales. Every time Apple comes out with a new or upgraded product, they sell like hotcakes - people who have the "old" version pony up even more money to buy the new version. I think the folks who jumped from the iPhone to Android are a very small minority and the rest of the Android crowd are folks who wouldn't have bought Apple anyway.

Jobs is a marketing God!

Re:Competition is a good thing

[catbutt]

I agree that competition is good, but it isn't only Android. Lots of other competition, and if Android hadn't shown up, someone else would have filled that gap. Apple expected competition when they got into this business.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[ircmaxell]

One thing that the past has taught us, is that resolution != quality. Sure, it can shoot 720, but without a decent lens or good sensor, most of those pixels will be just noise anyway. I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm just saying that just because it's 5mp and 720 doesn't mean that it'll give better quality than a 1mp and 320 x 240... It's one of those things that we'll have to wait for the reviews to see...

Re:Competition is a good thing

[91degrees]

Sure it would. Just slower. Apple still wants people to upgrade every so often, so they're effectively competing with their older products.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Ed Avis]

I wonder how long it will take to port Android to the iPhone mark 4? If it works well, I might even buy one.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Altus]

Its not like the flip recorders are cinema quality either though. I would have a hard time justifying buying one instead of a phone that could do the same thing.

Not a replacement for a proper video camera mind you, but probably good enough for anything Ill need.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Graff]

without a decent lens or good sensor, most of those pixels will be just noise anyway.

Apparently that's pretty close to what Jobs said in the keynote. He said the new camera not only shoots 720 but it does this with a larger sensor so the sensor elements still capture a decent amount of photons and don't lose quality. He also said they use better lenses. We'll see exactly how it pans out but the shots of pictures taken with the 3G model vs the new 4G model show that there's been a huge jump in quality.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[TheKidWho]

The quality of the 720p video was actually extremely impressive.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[ubrgeek]

I'm one of those people. I'm an Apple whore and buy pretty much anything Apple puts out (with the exception of the iPad - I don't see the need for one - and Apple TV - no smartcard) but finally gave up my iPhone and switched to the Droid. There were two reasons: One, I hate AT&T service. It's terrible (so far, Verizon has been _much_ better) and two, I can't type worth crud on a touch screen. I find myself increasingly using my phone for email when I travel and the keyboard, even with chiclet keys, makes it much easier (and faster) for me to type. Toward the end, the iPhone pretty much became a portable gaming device and I didn't really need one of those. So while the new iPhone is sexy, it's just not something that would fit my needs.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[0xdeadbeef]

Yeah, I'm excited. This means Motorola's and HTC's next high-end Android phones are going to have an even higher density display.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[toriver]

5 Mpx backlit sensor (like newer Sony and Ricoh cameras have) means good quality, assuming the keynote demos were anything to go by.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Lunix Nutcase]

None of which would have happened had Android not shown up.

Because Symbian (the one who holds 50% of the world-wide smartphone market) and BlackBerry OS didn't exist until Android showed up?

Re:Competition is a good thing

[dsavi]

Very true. With such a small sensor the video quality is going to be quite pitiful. Off topic, but I find it interesting that a Canon 5D MKII has a bigger sensor for video than the Red One. (Used for movies like Gamer and The Book of Eli) If I wanted to shoot 720p, I would just go for a midrange Nikon or Canon and get about 5x the quality.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[rsmith-mac]

It's all smoke & mirrors (and some processing in the background). The primary limitation right now is the lens size, not the sensors or the quality of the lenses. You won't get a significantly better picture without increasing the size of the lens, which it doesn't look like Apple is doing.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[MBGMorden]

Very true. It was hard to convince my mom that her $149 point and shoot digital at 12MP couldn't match my old (ancient, in technology terms) Canon Digital Rebel XT that was "only" 8MP. The reality though is that despite having only 2/3's of the pixel count, my camera takes pictures that look WORLDS better. Side by side shots finally convinced her.

Just like the Mhz myth for processors, cameras also can't simply be measuring in megapixels.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Graff]

Again, I believe he did say in the keynote that the lens is a better lens but we'll have to wait until there's official specs released or someone independent does some actual tests with it to be sure.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[ircmaxell]

but the shots of pictures taken with the 3G model vs the new 4G model show that there's been a huge jump in quality.

It's all in the shot. My old G1 took pretty decent photos IF there was PLENTY of ambient light (basically in direct sunlight). Pictures taken on a cloudy day looked like crap (very hazy). I don't care what the best possible image the phone can take is. I care about day to day use. How well does it do in non-ideal conditions (Something that Jobs is very unlikely to show during a keynote). That's why I am reserving judgment until reviews start coming in...

Re:Competition is a good thing

[pitje]

insanely impressive

Re:Competition is a good thing

[AnonymousClown]

Good that you dumped AT&T - that's how the market is supposed to work.

I know a guy who has an iPhone who bitches about the service but keeps it. He says that he wishes that Apple spent more time on the phone part of the iPhone. He says it's a great device but crappy phone. He's keeping his and probably the next time I see him, he'll have the new one.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[yincrash]

magically impressive

Re:Competition is a good thing

[newcastlejon]

A good lens is important of course, but I'd still rather have more pixels than less: you've got more to work with if you need to downsize it.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[pz]

Very true. It was hard to convince my mom that her $149 point and shoot digital at 12MP couldn't match my old (ancient, in technology terms) Canon Digital Rebel XT that was "only" 8MP. The reality though is that despite having only 2/3's of the pixel count, my camera takes pictures that look WORLDS better. Side by side shots finally convinced her.

Just like the Mhz myth for processors, cameras also can't simply be measuring in megapixels.

Another huge factor is the quality of the glass. The lowest-noise, highest-contrast, most-linear, biggest Dmax sensor in the world isn't going to give you good results if it has a cheap-o plastic lens in front of it. (Unless you're looking for that effect, like you get with a Lens Baby.)

Futhermore, designing and manufacturing high-quality lenses is really quite difficult. Putting high-quality glass in a phone-sized device is, currently at least, impossible.

My brother purchased an iPhone when they first came out, and put his photos up on the social networking site Multiply. Downsampled, they looked pretty good. Then, I tried screwing around with them a little in Photoshop to understand more. Full resolution, they suck. Sure, they're not bad for a phone, but are worse than the contemporary point-and-shoot I was using, and far, far worse than my DSLR.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[cgenman]

I don't know if I'd agree with this. If you look at the smartphone market at the time the iPhone launched, things were pretty barren. Similarly, the iPod was entering a market that didn't understand that no matter how much capacity you might have, you still need to fit into people's pockets. The iPhone 3G covered a major weakness in the original iPhone (2g browsing really, really sucks). Jobs brought to the market something that people wanted, and made the interface simple enough that it just works. That's a pretty good accomplishment.

And if you think that every apple product sells like hotcakes, you're missing quite a few. As a short list.

iTV ( that useless thing that isn't quite an Xbox 360 )
Motorola ROKR ( anyone remember Apple's pre-iPhone phone? )
eMac ( like a rehashed iMac, but long after laptops made them irrelevant )
Pippin ( that useless computer / video game console that wasn't quite a Playstation )
20th anniversary macintosh
Mac Cube
Mac TV
Quicktake ( a digital camera / giant blob of plastic )
Newton ( a PDA before PDA's existed ).
eMate ( a netbook based upon Newton before netbooks existed )

Re:Competition is a good thing

[ceoyoyo]

Flips have pretty small lenses too, but a lot of people have decided that the form factor and convenience make up for that. Most of those people may decide that the additional convenience of going with the phone that's already in their pocket more than makes up for the small additional quality loss.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sootman]

Right--just the same way that the iPod, once it started dominating the market, never got more features or space upgrades. Oh, wait...

I'll be honest: I'm happy with today's announcements but they are, for the most part, evolutionary--EXACTLY the kind of thing that would happen every year no matter how much competition there is or isn't. I'm sure the heat from the Android camp helps ensure that Apple keeps moving but to say that "none" of this would have happened is pretty far off. No sense mentioning that the initial release of an Android device was released almost two years after the iPhone was introduced--January 1997 -> October 2008--and that Apple revved the iPhone and its OS during that time--that is, BEFORE any competition EVEN EXISTED.

But sure, let's give Google all the credit for keeping things going.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Mike Buddha]

They existed, poorly. Android is the stick that keeps iPhone moving forward. Symbian and BBOS blow. Their market share is a relic of the past and is being whittled away by the newcomers, piece by piece.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[ArsonSmith]

magically delicious

iPhone = Lucky Charm

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Petron]

With out competition we would still have the original iPhone.

Apps, Price drops, extra compatibility, and most of the features added the iphone was due to the competitors having these features. My AT&T Tilt came out about the same time as the iPhone 2g and it could do more out of the box... With iPhone 3Gs, it's getting closer, but not quite there. There is still a few things my Tilt can do that the iPhone 4G can't (micro-SD card, Replaceable battery), but the list is MUCH smaller now.

This fall when my contract is up, I'm in the market for a new phone. For the first time the iPhone is on my "to check" list, but the Android phones are still looking like my next phone (I REALLY like having the option to upgrade storage by swapping a Micro-SD card...)

Re:Competition is a good thing

[tyrione]

Yeah, I'm excited. This means Motorola's and HTC's next high-end Android phones are going to have an even higher density display.

That all depends on Patents.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Wovel]

And no one will be able to tell :)

Re:Competition is a good thing

[agrif]

If Jobs literally told a crowd that the sensor elements still capture a decent amount of photons, he just went up a notch in my awesome ladder. Unfortunately, he also would have gone up a notch in everyone else's nerdy ladder.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[billDCat]

You are better off with a better quality picture to start with, not more pixels. More pixels of a bad quality image downsampled still gives a bad quality image. In fact, increasing the density of a sensor reduces the size of the receptors, reducing the number of photons reaching the receptor and leading to noise and quality issues. It's especially apparent in the small sensors used in point and shoot cameras and in cell phone cameras. It is possible to actually make an image worse through nothing more than increasing the sensor density.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[initdeep]

no it doesnt
it depends on if they wish to PURCHASE the displays from the same manufacturers that Apple is.

Apple didnt invent the displays.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[h4rr4r]

You think apple makes screens?
These are probably made by samsung, so HTC and motorola can buy them too. Unless you think there is a patent on 300dpi+ displays in a phone.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sammyF70]

3.5 inch impressive even!
I wonder .. Does it come with a magnifying glass?

Re:Competition is a good thing

[shmlco]

They increased sensor size. The size of a pixel in the 5mp camera is the same as that of the 3mp camera, despite the increase in the number of pixels. It also uses a backside illuminated sensor, which nicer standalone cameras are just now starting to use to reduce the noise floor and increase low light sensitivity.

I can't wait to get one.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[rufus t firefly]

Shit, I used to love my Rebel XT. Great camera, other than Canon not designing it to handle heavy lenses... I found out the hard way that you can destroy the camera by using nicer/heavier lenses (although I did use a Tamron 75-200 for a few years without damaging it). A bit of glass does make a difference ...

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Threni]

I was just thinking - with multitasking, a display that doesn't suck, a usable camera etc it's just like having an Android phone! Well done, Apple!

Re:Competition is a good thing

[shmlco]

They can buy them, but it won't matter until Android is updated to do the same auto-pixel doubling trick the iPhone uses to support the higher resolutions.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[gad_zuki!]

>Apple would have done this anyway to drive sales.

Oh, I don't know about that. Look at AppleTV. Its stagnated. Now with GoogleTV, we'll probably see Apple throwing dollars at it and trying to get a feature parity with google.

Look at Skype calling over 3G and the dozen or so apps/features that have been rejected and are now approved since Android started making Apple look bad. I doubt this is coincidental.

Look how long it took Apple to get off PowerPC while the rest of the industry was destroying them in benchmarks with C2D or even P4.

The tech industry, regardless of who it is, only really works with competition. Apple is no exception.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[somersault]

Serious question: if you're just going to use Android on it, why bother at all? Why not just get an HTC device instead? They have the same mahusive screens and capacitive touch capabilities, and if things are still like they were back when I actually gave a crap about phone specs, they will have better specs than the iPhone for less money.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Flipao]

You're right! It's good for Android that Apple is around. :D

I think his point was that competition has forced Apple to step up as opposed to merely recycling previous models (i.e. 3G, 3GS).

Re:Competition is a good thing

[somersault]

From what I've seen over the years, Blackberrys have always had realy shitty interfaces.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget Nokia's Meego phones!

Remember, we had 800x480/4" on all 3 Maemo internet tablets, starting long before anyone (well, anyone outside Japan) had it on phones. Then we got the N900 800x480/3.5" when HTC's HD2 was stuck with 480x800/4"; one can only hope the next step is cramming more pixels in the same 3.5". (Though personally, I'd rather a 1024x600 at the same dot pitch.)

Re:Competition is a good thing

[adisakp]

Camera sensor size is much more important than megapixels for how many photons you can actually capture. More megapixels on the same size sensor can actually lead to reduced quality and increased noise. Likewise, sensor type affects quality. The iPhone 4G has a back-illuminated sensor -- which means the photons do not have to travel through the wiring layers on the silicon. This means more photons captures and better image quality and better low-light sensitivity.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Very good! Did you get mine?

Re:Competition is a good thing

[OldeTimeGeek]

I don't think anybody would ever mistake a phone camera for a DSLR or even a point-and-shoot.

But that's not the point of having a camera in a phone, is it? It's far more likely for someone to have their phone available to them than their camera equipment and I'd be much happier getting a picture of an event with my phone's camera - even if it wasn't optimal - than not getting it at all because I didn't have my DSLR with me...

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sootman]

Anyone except the most rabid Apple hater will admit that Apple single-handedly defined the modern smartphone featureset, the main characteristics of which are a ~3.5" touch display at 320x480 and a very good web browser. Look at what was introduced AFTER the iPhone: the Palm Pre, HTC Dream, and BlackBerry Storm. Hmm, notice any similarities in the specs of those devices?

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sexconker]

Ludicrously impressive.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[lowrydr310]

There's something about the quality of Canon cameras.... I have a Canon SD300 which is 'only' 4MP, however it takes pictures of much better quality than the 8MP Samsung or 12MP Vivitar cameras that I've borrowed from friends.

I'm not saying that Samsung or Vivitar don't make decent cameras - it could very well be that these cameras I've used were lower end models - however this does reaffirm the fact that higher resolution doesn't always mean better picture quality.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[catmistake]

The display really is the thing. 326ppi is incredibly dense.... makes the device worth it JUST for the display. As it is, the display is higher resolution than, say, ANY head mounted display, and those cost between $300-$3000. With a $5 photographers LUPE, and some duct tape, you can build a monocular HMD out of this for $205 (plus the duct tape) or... a binocular HMD for $410 (all of this, of course, not considering the contract). What excites me... is the next revision of HMDs should be AMAZING. And the bottom should drop out of the price of the current offerings (lucky if you find sucky 640x480 displays).

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Gilmoure]

You forgot the Apple Color Laser Writer. Every Kinkos got one but that's the only place I ever saw them. Was like a cubic yard of pain.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Gilmoure]

I'll be happy when I can have a 360 dpi 52" display for the AV setup at home. Whey are they still trumpeting 1080P HD?

Re:Competition is a good thing

[TooMuchToDo]

Going from a Blackberry Curve to a Nexus One is my anecdote for saying "THIS!" to your comment.

Blackberry better hurry up before they're left behind.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sglewis100]

I think his point was that competition has forced Apple to step up as opposed to merely recycling previous models (i.e. 3G, 3GS).

Yeah the 3GS and the 3.0 upgrade sucked. I mean, where's the voice control, MMS support, cut and paste, bluetooth stereo, speed increase, video recording, opengl 2, compass, I mean they just sit back and never improve the thing.

I'm not saying Android didn't force Apple to rethink a thing or two (background processes for third party devs), but it's not like the iPhone resembles the v1.0 to this day. I have a Droid through work, I'm always confused if I should open Email or Gmail, or Calendar or Corporate Calendar, and the app reviews are great since they tell me to go to droidfilez.com usually (most recent review of almost anything). Also, I enjoyed paying $20 for a third party activesync program so I could have a SIGNATURE attached to my email, and the double tap in the browser that doesn't perfectly zoom text all the time was a nice touch. Oh, and that $20 third party program - it was nice, I lost multiple Exchange account support which the built in client had, unless I switch profiles every time I want to check a new account. Oh and that Droid keyboard sucks, and the batter isn't impressive, but I can shut down the phone, put a new battery in, and then reboot if I need to. And who misses the dock connector, not like I need TV out or anything.

Android is many things, including more open for app developers, but I'll reserve final judgement until Verizon and Motorola "allow" Froyo to be released for me. At least when iOS 4 ships, my iPhone and iTouch will get it immediately. Well, I guess it will take an hour to download first.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Amouth]

the Flip HD is a very very nice camera - i bought one for the wife for xmass - mainly picked it over others because it was the simplest for her to use - power button and a big ass red button to start recording.

i have been surprisingly impressed with the video quality that it produces - it is excellent in low light *aka indoors dim*

on the flip side i have a 3GS - and i have been horridly underwhelmed in the quality of the camera on it.

before knocking the Flip - find someone who has one and try it out - i think you will be impressed with what you get for your money

Re:Competition is a good thing

[gilesjuk]

Hmmm...

App Stores - Apple first, everyone else later

Multitouch on capacitive touch screen - Apple first, everyone else later

Accelerometers in a phone - Apple first? certainly the first to make it a standard feature and make it useful.

and so on....

Not to mention the visual design of the OS, imitated by pretty much everyone that dares to.

I've yet to see anyone design a phone that looks as nice. HTC's phones are styled by people who also do snowboards! hardly any use when trying to make a decent phone. Mind you HTC phones are a bit wooden and you look like a plank with one.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[gilesjuk]

Apple said that they have kept the sensor size for the 5MP unit the same size as previous phones. Rather than shrink it down.

This will at least give it a good chance against other devices, it also seems they've thought about the camera a lot more this time.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Altus]

I haven't tried the HD yet but I have used the original flip back when it was fairly new. Its a decent piece of work, but I just don't find myself needing a video camera all that often. I would gladly take a modest quality hit to not have to carry a separate device with me.

Its the same reason I'm not big on buying cameras. I have a small cannon digital camera and when I am going on vacation I will bring it with me, but most of the time I don't carry it around on the off chance I will want to take a picture. Having a viable alternative in my phone is a lot more appealing for people who aren't hard core about their pictures.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Graff]

I've only seen a liveblog of the event that reported him as saying photons. We'll see the truth of it when the video of the event or a transcript of it is released. Being an Instrumental Chemist I definitely thought it was pretty cool.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[gilesjuk]

The point is that you will at least have something approaching half decent with you at all times. Since the screen is now high resolution than VGA you need a higher resolution video function . VGA is 640x480 but the iPhone 4 screen us 960x640.

Many concerts ban you from using anything looking professional, so the better a camera phone can be the better.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[SETIGuy]

They can buy them, but it won't matter until Android is updated to do the same auto-pixel doubling trick the iPhone uses to support the higher resolutions.

I'm assuming you're being facetious, because everyone one knows that the Android GUI doesn't assume a single fixed screen size in pixels. Apps have always needed to scale properly on Android.

Designing an API with hard coded screen dimensions would be just plain stupid. As would letting app designers assume the screen size would never change.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Dr. Spork]

I'd like to see some benchmarks with low lighting and your sexy teen girlfriends, but who am I kidding.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Graff]

According to the liveblog at gdgt:

10:54AM - "Megapixels are nice, but what cellphone cameras are really about is capturing photons and low-light photography. So we've gone from a 3 to a 5 megapixel sensor with a backside illuminated sensor."

10:55AM - "It's a way of getting more light to the sensor... also, when most people increase the megapixels, they make the pixel sensors smaller. We've kept them the same size so they capture more photons. We've got a 5x digital zome, tap to focus, and LED flash."

So yeah, if it's accurate it's kinda cool that he at least mentioned photons - at least to the nerds!

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Graff]

I'd like to have the sexy teen girlfriends in the first place but, alas, they are only in my head!

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Locutus]

except that they really didn't put the bar up very high with this. The Nexus One has ~250 ppi display and Apple even said that 300 ppi is the most the eye can see. The Nexus One already has a a camera but the iPhone has a front facing one too. ok. Multi-tasking - Android/Nexus One already has that. 802.11n - Nexus One already has that. The new iPhone has a gyro, so it's got that going for it.

If anything, they really mostly joined the latest Android hardware and software with only a few Apple nicities thrown in via software apps.

  The tap-to-focus is nice and the movie editing might be good for little things. A good upgrade but not a game changer so Android should continue to do quite well in month to month sales. Which by the way has already started beating out Apple iPhone sales. With iOS v4 going out for free to most of the previous iPhone models and a good upgrade in hardware it should keep Apple very relevant in this space. Where is that Microsoft these days?

LoB

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sbeckstead]

Then why bother to mention it until the reviews come out.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Flipao]

Yup, but I don't think you'll get his until an Apple TV running iOS is announced.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sbeckstead]

Odd, I don't remember this in my optics classes. But ya never know it could be sort of correct.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Cederic]

Sorry, I had a 352×416 screen phone running Opera in 2007; I chose against the 800x352 pixel screen alternative due to form factor.

Although neither of them were touchscreens, I was using a 480 pixel wide touchscreen handheld in 1999; this is hardly new. And they both had hardware keyboards, something the iPhone still lacks.

Take a look at the Nokia n900, the Sony xPeria x10, the Nexus One: All of them running at 800x480, rather better than the iPhone.

So no, I'm not buying your trendsetter claim, or indeed your similarities in spec.

That said, the iPhone 4 has set a new benchmark for screens. That is a very good resolution for the size of screen, and I probably will buy a new Android phone when one comes out with a comparable screen (and qwerty keyboard).

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Ed Avis]

Serious question: if you're just going to use Android on it, why bother at all?

Because the Iphone looks so much cooler; but more than that, I'm particularly attracted to the new high-resolution screen.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Lars T.]

I don't care what the best possible image the phone can take is. I care about day to day use. How well does it do in non-ideal conditions (Something that Jobs is very unlikely to show during a keynote). That's why I am reserving judgment until reviews start coming in...

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/camera.html - the examples are under "Built-in LED flash." Also one bigger low light in the gallery.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[gumbi west]

Wait, I can't replace my DSLR with the camera on a phone?

That was totally the market they were shooting for too.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[iluvcapra]

Very true. With such a small sensor the video quality is going to be quite pitiful. Off topic, but I find it interesting that a Canon 5D MKII has a bigger sensor for video than the Red One. (Used for movies like Gamer and The Book of Eli) If I wanted to shoot 720p, I would just go for a midrange Nikon or Canon and get about 5x the quality.

Keep in mind that none of the 24p DSLRs record a raw video file or even have an SDI out. If you're using them you're stuck with H.264.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Lars T.]

You won't get a significantly better picture without increasing the size of the lens, which it doesn't look like Apple is doing.

Actually, looking at pictures of the back of the 3GS and the iPhone 4 - that's exactly what they have been doing. Compare http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone#iphone-compare to http://images.apple.com/iphone/gallery/images/gallery01-20100607.jpg

Re:Competition is a good thing

[MSG]

Anyone who'd used Palm's devices before the iPhone would say that the iPhone was an evolutionary improvement that imitated most of the Palm features. An awful lot of Apple fans use the word "revolutionary" when they mean "I never owned a PDA/phone".

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sootman]

It might seem like a small difference buy you're missing my point. 352x416 is not the same as 320x480--besides being smaller, its aspect ratio is the almost-square 1.18:1 rather than the widescreen 320x480. ALL THREE of the phones I listed had screens EXACTLY the same resolution as the iPhone's in the first two years AFTER it was introduced. I'm not saying Apple had the first screen ever at that resolution or higher, I'm saying that no one else ever had a screen with those pixel dimensions and then all of a sudden EVERYONE did. They very much are trendsetters, just as when they were when they introduced the first widescreen laptop (the PowerBook G4) in 2001.

I myself had a Dell Axim X50v PDA in late 2006 at 640x480 (conventional 4:3 screen) which was double the iPhone's but the system UI (Windows mobile) was much, much worse so it wasn't a net benefit. What's the best thing to do with a gorgeous screen like that? Look at pictures! But the damn thing didn't even come with a decent photo viewing app. (Text, also, looked great at 200dpi.) Also, all mobile browsers, including Opera, sucked at the time. You can't even TRY to compare the capabilities of Opera in 2007 with Safari on the iPhone the same year.

And keyboards are a personal preference. I've had three phones with hardware keyboards (Nokia 6800, 6820, and a BlackBerry from work) and I vastly prefer soft keyboards (Apple's or Android's).

Re:Competition is a good thing

[beakerMeep]

The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics). These devices were launched on March 10, 1997.

This generation of devices uses the Motorola 68328 processor at 16 MHz, and has 512 KB (Personal) or 1024 KB (Professional) built in memory. This PDA has a plastic casing which is 4.7 x 3.1 x .7 inches and weighs 5.6 ounces. On the front of the device there is a 160x160 pixel monochrome touchscreen LCD, with a Graffiti input zone below it.

Are you seriously going to claim the combination of PDA and phone was also an Apple invention? Is there anything they didn't invent? Why is it so hard for people to see these things are obvious. This is just the screen size that fits people's hands.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[virtualXTC]

You're right! It's good for Android that Apple is around. :D

How true, if not for the locked down, user screwing, this is the crapple iphone, Android quirks would likely annoy me a great deal more. Now I just consider my self lucky to have the ability to actually run the quirky software, instead of having to go without it or pay an insane price for the feature as is true for most iPhone users.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[virtualXTC]

but the shots of pictures taken with the 3G model vs the new 4G model show that there's been a huge jump in quality.

It's all in the shot....

Not true, my HTC Kaiser (AT&T tilt) took amazing pictures not matter what the lighting. My newer / higher resolution HTC dream (T-mobile G1) rarely produces a satisfactory photo, unless conditions are near perfect.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[BasilBrush]

Which by the way has already started beating out Apple iPhone sales.

If by "started", you mean in one single survey, USA only, excluding iPod Touch and iPad, but including all varieties of Android from all manufacturers, for a single month in the low sales season when the last model of iPhone has been out for a while, and a new model is just around the corner.

Android OS devices are a long way from outselling iOS devices in any real sense.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[nneonneo]

That works out to an effective resolution of ~16000x9000, which is pretty damn high (it's a 144 megapixel display). I'm sure we'll eventually get to that point, but seriously, a 144 MP display is still a few years off.

Also, at normal viewing distances, I doubt a 360 dpi display has any significant advantage over a 120 dpi display (1080p on a 52" screen is about 42 dpi, so 120 dpi seems like a more reasonable goal).

Re:Competition is a good thing

[virtualXTC]

slightly off topic: the keyboard IS the Droid's killer app (well that and free satellite GPS turn by turn directions with Google 'voice search' destination lookup). I just wish they'd revive the G1 keyboard on another Android phone as it's by far the best I've ever used.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[BasilBrush]

None of which would have happened had Android not shown up.

Apple is 3rd in the smartphone market, Android is 4th. Android didn't bring competition to the smartphone market, it was already there.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[zuperduperman]

> I'm particularly attracted to the new high-resolution screen

Really? You mean the screen that is only about 15% higher dpi than what you get on a stock android device these days? This seems like a very marginal thing to change a buying decision, especially considering you may have a hard time getting all the cool hardware to function on Android (last I heard the GPU was not fully utilized, etc.).

I would bet other devices will be on the market pretty quickly with these screens and wait for a new rev of the Nexus or similar.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[BasilBrush]

Designing an API with hard coded screen dimensions would be just plain stupid. As would letting app designers assume the screen size would never change.

For a desktop windowing system it would be stupid. For a small screen display for which apps always show full screen, it enables apps to be perfectly designed for the known output. Designing good UIs for screens that small is hard. Knowing exactly what screen you are designing for is a big advantage.

Android has the disadvantage of HAVING to cope with assorted sized screens in different manufacturers phones. Apple don't have that disadvantage since they control all iOS hardware.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[virtualXTC]

Wow, that was a troll, but somehow you've been modded insightful, so I guesss I'll bite:
Only the most naive users and apple fanboi's would believe that apples smart-phone deign was truly innovative and first of it's kind. HTC had them beat for years: the MDA II, MDAII, MDA vairo, MDA Amino, vairo II, wing, kiaser, magician, touch diamond; and Palm pretty much defined the screen size for smart devices.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[RocketRabbit]

As a lens increases in size, it actually decreases in performance and more aberrations appear.

Using the smallest diameter lens you can, and still let in enough light to photograph by, is a better move than using a large diameter lens.

You'll just have to take my word on this, but a Carl Zeiss camera phone lens (sells to OEMs for a few dollars) will outperform their MasterPrime cinematography lenses which cost many thousands of dollars apiece.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

It's all smoke & mirrors (and some processing in the background). The primary limitation right now is the lens size, not the sensors or the quality of the lenses. You won't get a significantly better picture without increasing the size of the lens, which it doesn't look like Apple is doing.

The liveblog I watched vaguely suggested that the sensor is bigger, but I'd still seek confirmation of that by this point.

What was clear, however, is that the iPhone 4 is using a back illuminated sensor, which is supposed to be a significant incremental advance in sensor performance, equivalent to increasing the sensor diagonal by 1.4. Though again, I haven't yet seen independent confirmation of this (haven't been looking, though)--my figures come from press releases.

It's true that with a camera that small, the primary limitation is indeed the lens size as you said. But you can possibly get a significantly better picture by improving the sensor and lens technology at a constant size--it's just that if you actually cared primarily about image quality, you'd always go for a much larger sensor and lens.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[anethema]

Sure evolutionary like the steam engine vs a modern porsche.

Have you ever used a Palm? You essentially couldn't browse any site, almost nothing worked. The PIM apps were decent of course, but playing mp3s was a joke, video was basically not possible, and the OS looked like dogpoop.

I mean, I had a 650, then 680, and I liked palm for a time, but how big of a jump do you really need to be called revolutionary rather than evolutionary.

The iPhone jumpstarted the entire industry from drivel like the Treos to stuff like the new Evo 4G and Palm Pre. I'm using a Nexus one right now, and I like Android, but like the OP said, you have to be a pretty rabid Apple hater to not acknowledge that Apple basically got the entire modern smartphone industry going.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sootman]

I'm not trolling, I was being sincere. I will dissect your phones one by one. Note that names and models vary, names vary and are from this page.

• MDA II - 240x320 screen, same as many.
• MDAII (I assume you meant III)- 320x240
• MDA vairo - 320x240
• MDA Amino - 640x480 - more than iPhone but still traditional 4:3
• vairo II - 320x240
• wing - 320x240
• kiaser - 320x240
• magician - 320x240
• touch diamond - 640x480, and it came out after the iPhone.

Thanks for helping me prove my point.

"Palm pretty much defined the screen size for smart devices." The HUMAN palm, you mean. Of course the size is "pretty much" defined by the size of the hand and the technology available at the time. PDAs ranged from 160x160 (early Palm, yes I had one) to 640x480 (Dell Axim, among others; yes, I had one of those too) but NO ONE (AFAIK) made a screen that was 320x480 and within two years AFTER the iPhone's introduction we saw screens of that EXACT size from Palm, and BlackBerry, and your beloved HTC. Coincidence? If the iPhone was not being copied then why didn't we see more 640x480 phones being introduced in its wake? Hell, that's TWICE as many pixels as an iPhone and 640x480 handheld screens have been readily available for YEARS.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sootman]

How long after the iPhone came out before competitors had similar feature sets?
iPhone first demoed: January 2007
HTC G1/Dream w/ Android OS released: October 2008 (21 months later, 320x480 screen)
BlackBerry Storm released: November 2008 (22 months later, 320x480 screen)
Palm Pre first demoed: January 2009 (24 months later, 320x480 screen)

How long is the product development cycle for a smartphone, starting from zero?
Looks like about two years? They all had the hardware laying around and a bunch of engineers and coders on staff, they just had to arrange the pieces into something that looked like an iPhone and write a new UI and some apps.

I never said they "invented" the smartphone market. I said they defined the modern smartphone featureset . Watch the iPhone's introduction. Steve Jobs spends a good chunk of time talking about the differences between the iPhone and other major smartphones. I guarantee you every other manufacturer started planning iPhone act-alikes that afternoon. No other smartphone looked like that, no other smartphone had nearly as good of a browser.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[x102output]

It's all smoke & mirrors (and some processing in the background). The primary limitation right now is the lens size, not the sensors or the quality of the lenses. You won't get a significantly better picture without increasing the size of the lens, which it doesn't look like Apple is doing.

Not exactly true. You can increase the lens size OR the sensor size. This same thing was explained when DSLRs first came out touting 35mm sensors. If you increase the sensor size, then your lens quality matters less. The same relationship works in the opposite direction: You can keep the sensor the same size, but increase the lens quality.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[gTsiros]

with the exception of the pixel count there were devices that surpassed the iphone in many areas. i used one of them.

mda pro. vga. it even had physical qwerty.

what's good about the iphone is the boost it gets from it being an apple branded device.

it's not particularly powerful, not exceptionally well engineered or even affordable.

but it is backed by apple.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[darthdavid]

You forgot this.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Chirs]

Sorry, I'm not going to take your word on it. Assume we can shape the lens to an accuracy of x microns. As the lens gets larger, the ratio of the size of the defect in the lens to the size of the lens itself gets smaller, meaning that the image overall will be more accurate.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[treff89]

My Nikon D90 records in M-JPEG. That's to say, each individual frame is encoded as a JPEG file.

Who cares about what kind of special video-out they have when these cameras produce decent, usable video for a much cheaper price and with a huge library of lenses?

Re:Competition is a good thing

[treff89]

You must be a technically incompetent imbecile.

I have been playing DivX files downloaded from the net on my Sony palm since 2003. No conversion to a format Apple would like you to use first. And a 320x480 screen which was really not that special even at the time.

MP3s play in the background while I'm reading a textbook or controlling my TV.

The OS didn't have fancy bells and whistles everywhere because it was designed to be functional rather than battery-sucking eye candy.

There are apps on my palm that haven't yet been emulated on the iphone. It was an evolutionary step forwards in some ways, and backwards in others.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Amouth]

I agree - in that i rarely would want to carry a separate video camera - i got it for the wife so she would have something to film our new born - and i wanted it to be as easy and simple as can be, which the Flip HD is perfect for.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[cowscows]

It's easy to say that, but if it was so obvious then why did it take an outside computer company to come in and put it all together when there were already a bunch of big rich technology companies who had been fighting for marketshare for years?

If it was so obvious, then why didn't Palm make the Pre until after the iPhone came into existence? I guess their decade long head-start just quite wasn't long enough for them to release this entirely obvious product.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I say BS. No phone camera lens can come anywhere close to my 50mm f1.4 Nikon lens. Sure, the smaller lens might have less chromatic aberration and a larger depth of field compared to a wide-open lens, but CA isn't really a problem (my camera automatically removes it) and if I want the depth of field I just stop it down. I can easily shoot photos which are impossible for a camera phone, especially in low-light situations. I can use a narrow depth of field for the situations where I want the subject to be in focus and everything else out of focus. You won't see pros shooting much with cell phones, even if they were 50MP.

It's easier to make a tiny lens sharp since it inherently has a large depth of field, but it also has a lot less light gathering ability as well and a tiny sensor has a smaller dynamic range.

There's many parameters that make a good lens including sharpness, contrast,flare/ghosting resistance, brokah and depth of field. There's a reason that those cinematography prime lenses cost so much, otherwise they'd be shooting with cell phone type cameras.

See http://www.linkwitzlab.com/dpp/camera%20lens.htm

Re:Competition is a good thing

[treff89]

Wrong. You said "NO ONE (AFAIK) made a screen that was 320x480 and within two years AFTER the iPhone's introduction we saw screens of that EXACT size from Palm"

A simple Google search would have revealed that Palm devices have run 320x480 screens since 2002. Tens of devices of this screen resolution were released. I present one of the first,
http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=1195&c=sony_clie_peg-nr70v

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Locutus]

yes, it is a start and we'll see if dozens of hardware vendors selling Android devices can continue to outsell one hardware vendor with one phone and one carrier.

time will tell but yes, it is a start.

LoB

Re:Competition is a good thing

[adolf]

Install Swype, and you may just find that you don't like the physical keyboard on the Droid so well after all. I used to use the keyboard on my Droid most of the time, until I installed that.

I still use the keyboard occasionally (for typing of technical terms, part numbers, using SSH, etc), and I'm very happy to have it despite the fact that it makes the phone bigger, more complex, and more fragile...but Swype is so fast and easy that I strongly prefer it.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[adolf]

My Dell laptop has a 15.4" 1920x1200 display that offers just about 120DPI.

It is five years old.

I agree with GP: We could use more pixels any day now.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[DMUTPeregrine]

I don't know, the Nokia N8 will have a 1/1.8 sensor, and a reasonable Zeiss lens. So similar to a Canon point-and-click, but no optical zoom and shorter focal length. THAT is the real killer compared to a real camera.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

I don't think "extremely impressive" is appropriate for anything using such small sensor and lenses. Some DSLRs which can shoot video are extremelly impressive. Some digicams (Canon SX200 IS for example) are quite impressive. A mobile phone can be at most in the category of pretty damn good, IMHO...

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

Well, he did go too far with the claim (especially with the example at the end...) and focusing only on aperture, but there is some truth in what he says.

It's about certain "undesirable" optical effects - for two lenses of given size (and assuming the same amount of engineering that went into them, the same price), one for smaller sensor and one for larger, the former will be better. Of course in practise that's also a dance of balancing with the quality of the sensor, which will be worse in the smaller one.
About properties of smaller lens masking what could easily become a defect in larger ones.
Or, in other words - when you increase the sensor size, the minimum acceptable size of the lenses also increases.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[mxh83]

You need to have realistic expectations from a device that is at least 5 times smaller and lighter than your DSLR and can do millions of things more than just taking pics and video. A DSLR is not even worth the extra bulk over a P&S for 95% of the general populace.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

So, when will some places start banning phones? (not like that could ever happen already, somewhere... ;) )

Re:Competition is a good thing

[TheKidWho]

It's good for a mobile phone is what I mean, of course it's not Cinema quality.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

Yeah. I just don't like moving points of reference. A camera integrated for convenience into a device we always carry, and claiming very small part of cost and even space inside that device, can be at most pretty damn good; for those descriptions to remain meanigful.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[adolf]

I try hard not to reply to myself, but, uh. This.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[CaptainZapp]

Speaking of Canon [and really drifting off-topic here, sorry] the reason I bought a PowerShot G11 was exactly because they reduced the pixel size from 14M (G10) to 10M.

The picture quality is awesome.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[blackpig]

Apple TV has hardly set the world on fire.

And Safari for Windows?
I recall a video with Jobs and a graphic showing Safari with a hoped-for 40% + of the total browser market

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Alioth]

A display a few inches across at 360dpi is dozens of orders of magnitude easier to do than a large screen at that resolution.
It's very much more difficult to make a very large display with this kind of resolution because:

1. Dead pixels. The more pixels you have, the lower the yield due to dead pixels. It may not even be possible to manufacture 52 inch screen at that DPI with an acceptable ratio of dead pixels.
2. Bandwidth. You're asking for 144 megapixels which even at cinema frame rates (24fps) would with 24 bit colour require a data rate of over 3 terabits per second to the display itself. There are highly significant electronic engineering challenges to be overcome to do that, to say the least (and not only do it, but at a price people can afford).

Then you have to realise that unless you sit about 18 inches from your 52 inch display, you won't be able to distinguish 360 dpi from 96 dpi so it's all a bit of a waste of effort anyway.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[teh kurisu]

According to The Register, one factor in the discrepancy was that the survey which put Android ahead didn't include corporate/enterprise sales.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[teh kurisu]

Apple TV has hardly set the world on fire.

Which is a minor miracle, given the amount of heat those things put out, even in 'standby' mode.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[teh kurisu]

The Nokia N95 has an accelerometer, and I believe it came out a few months before the original iPhone. That said, its only use at the time was to set the orientation of photos automatically, although this has subsequently been expanded with firmware updates.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[flowwolf]

Job's covered this point in the speech well enough. The lens is the same as in the 3gs and the size of the pixels on the sensor are the same, there's just more of them now. Also there is some fancy lighting that is done behind the sensor to that allows more photons to be collected. Not sure how that works, but Apple has been taught this lesson well it would seem.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[AmiMoJo]

Foreign travel was one of the major attractions of Android for me. I use an app called RMaps which is basically like Google Maps except that it can use offline data files stored on SD card. I got an 8GB SD card and ripped Google maps tiles for all of Japan, drilling right down to street level around Tokyo. I could then go anywhere and get street level mapping via the GPS and not have to use expensive data services.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Ed Avis]

You mean the screen that is only about 15% higher dpi than what you get on a stock android device these days?

Hmm, perhaps I am out of date. But it does seem quite a bit better: 960x640, compared to 800x480 for the Droid Incredible, Evo 4G, or Nexus One. That's 60% more pixels. However, it is slightly smaller (3.5 inch diagonal versus 4.3 inches for the Evo 4G or 3.7 inches for the other two).

The ideal would be an IPad that makes phone calls, of course; I wonder if Android will be ported to that and able to use the cellular phone network on models that have it.

You're probably right that other devices will soon catch up with equally high-resolution screens.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Grizzley9]

Because most people don't site close enough to see the pixels in that large of a TV.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[mdwh2]

And in turn for outside the US, although we've had Symbian for years, it's still good to see new competition - even if they don't offer much new, competition is still good for all.

Without Android, yes, it would have been even funnier to see people still raving over how wonderful their 2007 original Iphone can check email and read the web in 2010, as if this was anything new...

Re:Competition is a good thing

[mdwh2]

Nexus One already has a a camera but the iPhone has a front facing one too. ok.

Although this is nothing special anyway - front facing cameras have been commonplace since at least 2005, even on dirt cheap feature phones. My V980 had it, my 5800 has it.

(No doubt that multitasking, front-facing camera, and high resolution will suddenly go from being "Why would I want that?" to "Look how wonderful these features are"...)

Which by the way has already started beating out Apple iPhone sales.

Indeed, and Nokia meanwhile still dominate them both. (Motorola, Samsung, LG, Blackberry also sell more than Apple.)

Re:Competition is a good thing

[mdwh2]

Don't forget the Air :)

And even for their other products - with the sole exception of the Ipod - there are still plenty of other companies in the market that sell even more like hot cakes (e.g., Microsoft on the desktop; Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry etc on phones).

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Uberbah]

And if you think that every apple product sells like hotcakes, you're missing quite a few.

But your counter-list isn't hot sauce either, and for most of it you have to go back 10 years or more.

iTV ( that useless thing that isn't quite an Xbox 360 )

No such product. However, the Apple TV was the top selling product on the Apple Store when it was introduced, and sales have increased over previous quarters.

eMac ( like a rehashed iMac, but long after laptops made them irrelevant )

Which was...only sold to schools for most of it's run. So yes, quite shocking that it was never a big seller.

Pippin ( that useless computer / video game console that wasn't quite a Playstation )

1995.

20th anniversary macintosh

1997. And it was never intended to be.

Mac Cube

2000. And it's done just fine in it's reincarnation as the Mac Mini.

Mac TV

1993.

Quicktake

1994.

Newton ( a PDA before PDA's existed ).
eMate ( a netbook based upon Newton before netbooks existed )

1998.

Motorola ROKR ( anyone remember Apple's pre-iPhone phone? )

2004. Finally, a crappy product that wasn't from the Paleozoic Age!

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Uberbah]

You forgot this.

Other than being the forth item on his list, of course.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[mdwh2]

Yes, I like this about Nokia maps also - it supports offline maps as standard.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sootman]

Again, 320x240, but thanks for trying. http://www.gsmarena.com/o2_xda_ii-697.php

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sootman]

Were any of them phones?

Also, the Clie runs Palm OS but it's a Sony product.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Uberbah]

Except that LG demo'ed a large screen touch phone months before Apple did.

So what? Apple was developing their iPhone at the same time - LG was just the first to show off their vaporware.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Uberbah]

Weak. Sauce. He said AFAIK, and...

A simple Google search would have revealed that Palm devices have run 320x480 screens since 2002.

...a simple look at your own like shows a smartphone without a multitouch screen. It's nothing more than a Palm PDA repackaged into a flip phone, Grafiti writing area and all.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Uberbah]

Oh, and he also said "and a very good web browser". Do tell us how wonderful the web browser was on that Sony Clie.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[treff89]

I fail to see your point? I'm not claiming it isn't a PalmOS device or that it had multi-touch function... parent poster was claiming 320x480 screens in mobile devices were introduced by Apple. It looks like the user quality at /. has stagnated as much as mobile technology over the past few years.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Uberbah]

Exceptional hand waving.

mda pro. vga. it even had physical qwerty.

Yeah, because the damned thing was huge. I also like how the anti-Apple fanboys are convieniently skating by two out of three of his points, and only focusing on the screen size:

a ~3.5" touch display at 320x480 and a very good web browser

Re:Competition is a good thing

[dn15]

In his keynote Jobs did say they increased the sensor size (and consequently the size of the lens.) A pixel captured on the iPhone 4's camera represents about the same physical space on the sensor as a pixel on the older iPhone.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[treff89]

The web browser, NetFront 3.1, was above par at the time. In fact, I still use it to check movie times, research Pubmed and Wikipedia, download pdfs and docs, upload docs, check my student timetable and download lecture notes, and browse Fark, Reddit, and news sites — all on the go obviously.

It obviously has no Flash, and you need to change the user-agent to work with Gmail. However, you can set rendering quite flexibly, allowing convenient display of most sites even today.

Not bad for 2003 huh?

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Uberbah]

Are you seriously going to claim the combination of PDA and phone was also an Apple invention?

Seriously stupid straw man. Seriously.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Locutus]

while the front facing camera has been around for awhile, its usefulness has not been defined yet. if it turns out that we all must have video conferences then ok but the jury is still out on that one.

As far as all those other phone manufacturers go, you must know the difference between a smartphone and a not so smartphone. Not all phones are created equal and we are talking about smartphones here.

LoB

Re:Competition is a good thing

[amliebsch]

It doesn't work like that, since setting the picture size does not actually increase the physical size of the sensor pixels. Either it uses all the sensor data and resizes it, like you would in Photoshop, or it systematically discards every n number of sensor lines.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[painandgreed]

None of which would have happened had Android not shown up.

Hardly. Competition might help shape what shows up in new products, but new features will constantly show up in newer products. It's called 'feature creep' and is how Apple convinces owners of currently working hardware to upgrade. It started with the iPod. Each new version comes out with a couple of new features the old one lacked. Larger HD, better screen, games, etc. Even though their current products is still working fine, the user decides they want the new features and buys a new one. Same is going on with the phone.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Polarism]

Only these: Pippin, Quicktake, and Newton. The rest happened on his watch. Sorry bud.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[Uberbah]

The web browser, NetFront 3.1, was above par at the time.

"At the time" was still the cat's ass, though - that's like saying a sandwich filled with rotting fish is great because the alternative is a sandwich filled with shit. And there's still the whole touchscreen thing.

I still use it to check movie times, research Pubmed and Wikipedia, download pdfs and docs, upload docs, check my student timetable and download lecture notes, and browse Fark, Reddit, and news sites -- all on the go obviously.

And I can do the same from my LG Touch. But a pleasant experience it isn't.

I fail to see your point? I'm not claiming it isn't a PalmOS device or that it had multi-touch function... parent poster was claiming 320x480 screens in mobile devices were introduced by Apple.

It's because everyone is focusing on the screen resolution or arguing that other browsers had web browsers before that. But that's a selective reading of his original argument:

the main characteristics of which are a ~3.5" touch display at 320x480 and a very good web browser

Re:Competition is a good thing

[treff89]

I'm obviously not going to change your opinion, mate, if you can't tackle the issues of the matter. I concede. Clearly, the iphone is an incredibly advanced device, exhibiting software and hardware advances far outside the scope of even the dreams of preceding devices.

There ya go. Feel a bit better about buying one now?

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

If you had for a long time only 3 major players, and suddenly you have 6 (throw in some high visibility places which knew only 2 anyway, specifically, and were denied many affordable options, generally) - in a healthy market there's really nowhere else to go for longtime players but down, towards new ratios. I kind prefer it from the situation on the dekstop...
Most of them are growing in units happily anyway, and will continue to do so (for the example of Symbian, it's still less than 20% of devices which Nokia sells; and while Symbian has half of smartphone sales, Nokia as a whole has "only" 37% of mobile phone sales - in the long run they can't have more than the second percentage after all...)

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

I don't know - one quite low end smartphone from 4 years ago that I had, Nokia E50, had 240x320 with 2.1 inch screen (and such screen is common in many of their "feature phones", too); that ends up to be around 195ppi already / I would expect there to be around 50% bump by now (considering that LCDs basically could, at the least, follow the same density gains as semiconductors; essentially being ones)

I am intrigued by your idea of a ghetto HMD; though it would probably still end up with something awkward and headache-inducing :/
Oh well, maybe LED & laser projectors are the way forward...

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

Which isn't that big of a deal, considering how "neutral" ("flat") output you can get out of them, so you have room to play with later; quite high bitrates for H.264; and possibility of using intermediate codec during editing.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

Too bad those cameras outputting M-JPEG result in a bit..."grainy" output, in comparison. H.264 ones give definetely more visual information per frame (even if that's not encoded as individual frames - so what, one can use intermediate codec during editing)

Throw in the issue with open M-JPEG and patent encumbered H.264 and...meh, what a mess :/
Oh well, not that much different from the eternal Canon vs. Nikon holy war raging already, I guess ;)
But it doesn't make the choice easy, considering that my currently preffered setup (a good quality compact digicam, at least as far as they go; it does give impressive 720p though) won't be enough for much longer.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

They're pretty much at the size limit anyway, at least if they don't want to increase the thickness of the device (and I'm pretty sure that's not what Apple is willing to do...)

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

Not quote. When increasing sensor size you have to increase the lens size proportionally if you merely want them to remain just as good (disregarding separate gains from bigger sensor); the lens quality matters more

Re:Competition is a good thing

[pankkake]

They were smaller devices when the iPod came out. I had one, and no one knew what was a mp3 player back then.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

I'm starting to hate how Jobs using the term will end up in talk of "photons! photons!" everywhere...

But - not only camera sensor size per se, also largely aperture of the lenses; they just usually go hand in hand anyway.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

Of course it does; when camera uses more physical pixels of the sensor for each pixel of the output image, that's equaivalent to using a sensor with larger physical pixels (not quite to the same degree as "native" sensor of such density would do, but reasonably close)

That's why "night mode" of many consumer digicams shots in greatly reduced resolution of output image.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[The Phantom Mensch]

Another huge factor is the quality of the glass. The lowest-noise, highest-contrast, most-linear, biggest Dmax sensor in the world isn't going to give you good results if it has a cheap-o plastic lens in front of it. (Unless you're looking for that effect, like you get with a Lens Baby.) Futhermore, designing and manufacturing high-quality lenses is really quite difficult. Putting high-quality glass in a phone-sized device is, currently at least, impossible.

To make things worse a lens made for a smaller sensor needs to be better than the lens made for your DSLR. If you're trying to get the same resolving power out of the lens made for a sensor that is 4 mm x 5 mm, the manufacturing tolerances need to be 4x better than the lens made for a 16mm x 20mm sensor. With a cheap lens on a tiny sensor you get the worst of both technologies.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[cgenman]

Sure, apple TV sales have gone up 35%. But they're still pretty bad. Apple even refers to it in the press as "a hobby." Maybe someday it will take off, but with verified 1st month sales of 100k (vs 1 million for the ipad), it's no hit.

They also discontinued several formats of the Shuffle, after many attempts at making it a hit.

The Air is seeming a bit creaky. Have you seen sales numbers, or Mac Event pushes? According to this analysis, the air is looking to be around 8% of Apple's total laptop sales.

Also, the cube was not the mini. The mini is a well-designed, compact machine with sufficient power and a low price. The cube was a beast of a thing, with grossly insufficient cooling, a weak processor, and a huge price. Similar philosophy maybe, but no striking it from Apple's list of products that failed to rock the world.

Also, you could buy an eMac almost anywhere: it wasn't just a school machine. But nobody did. It was a legitimate failure.

Not all products have to rock the world. If you're afraid of failing, you'll make bland crap that has no chance of succeeding. Apple is no different. Their products don't succeed because Apple's fanboys will buy anything. Clearly, there are certain things nobody will buy. But Apple does take enough creative risks in major ways, and spend the time polishing them well, that sometimes they catch on with the mass market.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[wwphx]

Last week I went through Carlsbad Caverns with my 6MP Rebel and a Bogen tripod. Shots were wonderful (and heavily bracketed!). I want a higher MP camera, but I want to go to a full-frame sensor when I upgrade -- I don't like not being able to have a true wide angle lens.

Yeah, it's funny when people argue about MP vs imaging sensor size. Just like when 110 Instamatics were big and people wondered why their enlargements sucked. Bad glass, small negative -- you ain't gonna get quality out of something like that.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[RocketRabbit]

Then compare, if you will, the resolution in lines per mm of a Minox 15mm f/3.5 lens with the Master Primes.

The Minox lens has a much higher resolution, because as your physical glass size increases it becomes more difficult to hold that micron accuracy across the entire lens.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[RocketRabbit]

Of course the cell phone lens is better. Your Nikon f/1.4 has several crippling limitations in comparison, including the requirement that the lens must be farther away from the film plane. The closer a lens is to the image plane (sensor, film), the higher quality your image plane image will be. Additionally, as you increase the size of the sensor, you are increasing the size of the image circle and this ensures lower image plane quality.

If you want to see your Nikon's ass get kicked, compare it to a similarly priced Voigtlander lens on a rangefinder camera. Or go one better and compare 21mm lenses, where the rangefinder has an even larger advantage.

A tiny lens shooting a tiny image circle, and bumped right up against the sensor, has theoretically better optical potential than an SLR lens, but the image quality is lower because smaller sensors suck. But this is not the fault of the lens.

Zeiss will be happy to show you their dirt cheap, optically magnificent camera phone lens next to a Hasselblad mount lens in CLN issue 19. They keep the specifications for both on their site, so you can read it for yourself.

Of course the purely aesthetic considerations such as bokeh, narrow depth of field, etc, have an impact on the final artistic merits of an image, and you can't get narrow DOF from a microscopic sensor. But saying your lens is better because your whole imaging system makes prettier pictures is not true at all.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[catmistake]

I had the idea very shortly after the release of the original iphone... I was exaggerating with the duct tape, of course... I imaged something that looked like shop glasses, that somehow supported the displays behind a magnifier lens. I went so far as to make a few rough sketches, but left it moiling around in my head too long. Because Apple applied for a patent on the idea a few months ago.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[sznupi]

I don't think you should expect much from it; Apple probably patents lots of stuff for the sake of patenting it?

BTW, reminds me about another Apple patent somehow related to the discussion (accidentally...this specific idea was had by me quite some time ago; though I'm sure even then it was nothing new, despite Apple patenting it now) - hiding camera (or a cooperating group of them, specifically) in the screen; microlenses between pixels, essentialy. That could have changed videoconferencing a bit - false hints of avoiding eye contact are one of major problems; and we are damn good at noticing them, even on such small devices as mobile phones. "Screen camera" might eliminate the problem.
Oh well, but Apple chose not to do it (well, chose to add videoconferencing when the above solution is not yet possible, to be more precise), and so even more people will likely be put off by videoconferencing. Not that it would make much of a difference, probably.

But I think I will still play with the idea in the form of stationary scenario - using, roughly, the optical setup of teleprompter.

Re:Competition is a good thing

[macs4all]

I'd be much happier getting a picture of an event with my phone's camera - even if it wasn't optimal - than not getting it at all because I didn't have my DSLR with me...

That's why the REAL answer to the question "What is the best camera in the world?" is "The one you have WITH you!"

Re:Competition is a good thing

[bingoUV]

What is the typical distance a laptop screen is viewed from? 3 feet? Max 6 feet.

What will it be for a monster-size screen (e.g. of a TV)? Any less than 15 feet and it will tire your neck to watch a tennis match.

Correct comparison is for dots-per-(degree angle projected on the eye).

Re:Competition is a good thing

[JoshNorton]

Motorola ROKR ( anyone remember Apple's pre-iPhone phone? )

2004. Finally, a crappy product that wasn't from the Paleozoic Age!

And that was NOT an Apple product - made with licensing from Apple, but not designed by them...

Want one so bad but won't buy

[Jason Quinn]

Never before have I wanted a product so much but will not buy do to Apple's draconian policies.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Anonymous Coward]

do to Apple's draconian policies

What are you going to do to Apple's draconian policies?

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't. You know that euphoria you have when you're watching porn and then after you're done jacking off you feel guilty about it. This is the same thing only instead of a woman's skin, you're jacking off to steel, glass an silica. If you go over the top and buy it, you'll wont' just feel guilty, you'll feel like an idiot.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Em Emalb]

I am waiting to find out what the upgrade policy is going to be.

I've had my regular 3G iPhone for a couple years now (company phone) and it's about time for an upgrade. Hoping it'll be at a drastically reduced price or free w/2 yr deal.

We'll see.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MBGMorden]

Just get an Android phone. From a hardware perspective, the newest Android phones like the Droid Incredible are pretty close to this (or even exceed it in a few areas still), and they don't have the draconian policies. My bet is that HTC will soon leapfrog Apple once again (afterall, this thing just barely bests the Incredible, which has been out for a month or two) pretty soon. My next upgrade isn't due until this December and I'm guessing there will be some REALLY nice stuff out by then (I know HTC will have jumped one iteration by then, but I'm crossing my fingers on them being two iterations forward by then).

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[s73v3r]

Kinda. This has a much better screen, and a camera that's as good or better.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MBGMorden]

I'm guessing $199 w/ 2yr contract. That seems to be the going rate these days for the upper tier smartphones. They don't cut you any slack for how long you've had your current phone.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't. You know that euphoria you have when you're watching porn and then after you're done jacking off you feel guilty about it.

You're doing it wrong

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[gyrogeerloose]

I'm guessing $199 w/ 2yr contract. That seems to be the going rate these days for the upper tier smartphones. They don't cut you any slack for how long you've had your current phone.

Yep, that's right--$199 for an 8GB 4G, $299 for the 32GB 4G $99 and for an 8GB 3GS. With 2-year contract, of course.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[venicebeach]

I'm curious, specifically which draconian policy would impair your use and enjoyment of the phone?

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Anonymous Coward]

$199 for 16GB* 4G

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[rinoid]

Guess what Best Buy, Macy's, Banana Republic, LL Bean, Dicks Sporting Goods, or maybe you know WalMart better?, or insert your retailer of choice here are? They are all curated experiences!

You, as a regular schmuck (I'm presuming) are not really affected by the so-called "draconian policies" ... and furthermore, it's a bit of stretch to call a curated app store a draconian experience. I've not once felt excessively, harshly, nor severely treated while using my iPhone.

It's a wicked tired canard.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Tumbleweed]

From a hardware perspective, the newest Android phones like the Droid Incredible are pretty close to this (or even exceed it in a few areas still)

I just got an htc EVO 4G on Friday, and I'm actually not feeling any buyer's remorse, even post-iPhone 4, which is nice. I DO like the iPhone 4's pixel density, but it's much smaller than the EVO 4G's 4.3" display, which is one of the main reasons I got the phone I did. I don't know what the pixel density is, but the quality of the text is flat-out amazing, so I've got no complaints there. The EVO 4G has a higher resolution main camera, and the front-facing one doesn't require WiFi to do video chat. I've not messed much with the camera on my phone yet, so I don't know the quality of it, as megapixels aren't everything. The EVO has dual LED flash; not sure about the new iPhone. You'd think with Apple basing their business around iPhones and iPads, that they would've announced some kind of tethering or hotspot capability for them to work in concert, but I didn't see anything like that announced (might've missed it). I guess if you have an iPad w/o 3G, you can just get an EVO and turn on its hotspot and not have to deal with AT&T. :)

To me, the deal-breakers with the iPhone 4 are _still_ being restricted to AT&T (insane), and of course, the draconian developer policies (which DO affect users, even though most users never know it).

Android phones evolve MUCH quicker than Apple's, especially htc (and to a lesser extent, Motorola). We'll see 1.5gHz Android phones this year, and quite possibly the dual-core phones will start trickling out in Q4, as well. Hopefully by this time next year, we'll have 720p displays on LTE-enabled phones, as well. The new chipmaking process shrink coming to the industry at the end of the year will enable processor to sip much less juice than they do now, so battery life should get better as well, though that will be dependent on the eternal struggle with faster chips, too, so we'll see. Fun times! Computers are much less interesting right now, tech-wise, than cellphones.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[pgmrdlm]

Acceptance of cash. Don't take cash, you don't get my business.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MemoryDragon]

Problem with HTC is simply the long term support. HTC usually leapfrogs Apples phones within 3 months, and within 6 months you can hope to get a software update to the next Android version. Just ask the Hero owners, and before the HTC touch owners, or the ones owning a HTC HD/HD2 etc... all phones HTC abandoned within a years timeframe.
(The GSM Hero owners are still waiting for the promised 2.1 update outside of Taiwan and 2.2 will never show up)

The alternative to that is Motorola, which so far behaves, but has locked down the bootloader to the Milestone so if Motorola decides to abandon the phone the community cannot even take over.

Alternatively you can get the HTC manufactured Google Nexus one, which has a share of problems of its own, like a lousy touch screen which goes bonkers from time to time, bad antennas, but hardwarewise outside of that is amazing and probably will get long term support the usual Apple timeframe.

I really tried to stay away from Apple and I have settled down to the Nexus one despite its flaws for the moment and probably until end of the year 2011 but after that if the Android situation will not become better than I will give in...

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[StoatBringer]

Do keep us up to date on other products you're not buying.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[gyrogeerloose]

$199 for 16GB* 4G

Right. My bad--was typing too fast.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Mike Buddha]

You, as a regular schmuck (I'm presuming) are not really affected by the so-called "draconian policies" ... and furthermore, it's a bit of stretch to call a curated app store a draconian experience. I've not once felt excessively, harshly, nor severely treated while using my iPhone.

How are we not affected by the dictatorship of Steve Jobs? We're not allowed to use GPL'd software; we're not allowed to use applications that replicate included functionality; we're not allowed to modify the UI to our liking; we're not allowed to watch porn; we're not allowed to use the unlimited data connection we have to pay for all of our legitimate purposes; we're not allowed to develop software using tools that Steve Jobs does not approve of; we're not allowed to use some of the most popular technology on the internet because of the "benevolent" dictator's insecurities. Shall I continue?

This is different from shopping at Wal-Mart, Target, etc. because those companies might not sell what you're interested in, but they aren't going to stop you from buying the products you want from another source. Please, stop glossing over the fact that this "walled garden" blows; it's insulting to my intelligence. I suppose if I embraced the lack of freedom, I'd be happy. Not unlike the Patriot Act, I might add.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Wovel]

Apple does accept cash...They temporarily did not for the iPad.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[i_ate_god]

I'm curious, specifically which draconian policy would impair your use and enjoyment of the phone?

1) Standards & Development:
My Nexus One acts as a hard drive with my computer. It uses standard USB cables to connect to it. Tethering with the nexus one had no hassles whatsoever. The Nexus One worked flawlessly with Linux and Windows without the need for drivers, and I did not have to pay for a developers license to start playing with it.

2) Usability:
The Android supports multitasking and as such, has a much more useful "homescreen", which is actually several screens that can contain widgets with uptodate information. The home screen is just an app, I can replace it. The keyboard is just an app, I can replace it. Email is just an app, I can replace it. I can run services in the background with a proper notification system so that I can be properly notified should I choose it from whatever app I install. If I don't like Google's idea of Android, I'm free to install any version of Android I want. I'm free to install any OS that can work with my Nexus One I want.

3) Upgradability:
I can swap the 4gb MicroSD card for a 32gb MicroSD card should I chose to do so, and only pay the costs of the microsd card.

4) Flexibility:
There are no or very little limitations to the kinds of apps available on the market, and nothing stops me from installing apps outside of the market as well. As a developer, I am not limited to what I can make my app do. I am not limited to one programming language to make my app.

iPhone has the exact opposite of all four of these points, and I find that to be horribly draconian.

If I am going to shell out $600 for a device, I intend to use it as I see fit and not be dictated by anyone on how I should use my shiny new toy.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

There are lots of places on the web that tell you how to hotspot your Android phone, the EVO just makes it simpler.

FWIW - just so you know - Android 2.2 is coming to EVO in July from Sprint - no mucking about to install Froyo by rooting, etc. I can't wait, got my EVO yesterday, replaced my Samsung Moment (that was a great phone too, IMO - but the EVO is just better).

http://www.evdoinfo.com/

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Duradin]

"...we're not allowed to watch porn;" Not being able to buy porn apps through the app store is not the same as not being allowed to watch porn on it at all.

"...we're not allowed to develop software using tools that Steve Jobs does not approve of; " You can use any tools that you wish. You are limited, however, if you want to sell through Apple's app store. Ad hoc is no holds barred.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Tumbleweed]

There are lots of places on the web that tell you how to hotspot your Android phone, the EVO just makes it simpler.

Uh, I think you're confusing 'hotspot' with 'tethering' - there is a big difference between the two.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[gnasher719]

How are we not affected by the dictatorship of Steve Jobs? We're not allowed to use GPL'd software;

It seems that some GPL'd software was available for the iPhone, with the developer giving source code to everyone asking for it, and everybody could port it to any other phone, and everybody who had the things needed to develop software for the iPhone could get the source code and improve on it and put it on their own phones or on the App store. And then the FSF complained to Apple, and instead of waiting for a lawsuit where Apple could prove the FSF wrong, they removed the application from the store.

So who exactly is responsible?

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[pgmrdlm]

I had to look that up, which is what I should have done prior to my original post. I stand corrected, thank you.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Skuld-Chan]

From the specs its only slightly higher ppi/resolution than the Nexus One (I think the incredible has the same screen). The incredible camera isn't bad either - its far better than the current iPhone, but who knows with the new one.

Still nexus one at least has all the nifty new features the iPhone 4 has - noise canceling mics (that actually does work!), 6 axis accelerometer/sensors etc etc.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MBGMorden]

The Incredible vs the iPhone 3GS:

1Ghz Snapdragon CPU vs 600Mhz ARM Cortex-A8
8MP camera with LED flash vs 3MP camera with no flash
480x800 3.7" screen vs 320x480 3.5" screen
512MB RAM vs 256MB RAM
8GB base storage + additional 32GB available via SD expansion vs 16 or 32GB base storage (about the only category that iPhone 3GS won on, and even then, depends on how you look at it - the Incredible has more potential storage when maxed out).

In virtually every category, the HTC Droid Incredible was had better hardware than the iPhones available at the time. Apple has in turn jumped back into the lead, but as I said, HTC's next phone will likely beat out the iPhone 4 again. Same game as almost all competitive tech companies play.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

You may be right.

As I understand tethering (I used to tether my Razr to my Macbook Pro), one dedicates something like a modem script to communicate with the phone and the phone does the rest.

As I understand hotspot, the phone's internet is then served with the phone putting out the wifi signal, per this quote:

The pros of this method: it's free and it makes your phone act as a Wi-Fi hotspot that any computer can connect to without extra software or messing with your computer's setting.

From - http://blog.7touchgroup.com/tag/android-hotspot-app/

The downside was that it required a rooted phone, but I've been seeing these instructions for a few months now.

Did I miss something?

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Tumbleweed]

And if the camera app still takes forever to load, the screens are laggy, the video is hitchy, all of that GHz, means nothing. Even with a slower processor, you've got to give Apple credit. It performs smooth as butter. They work very well with what they have.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here - certainly not the EVO. My camera app starts up right away (~ 1 second), video is fine, and everything is incredibly smooth.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Tumbleweed]

The downside was that it required a rooted phone, but I've been seeing these instructions for a few months now.
Did I miss something?

Yes. I'm talking about the EVO 4G phone specifically, not Android phones in general. Hotspot ability is built-in to the EVO 4G, fully supported by Sprint, no rooting required. It's a $30/mo add-on to do that, though you can (now) get it for free by rooting your EVO. Regular tethering is supported and free with the EVO. The hotspot on the EVO supports up to 8 connected devices.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[somersault]

To me even my HTC TyTN (~6 years ago) was better than any iPhone before, simply because it had a hardware keyboard. And since then the iPhone has pretty much always been behind HTC's flagship phones (I don't really keep current either, but any time I've checked there have always been much cooler devices out there than the iPhone).

I'm really glad that the iPhone came out though, as it's forced other manufacturers to get their act together when it comes to the actual software side of things. But now that everything else is doing multitouch swishy touch feely zoom zoom, the iPhone doesn't have any real advantage beyond Steve Jobs' marketing prowess IMO..

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[somersault]

-before* (I know that the iPhone wasn't even out back then, I had originally said "before the iPhone came out")

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MBGMorden]

And if the camera app still takes forever to load, the screens are laggy, the video is hitchy, all of that GHz, means nothing. Even with a slower processor, you've got to give Apple credit. It performs smooth as butter. They work very well with what they have.

Except that the Droid phones typically have none of those problems. As shocking as it may seem, somebody besides Apple actually does make a phone that works well.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[dmesg0]

Don't. You know that euphoria you have when you're watching porn and then after you're done jacking off you feel guilty about it.

Hmm, I felt guilty only after one-night stands with women. Are you dumping your right hand after jacking off?

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

Maybe we're just miscommunicating then.

I'm not advocating rooting - I didn't try that on my Moment. BUT - for those that want to go that route, the EVO forums are already pointing to hotspot methods, such as the one I posted (it included tethering, too - but if you followed that app's link you'll see both are supported.

I'm well-aware of EVO's capabilities. Like you, I've been studying them and went for mine on the 4th - but my store was shorted, so I had to wait until yesterday.

I was merely making an arcane point - not an important one.

For the masses, and for practical purposes, and to not get in trouble with any carrier's TOS - yes, I'll agree that the EVO is unique with this as a supported feature.

By the way - have you installed Fring? I'm Skype videoconferencing with my offices (I'm on travel) from my EVO and I'm loving it!

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[VinylPusher]

I'm with you all the way on this, but you have to admit that this new iPhone is not only going to be enormously popular, but is also a really good device. It's just a different 'good' than your Nexus One.

Personally, I want whatever follows the Nexus One or the Nokia N900. My next phone... I want to be able to write tools for it, without messing about with licensing. That iPhone though... *sigh* I'd quite like to have it as a second phone.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[somersault]

Great example: today I discovered that there's a free app for Windows Mobile to turn your phone into a WiFi hotspot. I don't see Apple allowing this anytime soon.

They don't allow customers to upgrade storage of their devices with SD cards so that they can charge ridiculous amounts for higher capacity models. And they don't even allow you to use the phone as a general purpose storage device. I still have never owned an iPod/iPhone, nor do I really want to, but I'm seriously considering it simply because things like modern car stereos are designed to work so much better with iPods than with simple storage devices :/

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Tumbleweed]

For the masses, and for practical purposes, and to not get in trouble with any carrier's TOS - yes, I'll agree that the EVO is unique with this as a supported feature.

I don't know of any other phone that has that feature at all, supported or not. I was kind of surprised the iPhone 4 didn't have it, but oh well, sucks to be an Apple customer. *shrug*

I haven't messed with the video conferencing at all. I've read online that the iPhone 4's video conferencing only works with other iPhone 4s? That's unfortunate, if true - a combined based of iPhone 4 and EVO users would be a good thing.

I'm currently investigating replacement soft keyboards for my phone - looks like Better Keyboard may be the best out there, at least until Swype for Android comes out of (closed! :( ) beta.

I also need to get one of those apps that identifies a song that is playing, just by listening to it.

And as soon as I get some time, I'm going to get a bunch of augmented reality stuff like Layar, etc.

So many possibilities for this level of smartphone, it's kind of ridiculous.

I have a 16 gig class 10 card coming soon; hopefully this week. The included 8 gig class 2 card is nice, but I want more, faster storage. Hopefully 32 gig microsdhc cards will be out and cheap sooner rather than later. The SanDisk is the only one I know of out yet, and it's around $300 or so. Ouch. Plus it's only a class 2 card.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Danse]

I'm with you all the way on this, but you have to admit that this new iPhone is not only going to be enormously popular, but is also a really good device. It's just a different 'good' than your Nexus One.

It's only a "different good" if you don't mind all those issues that were listed. If you do, then the iPhone may be impressive hardware-wise, but it's not a "different good", it's "less good".

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Guess what Best Buy, Macy's, Banana Republic, LL Bean, Dicks Sporting Goods, or maybe you know WalMart better?, or insert your retailer of choice here are? They are all curated experiences!

They're curating their own stores, not something I own.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

I've every reason to expect that Fring will fully support the iPhone 4 - I had an iPhone buddy turn me on to Fring in the first place.

No waiting for Skype support - just use Fring.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[LynnwoodRooster]

So the answer from the Apple fanboi is to declare the comment "asinine" without any facts... In what way is the new iPhone superior to the HTC EVO? And how was the 3GS superior to the HD and the Incredible and the Touch Pro 2?

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[topgun966]

According to these specs, pound for pound the Evo destroys this.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

I don't know of any other phone that has that feature at all, supported or not.

http://forum.androidcentral.com/hacking/7674-wifi-hotspot-app.html

There's at least one poster there talking about simultaneously supporting his iPod touch and laptop - no extra software on those devices - via their wifi.

The beauty of Android - you can get in as much trouble as you like. :)

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Tumbleweed]

I've every reason to expect that Fring will fully support the iPhone 4 - I had an iPhone buddy turn me on to Fring in the first place.
No waiting for Skype support - just use Fring.

Ah, that'll be great if Fring lets iPhone 4 and EVO users video chat with each other, albeit at the lower resolution the iPhone 4 supports. :)

I'm not waiting for Skype, I'm waiting for Swype. I thought it was already available, but apparently it's still just in beta. Annoying.

Hopefully the other carriers will all get 'superphones' available for their users soon. I'm hearing rumors of an htc 'scorpion' for Verizon, though the specs are still just rumors at this point.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[yttrstein]

How very socially conscious and noble of you. Personally I'd just really rather have a super cool phone, but good luck with your nobility.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

Fring is just a front-end. It coalesces contact in one place and uses any xport layer you desire.

If you want swype capability, how about checking this out?

http://www.shapewriter.com/software.html#android

http://lifehacker.com/5344955/get-a-better-android-keyboard-no-rooting-required

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

See also:

http://androidandme.com/2009/11/applications/swype-keyboard-coming-to-android-in-2010/

Apologies if this is old hat - hey, it's just bytes of info.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Tumbleweed]

http://androidandme.com/2009/11/applications/swype-keyboard-coming-to-android-in-2010/
Apologies if this is old hat - hey, it's just bytes of info.

Yeah, thanks. I already checked their website this morning - it's in closed beta. Hopefully it'll be out soon. That and Froyo, and I'll be all set!

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[nanoakron]

I'll place a bet on which one will be selling better in 3 months time...

(iPhone just in case you didn't get the inference)

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

Yep - not trying to do your thinking for you. I was pretty sure, just from my not-what-it-was-memory, that you were the guy last year that took time to turn me on to some of the Nokia alternatives and so forth - and that set me out armed with info to look into better alternatives and looking at things differently from what I had been.

Presuming that my memory was correct, I was just hoping to give back.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[ezelkow1]

Where did you hear 2.2 in july? Just wondering, got my evo last week and thoroughly enjoying it and eagerly awaiting 2.2 as I have heard on both the droid and nexus it provides a huge speedboost, not that the evo really needs it.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[earlymon]

http://www.evdoinfo.com/

Android 2.2 Features Announced By Google

Today at the Google IO keynote, Google announced the new features that Android 2.2 code named "Froyo" will introduce. Android 2.2 will be available via update for the super popular Sprint HTC EVO 4G phone this July!

Hopefully, I didn't misread that. "Via update" implied a supported process to me, not rooting, or ad hoc or something.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[sznupi]

And why would that make anyone feel guilty?...

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[zuperduperman]

> Ad hoc is no holds barred.

Ad hoc expires after 90 days, has a limited number of devices it can deploy to. That is hardly "no holds barred".

Further, as far as I have been able to understand it, ad hoc is technically is still bound by Apple's SDK developer agreement, so even developing an application for you own phone may in fact violate the agreement.

So "no holds barred" is completely untrue.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Grizzley9]

You didn't give any reasons as the GP asked, you just restated the supposed fact. It is implied that you would tell HOW HTC leapfrogged Apple, not just restating some tag line.

Personally, I hope Android phones do leapfrog and shame the iPhone as it will be better for us as consumers. Though I've seen it plenty of times that features are not the entire picture in the smartphone market.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[BLKMGK]

Call *639# and they will text you your status. Mine says eligible for $18...

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Grizzley9]

If I am going to shell out $600 for a device, I intend to use it as I see fit and not be dictated by anyone on how I should use my shiny new toy.

If that's your attitude then:
1.) A simple jailbreak allows you to do such things
2.) Not sure how this preferred home screen is "Draconian". You're also free to "install any OS that can work with your Apple phone that you want".
3.) I would agree with this, but have yet to need more than is built in, YMMV.
4.) There's over 200k iPhone apps. They do have some limitations but how else do you account for the stability of the phone except by standards? Or you could use a simple jailbreak.

Your last sentence just negated all your points by you being able to jailbreak it b/c you want to use it how you want to. Also, not sure how the iPhone "has the exact opposite of all four of these points". You must find many things in life "horribly draconian".

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MrCrassic]

Just get an Android phone. From a hardware perspective, the newest Android phones like the Droid Incredible are pretty close to this (or even exceed it in a few areas still), and they don't have the draconian policies. My bet is that HTC will soon leapfrog Apple once again (afterall, this thing just barely bests the Incredible, which has been out for a month or two) pretty soon. My next upgrade isn't due until this December and I'm guessing there will be some REALLY nice stuff out by then (I know HTC will have jumped one iteration by then, but I'm crossing my fingers on them being two iterations forward by then).

Hardware-wise, yes. The only problem is that Android is FAR from providing the same smoothness and "suave" that iPhone OS does. I own a G1. Maybe that's an old device according to today's standards, but considering that I had v2.1 loaded on it and have used it long enough to give it an honest try, I think I'm at a position to solidify this opinion.

For me, when a new Android phone comes out, my senses get kind of riled up, but simmer soon after. On the other hand, every single iPhone release, especially this one, has generated enough hype to power a first-world country for days and overload at least a good number of servers on announcement day. Yes, a large reason for that is solid marketing and excellent suspense tactics. However, unmatched (yes, unmatched) quality is a significant driver for that as well.

Call me an iShill, a RDF victim or whatever you want. Excepting Maemo and SymbianOS, I've tried and owned every offering there is, from the low-end basics to the supposed high-end "game changers." The last few years of trying, and returning, to my iPhone have proven to me that it is the best smartphone offering out there for most people of all kinds and that dropping probably $700(1) on the announced redesign is a worthwhile investment I will probably not regret.

At least I can get what I paid back if I'm wrong.

(1) I know that someone will gladly remind me that it's $199/$299, but let me preempt that: That is the price for AT&T customers looking to upgrade their iDevices or new AT&T customers signed up to the iPhone plan. $700 is the average price I've seen new iPhones selling for on Craigslist, which is where I've gotten all of my iPhones to date.
(2) Quad-band HSDPA is the business.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MouseR]

Pardon my trollish-perceived comments but in what way does this leapfrog Apple?

You're talking featuritus here. X component has N more score points but in what way did that phone make it easier for you to work and integrate, communicate, expand, play, work, etc?

Where technology becomes more significant than raw numbers, and leapfrogs another technology, is when said technology (/device/process/etc) actually provides a useful step forward, such as for example, visual voice mail versus phone pad menu maze. Or when a device is smart enough to adapt to it's surrounding to provide solutions based on your location (help line, tourist info, local shops). This has more value than N more megapixels (without lens to really make it useful).

HTC (or other ones so far) have yet to "leapfrog" that. They merely played the "Me Too" game, and added marketing numbers around it (Megapixels, Ghz etc).

That's what I'm waiting for Android to do (or heck, why not, WebOS): leapfrog Apple and bring us that one "Woah" that that makes you realize "Damnit, THAT's what I need".

Then, I will consider it leapfrogged.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[el cisne]

Oh boo-frickity-hoo. That's been rescinded or modified anyway. Got another ooooh! Scaaaary "draconian policy" you want to parrot?

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Mr Bubble]

Good idea. You should take a moral stance and deprive yourself of a really cool product so that Apple will finally stop eating live babies. It's just insane. How long do they think they can eat live babies before people wake up to how incredibly evil they are.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MidnightBrewer]

I find that the cell phone companies' policies by default still eclipse anything Apple has tried to do to me lately. If you're in the States, buying anything that requires AT&T's service coverage seems rather futile, anyway (and considering the inadequate coverage that even the best providers offer, I'm happy to stay in Japan for now). Exactly what draconian policy do they have that makes you want to avoid buying an iPhone, and how are they worse than anyone else?

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MidnightBrewer]

Point 2 no longer applies (RTFAs that have been floating around the net for over two months now), as the newest iPhone OS supports multitasking. It also now supports services in the background with a notification system. The number of people who actually want to replace their keyboard and home screen number in the dozens, so I don't think that it's really a valid concern for 99.99% of customers out there. Finally, exactly what other OSes besides Android can you/have you installed on your Nexus One? As for the other points: the iPhone offers tethering, but it requires the carrier to cooperate. Not Apple's fault. Point 4 is mostly a developer concern, as it would take a prohibitive amount of time for even the ambitious user to exhaust the repository of applications already available. Most commercial systems out there require investment in an IDE, so putting this at Apple's feet is disingenuous. Google just underwrites their costs by data-mining your searches and selling ads through their service, so the cost is still there. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Apple's closed marketplace may be distasteful, but you have to hand it to them: they don't have any viruses on a system with always-on access to a cell phone network. I'm just waiting for the day that Android gets nailed with that one.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[adolf]

I do that, too: iPod Touch and laptop running over wifi supplied by my (rooted) Droid. AFAICT, there's no silly arbitrary limit on the number of connected devices (it is a Linux box, after all), unlike commercially-supported options.

It's not a cure-all, though: The tethering app presents the phone not as an access point, but just an ad-hoc device. Both Windows and the iPod are willing to request a DHCP address with this arrangement, and work fine. My PSP is not so happy with it, however, since Sony seems to think that the only 802.11 ad-hoc connection you'll ever want is to another PSP -- it therefore refuses to accept that it's got a working connection to Teh Intarwebs.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[adolf]

Mmmmm...no.

The camera app on my Droid was slower than hell until I installed custom 2.1-based firmware, a new kernel, and a mild overclock. The screen would never scroll as smoothly as with my first-gen iPod Touch, but it's a little better with CFW. The device still takes forever to boot up, and then isn't even quite ready to use even after the GUI comes up (which reminds me more of Windows 95 than anything else).

Even the touchscreen has issues (which may be fixable with calibration, but such tools don't seem to exist) -- both the iPod Touch and my 10-year-old Palm Pilot seem to be more accurate. (According to my research, this is more of a design fault affecting the A855 than something broken about my particular device.)

All of these with stock 2.0 and 2.0.1. (I never did try stock 2.1, so there's a chance that they may have actually fixed it themselves in the newest version.)

Meanwhile, sometimes things get confused and force me to reboot the phone, though that seems to happen less frequently than it used to.

I like the Droid to such an extent that I'm prone to fits of blatant fanboi-ism where I'll go on for hours about just how cool it is. But to say that it's trouble-free, or has a user experience that is as polished as Apple's offerings, would be a lie.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Achromatic1978]

I don't know of any other phone that has that feature at all, supported or not.

Nokia N97 was released with wireless hotspot functionality almost a year ago today.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Serious Callers Only]

Ad hoc is no holds barred.

You're being disingenuous here. Ad hoc is limited to 100 devices, and is not a serious distribution mechanism. It's for betas specifically, and if Apple chose they could easily pull the distribution certificate you have to pay for from them to do it, on a whim. In addition, it is limited to 100 devices per year per developer account (not per app), with no replacements allowed once devices have been added. You also can't use any tools that you wish - this is specifically barred by the SDK agreement you signed up for if you paid $99 (as is using ad-hoc for stuff other than betas).

You're not allowed to distribute software for the iPhone in any meaningful sense without going through the app store. The only distribution mechanism which is free of control is HTML on a web server, which is also typically free of remuneration and limited in performance/access to device features. For most developers, that makes it far less interesting. There's a reason almost all the serious development is going through the app store, in spite of the hassles.

I understand Apple's inclination to control what goes on their store, but let's be honest about what they allow and the restrictions they have in place. They could do a much better job of enforcing standards on the app store while giving leeway to developers, and will only improve if their feet are held to the fire by truly critical users.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Vectormatic]

There is some painfull truth in this, generally support for android devices is much less sure then for the iphone, but if you look at what the actual updates are, i'd say android still has the upper hand. From what i've seen iphone os updates add stuff like cut/paste functions, and to a minor degree larger stuff like multi-tasking (which i dont consider true multi-tasking, but that's another debate)

personally i currently like the HTC legend, but since my contract still has some time on it, i'll probably get its succesor running 2.2, should be quite awesome

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MemoryDragon]

The legend should be ok for 2.2 but dont put too much hope into getting 2.3 ever. Usually with htc phones you get one big update and then be done...

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Uksi]

1) Standards & development:

You're right.

2) Usability:

"home screen is just an app," "keyboard is just an app" -- don't care. Don't care to install any OS version I want. Don't care to install a different home screen. That's not usability, that's just a pain in my neck.

Widgets are probably cool, but for multitasking, quoth Larry Page: "software running in the background that just sort of exhausts the battery quickly."

For me usability is not caring about anything like how many apps are open or whether anything's draining my battery. I just want to do things and care as little as possible about anything other than the thing I'm doing. With the iPhone, I don't ever think about closing any apps. My friend, who has a PocketPC phone, is always compulsively tries to close the browser on my iPhone before putting it away and I always tell her "it doesn't matter, just hit the sleep button." You don't have to exit out of anything, you don't have to close anything, there are no trojans that can stay running in the background. It's nice.

3) Upgradability:

That's nice. And you can swap multiple MicroSD cards, which, while a pain, can come in handy if use your phone in different enough sitautions.

4) Flexibility:

That's nice too. However, in general, I have been very happy with the choice of apps on the Apple app store and they do a lot of different things. I haven't felt the need to get a different browser--I quite like what comes with the phone.

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Vectormatic]

i pretty much am OK with that, and as i said, it's pretty much the same with apple, sure an iphone 2G might be updateable to 4.0, but it is totally meaningless, since all significant features will be disabled anyway.

The main reason i want 2.2 at least is the large performance increases due to new JIT compilers and such in that release, for the rest i'm perfectly sure that android currently has the functionality that i want out of a smartphone

As for the legend, i love the formfactor/look, but as i understand it, its core hardware is slightly below the high-end stuff such as the desire, so basically i'm hoping that by the time i get to renew my plan, HTC will have launched another evolution of the hero-legend line, with slightly beefed up specs, and at least 2.2 standard, if they havent, i will probably be perfectly happy with a legend

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MemoryDragon]

Well the usual HTC timescale is, 1 line update per year with every phone of the line slipping to a lower level and every three months a new phone per line. (Currently they run on android 2 levels of lines, with one high one mid, the low range currently is the phased out models which are still sold but not updated anymore)

Every phone gets relatively fast a bugfix update if it is needed and then it takes a while for one big update but usually you get one big update.
As for android, I expect the Legend will get 2.2 but it might take a whole, I do not see anything which would prevent 2.2 or 2.3 when it is released to be run on the magic like hardware which the Legend still is (Legend -> Hero -> Magic, basically the same phone), but the Legend like all HTC models probably will be phased out by the end of the year so 2.3 will only be available via hacked roms, if at all. I am not sure how the hacking situation on the Legend is.

So there is a 50/50 chance currently HTC will run a Legend successor with G1ish specs, but it is very likely that a Nexus One derivate (N1 / Desire /Evo derivate) will replace the Legend as mid range model next year and the Legend line will replace the G1ish line as low end unsupported model. (unless HTC changes their ways due to the bad reputation they currently seem to get over their update behavior)

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Dr Max]

Are you insane the only reason to get an iphone is the software (not my cup of tea but it would suit my grandmother). Hardware wise they get blown away by almost everyone else (unless you want that front facing camera so you can talk to other people with an iphone4). i'm willing to bet around the end of the year htc will put out a phone with the dual core 1.2ghz snap dragon chip. (then it'll take apple a year or so to catch up just like with the nexus one.)

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[Vectormatic]

interesting stuff, so basically a legend-update is pretty much a sure thing for end-of-year?

anyway, to comment on your two lines stuff, i think there is now a third line with the wildfire, which i might have gone for if it werent for the QVGA screen

What i find a bit confusing though is that HTC uses the same name for different devices, the US 'hero' is rather different (at least in terms of looks) from what is sold as a 'hero' here in europe..

Re:Want one so bad but won't buy

[MemoryDragon]

I assume 2.2 should be a sure thing on the Legend
although it might take a while,
2.3 is questionable (probably most likely not)

iAds

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming July 1st!

IOS

[suso]

Apple, that acronym is already taken for an operating system.

I'm really hoping Cisco is going to sue you over that. But I won't hold my breath.

Re:IOS

[Radish03]

Kind of like how Cisco owned the trademark for iPhone as well?

Re:IOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm at Cisco right now, and from my cubicle I can hear people talking about it. They've already worked something out, apparently.

Re:IOS

[200_success]

Ha! I predicted iOS half a year ago, when the iPad was first announced and Fujitsu was going to sue.

Re:IOS

[sherpajohn]

Apple, that acronym is already taken for an operating system.

I'm really hoping Cisco is going to sue you over that. But I won't hold my breath.

Cisco also claims to hold the trademark to iPhone:

http://www.cisco.com/web/siteassets/legal/trademark.html

Re:IOS

[osu-neko]

Didn't they work out some sort of agreement for Apple using the name? I wonder if the same agreement (if there was one) would also cover using iOS?

Re:IOS

[Anonymous Coward]

They licensed the name iOS to Apple. mentioned in the cnet live feed http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20006866-260.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1

Re:IOS

[toriver]

Er, they are licensing out the trademark to Apple. Try to keep up.

Keynote not done yet!

[twitchingbug]

Wow. the keynote isn't even finished and the post went up. We have no idea about networks or prices or sizes. Ridiculous.

Re:Keynote not done yet!

[dancingmilk]

So wait, you mean its impossible to post an article and then have people post continuing updates in the thread? The mind reels.

Re:Keynote not done yet!

[rinoid]

+1

I'm boggled as hell.

Re:Keynote not done yet!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

So wait, you mean its impossible to post an article and then have people post continuing updates in the thread? The mind reels.

Go easy, man. Usually the complaint about Slashdot is that its news stories are days old. Give us time to adapt!

Re:Keynote not done yet!

[dancingmilk]

True enough I'll give you that one. It's pretty rare that news is posted here. I hit a link on the front page this morning that linked to an article from June 2009, so if that's any indication...

Re:Keynote not done yet!

[metamatic]

US networks = AT&T. The exclusivity contract doesn't expire until 2012.

Re:Keynote not done yet!

[Gilmoure]

Teh interwebs is a static medium. Don' you be bringin' in any of that updates and additions stuff. Chiseled in stone is all the web rolls.

Re:Keynote not done yet!

[Lars T.]

Wow. the keynote isn't even finished and the post went up.

Yeah, I also like it better when they sit on the articles a couple of days before posting them. Let them ripen.

Re:iAds

[Albanach]

I find this one the most interesting feature.

iAds [blogcdn.com]

What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.

Re:iAds

[Anonymous Coward]

But they have good brands, so it is not a problem

11:25AM "So let me tell you some of the brands that will be advertising with us. Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney... those are some of the brands."

Re:iAds

[WCMI92]

What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.

Heh! Odds of that being approved for the App Store are approximately 3,720 to 1.

This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Pecisk]

...when you can announce that your document viewer will support PDFs and everyone is in the awe :)

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[betterunixthanunix]

As I recall, this is the same man who declared the iPad having the ability to browse the web to be something unique that no other device on the market can do.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Comboman]

Considering the current hate between Adobe and Apple, I'm a bit surprised myself.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[webdog314]

Actually, people should be in awe - and if you're Amazon you should be shitting your pants. One of the big debates lately in the publishing industry has been in regards to a unified format. Allowing PDF's in the iBooks part of iTunes basically makes that a moot point. Brilliant on Apple's part, and a death knell for traditional publishing.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[gyrogeerloose]

Considering the current hate between Adobe and Apple, I'm a bit surprised myself.

Stevie J. may be pissed off at Adobe right now (they'll probably make nice eventually) but PDF is the native display format used by OS X* so he probably doesn't have a problem with it on the iPhone.

*I'm not sure if that carries over to the iPhone OS--uh, I mean, iOS--or not. Anyone out there who can fill me in on that?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[hedwards]

Have you ever tried to read an ebook in PDF format? I have and quite frankly it sucks. It kind of works on my eee PC, but anything smaller than that and it's not going to work. There's a lot of features you don't get with a PDF which even a basic reader app can do. Such as inverting the colors so that the background is dark and the text is light. Causing the text to reflow based upon the size of the screen. And not contain executable code which documents should never have included.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[DrXym]

Actually, people should be in awe - and if you're Amazon you should be shitting your pants. One of the big debates lately in the publishing industry has been in regards to a unified format. Allowing PDF's in the iBooks part of iTunes basically makes that a moot point. Brilliant on Apple's part, and a death knell for traditional publishing.

The format is just half the picture. Apple can and probably will slather the format with a proprietary DRM. So your book could be PDF under the DRM but it doesn't make it any more portable to other readers for being so.

Same thing has happened to EPUB too. There is more than one DRM although most of the industry has sensibly chosen to go for the same DRM (Adobe) which does mean content is portable between devices.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[ceoyoyo]

Oh? Can you point to another ebook reader that supports a good reflowable book format like epub and also a page layout format (for textbooks, etc.) like PDF?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[KylePflug]

Every iPhone OS device has supported PDF since 2007. Users just wanted to merge that support with the UX of iBooks. Keep up.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[tyrione]

Considering the current hate between Adobe and Apple, I'm a bit surprised myself.

Stevie J. may be pissed off at Adobe right now (they'll probably make nice eventually) but PDF is the native display format used by OS X* so he probably doesn't have a problem with it on the iPhone.

*I'm not sure if that carries over to the iPhone OS--uh, I mean, iOS--or not. Anyone out there who can fill me in on that?

Quartz is Quartz. Display PDF is Display PDF. The implementations into the OS services is where they are different.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Lifyre]

PRS-505. I've had it for about 2 years now. A crap ton cheaper than the iCrap too.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[tyrione]

Have you ever tried to read an ebook in PDF format? I have and quite frankly it sucks. It kind of works on my eee PC, but anything smaller than that and it's not going to work. There's a lot of features you don't get with a PDF which even a basic reader app can do. Such as inverting the colors so that the background is dark and the text is light. Causing the text to reflow based upon the size of the screen. And not contain executable code which documents should never have included.

Has it not occurred to you that Display PDF manages a lot of your desires for you?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[ceoyoyo]

No color. Crap for textbooks. Also no web, music, gps... I should hope it's cheaper.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[initdeep]

the sony prs505 will do both, and it's ancient.

in fact, they introduced ePub support over two years ago, and pdf support was from day one.

and just like any other reader, the usage of pdf's will suck since they do not reflow properly and need to be created for the EXACT screen size to be useful.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Threni]

LOL! I looked at that in a Sony store. I asked "Is this a demo prototype or the finished product?" The guy replied "we don't have prototypes in our store". I asked him "so how do you explain the shitty slow response to key presses, the low quality display, and the fact that it takes over a second to refresh the screen when you page through the document, during which time the screen is a corrupt, unreadable mess?". He didn't have an answer. It's hardly a surprise that they've not done very well - they're way overpriced for the spec.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[soupd]

iPhone OS already supports PDF viewing; I have a gig or so of legislative PDFs on my iPhone 3GS that I browse with the 'Air Sharing' app. What Apple announced is more subtle, which is PDFs being supported by their eBook reader with the same functionality of native eBooks.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[BitZtream]

Thats because you're doing it on a device/OS that doesn't have 'PDF built in' as dumb as that sounds.

Before I bought a Mac I fucking hated PDFs ... still do actually, but I only notice if I look at the file extension or ... I'm not using my Mac.

Somehow, the way PDF just fits in with the feel of everything else just doesn't bother me on my Mac. On Windows it sticks out like a sore thumb. In OS X is appears as though its just another document. I realize that I'm talking about a desktop here, not an e-reader setup, but using PDFs is something Apple has done before and its part of the iOS as well so I have a sneaking suspecion that they'll make it feel usable as a book format.

Personally, I just want HTML as my universal document format with SVGs for images where possible, but thats just a personal opinion with no particularly overwhelming reason why everyone else should support it.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[SETIGuy]

Don't worry, next year he can change his mind and remove that capability. And everyone will be in awe about how perceptive he is about their lack of need to read PDFs.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Graff]

The format is just half the picture. Apple can and probably will slather the format with a proprietary DRM. So your book could be PDF under the DRM but it doesn't make it any more portable to other readers for being so.

Yeah, just like music in the iTunes store. Oh wait, that music is DRM-free and in an open format...

Anyways, this is more about 3rd-party content being usable in the book reader app. PDFs were perfectly readable from day one on the iPhone. All the new announcement means is that there's an easier way to get them on your device and they will be easier to organize and consolidate than before.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[amicusNYCL]

What are you talking about? Is this the same man who described his company as being the market leader in cut-and-paste?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Guy Harris]

Considering the current hate between Adobe and Apple, I'm a bit surprised myself.

Considering that Mac OS X's Preview app has supported PDFs since Day One, and that iPhone^H^H^H^H^H OS has supported showing PDFs since at least 2.0 (maybe even 1.0), I'm not in the least surprised.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[iluvcapra]

The PRS-505 is a good reader, but it has no radios or network connection and its bookstore is horrible. I went Kindle to iPad.

And I'm a Sony employee :)

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[zafayar]

I don't know, but PDF is the most horrible format for eBook. The biggest problem for me is that it does not flow at all nor does it allow any changes. OPS/OPF based eboks are a lot better when used on eBook readers. But then it is just me...

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[blai]

why is iTunes serving me books?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[gyrogeerloose]

Okay, thanks for info.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Homburg]

Really? How do you reflow the text in a PDF so that it fits on a narrower display with larger text?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[EMB Numbers]

Yes. iPhone OS uses the Quartz 2D graphics system which uses the PDF "imaging model."

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF doesnt reflow. Turn your iPad on the side, bam, have to scroll around.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Moofie]

Um, it looks like your Sony thingy retails for $280. I can get a 4G iPhone in two weeks for $199. On what planet is that cheaper? You let me know if you find that intersection, OK?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[gyrogeerloose]

Yes. iPhone OS uses the Quartz 2D graphics system which uses the PDF "imaging model."

Okay, thanks. I kind of figured that it did but I didn't want to say so without confirmation from someone who actually knew what he was talking about.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[BZ]

Display PDF can change the text layout on the fly as you resize the horizontal available space?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[shellbeach]

Actually, people should be in awe - and if you're Amazon you should be shitting your pants. One of the big debates lately in the publishing industry has been in regards to a unified format. Allowing PDF's in the iBooks part of iTunes basically makes that a moot point. Brilliant on Apple's part, and a death knell for traditional publishing.

Um, PDF is not a format for ebook reading. PDFs are designed to display a predefined page layout regardless of the media used to view them; ebook formats are designed to flow text within different media sizes and allow people to change font sizes. At best, with a PDF on the iPhone, you're going to be reflowing the text and ending up with something no better than mobipocket or EPUB; at worst, the reflow won't work and you'll be scrolling around the page with your finger to read the damn thing.

Don't get me wrong -- I'd love to have better PDF support on the iPhone, just not for book reading. And that's probably why iBooks is using EPUB as its book format, incidentally.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[DrXym]

Yeah, just like music in the iTunes store. Oh wait, that music is DRM-free and in an open format...

It is now, it never used to be. Despite being AAC it was blanketed in a DRM envelope.

Anyways, this is more about 3rd-party content being usable in the book reader app. PDFs were perfectly readable from day one on the iPhone. All the new announcement means is that there's an easier way to get them on your device and they will be easier to organize and consolidate than before.

I have no issue with PDF being the choice of reader, but if you think premium book content will be DRM free I have a bridge to sell you. Apple only begrudgingly removed DRM from music and still use it to protect video & apps. Premium book content (i.e. commercial titles) will be wrapped in FairPlay DRM rendering them useless to other devices. Needless to say the iPad won't support other DRM schemes either such as Adobe Digital Editions so it's tough shit if you want to buy something from B&N, or some specialist store.

I'm sure some of the larger online book vendors will produce some hack workaround, serving up pages through a browser or whatever but that is a second rate experience and one which doesn't work if you wish to read somewhere which has no wifi.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[webdog314]

You apparently missed the discussion I was referring to. You are correct about PDF's. They don't reflow well and they are designed for predefined page layout. THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT. There are many types of books that do NOT do well with reflowing their content (technical papers, comic books, etc), and epub is a lousy format to try and force them into. Most books work just fine with epub, but certainly not all, and that was the major debate among publishers. Of course, they all want to make a new proprietary format of their own that everyone ELSE takes up, which is why there is such a push in the open formats community for epub. But including the option for PDF's in the iBook store fills that void and makes the discussion moot. And that, incidentally, is why the new announcement is important.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Lifyre]

Bought mine for less than $250 withOUT a 2 year contract. So yeah I can buy a subsidized phone for $199 and pay the extra off over the next 2 years.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Lifyre]

No Color is a legit complaint, it is an eInk display and last I checked they didn't have a color version out. Does my text books just fine in pdf form, other than the color issues. It doesn't do web, which I like, because it means they can't take my books away like they can on the Kindle. It doesn't do GPS, doesn't need to, it's a freaking BOOK. Of course I can use it for 8 hours a day for 2 weeks between charges so thats a plus.

Oh and it plays music just fine thanks for asking (kills the battery life though).

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Moofie]

...okay, still trying to figure out what you mean by "cheaper" in your language. You bought your contraption for $250, and a subsidized phone for $199, and that's cheaper than the subsidized iPhone?

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[ceoyoyo]

The point is you can't really compare it to an iPad and say it's cheaper. If all you want to do is read books then it's fair but the iPad is a general purpose device that is also a pretty good book reader. Of course it costs more.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[ceoyoyo]

PDFs look great on the iPad. They've been available in other readers on it since day one. Too bad they don't look good on the Sony.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Lifyre]

And all I was addressing was his comments about being a reader not an all purpose device.

Re:This kinda tells about power of your brand...

[Lifyre]

Yeah because they take the rest of the cost out of you in $10 monthly payments over the next 24 months. Or do you not know what the ETF is and why it exists?

Re:iAds

[oodaloop]

Integrated Air Defense System?

Revolutionary

[Beelzebud]

This is going to revolutionize the way we use iphones! Apple has done it again. All Hail Steve!

Sold!

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

What do you mean I have to wait until the 24th to buy!!!!!

Re:Sold!

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I live in Canada, so I don't get screwed by AT&T.
I get screwed by Fido instead, but I am used to that.

Re:Sold!

[Locke2005]

I live in Canada, so I don't get screwed by AT&T. I get screwed by Fido instead, but I am used to that. So the phrase screw the pooch actually makes a lot more sense in Canada?

Re:Sold!

[BlueWaterBaboonFarm]

Except that Telus, Rogers and Bell all carry the iPhone currently. I assume this will remain true for iPhone 4 and have no reason to think otherwise. Also, you can get a Wind SIM card and pop it in your iPhone and go from there.

I'm not saying that the above companies are great, but it's very different than being stuck with only one option, AT&T.

Re:Sold!

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Yeah, Telus and Bell are partnered. I had a party the day I cut Telus out of my life.
Fido is owned by Rogers.
Wind is not available in Vancouver yet.

So in this case I get screwed by the pooch.

One more thing...

[onefriedrice]

This story was posted before the "one more thing" was mentioned, and it's one of the more interesting features: mobile video conferencing!

Re:One more thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sweet! Another innovation from Apple already available from others!

Re:One more thing...

[s73v3r]

And used by who?

Re:One more thing...

[Khyber]

It's not even useful video conferencing.

Camfrog still rules the entire video conference sector, on both price and performance.

100 webcams at once, fuck yes!

Apple - copy everyone else, claim it's revolutionary.

Re:One more thing...

[Animaether]

Well that's the thing, isn't it?

It's not necessarily that Apple truly innovates, or even that it simply does things better (i.e. the iPhone).

It's the fact that Apple is one of those brands that a lot of industries follow.

So once -Apple- starts doing videoconferencing, even just the two-way that's been shown in TV commercials since the day phones with two cameras (or just the 'front' camera) were launched, you'll suddenly see a lot of (renewed) interest in supporting it; including carriers.

Personally, I yawn at these announcements in terms of what they announce. But I applaud the announcements themselves, as it'll light some fire under companies' behinds to kick back into gear.

The one announcement bit that has the opposite effect, is the FarmVille-as-an-app. Not that I care for FarmVille, but one major problem FarmVille players supposedly had was the lack of Flash support on the iPhone (and iPod touch, and iPad) - Flash being what FarmVille needed to run. But Apple made it clear that they would definitely not be supporting Flash, and instead were 'promoting' HTML5.
So will there be an HTML5 FarmVille? Perhaps - but it's clear that at least as far as the announcement goes, it will be an iPhone/Pod Touch/Pad-only app instead.
I believe this is far more the future that Apple envisions, than that developers use HTML5.

But their platform, their store, their firstborns and FarmVille folks' freedom to decide to make it a native app and all that; such are things :)

Re:One more thing...

[osu-neko]

Apple - copy everyone else, claim it's revolutionary.

It's revolutionary when someone else fails to start a revolution with their idea and it just languishes until you take it up and start a revolution in the industry with it.

Re:One more thing...

[Altus]

Wifi only because AT&T will never allow it. They say they are working with carriers which means outside the US it should be available in no time but inside, you can forget about it.

It is iPhone only, but it sounds like Apple is opening up the protocol for others to use. It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

Re:One more thing...

[GweeDo]

"mobile video conferencing"
So long as your bring your Android phone with you for WiFi tethering...I see a new Sprint ad coming...

Re:One more thing...

[ducomputergeek]

Yeah, I'm not so sure about this whole mobile video conferencing. Now instead of the assholes with the earpieces, we're going to see people holding out their arms not paying attention to where they are walking and being even bigger douches. And this goes for Driod users with this features too.

Re:One more thing...

[oji-sama]

And used by who?

I have a workmate who makes Skype calls with N900. But definitely not often...

I don't see myself using video calls in everyday situations for now no matter what phone. But perhaps they do get more common if Apple manages to push them through.

Re:One more thing...

[cowscows]

You do realize that there's a difference between having a webcam sitting on top of your monitor and sending live video from your phone, right? Not to mention that Apple's version of it will probably be about as simple as making a phone call.

Like they said in the keynote, this isn't some new idea, this is a "vision of the future" that predates Apple, but finally starting to become a reality. It's about damn time, too.

Re:One more thing...

[mcfedr]

Used on skype lots, not used on the network because they seriously rip you off for it, 10p per minute for regular calls, 50p for video, and thats not changed since it first came out 5+ years ago. Also not included in contract minutes

Re:One more thing...

[idontgno]

In other words, it doesn't count until Apple does it.

That does sound familiar.

Re:One more thing...

[ducomputergeek]

We use skype a lot for voice conferencing. A lot of times I use my iPhone for it and like the new version that works over 3G. Just about everyone we deal with has a video camera in their laptop top or computer. It rarely ever gets used.

Re:One more thing...

[onefriedrice]

I don't have an iPhone, and I'm not about to buy this one either, but what makes it "interesting" to me is the front-facing camera, a feature not seen on many (any?) widely used phones in the US. They didn't invent mobile video conferencing, but you can be sure that they will be responsible for making it usable and more widely used.

I had to look up what Camfrog is, although having software on my phone to display 100 webcams at once isn't really something that interests me anyway. Thanks for the reference, though.

Re:One more thing...

[jittles]

Hmm the HTC Incredible and HTC Evo already have front cameras if I am not mistaken and are quite capable of doing video conferencing over the data network instead of wifi. Both of them have already been available for at least 3 days. ;)

Re:One more thing...

[oji-sama]

Used on skype lots, not used on the network because they seriously rip you off for it, 10p per minute for regular calls, 50p for video, and thats not changed since it first came out 5+ years ago. Also not included in contract minutes

Aren't Skype to Skype calls free?

Re:One more thing...

[MobyDisk]

It no longer makes sense to have WiFi-only apps now that AT&T has metered data usage. AT&T should actually *want* you to use videoconferencing and tethering, because they will make more money off of it.

Re:One more thing...

[cowscows]

The reality is,(with a few exceptions I'm sure)that for any reasonably complex application, a native app can almost certainly be superior than a web app. If the SDK and API's are even halfway decent, you're going to have way more options programming directly to the OS than you will going through a web browser. Not to mention that native apps can gain easy access to UI elements that are consistent within that OS. These benefits hold true on a desktop computer as well as a phone/tablet/whatever.

Now that doesn't mean that farmville is going to take full advantage of all of that, but at least they have that opportunity. Honestly, if I was in Farmville's position, I'd have released a native iPhone App and also would be working on an HTML5 version. If you've got the resources, you should put your best foot forward on any platform that you think will make you money.

Re:One more thing...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

And used by who?

Why wouldn't having a mobile web-cam be interesting, especially to an IT type? "Hey I'm in the server room, but I can't find the box you're looking for. Here, I'll show you..." Don't people do that with Android already?

Re:One more thing...

[Fear the Clam]

Please. I'm, a FarmVille gamer.

Re:One more thing...

[Dahamma]

Except it's not really "video conferencing", it's more like "video calling". From the looks of it, it's just a point-to-point call between two phones - over wifi only.

Fun feature for some, maybe, but "change the way we communicate forever?" Ives needs to take a deep breath and look around a bit, it's not revolutionary or even NEW...

Re:One more thing...

[willy_me]

No, they make more money when people only use 100MB of their 2GB allowed bandwidth. If the average person starts to use more then it costs them. The only way they could make money is if people were to go over their limit and payed for said bandwidth.

Re:One more thing...

[tyrione]

The reality is,(with a few exceptions I'm sure)that for any reasonably complex application, a native app can almost certainly be superior than a web app. If the SDK and API's are even halfway decent, you're going to have way more options programming directly to the OS than you will going through a web browser. Not to mention that native apps can gain easy access to UI elements that are consistent within that OS. These benefits hold true on a desktop computer as well as a phone/tablet/whatever.

Now that doesn't mean that farmville is going to take full advantage of all of that, but at least they have that opportunity. Honestly, if I was in Farmville's position, I'd have released a native iPhone App and also would be working on an HTML5 version. If you've got the resources, you should put your best foot forward on any platform that you think will make you money.

I can't believe we even have to explain to people that native OS applications will always be more extensible, faster and scalable than Web Apps. What the hell they teach today to this generation continues to come out as a bag of hurt.

Re:One more thing...

[tyrione]

And used by who?

Why wouldn't having a mobile web-cam be interesting, especially to an IT type? "Hey I'm in the server room, but I can't find the box you're looking for. Here, I'll show you..." Don't people do that with Android already?

Especially with the back camera facing the server and your front camera showing you, both in a split view to talk and show the object of the conversation at the same time.

Re:One more thing...

[tyrione]

Wifi only because AT&T will never allow it. They say they are working with carriers which means outside the US it should be available in no time but inside, you can forget about it.

It is iPhone only, but it sounds like Apple is opening up the protocol for others to use. It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

I've got over 14,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to choose from to chat and discuss in video conferencing. The last thing I need is a bunch of morons driving on I-5 trying to chat and look at who they are chatting with, simultaneously. It's bad enough already with just voice.

Re:One more thing...

[AcidPenguin9873]

This is exactly what Apple wants to have happen: every developer now publishes a native iOS version of their app. The lack of Flash support on iOS is merely the tip of the iceberg. If Apple's strategy comes to fruition, iOS becomes the dominant app platform so developers are basically forced to support it - just as Windows was for the past 20 years. And Apple both gets to control what is available for iOS (read: keep out competition), and gets a cut of everything that sells. Read this (this is not my blog, it's mostly about finance and banking and that whole mess, but there are a handful of posts on other topics):

http://baselinescenario.com/2010/05/30/personal-computing-apple-google-2/

It's a pretty scary future indeed, but sadly with iOS's dominance I can't see how to stop the freight train. With PCs, maybe there was enough market pressure for an "open" system where we can run whatever we want. But with smartphones, it's enough of an "appliance" that I don't think anyone will care. And we'll be stuck with Apple's draconian policies for the next 20 years.

Re:One more thing...

[aobie_isu]

HTC Evo that came out June 4th has a front facing camera with the same idea in mind it would seem. http://gizmodo.com/5554198/htc-evo-4g-review-a-war-machine

Re:One more thing...

[Shin-LaC]

It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

There is.

Re:One more thing...

[Wovel]

Doing nothing new, except now making video calls on mobile devices will be common and before it was not...They are also creating an open standard based on their software. (presumably a real open standard and not an Adobe like open standard that changes week to week).

Re:One more thing...

[natehoy]

Simple solution. The phone has two cameras (one front, one back), so you use the front camera to send your image to the other person, and the back camera to take a video feed of what's going on in front of you and display it as an overlay/popup window down in the corner of the screen next to the picture of the person you're nattering on with.

That way you can stare at the screen and still see what is in front of you.

I call it a "front view mirror". Patent, of course, pending.

Re:One more thing...

[initdeep]

yes but only between their devices and only via wifi!!!
yeah
great

walled garden!!!!!

Re:One more thing...

[hondo77]

Your netbook has a camera in it because Apple put one in their laptops a long time ago.

Re:One more thing...

[Stevecrox]

Front facing camera's aren't new. Video calling was the original selling point of 3G networks

Re:One more thing...

[earlymon]

Me, for one.

I've been using mobile videoconferencing since yesterday. I'm on travel with my EVO and Skype videoconferencing our various offices while on travel, without looking for a hotspot or pulling out my laptop.

http://www.fring.com/fring_is/what_is_fring/

Re:One more thing...

[Skuld-Chan]

I had this capability on my Nokia N95 - and it was even supported in apps like Qik, but I never used because webcams for me at least aren't all that useful unless its a meeting or something - and even then its really not essential. I honestly don't need to know what my customers look like :), and I know what my friends look like.

Most people don't want to watch their kids/cat/whatever in realtime I'm guessing either - otherwise youtube wouldn't be nearly as popular.

Re:One more thing...

[Bert64]

Apple don't come out with anything new, they take existing and somewhat failing ideas and create far superior implementations of them...
Mobile web browsing was around long before the iphone, but the iphone was the first phone with a decent usable mobile browser for instance.... Mobile phones could run apps before the iphone, but the app store makes it easy for users to find and install the apps.

Re:One more thing...

[ptbarnett]

Aren't Skype to Skype calls free?

For now. But Skype has announced that will only last through the end of 2010, at least for mobile devices.

Re:One more thing...

[isorox]

It's revolutionary when someone else fails to start a revolution with their idea and it just languishes until you take it up and start a revolution in the industry with it.

We'll see. When 3G first launched in the UK, the carriers tried to sell the phones based around video calling. All the phones had front facing, or swivell, cameras, and threw in lots of minutes. They really didn't take off. If anyone can do it, apple can, but I'm not convinced.

Having said that, skype have since made video calls on computers easy and common, so perhaps the time is right. Gah.

Re:One more thing...

[DJRumpy]

Camfrog:
1) Open browser
2) Sign up for username/password
3) Verify e-mail address, browser username
4) Beg friends to join up so you can chat with them
5) Wait for them to go online and sign in
6) Profit?

iPhone:
1) Hold home key for 2 seconds
2) Voice Command: "Call BlahBlah"
3) Profit?

Re:One more thing...

[Totenglocke]

So once -Apple- starts doing videoconferencing, even just the two-way that's been shown in TV commercials since the day phones with two cameras (or just the 'front' camera) were launched, you'll suddenly see a lot of (renewed) interest in supporting it; including carriers.

Except you're forgetting that the Evo already has this and it was announced that the Evo would have this capability months ago. It's great to see how Apple's policy of making minor changes and calling it a brand new device is causing them to already lag behind when their latest and greatest phone isn't even out yet. The only thing the iPhone 4 has over other phones is the screen resolution and possibly battery life. Maybe Apple will finally start putting out some effort to compete in the next couple of years?

Oh yea, and was anyone else surprised that Apple didn't do the usual bump in storage capacity?

Re:One more thing...

[DJRumpy]

Apple intends to release FaceTime as an open standard.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/07/apple_announces_open_standard_facetime_video_chat_for_iphone_4.html

Should make Video Chats via gadget that much closer to reality.

Re:One more thing...

[Totenglocke]

SSSH! You can't say that! How dare you point out that the Prophet Steve Jobs' latest iDevice from heaven isn't as good as devices currently on sale!

Re:One more thing...

[Achromatic1978]

Yeah, you gotta love the restrictions.

"You know how other phones have had 3G video calling, oh, for nigh on 8 years now... we've got something we think is a bit better..."

"Video calling. You can call anyone. Anyone with another iPhone 4G. Oh, and you both have to be on Wifi. Not bad, huh?"

Yawn, indeed.

Re:One more thing...

[Achromatic1978]

You continue to be a douche bag who doesn't grasp the integration of Apple's solutions.

And you continue to be a douche bag that can't fathom how anyone else might possibly not think that a solution that allows users on Apple's latest and greatest device to video call other users of Apple's latest and greatest device isn't absolutely amazing and revolutionary.

Apple wants an integrated solution, alright. "You. Using Apple software. On Apple hardware. Talking to other Apple users alone."

Ye gods.

Re:One more thing...

[kroyd]

Mobile videoconferencing is great for deaf people, as they can use sign language. (This is the only use of videoconferencing I've observed after quite a few years of pretty common availability here in northern Europe)

Re:One more thing...

[Chroniton]

Wifi only because AT&T will never allow it. It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

Of course, there IS a standard, called Video Share and AT&T has had it for years.
Maybe you're thinking of the other carriers, which still don't support it?

Why does everybody on this site bitch when Microsoft spreads FUD about linux, and then they turn around and do the same of AT&T ?

There are legitimate issues with AT&T, but this ain't one of them. Neither is signal quality in 2010. Enough is enough.

Re:One more thing...

[mspohr]

My Android Nexus One phone already does mobile video conferencing... except that it is not limited to WiFi only... works with Fring and Skype to do mobile video anywhere... using whatever connectivity is available...

Re:One more thing...

[TooMuchToDo]

Yes, but SkypeOut is not. Also, Skype plans on charging for Skype to Skype calls that ride over 3G.

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-mobile/download/iphone-for-skype/

Skype-to-Skype calling on 3G is free until the end of 2010, after that there'll be a small monthly fee.

Re:One more thing...

[MobyDisk]

Then AT&T should have incentive to set the limits at just that right point. Not to disable the feature entirely.

Re:One more thing...

[vlueboy]

It no longer makes sense to have WiFi-only apps now that AT&T has metered data usage. AT&T should actually *want* you to use videoconferencing and tethering, because they will make more money off of it.

Wrong. It is a misconception that millions of data-addicted old customers will suddenly pay for overage charges. Only AT&T's NEW contracts include the fees, so money won't be until iPhone 4 buyers enter their market in the next few weeks.

AT&T's exclusive carriership of the iPhone is ending soon. What will happen to AT&T when Verizon and others are allowed to share iPhone's carrier rights? The new fees are aimed at prepping business models and per-capita cashflow to offset their expected headcount loses.

Re:One more thing...

[topgun966]

LOL I LOVE APPLE FAN BOIZ!~!!!! :P You guys crack me up. Apple didn't innovate ANYTHING as far as video conferencing. They are hurting it if anything. Its limited to iphone 4 to iphone 4 only. AND only on wifi. Ummmm thats call webcam chat. Sure you can use the internet from my Evo so you can video chat lol. Come on iphone fan boys you have to admit, this is pretty weak. Honestly I was hoping for something with more pizazz.

Re:One more thing...

[yyxx]

It's revolutionary when someone else fails to start a revolution with their idea and it just languishes until you take it up and start a revolution in the industry with it.

In what sense of the word has that technology been "languishing"? Other phones have had multitasking, high-resolution cameras and screens, and front-facing video cameras for years and continue to be shipping at many times the volume of Apple's shipments (and a fraction of the price).

Re:One more thing...

[redbaritone]

... one of the more interesting features: mobile video conferencing!

Driving while texting is so 2009, now.

Re:One more thing...

[Gilmoure]

Am picturing an army of one armed zombies shuffling around sidewalks, bumping into things.

Re:One more thing...

[peppepz]

It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

Isn't that standard since 2003 or so? Even the cheapest 3G phones support it.

Re:One more thing...

[yyxx]

Like they said in the keynote, this isn't some new idea, this is a "vision of the future" that predates Apple

Gosh, you mean like this people have already been able to use on their Nokia phones for quite a while? The latest software to support it is Skype/Fring (but it's been available for others before):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GjfMO9lziE

Not to mention that Apple's version of it will probably be about as simple as making a phone call.

Yeah, and it will probably only let you talk to other iPhone users. But, hey, that way you can maintain your illusion that this is something new or unique to Apple. Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now.

Re:One more thing...

[cowscows]

Over the course of an average day, I probably walk by at least a couple hundred people using mobile phones, and I have never once seen someone using video chat on their phone.

Whether or not their phones could technically do it before isn't the point. Whether it's through technology, design, marketing, or some combination of all three, Apple's definitely got a history of taking these sorts of things mainstream. And that's pretty interesting.

Re:One more thing...

[s73v3r]

They've had video calling, but nobody used it.

Re:One more thing...

[s73v3r]

Eh, if I'm trying to show the other person something somewhat important, I'm probably just going to want all the video quality/bandwidth showing them that. They probably know what my ugly face looks like already.

Re:One more thing...

[mr_josh]

I think -if I can add to part of your point- that Apple plays a really important part in the industry, one that Apple-haters (or maybe, simply, avoiders should really be thankful for.

Apple is a marketing powerhouse, this we all know. And while at their core, Apple's phones aren't hugely more revolutionary than some others (and in some instances, they ARE unfathomably better), competing phones have to have a feature set and level of overall quality and functionality that are amazing, in order just to differentiate themselves from Apple- or maybe, just to get their product out from behind the Apple smokescreen.

Don't get me wrong, I am an iPhone fan (I don't have one because of AT&T and my unwillingness to pay $70/month for a phone), but I think now that several years in iPhone production, the rules of the game are becoming clear: if you're going up against Apple, you've got to bring a product that is better than the iPhone at everything, because its image factors in to its user experience, and that's a tremendous hurdle to overcome.

Re:One more thing...

[aristotle-dude]

It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

There is.

Nope, sorry but nowhere on that page does it describe a universal standard for video calls. UMTS is another name for HSPA and it is the transport mechanism for 3G data on GSM networks.

Re:One more thing...

[Totenglocke]

The last thing I need is a bunch of morons driving on I-5 trying to chat and look at who they are chatting with, simultaneously. It's bad enough already with just voice.

Exactly! It pisses me off when I see some S.O.B. driving with another person in the car and they're talking to each other - that is like, way dangerous man! And I can't believe that the government hasn't banned stereos in cars as well - that's just an unnecessary distraction that kills people man! Damn stereo corporations buying off the government at the expense of human life!

Disclaimer: Given the fact that some people don't have a sense a humor, it should be noted that the above is not said in a serious tone

Re:One more thing...

[Space cowboy]

Yeah, and it will probably only let you talk to other iPhone users. But, hey, that way you can maintain your illusion that this is something new or unique to Apple. Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now.

Except that it will be released as an open standard. But, hey, that way you can keep thinking anything Apple does is evil. Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now ?

Simon

Re:One more thing...

[thaig]

Not it isn't. :-) There's nothing to it except being useful which video calling isn't.

Re:One more thing...

[aristotle-dude]

Wifi only because AT&T will never allow it. It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

Of course, there IS a standard, called Video Share and AT&T has had it for years. Maybe you're thinking of the other carriers, which still don't support it?

It requires a complex set of video call servers whereas this standard would be TCP/IP based and easier to implement without carrier involvement. Carriers may eventually allow it on their networks but it is based on standard IP transfer rather than some GSM standard that only works on UTMS/HSPA.

Re:One more thing...

[VisceralLogic]

Well, AT&T may allow it, but you'll eat through your non-unlimited data plan pretty quickly if you use it much.

Re:One more thing...

[Slur]

AT&T will never allow it

Uh, you do realize the future extends into infinity, don't you?

Re:One more thing...

[yyxx]

Except that it will be released as an open standard.

So, Apple ignores existing standards, puts together some protocol out of existing technologies, including the patented h.264, builds a proprietary product around it, and then promises to release what they call an "open standard" some time in the future. Pardon me for not getting excited.

But, hey, that way you can keep thinking anything Apple does is evil.

No, not everything Apple does is evil, just some of the things they do. And not everything they do is technically inferior, just some of the things they do.

Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now?

No preconceptions, just business as usual for Apple.

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

The camera on the front might prove mostly useless even to those rare people who videocall.

See, the most popular usage of that feature seems to be...showing somebody your surroundings. Front camera is actually horrible for that (and it's even worse if given phone can't switch to using backside camera for videocall)

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

That's actually quite close already to the only semi-common way in which people sometimes do use videocalling - showing their surroundings to the other party. But that not only doesn't require front camera - it's worse with it (if the phone doesn't allow for using back camera for videocalls)

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

UMTS videocalling is as easy as voice calling - you initiate normal voicecall, and if there's a possibility of establishing videcall with the other party, the option will be there (just like Apple does it, apparently)

If you think not many mobile phones, even in the US, had UMTS videocalling then you probably didn't look for it much (well, those front facing cameras are hard to notice actually; and largely useless BTW, the only semi-common usage scenario of videocalling turned out to be...showing your surroundings to the other party, and back camera is better for that)

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

You do realize that UMTS videocalling is available for better part of the last decade, right? With hundreds millions of devices already out there by this point.

Oh, and it's as simple as making a phone call...because it is just a phonecall (you call somebody, and if videocall can be established, the option of switching to it during the call will be there)

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

We already have a widely deployed mobile standard, and one working better than this Apple solution in search of a problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videophone#Current_usage

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

There are already hundreds millions of devices supporting mobile videocalling standard, one that is better than this Apple thing, too. That's not common to you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videophone#Current_usage

Re:One more thing...

[iluvcapra]

But with smartphones, it's enough of an "appliance" that I don't think anyone will care. And we'll be stuck with Apple's draconian policies for the next 20 years.

Who the hell cared about Windows being the dominant monoculture, until the virus epidemics? It's STILL the dominant monoculture, and if you want your application used outside of the US or commercially you must support it. Nobody cares even now.

What you're trying to say is: "With PCs, there has never been significant pressure for open systems, and 10 years of widespread availability of open software, operating systems and hardware has made almost zero impact on the open/proprietary share of platforms. But with any information technology I don't think any user will care. We'll will be stuck with the App Store agency business model for the next 20 years." Just as we were stuck with the anti-competitive "Windows Tax" Microsoft rentier model before it.

Stupid users, making developers lives difficult again. If only they knew how to flash their own ROMs and sideload hacked firewall configs onto their cellphone, they would be so much happier!

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

Hundreds of millions of UMTS mobile phones already in the wild:
1) Make an ordinary call
2) If the other party has a phone supporting videocalling, the option of switching to it during voicecall will be there

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

Video chats via an open standard are already a reality for many years, on hundreds millions of UMTS mobile phones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videophone#Current_usage

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

Millions of people already have mobile phones capable of easy videocalling - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videophone#Current_usage

Re:One more thing...

[DJRumpy]

"The first national consumer UMTS networks launched in 2002 with a heavy emphasis on telco-provided mobile applications such as mobile TV and video calling. The high data speeds of UMTS are now most often utilised for Internet access: experience in Japan and elsewhere has shown that user demand for video calls is not high, and telco-provided audio/video content has declined in popularity in favour of high-speed access to the World Wide Web - either directly on a handset or connected to a computer via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared or USB."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Mobile_Telecommunications_System#Features

A bit misleading to indicate that all of these hundreds of millions of phones are ready for video calling, when few actually implement it, fewer folks actually use it (and it's trending downwards), and even fewer still implement it well.

Perhaps the inclusion of this feature in a major phone which will literally work with a click of a touch screen will make this more common and desirable to the masses, much like the iPad is doing for Tablets.

Time will tell...

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

It is a standard of the specs; hundreds millions of UMTS mobile phones used right now already support easy videocalling (and better one than this new Apple "solution" in search of a problem). I even have one basic "feature phone" which does videocalls despite not having front camera ffs... (which is actually more sensible than it sounds - it turns out that the only semi-common usage of mobile videocalls is to show the other party your surroundings)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videophone#Current_usage

Re:One more thing...

[JAlexoi]

It's revolutionary when someone else fails to start a revolution with their idea and it just languishes until you take it up and start a revolution in the industry with it.

They may be revolutionary, but their outright lying that they invented stuff is just too much. See multitouch quote in 2007, the last time they presented something truly revolutionary.

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

They are ready; virtually every UMTS mobile phone supports videocalling, even if it doesn't have front facing camera (I have one such simple phone) - which isn't much of a problem, it turns out, since the only semi-common usage scenario is for people to...show their surroundings to the other party.

You saying that the usage is trending down ever since the novelty factor wore out - that's misleading. It just shows that mobile videocalling is generally a poor idea, which looks good mostly only in SciFi.
Despite many major phones / phone families already having this feature, and already working " "with a click of a touch screen"/button.

Re:One more thing...

[DJRumpy]

Just as the Tablet was a poor idea? You argument sounds good on paper, but it takes a good implementation of technology before the masses will want it. Although it might excite the geek crowd, until it's put out in a user friendly fashion that is easy enough for you mother, father, or grandmother to use, it's largely irrelevant to the mass consumer.

Just because a phone implements a video calling technology, doesn't mean that the phone you are calling also supports it. Besides, UMTS is the base technology. It still relies on the application layer to provide the video compression/decompression technology. This new open standard by Apple may very well grease the wheels so that you no longer need a 3rd party app to accomplish this across a wide variety of phones.

Re:One more thing...

[fiannaFailMan]

Camfrog still rules the entire video conference sector, on both price and performance.

"Rules?" So how come I never fucking heard of it until right this minute then, hmmm?

Re:One more thing...

[AHuxley]

And its seems to be a locked in network webcam too.
No flash like webpage broadcasting or other chat apps?
Just via ichat (aim) vs skype/msn/yahoo ect?

Re:One more thing...

[zuperduperman]

> My Android Nexus One phone already does mobile video conferencing.

Since the N1 only has a rear camera that must be quite a craptastic experience. You either see them or they see you, but never both at the same time?

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

Look, you obviously were unaware even of the fact that UMTS videocalling exists and you are surely just as unaware of how easy and straightforward it is
But it turns out it's just a gimmick, in the case of mobile device. People ususally at most did a few videocalls when it was a novelty for them and...moved on (and the same people can use, say, Skype video regularly - but it makes sense, when they sit comfortably in a private place, etc.)

Just because a phone implements a video calling technology, doesn't mean that the phone you are calling also supports it.

How...the frak...iPhone...is supposed...to improve that? O_o

And again, you just show how you are unaware of how straightforward UMTS videocalling is - it's integrated into phones, into their voice calling funcionality! If you inititate a voicecall with any UMTS phone that also supports videocalling, the option to switch during call will be there! (and to switch back to normal voicecall for that matter, too; all without hanging up)

If you throw "the tablet", why not Apple TV?

Re:One more thing...

[mspohr]

If all you want to do is stare at the phone, then it would be difficult with only one camera. I would think it would be more useful to show people what is going on around you, not your fat nose. However, if you want two cameras, there are lots of different phones with two cameras and video conference capability that have been available for years from Nokia and others. However, it is good to see that Apple if finally catching up to the rest of the market... now all they need is a memory card, OLED screen, tethering, flash, and a bigger display. It could also lose a little weight to get into the top class.

(Please spare everyone the rant on how you don't really need or want these extra features or try to explain that Apple really has tethering except that it doesn't have tethering. We don't live in the reality distortion field.)

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

Well, if those people insist on not getting even cheap BT headset so they won't have to operate the car with one hand... (which is probably not that big of a problem in itself; but I noticed that people tend to have, also when driving, a reflex of instantly trying to pick up their dropped phone (it will inevitably happen from time to time) - which even in stationary car can be a bit more problematic than usual; in a moving car it gets really dangerous, if those people are unable to stop that reflex)

BTW, talking while driving apparently can be much more distracting than music. That shuld be covered during driver training anyway...

And I mostly wouldn't care about those things (mostly - they can mean higher insurance on everybody and general economic loss; or, rarely, those people playing the pity card and demadning care from others - if they merely damaged themselves severely, without dying). If not for the needless increase of risk for other people on the road.

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

"May eventually" vs. one widely supported "GSM" (as in, what people perceive to be part of GSM association) standard - which is used by vast majority of the world. Used by iPhone, too (though without utilising videocall standard...); plus I wouldn't be surpised if hypothetical "Verizon version" of iPhone were to show up only together with ongoing LTE adoption by Verizon (LTE which is essentially also a "GSM association" thing)

And if the speed of "IP transfer" is sufficient for videocall, you're in UMTS coverage area anyway.

Re:One more thing...

[Khyber]

Gee, video calling isn't useful?

How about being at my Australian test site and having to give live updates to my UK partners? I'll guarantee you the shed won't have internet but it'll have cell service.

I think you seriously underestimate the usefulness of video conferencing.

Re:One more thing...

[Khyber]

It's a shame you seem to be the only one with half a clue in this entire conversation.

Re:One more thing...

[DJRumpy]

Why would you want to have video chats with complete strangers? The iPhone will be useful for video calls to people you actually know, on a PHONE. Camfrog is an IM/Video app for a PC, which requires both to have the same software, and a nick via Camfrog. You also forgot to mention that there is no smartphone version that actually supports video. Kind of a big gotcha considering the topic at hand.

Re:One more thing...

[gyrogeerloose]

In other words, it doesn't count until Apple does it.

Incorrect interpretation. No matter who does it, it doesn't count until it's done right. And these days, when it comes to doing it right, Apple has been on a roll.

Re:One more thing...

[cowscows]

Maybe it is that simple. But then again I've never seen anybody using it. I've never seen anybody even showing off the fact that their phone can do it.

Perhaps videocalling is just plain not useful or interesting or fun. I guess we'll find out shortly, because if there's anybody who can get average people to use more phone features, it's Apple.

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

When looking at average, Apple is certainly far from making people use more phone features.

Anyway, you will surely see a small craze for some time; just like there was with 3G videocalls. But it passed, it's just not a good idea. As you said, you've never seen anybody using it (people "show off" features of their phone at your place?...)

Re:One more thing...

[Mr Bubble]

Wow. I think I will go to a dark room and off myself. Seriously dude, lighten up. The market can't be compared to the PC market of 20 years ago. The start up and material costs are waaay lower for hardware these days - especially in the mobile space. Unlike a PC, a user changes his/her cellphone frequently. The cost of smart phone software is minuscule compared to Windows software - people don't lose huge investments when they switch platforms.There are plenty of companies competing with Apple. If it turns out to be the death march you make it out to be, people will switch to HP's Pre or Android or Windows Mobile Genuine Phone Series 7 or whatever.

Re:One more thing...

[Achromatic1978]

The iPhone will be useful for video calls to people you actually know, on a PHONE.

Who also happen to have bought an iPhone 4G, and who also happen to be connected to a Wifi network with said iPhone, as are you, when you want to call them. Easily as onerous as your list of caveats for the alternative. (But I'm not entirely surprised, as you seemed to be blindsided by the concept of standardized UMTS video calling...)

Re:One more thing...

[Serious Callers Only]

It's certainly nothing new, and Apple's hyperbole is frankly a little silly (or sickening, if you expect honesty from them I guess), however there are three things that might help this take off -

• Free - 3G videocalls cost money
• Ubiquity - having the ability to do free video chats on tens of millions of devices
• An open protocol - that means video chats with people on Nokia phones (for example) if Nokia choose to support it, or Skype, or Google

I agree this isn't in any way revolutionary or new, but it is an interesting step from Apple, and one I might use for chats with family and possibly some friends if I get one of the new phones and the protocol takes off. 3G video calling was always just a way to screw more money out of consumers, whereas this is free and internet based. I did expect at least interop with iChat, but presumably that will come soon.

Re:One more thing...

[Nick Ives]

Front facing video cameras have been around on phones for about 5ys. The reason nobody uses them is because you look like a tool if you video chat to your phone in public.

Given that the whole point of of the iPhone is to wave it around as much as possible, I expect it'll be a hit on that platform.

Re:One more thing...

[Nick Ives]

It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

There is. Phones in Europe have been doing video calls for years.

Re:One more thing...

[pmontra]

There is a standard for video calls on phones. It's the one that all 3G phones use since 2002. Actually, I've got phones that can do video calls since 2003. Obviously Apple tought that going their proprietary way would let them make more money.

Re:One more thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on. In Japan, NTT Docomo started offering Video calls on their cell phones in 2001! That's 9 years ago. Nowadays, video on cell phones is a trivially common feature in Japan. Nobody would brag about it. The few phones that lack it tend to be foreign "smartphones".

Apple are marketing geniuses and are fairly good at making things simple (by virtue of locking everything down and leaving out some of the most complex bits). But they're not a tenth as innovative as they want you to think (and the Apple cultists DO believe).

Re:One more thing...

[Maury Markowitz]

We'll see. When 3G first launched in the UK, the carriers tried to sell the phones based around video calling. All the phones had front facing, or swivell, cameras, and threw in lots of minutes. They really didn't take off. If anyone can do it, apple can, but I'm not convinced.

And, like so many other claimed features, they were largely unusable. Tried one on Bell, gave up.

Maury

Re:One more thing...

[Maury Markowitz]

They may be revolutionary, but their outright lying that they invented stuff is just too much. See multitouch quote in 2007, the last time they presented something truly revolutionary.

I don't recall anyone claiming that Apple invented this stuff, except the Apple haters. This has a long history. Haters have stated that Apple claimed to invent...

1) the mouse
2) the GUI
3) USB
4) touch screen phones
5) multi-touch
6) an endless list...

Yet Apple has never claimed to invent any of these. No, it's just the haters making these claims, so they can then claim that Apple fanbois are full of crap.

The only thing I can recall them inventing in the last little bit is magsafe. And thank god for that, it's saved my laptop about a dozen crashes now.

Maury

Re:One more thing...

[Vectormatic]

my 3 year old nokia already has a front facing camera, and is capable of video-calls. I never did it, because i dont care about it, but the technology has been around for ages...

Not to mention that wifi-only is increbidly lame, what do we have all these high speed wireless technologies for anyway?

Re:One more thing...

[natehoy]

No, I wasn't being clear.

You use the camera facing away from you on your own phone to show YOU where you are going. That way, you don't have to take your eyes off the screen for a second. :)

Re:One more thing...

[DJRumpy]

Connecting to WiFi is as simple as walking into a WiFi signal. It will prompt you as soon as you try to do anything over the network, and ask if you want to connect, even a secured network will auto-accept an iPhone user if it is an AT&T provided WiFi hotspot. I would not equate that to the same thing as going to some service web site, creating a nick, searching for your friend, and hoping/waiting while they join, and then starting a video chat, all while ignoring the fact that there is no PHONE equivalent of the Camfrog app that does video.

As to UTMS, I'm very well aware of what it is, and also aware of the fact that no one uses it, which is the point of this sub-thread. Apple tends to make failed or failing technologies due to lack of interest, interesting and useable to the masses, just like they did with the iPad, and the Smartphone. Granted there were devices before these came along, but the tablets were failing miserably on all fronts, and the smart phones were downright painful to use, especially when it came to browsing, music purchasing/syncing, and applications.

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

I got you what you mean...

And that's why I said "close" - because showing your surroundings using back camera, with preview, ends up essentially the same (and I is a more one-way deal, as far attention goes, anyway; so you're more likely to focus on the preview / the scenery "behind phone")

Re:One more thing...

[painandgreed]

It's a pretty scary future indeed, but sadly with iOS's dominance I can't see how to stop the freight train.

Well, they could start by coming out with a superior product. Android's out there and doing well. For that matter, I so no possibility of an Apple monoculture so long as they are AT&T only. Apple is practically forcing people to buy and try other people's similar products by limiting themselves to one telcom in the US.

Re:One more thing...

[jfanning]

Nearly everyone in Europe and Asia has had video conferencing on their phones for over 5 years and funnily enough it is just as easy as making a call, because it is just making a call!

RDF strikes again.

Re:One more thing...

[jfanning]

My, the RDF is strong here.

There is a standard for making video calls. It is part of the 3GPP specifications and has been since before 2000. And it is supported by every 3G phone with a front camera. Every one, that is, except for the iPhone.

Re:One more thing...

[Internal Modem]

The Inc does not have a front facing camera. The Evo will not sell enough phones that you can to talk to another Evo user unless you buy it for them

Re:One more thing...

[sznupi]

Hundreds of millions of other devices already use an open standard.

Re:One more thing...

[thaig]

I has been available for years on my desktop and I don't use it. I communicate with people all over the world every hour of the day - I've tried it and given up bothering. It is on my existing phone (not an iPhone) but I don't use it.

And nobody else has either and they've had it on their phones for years. In fact since IM I actually make fewer voice calls.

It's a gimmick.

Re:One more thing...

[isorox]

They were unusable because the act of walking down the road staring at the phone was unworkable. There was also the fact you looked stupid, and without headphones both sides of the conversation were public.

Re:One more thing...

[farble1670]

skype is clearly on a monetization war path. skype 3g was released for android, but only for verizon-based devices where they are getting a kickback. skype 3g for the iphone has an extra monthly charge for the privilege of using it over 3g. the 3g charge is almost double what it otherwise costs for an unlimited US calling plan.

IMHO, skype has jumped the shark. time for someone new to come in and eat their lunch.

Re:One more thing...

[JAlexoi]

A direct quote by Steve Jobs at Macworld 2007! you fanboy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JZBLjxPBUU
Steve Jobs: "And we have invented a new technology called multi-touch..."
Maybe you should get your facts right...

Lord Jobs ships a new model

[Locke2005]

Let a new round of religious wars commence!

Re:Lord Jobs ships a new model

[Anonymous Coward]

Begun the phone wars have... again

Re:iAds

[ircmaxell]

Wow, those are conservative odds as well. I would have put it somewhere around G to 1...

What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[tepples]

If they had any intention of trying to sue over something like that, Nintendo would've been in court already.

For those playing at home, IOS4 is a really old version of the Cisco router operating system and a version of the Wii kernel used to load the initial contents of a Wii console's flash chip. But then what abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[Pojut]

But then what abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

B.N.C.S.

Actually wait...

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[Cro Magnon]

But then what abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

Considering that I've seen an abbreviation for Special High Intensity Training, I'd say there's not much that isn't taken.

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[Hatta]

My dad worked at Cornell University when they were trying to adopt NT. Apparently they had some laughs when deciding what to call the mailing list.

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[Mr Z]

Wait, didn't Apple already step on Cisco's trademarks before with the iPhone?

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[Ogive17]

We had a homebrew tool created by a guy in our department that we lovlingly named "FART" Forecast Analysis Review Tool.

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[PatPending]

While there was no listing for FART, there was one for BARF.

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[HockeyPuck]

Cisco has agreed to license the iOS trademark to Apple for use as the name of Apple's operating system for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The license is for use of the trademark only and not for any technology.

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[CoryD]

The first college I attended was the University of North Texas. The call letters were never given normally. K-Unt would have been a great college radio station though.

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[Duradin]

University of Minnesota, Morris has KUMM (89.7 FM).

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[failedlogic]

What's the matter? Its not trademarked. :)

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[mjwx]

In Perth, Western Australia there was going to be a "Curtain University of New Technology" before someone figured out the acronym and dropped "New" from the name.

And the perennial favourite, the OGC logo

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[mqduck]

But then what abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

LOVER
TOKE
SNUFF
COKE (though it is the Coca-Cola Bottling Company's stock symbol)
BUZZ
TWEAK
YHWH
ORGASM
SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS

Thank you for giving me something to do for an hour, BTW.

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[JohhnyTHM]

A long time ago, I went to Shirecliffe College. Someone decided it would be a good idea to rename it Shirecliffe Higher Institute for Technology and Education. Aparently they got as far as having the signs made before someone noticed...

Re:What abbreviation isn't taken nowadays?

[Dr Max]

Our IT department is called SPARQ. Very few people actually know what it stands for, and that’s properly for the best. SPARQ = Silly People Asking Retarded Questions.

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

I'm glad to see the iPhone getting a serious upgrade in the hardware department, but the walled garden is still enough to keep me from ever owning one. Android is teh place to be, at least for me.

Re:iAds

[Anonymous Coward]

Never tell me the odds!

Re:Great features but...

[catbutt]

It's WiFi only "for 2010"

Re:iAds

[Dalzhim]

It was a typo... It's supposed to be Aids.

Re:iAds

[Graff]

It's an optional thing for a developer to include in his app. I can imagine that there will be free apps that use iAdd and pay versions that don't have ads. Just use the version without ads and you are good. If there's no version without ads then don't use the app!

That's basically how it works now except Apple is providing developers with an easy and good-looking way to include ads in their app without having to cut deals on the side. Pretty much win-win for Apple, app developers and iOS users.

Re:Great features but...

[tim_gladding]

Looks to only be over wifi. AT&T's network couldn't handle the data.

The iPhone has lift it's walled garden!

[bjartur]

Now you can switch your default search provider to Bing!

Who can I buy from

[IndustrialComplex]

So Apple is out, as well as Sony.
I agree with your sentiment, I really do want some of these products, but I'm fed up with the companies that present them.

I'm in the market for several new products:

1. Smartphone
I want to ditch AT&T and would like something that is as flexible as my older generation jailbroken iPhone. (VNC, Strong developer base, etc)

2. eReader
Though eInk displays are pretty much all the same, anyone have any luck with an eReader that isn't Sony but lets you have flexibility with the device?

3. A non-rented media recorder
ie: Non-Tivo and non-TV company owned. Is MythTV really the only option right now?

4. Unicorns.
I mean, as long as I'm asking I might as well get it all out there.

Re:Who can I buy from

[key.aaron]

2. IREX DR800SG - You can port over any program you can imagine to it if you are so inclined, it has an awesome screen, and its PDF capabilities are pretty good too (getting better with new revisions of firmware).

Curiously though it is no longer on Best Buy... no clue why.

Re:Who can I buy from

[nofx_3]

"4. Unicorns.
I mean, as long as I'm asking I might as well get it all out there."

There's an app for that:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/robot-unicorn-attack/id374791544?mt=8

As long as you don't mind your unicorns being of the robotic type.

Re:Who can I buy from

[DrgnDancer]

Wait. There's a Robotic Unicorn Attack iPhone game? Crap. There goes all my productivity, like, ever. Dammit.

Re:Who can I buy from

[Dragonslicer]

1. Smartphone I want to ditch AT&T and would like something that is as flexible as my older generation jailbroken iPhone. (VNC, Strong developer base, etc)

The Nokia N900 is nice. You can get one from Newegg for $500, and T-Mobile plans are $20/month cheaper if you don't get a subsidized phone and a contract, so it's pretty much a free phone over the normal two-year span if you can handle the upfront cost. The screen is almost as good as the new iPhone at 800x480, has X Terminal installed by default, and a VNC viewer is available in the repository. If you use x11vnc on the server side, though, you'll need to use the -skip_dups option. I haven't had to enable root on mine, but I believe it only takes one command (which is actually documented and supported by Nokia) in the terminal.

Re:Who can I buy from

[coredog64]

I'm not sure why you want to hate on the Sony reader.

The reader platform is one of the few places where Sony consistently does the right thing (tm).

When they wanted to move from a proprietary format to ePub for their online bookstore, they offered a better-than-free firmware upgrade for my out-of-support PRS-500. (Better than free because they paid for overnight express mail to and from the Sony service center. It was out of my hands for 5 days). In addition to ePub, it added mass storage mode which in turn made the device accessible from x64 machines.

When the firmware update turned out to have some consequences for battery life, they again paid for overnight express mail to and from the service center. When I got it back, included in the box was a $10 credit for the Sony bookstore.

Sony has complied with the GPL from day one on the PRS series, offering up the code without any bullshit like you might see from other large name vendors. Not only that, but they created a fairly "hack" friendly device.

Finally, Sony uses ePub without any proprietary extensions, which means I can download DRM'ed ePubs from my local library and read them on my Sony reader. Or I can buy books from the Sony store and read them in ADE on my PC. And they're fairly lenient in allowing multiple devices to have access to the same account.

Re:Who can I buy from

[Pherlin]

3:

BeyondTV, if you can deal with the lack of future versions, or SageTV if you are more worried about that sort of thing. If you want to do Cable/Satellite HD there's a significant Up-Front investiment involved (Hauppauge HD-PVR and the headaches it involves,) But the level of freedom you can get with such a setup is liberating.

I've run BeyondTV since 2004 and have been a satisfied customer the whole time. They don't release new versions, but it works well enough (HD Support isn't perfect, but it works for me.) Placeshifting is available, both in the home and over the internet. My current setup involves 3 PCs, one carrying the centralized set of tuners. I can add an additional local client for about 30$ a pop, no guide fees, and setup is easy as pie. Plus there's the DVD Burning Capability. All in all it's a seamless setup, but it's not hard.

I've heard good things about SageTV, but it doesn't have placeshifting as a standard feature. It is, however, supposedly easier than MythTV to setup.

Keep in mind, your initial tuner setup -WILL- set you back. But it's far more affordable, relatively speaking. When I got my first setup I paid 200$ for an External USB 2.0 Tuner. Nowadays you can get the HD-PVR for around that, and USB NTSC/ATSC tuners will set you back less than 100.

Re:Who can I buy from

[IndustrialComplex]

I'm not sure why you want to hate on the Sony reader.

I don't hate on their reader. I hate on Sony.

Rootkits in CDs, built to spec DVD players that force me to watch 5 previews and 2 copyright warnings and disable just skipping to the damned DVD menu (Or perish the thought, just playing the damned movie), Removing other OS from the PS3 and since the upgrades are required for new games, effectively banning me from new games if I want to keep linux on my PS3.

Their products are generally sound, and their eReaders are very nice, but the company is not one I care to send my money to based on their anti-consumer practices. (That ignores their whole music-branch which for their participation in the absurd copyright infringement lawsuits means I will not even go to the concert of a band that is signed with them)

Re:Who can I buy from

[sincewhen]

Unicorns?

You should watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPDUFuQHQZo&feature=youtube_gdata

Re:Who can I buy from

[tchapin]

Take a look at SageTV Media Center (sagetv.com). It's a great mult-platform DVR / media center. It's easy to set up and use, has great hardware support, has an active user community, and has a nice low-power hardware extender. It's also reasonably priced.

Re:Who can I buy from

[IronChef]

2. eReader
Though eInk displays are pretty much all the same, anyone have any luck with an eReader that isn't Sony but lets you have flexibility with the device?

I am not exactly sure what your needs are, but with the free ebook manager app Calibre you can put pretty much any of your content on your Sony reader.

If you are looking for more flexibility in how to use stuff you buy from the Sony store, it won't help with that. But you can put your own stuff (and news from the web) on the Sony Reader or many other readers pretty easily with Calibre.

http://calibre-ebook.com/

(Just a happy user.)

There are also non-Sony, non-Amazon, non-B&N e-ink readers, like the Cybook.

http://www.bookeen.com/en/

(I don't have one, it's just the first one that came to mind.)

Re:Who can I buy from

[AntiDragon]

Unfortunately, if you're serious about boycotting a company then that means avoiding the good as well as the bad. If you say "I'll never but from Sony again. Except this eReader" then you're not really serious about boycotting.

I agree - their e-Readers are great devices and I'd be very happy to own one but, like the grandparent, I've been burnt and put off by the antics of other parts of the company to ever hand them any of my hard earned money again.

Re:Who can I buy from

[IndustrialComplex]

Unfortunately, if you're serious about boycotting a company then that means avoiding the good as well as the bad. If you say "I'll never but from Sony again. Except this eReader" then you're not really serious about boycotting.

Exactly, Sony's eReaders have been pretty much well reviewed. If it wasn't for them being a Sony product, I probably would have purchased one.

Sometimes it isn't easy to participate in a boycott. In fact, the best boycotts are those that can persist through inconvenience.

Re:Who can I buy from

[feepness]

I don't hate on their reader. I hate on Sony.

Not buying a good product from a huge company because another division in the huge company did something stupid is like hating your local firefighters because the police in another town in a different state were corrupt.

If you don't buy anything from the company they won't figure out the difference between what they did right and what they did wrong.

Re:Who can I buy from

[seebs]

eReader: I'm loving the nook. I dunno if it's flexible enough for whatever you want, but:

* I plug it into a Mac or Linux or anything, and it shows up as disk space I can copy files to.
* The files are in a standard format that does not require or suggest any kind of DRM.
* All the Baen free library books and their for-pay ebooks work with it.
* It reads books real good.

Seriously, I don't care about anything else it could potentially do; what it does is fine.

Re:iAds

[El_Muerte_TDS]

No, it's "inter-Active Denial System"

Re:Great features but...

[s73v3r]

Video calls are only on WiFi for now.

Price is $199 16GB / $299 32GB

[Anonymous Coward]

Price is $199 16GB / $299 32GB. AT&T will upgrade you at subsidized cost if your contract expires at any time in 2010, and the 2 year contract is added to your existing contract. Preorders begin June 15, and US sales begin June 24. International shipping begins rolling out in July, but some countries will have to wait 'til August or September.

Re:Price is $199 16GB / $299 32GB

[sqrt(2)]

The actual price is $599 for the 16GB and $699 for the 32GB. That's the cost of the hardware without a contract, that's the price people should be quoting because I think it's the most relevant. That's the reality of upgrading for the vast majority of current iPhone users, even with AT&T allowing customers to renew 6 months early.

AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

[Joe The Dragon]

AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

Re:AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, do ads use up your data? That seems like a bad situations, but it's not clear how it could be avoided.

Re:AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

[Taliesan999]

No, the new iPhone features would have killed AT&T's network had they not put something in place to limit usage or at least make people aware of how much data they're using. This is actually a discount if you don't use that much data.

There's still get unlimited Wi-Fi access with AT&T's plan.

I'm assuming you actually want to be able to make a call with your phone in SF and NY?

There is a FINITE amount of bandwidth available in the 3G spectrum that AT&T uses and you can only improve the density of 3G access points by so much.

Re:AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

[tftp]

So, do ads use up your data? That seems like a bad situations, but it's not clear how it could be avoided.

It's very easy to avoid. I have no Web browsing on my phone.

Re:AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

[Taliesan999]

So, switch to T-Mobile.. they currently offer an unlimited data plan over 3G... really, I'm using it with the Nexus One I got from the Google I/O conference.

Should work on a jailbroken just iPhone fine. Oh, upset you need to jailbreak it... locked to AT&T... upset about that... well DUH, you bought an iPhone.

From what I understand, the unlimited contracts already in place continue at least until the contract is up. That's what you signed up for... AT&T doesn't have to extend that contract any more than you do.

Most people DON'T use anywhere near as much as 2Gb on the iPhone... a lot of people can actually save money.

Over the air bandwidth IS a limited resource in some densely populated (or densely populated by iPhone/smartphone users) areas in the US, regardless of how upset you feel about it, especially when that over the air bandwidth INCLUDES the bandwidth used to make 3G voice calls.

The new iOS4, background processing, music services, uploading HD video would likely be the reason that AT&T have implemented the new caps. You seriously expect them to invest heavily in a 3G network, coming under increasing strain, but with them getting the same amount of money from subscribers?

Oh and yes, I used to run a small ISP in Australia, where we had to pay for every byte going the provider of our upstream network and I'll tell you (as every ISP in Australia likely will) that when bandwidth is a LIMITED resource (and you either have a sunk cost, or pay to increase that bandwidth) you have to price accordingly.

Re:AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

[sqrt(2)]

AT&T is incredibly profitable, they have been making record profits every year since the iPhone was first released. I expect a business like that to scale up as they add more customers, NOT find new ways to charge more for less. Demand for bandwidth will ONLY increase, and fundamentally that's what AT&T is a provider of. If there business plan does not include a substantial investment in the ability to provide for the future needs of their growing customer base then they are failing in their primary function as an enterprise that sells bandwidth. You can make a ton of money in the short term with hacks and social manipulation (caps and higher rates), trying to get people to adjust their behaviors and use less bandwidth, but that can't work forever. So they save money today by not building an extra tower or upgrading their infrastructure but that extra profit is at the cost of not being able to meet the growing needs of tomorrow.

Re:AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

[kthreadd]

Good thing then that it sells in 87 other countries as well.

Re:AT&T NEW 2GB data plan will kill this.

[Lars T.]

So, do ads use up your data? That seems like a bad situations, but it's not clear how it could be avoided.

You mean apart from not clicking on the damn ads? Or not using apps with ads in the first place?

Reinvented Video Calling

[mcfedr]

Various 3G phones have supported video calling from the outset of the 3G network, phones from a variety of manufactures, on different networks, even in different countries. Why do they have to reinvent everything?

Re:Reinvented Video Calling

[ninjacheeseburger]

I agree I have a Sony Ericsson k800i (in the uk) I think its about 4 years old now and it has 3G video calling. Never used it as its expensive and have never needed it.

Re:Reinvented Video Calling

[cmorriss]

I for one am glad they decided to reinvent the smart phone in general. Before the iphone, we were being lead down a pretty shitty smartphone path by Microsoft, RIM, and even Palm.

Re:Reinvented Video Calling

[nemasu]

I totally agree. Seems like kind of a waste of a front facing camera if it only works on WiFi......even if they get it working on the 3G network, since it uses an iphone app (FaceTime), it will probably be an iphone only thing. Why not use the already implemented standard instead of a 1/4 working solution? Or at least both....its all just software.

Re:Reinvented Video Calling

[LynnwoodRooster]

THIS. CANNOT. BE! Lord Jobs has told us this is iRevolutionary and iUnique and therefore it must not have iExisted before the new iPhone created it! HERETIC!

Re:Reinvented Video Calling

[gyrogeerloose]

Seems like kind of a waste of a front facing camera if it only works on WiFi

Well, it would be nice to have it work over the 3G network but Jobs said that the carriers (note plural there) needed some work. In any case, free Wi-Fi is pretty widely available at many places in the U.S. such as airports and cafes so it's not like it's completely useless.

even if they get it working on the 3G network, since it uses an iphone app (FaceTime), it will probably be an iphone only thing. Why not use the already implemented standard instead of a 1/4 working solution?

Is there an already implemented standard for mobile video phones? Does it work as easily as it appears to on the new iPhone? In any case, Jobs also mentioned that Apple intends to release FaceTime as an open standard so anyone can use it on their phones.

Re:Reinvented Video Calling

[teh kurisu]

Is there an already implemented standard for mobile video phones? Does it work as easily as it appears to on the new iPhone?

I've tried a video call before from my Samsung Z560 to a Nokia N95 and it worked fine, so yes, there is some standardisation. You type in the number, open the menu and select 'Video call'. The interface isn't particularly slick, but that doesn't need the networks' cooperation to fix. The resolution isn't great either, which might be a more pressing problem. And I fully expect Apple to integrate FaceTime into iChat, which can't easily happen with 3G video calls.

Re:Reinvented Video Calling

[nemasu]

Well, it would be nice to have it work over the 3G network but Jobs said that the carriers (note plural there) needed some work.

Not would be, it IS nice. I've been enjoying it for at least a year...I don't understand what he's talking about when he says they need work, most if not all UMTS carriers should already have the capability.

Is there an already implemented standard for mobile video phones?

Yes, it's been out for some time. I have it on my X1....many phones have the capability. It's pretty easy to use as well...I press the video call button... The only downside is that it kinda pricey. What I'm hoping for is the ability to use both services...probably not gonna happen though.

Still no 64 GB version

[proxima]

The maximum storage capacity of the iphone maxes out at 32G, while the ipod touch goes up to 64G. I suppose that's comparable to the HTC's incredible maximum capacity of 40G (via 8 GB internal and 32 GB microsd card), but it's unfortunate that there isn't a larger option. The iphone really seems capable of replacing many mp3 players for reasonably sized collections, but with apps and music it's not hard to hit 32G.

And, of course, it would really kill Apple's profit margins to actually offer an SD slot...Oh well.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[Locke2005]

Shouldn't microsd cards be able to go up to 128GB? Will the iPhone take a larger flash memory card once it is introduced?

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[phayes]

Yup, that's my major disappointment. With 64Gb I can put all of the music in my collection that i rate as good or better & still have room left over. with 32gb it's music or other stuff.

My phone is currently a Sony Ericsson p910 that's starting to get flakey & I was hoping to get a device to replace it, add a decent camera & an ipod.

Oh well...

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[MobyDisk]

It would add a seam in the phone - a hole - an imperfection. Just like a replaceable battery.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[D Ninja]

Of course, the Droid (Moto) can handel 64GB cards. You're losing some of the power of the newer phones, but it's still a great phone.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[sznupi]

Fewer changeable parts = less to worry about breaking
Seriously, WTF? How one manages to write that with a straight face? (SIM must be replaceable anyway; if battery dies, it's good to be able to replace it easily - that actually lowers the chances of something breaking in the process; and as for SD card - something which is not there cannot brake, great!)

Or the SIM card, battery and microSD could be under one common cover, something which is a standard solution to the problem... (it doesn't even have to be that easily opened; a screw would be fine)

Also... you must know that, for some time already, the typical "Mp3 players" out there, wordlwide, are in the form of so called feature phones, which quite succesfully manage "making room for crap like antenna's and other crap of the like."

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[natehoy]

can handel 64GB cards.

Don't get me wrong, "Messiah" is an awesome song, but I don't think I'd want 64GB of just George Handel's work. I think I'd want just a bit more variety.

To each his own. :)

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[roju]

SDHC is artificially capped at 32 gigs. Once SDXC devices start rolling out we'll see higher capacities.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[MobyDisk]

I'm sorry this was modded funny, because that is absolutely the actual reason. I am not geeky enough to memorize all the interviews and quips Steve Jobs has made, but he has basically said this is the cause.

Apple wants the iPhone to look like a magical device that just works - no obvious buttons, switches, speakers, seams, etc. Apple's reputation is built on this. If Steve could convince everyone that changing the speaker volume is a bad idea, and that he could pick the right volume level for everyone - he would do it, just to eliminate another physical complication from the device.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[Gilmoure]

My 750 GB movie collection won't fit on it either.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[Gilmoure]

I will bury them under the stacks of My Little Pony and Barbie DVD's! I will shower them with Apple iTunes receipts! I will drink their blood from the skull of Ken Starr!

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[Slur]

Oh, c'mon. You just need to be more discerning. Half of the music you like sucks, you just haven't realized it yet. ;-)

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[Graff]

Apple wants the iPhone to look like a magical device that just works - no obvious buttons, switches, speakers, seams, etc. Apple's reputation is built on this. If Steve could convince everyone that changing the speaker volume is a bad idea, and that he could pick the right volume level for everyone - he would do it, just to eliminate another physical complication from the device.

It's certainly not the actual reason. Apple has a micro-SIM card slot on the new iPhone 4G and that adds a seam. They didn't seem to have much problem with it being there.

The problem is that a soldered card takes up a lot less room in the device than a card + carrier. If you look at teardowns of the device it's pretty much packed solid and there's not a bit of spare space. In order to accommodate all of the slots and features everyone wants, such as physical keyboards, replaceable batteries, memory card slots and so on, Apple would have to either increase the device size or cut out some of the features planned for the device, maybe a lower capacity battery, lower quality camera, worse display, and so on.

Steve Jobs even said in the keynote that they had to move from a regular SIM to a micro-SIM because of space concerns.

I'm sure there are some esthetic concerns in addition to the engineering ramifications but I'm willing to bet that engineering is what really decided the matter. Overall the new iPhone is pretty damn compact and crammed with electronics, it's a wonder they could fit so much into such a spare package.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[proxima]

The problem is that a soldered card takes up a lot less room in the device than a card + carrier.

On the iphone this might be true, but why no SD slot on the ipad? Granted, the internal flash of these devices is generally faster than most SD cards, but Apple is likely making a tidy profit off the larger-capacity ipads. Teardowns of the device show large empty spaces all around the edges.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[Graff]

Yeah, it's not as clear on the iPad. I'm guessing several reasons.

One is they wanted to keep everything as similar as possible between the iTouch, iPhone, and iPad. Since the iPad would be the only one that had the space for a SD slot they chose to go without one on all the devices.

A second reason would be that they wanted easily-definable configurations and allowing people to put in their own SD card would cause the device to have odd amounts of storage.

A third might be design issues. Supporting stuff like SD cards might mess with internal timing, bus design of the device, or software support and Apple just didn't feel it was worth pursuing.

Lastly, allowing people to buy a lower-end device and then add in more storage later would generate less money than having people go for the higher memory ones from the start.

Only the minds at Apple truly know how much each of these weighed on the final design.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[adolf]

One is they wanted to keep everything as similar as possible between the iTouch, iPhone, and iPad. Since the iPad would be the only one that had the space for a SD slot they chose to go without one on all the devices.

The iPad is already very different, in that it is rather large and has a USB port. Supporting SD simply isn't very far-fetched from my perspective. Next.

A second reason would be that they wanted easily-definable configurations and allowing people to put in their own SD card would cause the device to have odd amounts of storage.

It's not as if modern filesystems haven't solved these problems for decades. Next.

A third might be design issues. Supporting stuff like SD cards might mess with internal timing, bus design of the device, or software support and Apple just didn't feel it was worth pursuing.

Oh noes. Adding hardware to a device is hard, and takes engineers and stuff, which sounds expensive. (The rest of the device, apparently, is ejaculated fully-assembled by unicorns, since there's not any engineering involved with them, or something.) (And nevermind the fact that it's a dead-simple basement hack to plug an SD card in to a lightly-modified WRT54G without creating any issues. But then, I guess Linksys doesn't use unicorns for their R&D and production.) Next.

Lastly, allowing people to buy a lower-end device and then add in more storage later would generate less money than having people go for the higher memory ones from the start.

This. Or, better: Someone buys cheap version, decides they like it, uses lots of space, runs out, and then must buy an entirely new phone in order to get more space.

Never attribute to technical limitations that which can be adequately explained by greed.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[pandrijeczko]

iTunes is "kindergarten" software, it's designed to be completely usable by non-technical people and does a less-than-average job. However, as a techie, I find the interface totally unintuitive.

I also hate the fact that it won't *JUST* download music to the device without touching my music collection. I am a bit anal when it comes to having correct tags on my music, I don't buy any downloadable music (and won't ever because again it's just for kids who haven't got the patience to listen to an entire album).

Fortunately, there is a better solution, Media Monkey which as of recent versions appears to support the iPod Touch very well, as well as other players, phones, etc. It also easily handles my collection of over 1200 ripped CDs and can convert to lower bitrates as you sync - plus it appears to work really well under WINE in Linux.

I've already turned off the intrusive iTunes startup services in Windows, I'll just leave it on the PC for any updates or app store purchases.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[Graff]

The iPad is already very different, in that it is rather large and has a USB port.

The iPad does not have a USB port, it has the same dock connector that the iPhone uses.

Never attribute to technical limitations that which can be adequately explained by greed.

I don't know all of the reasons that Apple might have had for non-removable storage on the iPad, I'm just listing possibilities. I'm sure that reality includes some of these reasons and possibly more but you'd have to talk to the engineers over at Apple to get their actual reasoning. I'm sure some of it, but not all of it, is the money issue.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[adolf]

The iPad does not have a USB port, it has the same dock connector that the iPhone uses.

iPad specs. Scroll down to "in the box."

Sure, it's a USB-to-dock adapter. But the fact that there are USB host signals in the iPad's dock connector is a wild departure from every other iPhone-like device that Apple produces.

I don't know all of the reasons that Apple might have had for non-removable storage on the iPad, I'm just listing possibilities. I'm sure that reality includes some of these reasons and possibly more but you'd have to talk to the engineers over at Apple to get their actual reasoning. I'm sure some of it, but not all of it, is the money issue.

Please understand your subject matter, and the context: The iPad does support removable storage (and a few other things), and this is a discussion about the iPhone 4, which does not.

I don't know any of the reasons why Apple does what Apple does, except that engineering has little to do with it. The lack of the SD card slot is the product of the same folks who are responsible for the non-removable battery: designers, the marketers, and (most importantly) Steve Jobs. Had any of these folks created a spec and a drawing that included a place for an micro SD card and sent that down the chain to the folks who make specs work, I have every bit of confidence that Apple's engineering department would have had little difficulty implementing it.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[Graff]

But the fact that there are USB host signals in the iPad's dock connector is a wild departure from every other iPhone-like device that Apple produces.

The iPhone also has a USB-dock connector and the same signaling mechanism is used across all of these devices. It's not a wild departure at all.

Had any of these folks created a spec and a drawing that included a place for an micro SD card and sent that down the chain to the folks who make specs work, I have every bit of confidence that Apple's engineering department would have had little difficulty implementing it.

Sure, it's not impossible to do and if it was a requirement then they would have done it and traded off other aspects such as cost, complexity, dimensions, and other features as necessary. Someone decided that they didn't want to make those tradeoffs and so there is no micro-SD slot.

What would the tradeoffs have been? We can only conjecture, however, it obviously hasn't been a huge roadblock to adoption so they probably made the right decision.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[adolf]

I believe that you misunderstand how USB works.

It's not peer-to-peer as Firewire is.

Having the ability to plug USB peripherals (such as external storage or input devices) into a USB host such as an iPad is rather completely different than plugging an iPod (which is merely a USB peripheral) into a PC (which is a host).

Even if you can't get your head around that, then you must admit that the functional ability of the iPad to connect to external USB peripherals is a great departure from the norm.

Meanwhile, I think you've been drinking too much of the Kool-Aid.

Re:Still no 64 GB version

[mr100percent]

What would be the point of an SD slot when there's no UI for the filesystem on the phone except via iTunes?

Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[HeckRuler]

a three-axis gyroscope, which allows rotation and precision that accelerometers can't match

Uh... So the thing obviously doesn't have an actual gyroscope, so I'm assuming he means rotational accelerometers... which is better then regular accelerometers how? They measure different things. Am I or the summary getting some lingo wrong?

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[TheNarrator]

If he had a gyroscope in there it would have to mechanically spin the rotor right? That's kind of weird having a moving part like that in a phone...

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[JesseMcDonald]

Actually, it has something like this 4x4x0.9mm ITG-3200 Triple-Axis Digital-Output Gyroscope. Not one, but three real MEMS gyroscopes in a single surface-mount IC package.

Yes, they actually can make them that small these days. Amazing, isn't it?

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[Jamori]

It's likely something like a tuning fork or MEMS (microelectromechanical Sensor) gyroscope, which are generically referred to as vibrating structure gyroscopes. It's nothing like the big clunking rotating toy; they come on teeny-tiny surface mount devices that cost about $10 in small quantites.

The Wii MotionPlus controllers use something similar.

From Wikipedia:

The physical principle is very simple: a vibrating object tends to keep vibrating in the same plane as its support is rotated. It is therefore much simpler and cheaper than is a conventional rotating gyroscope of similar accuracy.

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[UnknowingFool]

No. A gyroscope is a completely different technology than an accelerometer. A gyroscope can have multiple axes of freedom but an accelerometer measures one axis so you need more than one accelerometer to match one gyroscope.

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[voidptr]

In addition to MEMS gyroscopes, you can make a gyro with lasers too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_laser_gyroscope which are pretty popular for avionics use now.

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[tyrione]

a three-axis gyroscope, which allows rotation and precision that accelerometers can't match

Uh... So the thing obviously doesn't have an actual gyroscope, so I'm assuming he means rotational accelerometers... which is better then regular accelerometers how? They measure different things. Am I or the summary getting some lingo wrong?

Glad to see your science skills are from 1949.

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[Bert64]

Why? phones have had vibrators, which are moving parts, for quite some time...

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[TooMuchToDo]

Off-topic, but noteworthy. It's fantastic to be alive today with how fast technology advances. I can't wait to see the next 30-60 years (27 now).

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[Spy Hunter]

Gyroscopes don't have to spin. MEMS gyroscopes vibrate instead. They do have moving parts, but the moving parts are insanely tiny, fabricated on silicon chips, and packaged in standard microchip packages. Quite amazing, really, when you think about it.

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[HeckRuler]

Well thanks for pointing out MEMS gyroscopes. That is indeed spiffy. So it's not a rotational accelerometer like I thought, but I'm not sure what the functional differences are.

It's a little sad that everyone leaped at my mistake while ignoring the point I was trying to make: measuring rotation isn't comparable to measuring linear movement so you can't say one is more precise then the other. It's like "liters is better then meters". So that line is just marketing fluff. I guess I need to work on that whole "communication" thing. Of course, if I take my time and make everything clear, my posts are left in the dust as old and busted.

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[JesseMcDonald]

Well, you can use both gyroscopes and linear accelerometers to measure changes in orientation[1], but for this purpose a gyroscope will react much more quickly and precisely and, unlike the accelerometer, is not affected by any "real" linear acceleration which may be occurring at the same time. So for the same common task, measuring changes in orientation, a gyroscope will typically perform better than an accelerometer.

Of course, as you pointed out, a gyroscope won't indicate linear acceleration at all. Nor can it tell you what the original orientation was; it only measures the changes. So they each have their own uses. Generally gyros are combined with accelerometers; the accelerometers provide the initial orientation and runtime calibration data for the gyros, along with linear acceleration, and the gyros provide fine orientation data and help to separate gravity from other acceleration by providing an independent 'up' vector.

[1] One measures orientation with an accelerometer—at rest—by the effective 1g upward acceleration; to be motionless in a 1g field is equivalent to experiencing 1g acceleration in null gravity (as per General Relativity).

Re:Gyroscope vs Accelerometer

[JesseMcDonald]

So it's not a rotational accelerometer like I thought, but I'm not sure what the functional differences are.

A gyro measures changes in orientation—absolute angular velocity—whereas a rotational accelerometer measures changes in angular velocity.

Re:Really?

[UnknowingFool]

Also, it's still missing a good carrier, tethering, and flash.

Sigh. US mobile carriers all suck. Some more than others. Right now AT&T has its issues because of the iPhone. Tethering has been explained over and over that it exists in the iPhone currently. The limitation is that AT&T as a carrier has not allowed it. As for Mobile Flash, it sucks too. I'm waiting to see if the new Mobile Flash beta on Android resolves some of the major problems. While performance wise I think it is fine, it still is a major battery drain.

The major leak of the the iPhone paid up for us.

[jbssm]

Now, finally a Keynote from Steve about an existing product that finally delivers what people where asking for and some new great features. Front camera, better battery life, a flash (the one for photography not the software), HSDPA, better camera, noise cancelling mic .... all stuff that Apple could have put long ago. And some new cool stuff there people where hoping for but didn't believe much, like the big resolution bump of the screen.

Now, I get to wonder how many of the features where actually planed for this iteration of the iPhone, and how many Apple enginners where forced to put just because Steve didn't want to give only old Gizmodo news in his keynote?

I hope someone leaks the next iPad has well, a couple of months before the next major Apple presentation.

Re:iAds

[Albanach]

It's an optional thing for a developer to include in his app

Indeed adverts are. Adblock Plus is a browser plugin so that adds are an optional thing a user can choose to accept. I'm unclear as to what way graphics heavy adverts will be 'win-win for ... iOS users' given that as of today it is no longer possible to start an unlimited data contract.

Will a user be winning when an ad for an ap that would have cost $1.99 for the ad-free version sends them over their monthly cap and results in a $10 bill from AT&T?

All ads have done is resulted in a proliferation of free apps with limited functionality and lots of adverts. It's cluttered the marketplace and made it difficult to distinguish between applications and value. It's not immediately obvious how much paid or versions of similar apps cost, making price comparisons more difficult for the user. Where's the 'win' in that?

Apple have distinct carrier contracts. What would have been innovative would have been to negotiate with carriers, make bandwidth to Apple's Ad servers not count as part of a user's allowance and have the advertiser pick up the cost of serving their Ad.

Would you watch network television if you were billed for each ad you see?

Finally, some healthy DPI numbers

[dara]

I've been a proponent for 300+ DPI screens for quite a while. I never got to see the Neo Freerunner (282 DPI), but the Droid (265 DPI) looks good. Jobs is correct, from about about 10-12 inches viewing, this is what is needed to have the device seem like paper. My preference though is to take that high DPI to a bigger screen - say something like 1280x720 with 4.8" diagonal (308 DPI). New Snapdragons are supporting 1280x800 (not sure I like 16/10 better than 16/9 for phones - it is the standard for laptops these days), so hopefully we'll see some Android phones with these high DPI numbers soon.

Re:Finally, some healthy DPI numbers

[tknd]

I'd like to see high dpi displays for computer displays. It is kinda funny running the android emulator at 800x480 and having it almost not fit on a 1600x900 laptop display.

Re:Finally, some healthy DPI numbers

[Phroggy]

I'd like to see high dpi displays for computer displays. It is kinda funny running the android emulator at 800x480 and having it almost not fit on a 1600x900 laptop display.

Software support is getting better, but isn't there yet. Lots of stuff is still impossibly tiny or obnoxiously mangled when you try to run desktop apps at higher resolution than normal.

Re:Finally, some healthy DPI numbers

[pauljlucas]

[F]rom about about 10-12 inches viewing, [300+ DPI] is what is needed to have the device seem like paper.

Then why are magazines and books (which actually are paper) printed at 1200+ DPI?

Re:Finally, some healthy DPI numbers

[dara]

Well for one, some people are capable of focusing a lot closer - 4 and even 3 inches is possible. 12 inches at 300 DPI is like 3 inches at 1200 DPI. For me, I can't even come close to focusing at those distances so 300 DPI is about the limit. For another, the cost penalty of going from 300 to 600 to 1200 DPI isn't that significant for a printer, so why not? When display technology improves even further, we'll see if higher DPIs offer a marketable advantage, but I suspect we are getting near the end.

Re:iAds

[gyrogeerloose]

Never tell me the odds!

6 to 1 that someone will.

Re:Really?

[Reverberant]

Also, it's still missing a good carrier

The iPhone 4 is quad band, so it theoretically can be used on T-Mobile (locks notwithstanding)

tethering,

iPhone 4 + AT&T have that. Actually iPhone 3GS has it right now, but AT&T doesn't allow it (but carriers in other countries do).

and flash.

IMO, that's a good thing (which I say as a Nokia E71 owner with Flash Lite). It's great if you like Flash overlay ads, but I can live without it on a mobile phone.

All of this made in a suicide ridden factory...

Dollars to donuts that the device you used to compose that post has components made at the same "suicide ridden factory"

there's already competition

[SuperBanana]

First off, there's plenty of competition- as Apple pointed out, they're #1 in browser market share, but #2 in devices sold. Second, the market has no shortage of mobile platforms, and Android has a third of the iPhone's market share.

None of which would have happened had Android not shown up.

Er, wrong. For example, if I go to the supermarket and have pasta for dinner, that doesn't mean I won't have pasta for dinner if I don't go to the supermarket. Maybe my SO stops by the supermarket. Or we go out to eat. Or a neighbor calls us up and says "hey, want to come over for dinner? We're having pasta." It's the same kind of logical fallacy used to defend space exploration expenditures by saying "we wouldn't have ____ if it hadn't been for the space program!"

Re:there's already competition

[ArsonSmith]

Well, we wouldn't have gone to the moon in 1969 if it hadn't been for the space program!

Most of the others are similar. They may have shown up, eventually, but the space program accelerated them significantly.

Re:there's already competition

[sznupi]

Opera Mini is the #1 mobile browser looking at website stats (and that despite the fact of large portion of its users being rather cautious when it comes to amount of browing, data charges being expensive to them)

Also, Apple sales share is 2%. Even when looking at ill-defined category of "smartphones", they are #3, soon to #4 or 5 (it will get interesting when Samsung starts to ship bada OS on large portion of their phones; and unexpceted to many, from what I see)

FaceTime...

[Locke2005]

...taking phone sex to a whole new level since 2010!

Glass 30 times harder than plastic

[ninjacheeseburger]

Now what to call this extra strong glass...

Re:iAds

[WCMI92]

I'd rate the odds of navigating an asteroid field as much better than seeing an Adblock app in the Apple app store.

As for actually navigating an asteroid field, Pioneer 10, 11, Voyager 1 & 2, Galileo, Cassini, and New Horizons had no problems :)

backside illuminated sensor

[spammacus]

"a 5-megapixel backside illuminated sensor"

Does that mean the sun shines out its backside?

Re:backside illuminated sensor

[Maury Markowitz]

Worst name EVAR!

A more accurate name would be "back-wired sensor". Like the human eye, older cameras had the wiring in front of the sensor elements. Back-illuminated ones have the wiring in the back. That gets you about 45% more light, because it doesn't have to make it past the wiring and transistors.

Been around for a while, but only making its way into the consumer space recently. Basically boosts your low-light performance by roughly half. That means you can either double the number of pixels per space and still get the same performance (which is what apple did), or leave the spacing alone and make killer security cameras and astronomy sensors.

In either event, this really is a major jump in camera tech. I'll be interested to know if they also used Sony's CMOS process for it.

Maury

Re:backside illuminated sensor

[toriver]

Confusingly, it means the diodes are at the front instead of the back relative to the pixel microlenses.

Re:backside illuminated sensor

[DinDaddy]

Well there goes that saying.

Re:backside illuminated sensor

[sznupi]

In case of mobile phones it might be still hugely limited by lens size? On the other end of the spectrum you have of course DSLRs, which don't need it that much...but I guess consumer compact digicams will get a really nice boost.

Re:backside illuminated sensor

[adisakp]

Like the human eye, older cameras had the wiring in front of the sensor elements. Back-illuminated ones have the wiring in the back. That gets you about 45% more light, because it doesn't have to make it past the wiring and transistors.

Been around for a while, but only making its way into the consumer space recently.

FWIW, Squids evolved this technology millions of years ago.

Re:backside illuminated sensor

[Anonymous Coward]

That means you can either double the number of pixels per space and still get the same performance (which is what apple did),...

Actually, it's not. The pixels are the same size, which means they have the same number of pixels per space. They didn't increase it at all, they just added more pixels at the same size.

Re:backside illuminated sensor

[Serendip7]

It's an Omnivision sensor using a TSMC process. OVT is the only company doing production back side illumination as far as I know. BSI isn't the end all be all of sensor tech... really not that big a development for anything besides cellphones either. Loss from wiring drops very quickly percentage wise as the pixel gets bigger so decent sized pixels (astronomy, security, SLR, etc etc) aren't that affected. It's when the pixels get stupidly small that you have to worry about stuff like this. The cost and problems associated with BSI definitely make it not worth while for bigger pixels. Other companies have their own solutions as well... Aptina for instance uses a microlens light pipe technology that collects and funnels the light between the wiring to solve the same problem. It's kind of like using a magnifying glass to focus all the light into a fiber optic cable .. running the cable through all the wiring and then dumping all the light onto the actual sensor diode.

Re:backside illuminated sensor

[KrugalSausage]

For those interested: This was published 2 months ago http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010PhRvL.104o8102L

It seems the human eye wasn't an 'evolutionary flaw' after all as some proclaimed. Quote: "The retina is revealed as an optimal structure designed for improving the sharpness of images."

Basically: The blood vessels can act as wave guides for the incoming light. Cool!

So.

[tthomas48]

When do we get fed up and just build a wireless mesh network and cut out the carriers completely?

Re:iAds

[grub]

Firewall IP on a jail broken phone or Atomic Web Browser on jail broken or not.

Re:Really?

[frnic]

I see, and which multi-billion dollar company do you run? With your wisdom and foresight I expect we all would be happy to bow down in homage to you...

I'd love to develop for it.

[TodLiebeck]

This is a very impressive evolution. Thinner, better display, more processing power, better battery life, better camera, new sensors, and more capabilities across the board, both hardware and software.

I'd love to develop for it.

I just wish there was some way I could know that if I spent thousands of hours creating software for it, that such software would continually be available for purchase via the App Store. I'd be okay with explaining in detail to Apple how the software was going to work before developing it. But it would be necessary to obtain an authoritative answer to inform as to whether the software would be accepted (if implemented to a proposed specification) and for what minimum duration the software would be allowed on the store.

There is a fundamental risk in developing new software: "Will customers buy this?" This risk can be calculated to a certain extent. My concern with developing for iOS is that an additional incalculable risk exists, and it is simply too much to bear.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[MobyDisk]

Or, if there was a common API like Flash that could compile for this platform. Then if Apple rejected your app, you know your effort is not wasted because it would run on another device.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Use HTML 5

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[whisper_jeff]

Given that they've paid out one BILLION dollars to developers thus far (and, no, that isn't a Mike Myers comedy sketch), I'd say that deciding to not develop for the iPhone is a decidedly stupid decision. Say whatever you want but thousands and thousands and thousands of apps have been developed for the platform, without issue, and developers have been paid a rather sizable amount of money for their work. But, hey, feel free to avoid the platform because there's a slim chance that you might do something you're not supposed to and thus have your app be rejected. There are 100 developers behind you in line, so to speak, that are more than willing to fill the void your absence will create.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[maxhead]

incalculable risk exists, and it is simply too much to bear.

Incalculable? A competent developer aught to be able to calculate the risk.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[BitZtream]

Same risk faced by every iOS dev, every XBox dev, every Wii Dev, every PS3 dev ... pretty much every dev of every relatively or completely closed system on the planet.

Somehow it still seems to bring new people in and make lots of money for the people that do it.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[Blakey Rat]

Jobs in the keynote mentioned that they don't approve apps that crash. Hah! Explain how Safari got on the phone then, Steve. Oh, I guess that rule only applies to non-Apple apps... talk about double-standards.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Every app will crash under the right circumstances.

The question is, will that set of circumstances be, "Application opened?"

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[Mike Buddha]

I concur. This ain't deep water oil drilling we're talking about here.

There's the cost of your development system. The cost of the time it takes you to get up to speed with the archaic Objective-C. The cost of market research. The cost of the work hours it takes to create the application. The cost of testing. And don't forget the opportunity costs of all the labor-intensive tasks.

If the sum total of these costs is too high compared what you feel you would reasonably make with an App in the App Store, don't do it. Do the next best thing.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[gmhowell]

'Thousands of hours'? Gimme a break.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[putaro]

$1 billion is chump change in the software market. Electronics Arts makes over $4 billion a year in revenue by itself. Think about it, $1 billion/year means 1000 apps making $1 million/year. $1 million/year in revenue is a pretty small business.

This explains why the majority of apps in the App Store are things like 'iFart' or 'Mirror'. It's a very major risk to take to develop an application with no guarantee it will get by the gate keeper and then with revenues sure to be fairly small.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[xigxag]

Translating what you're saying to the desktop, if someone makes a principled stand, or for any other reason decides not to develop for MS Windows, they're just stupid? End of story? Screw Linux and OSX, gotta go with the dominant OS, no matter what?

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[fredmosby]

You're willing to accept the 80% or so chance that not enough users will buy your app to make decent money, but you aren't willing to accept the 5% risk that Apple will reject your app. That doesn't make sense.

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[shutdown -p now]

Same risk faced by every iOS dev, every XBox dev, every Wii Dev, every PS3 dev

And yet, one of those is not like the others...

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[shutdown -p now]

Jobs in the keynote mentioned that they don't approve apps that crash.

So Apple has solved the halting problem? Now that should make front page news, instead of some shiny toy. ~

Re:I'd love to develop for it.

[PitaBred]

No, it's not the same risk. If you develop something for the XBox, they won't randomly pull it after approving it. The approvals process is much more transparent with ANY other system than the iOS, as you call it. How many stories have there been of apple retroactively pulling apps because the apps do something they suddenly want to do, or don't want the phone to do? Now, how many of those stories have you seen about that same thing happening in all the other OSs you mention, combined?

Re:iAds

[denis-The-menace]

iADS= Integrated Annoying Display of Scams

Re:Biggest Announcement

[MonsterTrimble]

Guitar Hero on the iPhone. HOW?!? Kinda missing the guitar there...

And Farmville on the iPhone. I guess I should have seen it coming - they have farmville gift cards now at 7-11.

MEMS Gyroscopic Sensor

[Speare]

Uh... So the thing obviously doesn't have an actual gyroscope, so I'm assuming he means rotational accelerometers... which is better then regular accelerometers how? They measure different things. Am I or the summary getting some lingo wrong?

The Wii "wiimote" Controller has three MEMS linear accelerometers. The Wii "Motion Plus" adapters plug into the wiimote, and add three MEMS angular accelerometers, which are also very commonly referred as gyroscopic sensors. If the phone has the gyro sensors, it can sense relative tilt motions, but can't sense its own position relative to gravity when held still or sitting on a dock. The linear accelerometers work best at slow gestures, like those found in marble games or augmented reality windows. If it has all six sensors, which I expect it does, then there are a lot of quick and slow motion gestures you can do very accurately.

Re:MEMS Gyroscopic Sensor

[ThePeices]

A MEMS gyroscope is just that, a gyroscope, it is *not* an accelerometer.

The MEMS gyroscope measures angular *rate* in radians/sec, they do not measure angular acceleration. It is not an accelerometer.

If you dont beleive me, go read the datasheets from the device manufacturers. Analog Devices is a good place to start.

Not sure if anyone even considered this...

[kramerd]

...but how is it at phone calls?

 

Re:Not sure if anyone even considered this...

[Locke2005]

It's AT&T network only... does that answer your question?

Re:Not sure if anyone even considered this...

[Maury Markowitz]

> It's AT&T network only

Ummm, you know there's other countries in the world, right?

Maury

Re:Not sure if anyone even considered this...

[sznupi]

Seeing how iPhones how too often problems maintaining a stable connection while many other mobile phones (when in the same area & the same network at the same time) work fine - that doesn't answer the question.

Seek help

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't. You know that euphoria you have when you're watching porn and then after you're done jacking off you feel guilty about it. This is the same thing only instead of a woman's skin, you're jacking off to steel, glass an silica. If you go over the top and buy it, you'll wont' just feel guilty, you'll feel like an idiot.

You have problems if jacking off makes you feel guilty. You might want to talk to a psychiatrist.

Re:Seek help

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of all the poor dead sperm...

Re:Seek help

[Anonymous Coward]

more than half of the world would tell you the opposite. The answer depends on your definition of truth :)

Re:Biggest Announcement

[ggambett]

Hey, I think the Farmville thing *is* significant, because the client is written in Flash... I wonder how do they get it running on the iPhone. A full rewrite is the most obvious possibility, but I wonder if there's a more interesting technology there.

Re:could care less about the iphone...

[Steauengeglase]

The only real news about it was the update to iOS4.

Re:iAds

[tylersoze]

Speaking for myself as an iPhone developer, I will not be adding this to any of my apps. Since I freaking hate them as a consumer I'm not going to then turn right back around and add them when I'm trying to make money.

Re:iAds

[localman57]

I expect that Apple will host all of the ads. That would allow them to set standards on ads with regards to bandwidth. Perhaps one standard for those using WiFi, and another for 3G. They'll use their 800 pound gorilla

Well, Apple did miss something...

[sznupi]

A surpise awaiting in few of the most dynamically growing markets

Re:Well, Apple did miss something...

[Haeleth]

Congratulations to Apple for not pandering to the whims of superstitious peasants.

It won't hurt them, anyway. The sorts of people who can afford to buy iPhones tend to be sufficiently educated to have grown out of that kind of nonsense.

Re:Well, Apple did miss something...

[gyrogeerloose]

A surpise awaiting in few of the most dynamically growing markets

Very interesting. Wonder if they'll use another name for it in Asian markets.

Re:Well, Apple did miss something...

[Bing Tsher E]

From what I read on Apple's site about the new OS, there will be provision for a bluetooth keyboard. Which really pleases me, as it sounds like it'll work with the OS 4 upgrade on my iPod.

Re:Well, Apple did miss something...

[sznupi]

I doubt it would help much against knowledge of the true name of "iPhone Death" finding its way...

Re:Well, Apple did miss something...

[macs4all]

Speaking of which, where's my useable laptop-style keyboard?

Did you even watch the Keynote? There were some spectacular (and incidental) examples of Crackberry-style two-thumbed typing on the iPhone in portrait mode by some of the people doing the software demos. I was quite impressed at how fast (and accurately!) those people were entering text.

I'd say that the evidence is clear; if you are having a problem with on-screen keyboards, you might want to take a look at your meatspace I/O servo drivers, rather than the iPhone's keyboard design.

Re:Well, Apple did miss something...

[sznupi]

Uhm, all that particular bit of evidence conveys is that Apple chose (for one of their biggest shows, mind you) people who are not only presentable and outgoing, but also very trained in usage of iPhone onscreen keyboard.

Re:Well, Apple did miss something...

[sznupi]

Riiight...developer of iMovie / 1st party high profile app not highly trained in using iPhone? Same with 3rd party one?

Is RDF that strong where you live?

Nice, but..

[Anonymous Meoward]

..I don't care for AT&T's terms. I have a pre-paid account with them already, don't care for data over 3G (WiFi is perfectly fine for me), and I'd rather just stick my SIM into this model and be done with it.

Re:Nice, but..

[natehoy]

We had the same issue. My wife wanted a smart-ish phone but didn't want a data plan. We originally bought a Blackberry Pearl for her, but it didn't have WiFi so (while it's a very nice phone) there's little you can do to make it smart.

We thought about an iPhone, but the need to buy a data plan was, well, ouch.

A few months ago, I went out and got an unlocked Nokia 5800. Front and back cameras, WiFi, a 3Mpix camera that takes good photos, USB mass storage support (no specific software needed to load songs, pictures, and ringtones to and from it), and it came with an 8GB MicroSD chip. It's a Symbian phone so there's no lack of apps. $240 unlocked.

Since it's an unlocked phone, my wife uses our home WiFi for data (Facebook, checking the weather, syncing address books, email, etc), and just uses it as a GSM phone and camera when away from home. It runs an app that does her grocery shopping list and a few other functions just fine offline, and all of the data syncs when she gets into WiFi range.

Someday, we might get a data plan for it (it qualifies for the AT&T $15 data plan), but she hasn't really found a need for it.

It's a touchscreen with accelerometers similar to the iPhone, but it's a resistive touchscreen (not capacitave) which means it's a tad less responsive but you can use a stylus with it (one is built in) which improves typing accuracy quite a lot. Some people prefer the iPhone screen, but I like the resistive ones more. You can put a screen protector on them, for one...

I'm not saying it's as good as an iPhone for everyone. For some, it's not as good. Screen is smaller and resistive, it's thicker and heavier, and it uses Symbian and not the iPhone OS.

For us, it's better than an iPhone. We can load more apps that we actually want on it, the battery and memory can be replaced, and we don't need to be locked into AT&T or a data plan to use it.

Oh, and OviMaps, the free unlimited turn-by-turn voice navigation with the ability to load map data on to the MicroSD and use the built-in GPS (all with no monthly fees, no data connectivity, and no TeleNav subscription) is very nice. It's a full-blown GPS unit, and that's just a "bonus extra" we didn't even know we were getting.

Re:Nice, but..

[brantondaveperson]

You can put a screen protector on them, for one...

You can put a screen protector on an iPhone, or at least you can on an iPod touch. It's the first thing I did when I bought mine, and it works perfectly fine with it on.

Re:iAds

[NatasRevol]

No, you don't have to interact with them. You *can* interact with them, once you click on them. Huge difference.

Re:Biggest Announcement

[Steauengeglase]

Doesn't matter. In two weeks everyone will forget any and all previous work done on video chat or we will at least hear that video chat wasn't "really" done until Apple added recognition for sign language.

Cisco naming scheme

[astern]

So, does anyone else see how much Apple is taking from Cisco in relation to their naming schemes? iPhone is a Cisco trademark under license to Apple iOS is a Cisco trademark under license to Apple Apple has named their OS releases after "big cats", a term used when speaking about Catalyst switches. Anything else I missed?

Phone Sex

[Shihar]

OMFG! Mobile video conferencing! You mean that crap that has been around for years and no one wants! OMFGHS!

Seriously, I can't wait for mobile video conferencing. Think people look stupid when they are babbling to themselves via blue tooth? Well you just wait! Apple is taking jackassery to a NEXT level. Now, people are going to walk around holding their phone out at arms length in front of their face as they walk. It is going to be awesome!

There is a reason why video never caught on. It wasn't a lack of technology. We could have done video phone calls decades ago. It just never worked because no one wanted it. Video adds nothing to the conversation other than the fact that now your eyes have to be used during the conversation, you can't move around easily, and you have to be dressed and decent. It is even more stupid on a mobile phone because you instantly lose the whole "mobility" piece if you have to be looking at a screen or holding a phone in front of your face.

There is exactly one use for mobile video conferencing... phone sex. If you want better phone sex, then I guess you can get excited that Apple has now made available a feature you can already get on any new Android phone and has been around for computers for decades. Whoop-de-fucking-do.

Re:Phone Sex

[hondo77]

There is exactly one use for mobile video conferencing... phone sex.

There's a reason Apple's iPhone 4 video shows a dad video calling home to see his children. Perhaps if tore yourself away from net porn and discovered real women, a lightbulb might flick on.

Re:Phone Sex

[Altus]

I don't know, I use googles video chat with my friends from time to time. Particularly with folks I don't get to see that much. It does add a certain something to the conversation. I'm not sure I would use it a lot on a phone (but then I don't see myself using my iPhone from my couch for anything but a phone call), but I think it would be an excellent addition to the iPad.

Re:Phone Sex

[vijayiyer]

Video calling never worked because there was never a critical mass of devices for it to work with. The technology is obviously not new, but that doesn't mean it was possible before in any sort of realistic scale.
I don't particularly care for video-calling, and haven't since the CUSeeMe days, but I'm sure my mom and her mom will ask about it now. That means something has changed.

Re:Phone Sex

[sznupi]

Who are you kidding? There are hundreds millions of mobile phones with easy videocalling in the wild right now.

Re:Phone Sex

[sznupi]

Not just on any new Android phone, also generally on hundreds millions of UMTS mobile phones used already throughout the world...and of course nobody cares.

BTW, Apple taking jackassery to a NEXT level is understandable, considering some of earlier Jobs ventures ;)

Re:Phone Sex

[sznupi]

BS. They are all interoperable. It's a UMTS 3G standard.

Re:Phone Sex

[sznupi]

We're talking about mobile phones here. Simple fact is, they are already the largest, by far, installed base of videocall capable devices. Universally interoperable between each other (who cares that some people release some closed software for PCs? It's a different usage scenario, private & made in a comfortable place, for starters; one that is actually used because of that; we already have standard there, too - Jingle). Nobody cares, mobile videocalling is a good idea for SciFi mostly.

But hey, if you're now in the mode of what "Apple wants"...

Re:iAds

[Nikola Tesla and You]

What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.

GlimmerBlocker (uses ABP's blacklist) does the trick (or your favorite ad-block daemon). More effective than browser plugins since it works across multiple apps (browser, email, feed reader, etc). Even more effective if you have your own web server w/ said daemon. I do this with all the wired/wireless clients at home. Setup up the iPhone to use your own server via proxy and you'll have all the ad blocking you want.

AWS Support?

[Maury Markowitz]

New radios, including 802.11N (nice!) but no mention of AWS support. Mobilicity offers $65 unlimited _everything_ in Toronto, but only on AWS.

Maury

Re:AWS Support?

[Maury Markowitz]

Well Apple's tech page has the bad news: no support for 1200 MHz, so no AWS. :-(

Maury

Re:AWS Support?

[Maury Markowitz]

Wait, 2100 IS supported.

What is T-Mobile using in the US? I think the new players here in the GWN are on 1700.

Maury

Re:iAds

[DinDaddy]

You said you wanted to be around when Apple made a mistake. Well, this could be it.

I am not going to call you sweetheart though.

Re:iAds

[ArhcAngel]

So it'll take what...a couple of weeks for them to port the existing iPhone Android ROM over. Best of both worlds!

Re:Biggest Announcement

[idontgno]

A full rewrite is the most obvious possibility, but I wonder if there's a more interesting technology there.

I don't wonder. The full rewrite is the most likely possibility, both for technical reasons and because the defection of the most famous Flash crapplication in the world to the anti-Flash camp would be PR gold, and well worth any inducements shoveled in the direction of Zynga.

NB: This is empty speculation ONLY. It's quite possible that Apple has made some devastating technological advance that breaks Flash's content monopoly without any concession in Adobe's direction. But it's as likely that Zynga will rewrite or translate their flagship. And if that happens, expect the spin to ramp up into an orchestrated chorus of Adobe mockery.

Re:iAds

[Graff]

I'm willing to bet that developers will allow users to choose between cheap apps with advertisements and apps that cost more but are advertisement free. This is happening right now in the app store even without Apple providing an easy way for developers to implement advertisements. The users win because more choice is almost always better, if you do download a free app and see that it has a ton of advertisements then no harm, remove it from your device and either get the paid version or move on to another app.

Adblock is a good add-on for your browser and it'd be nice to have for mobile Safari but I don't think it's a good thing if it also works on purchased apps. App developers do a lot of work on building these apps and they deserve to get paid for their efforts, if they want to be paid. Allowing people to get an inexpensive, advertisements-supported app and then block the advertisements would be cheating developers out of their work.

The market will balance all these things out. If an app goes overboard and charges too much or has too many advertisements then someone else will come by and eat their lunch with a better app. It happens all the time, competition is a good way to correct these sort of things.

As far as the bandwidth to Apple's advertisement servers, how do you know if it does count toward your carrier bandwidth? There hasn't been any announcement about it. There are several services on the iPhone that don't count toward your bandwidth, I believe that App Store purchases are one of them. We'll see how it pans out but I bet that the advertisement bandwidth will not count towards your total bandwidth.

Re:iAds

[ArhcAngel]

I thought it was C3-PO translating a quote from R2D2?

Noise cancellation with two microphones

[peterwayner]

Several years ago, I was thinking in the same general vein and decided to experiment with an Invention Disclosure . I wonder how Apple structured their patents-- if they did-- because it's a pretty simple idea. I'm surprised that more cell phones haven't implemented it. Maybe they have. Does anyone know if others are experimenting with it too?

Re:Noise cancellation with two microphones

[Spad]

The Nexus One has two mics for exactly this purpose.

Re:Noise cancellation with two microphones

[LynnwoodRooster]

I'm surprised that more cell phones haven't implemented it. Maybe they have. Does anyone know if others are experimenting with it too?

Noise cancellation with dual microphones is about 60 years old, as a technology. My 18 month old HTC Touch Pro 2 has dual mics (for noise canceling), and my 3 year old Plantronics Bluetooth earpiece has dual mics for noise canceling. The difference is that the iPhone is finally catching up to what most other phones and communication devices have offered for the last few years, so rather than admit they were way behind the times they hype the crap out of it to make it seem like its iRevolutionary and thus Apple is seen as an innovator.

Reality is, Apple with dual mics is where Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, HTC, and most others were back in 2006. Apple's just really good at getting people to accept whatever they say at face value, even if it's just fluff and marketing glitz.

Re:Noise cancellation with two microphones

[peterwayner]

Thanks for both responses. I had a feeling it wasn't that novel an idea.

Re:Noise cancellation with two microphones

[Skuld-Chan]

So does the Motorola Droid :).

Re:Noise cancellation with two microphones

[alobar72]

i was once thinking about noice cancelling for voice driven multi-media-centers.
The problem is, that the sound of - say - the movie playing is disturbing the voice command you might give and so interferes with the recognition engine.
But: since the mediacenter-pc "knows" what sound he is playing at the moment he can just subtract it from the mic input and what should - theoretically- be left is the voice command.
well - anyway - I had to tell somebody - nevermind :-)

Re:iAds

[Nikola Tesla and You]

I'm unclear as to what way graphics heavy adverts will be 'win-win for ... iOS users'

Because we're too lazy to read!

attwireless.com down 15:19 EST

[rinoid]

For anyone snarking on about ATT and FaceTime being WiFi only ... they can't manage to launch an updated website in time for an announcement which will pour millions of customers in to check their upgrade eligibility.

http://twitpic.com/1uu6gz

Apple's site is live with new iPhone 4 pages and info.

FWIW

Re:iAds

[ceoyoyo]

Let's see - would you rather have graphics heavy ads that come from a variety of sources, vary greatly in quality, design, size and compression quality, or ads from one source that will likely do a good job both of quality and limiting things to reasonable sizes and may well do some local caching?

Re:iAds can be ignored

[MikeMo]

Apparently: "When you tap on it, it fills the screen or you can hit a button in the top left to close the ad."

Re:iAds

[Skater]

I took it as a marketing name to refer to the fact that it's 300+ ppi resolution, which is better (from what they said) than your eye can distinguish.

Re:iAds

[Graff]

Sounds reasonable enough to me. I'm a developer myself and I don't think I'll be doing it either. However, I could see people doing it as a way to put out a clearly-labeled free version to defray development costs and serve as a try-before-you-buy.

It depends on a lot of factors but at least it's an option and easy to add into an app if you want to give it a whirl.

Re:could care less about the iphone...

[Trolan]

Traditionally WWDC is the iPhone launch keynote, and the iPod related updates (iPod, iTunes, etc.) happen at a September event.

Re:iAds

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Marketing - the screen is higher than 300ppi, which is a resolution greater than the human eye can resolve.

Re:Biggest Announcement

[jo_ham]

Bejeweled 2 was a flash game too, and that's been a native app on the iPhone for years. It even connects to facebook.

Re:iAds

[malkir]

I find this one the most interesting feature.

iAds

-1 offtopic for talking about what Jobs is showing in the unveiling powerpoint presentation? Apple fanboys have raided Slashdot, and they're retarded.

Re:iAds

[alexandre_ganso]

The sweet spot for screens is said to be 300dpi. Being higher than that, it's said that your eyes are not able to distinguish individual pixels anymore. Hence the name. So yes, it's marketing-onyl, probably

Re:FaceTime: The open industry standard

[jo_ham]

H.264 is not proprietary.

I love this....

[FunkyELF]

From http://www.macrumorslive.com/

10:39 am Doing a live demo now.
10:39 am Firing up both phones.
10:40 am Zoomed in difference looking at home screen is remarkable. Apple had to get special projectors to show just how good this screen is.
10:40 am Loading up NY Times next.
10:41 am Loading slowly, "networks in here always unpredictable."
10:41 am Steve asks everyone to get off WiFi to help him out, audience laughs.
10:41 am NY Times still not loading on iPhone 4.
10:41 am Switching to backups.
10:42 am iPhone 4 now on AT&T, all kinds of error messages about not being connected to the internet popping up on iPhone 4.
10:42 am Steve goes back to showing photos.
10:43 am Difference is fairly amazing.
10:43 am iPhone 4 slowly barely loads NY Times.
10:43 am Steve apologizing again.
10:43 am Asks Scott for any suggestions.
10:44 am Someone shouts, "Try Verizon."
10:44 am Steve concludes demo.

Re:I love this....

[Graff]

It was a pretty funny comment from the crowd, I laughed.

Of course it turned out that there were something like 570 wifi base stations operating in the audience and it totally hosed the whole wifi network for the event. Since the iPhones were set to load their data over wifi rather than over the cell network it killed the demos. Once the organizers made people turn off their devices the demos went very smoothly. Funny how that works!

Re:I love this....

[Devar]

Yes, but why did apple not have the demo phones connected to a secure, and dedicated, wifi network? Not doing that just seemed silly.

Re:I love this....

[Graff]

Yes, but why did apple not have the demo phones connected to a secure, and dedicated, wifi network? Not doing that just seemed silly.

It doesn't matter how secure your wifi network is, there's only so much bandwidth in the appropriate frequencies. Jam enough base stations into the same space and every network in that area, closed or open, will start behaving erratically because of the interference coming from the other devices. There's not many ways around it other than maybe defying FCC rules and amplifying your signal a ton to drown out all the other ones.

One thing they could have done if they really planned in advance was to use extremely directional antennas and basically make a point-to-point connection, only listening and transmitting on a narrow path. This would require additional equipment and planning and would have been very tough with a handheld device like a phone.

In the end their best play was to get most people to stop using their laptops and that took enough pressure off of their network to allow the demos to work decently.

Re:I love this....

[lidocaineus]

Um, what do you think he was doing? It doesn't matter how secure your wifi network is if you can't cleanly get a signal through all the hundreds of OTHER base stations operating on the same frequencies in the immediate area.

Re:I love this....

[aylons]

You mean, how that doesn't work. For it to work, it takes engineering.

Re:I love this....

[cyberworm]

I don't know a whole lot about wireless bandwidth, but one thing I did notice about this display is that the 3GS apparently had no problem loading the NYT website, while the iPhone 4 wouldn't load it. In my eyes it appeared to be more of a glitch with the hardware, rather than a problem with the network. Also, how else could the people in the audience use that same network (probably pretty slowly I'd guess) if the network were that saturated. At the very least even if it were a dead connection, why would you just keep your laptop open and connected while watching the presentation.

For the price that people pay to go to the conference ('ve been to one) It's interesting that that many people would be on their computers during something that one would assume is fairly important. Were there really ~570 reporters liveblogging the event?


I'm not Apple bashing, just pointing out what I noticed. Please don't mod me to hell.

Re:I love this....

[MidnightBrewer]

They *could* have just turned on password protection for their wireless network. It's incredible how efficient that is.

Re:I love this....

[gollito]

Dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why wouldn't you setup a demo only network with dedicated bandwidth if you wanting to go down smoothly?

Re:I love this....

[Graff]

I don't know a whole lot about wireless bandwidth, but one thing I did notice about this display is that the 3GS apparently had no problem loading the NYT website, while the iPhone 4 wouldn't load it. In my eyes it appeared to be more of a glitch with the hardware, rather than a problem with the network. Also, how else could the people in the audience use that same network (probably pretty slowly I'd guess) if the network were that saturated.

When you have an overloaded wifi spectrum like that usually what happens is that some devices manage to get a clean connection and some don't. It's very sporadic and unpredictable. It's not like every device's connection will fail. You might even have what looks like a good connection and then it will stall for no apparent reason.

There are also several bands on which they could possibly be communicating and it could just be that the 4G and the 3GS happened to be on different bands at that point. The 4G's band might have gotten over-congested and there was still some room on the band that the 3GS was on.

And, yes, there were a ton of reporters and people using devices in that audience. Wireless is great but it relies on the assumption that there will only be a certain amount of connections communicating at one time. Once you surpass that limit you get into the "odd things happen" zone.

Re:I love this....

[sznupi]

This would require additional equipment and planning and would have been very tough with a handheld device like a phone.

...or few sharpshooters aiming the antennas from the side of the scene.

Generally, yeah, poor planning; and wouldn't require any acrobatics to resolve, really - for example Apple/AT&T could perhaps get temporary license (like singular events often do) to operate separate, local, low power basestation on frequencies which aren't used in the US normally (or at least aren't likely to be used at Apple event, with most people there probably using standard AT&T frequencies). Hell, just enable in the iPhone connecting to the net via Bluetooth - not only it shouldn't be clogged, vast majority of the audience would be beyond the range anyway. And 1Mbit/s is better from what they do now.
Assuming they actually don't want it.

Re:I love this....

[Graff]

So when you're out in public you got to ask everybody around you to turn off their wifi so you can use your phone?

Of course not. I know this is a troll but voice over cellular is not the same as data over wifi. There's also a huge difference between 1 or 2 base stations and a dozen or so clients and the situation at the Keynote where they had a couple of hundred base stations in a single room.

Occasionally, if you are connected to a wifi network and it stalls you might have to disconnect from the wifi and then your phone falls back to use the cellular data channels. I believe the iPhone will do this automatically but doing it manually might be faster, since the phone will take a little time to recognize that the wifi network is stalled.

Re:I love this....

[Graff]

...or few sharpshooters aiming the antennas from the side of the scene.

That won't do much to help the phone itself which will still be deluged by wifi data from the audience. What you'd need to do is to have an external directional antenna on a mount and connected to the phone. Certainly doable but now you have to do the Keynote trailing a wire and the wire will be in the closeups. Maybe it's better than the demo failing but no matter what the situation isn't optimal.

Generally, yeah, poor planning; and wouldn't require any acrobatics to resolve, really - for example Apple/AT&T could perhaps get temporary license (like singular events often do) to operate separate, local, low power basestation on frequencies which aren't used in the US normally

That's assuming that the phone could easily be tuned to one of those odd frequencies. Most times the frequencies are fixed in silicon and other factors like the design of the antenna and can't easily be changed. Certainly Apple could have made some custom silicon but this is really the first time they've had problems of this sort. Perhaps next time they will know to take extra steps in case they run into this situation again.

Of course the easiest solution is to just require that the audience turn off their devices during the Keynote, assuming they listen!

Re:I love this....

[sznupi]

#1 that's not preciselly how radio waves work...only one end being highly directional and giving (in the cone) greatly amplified power might do the trick; remember that it doesn't enhance only transmission from the hotspot, also reception. And might totally overhelm the signals coming from the audience.

#2 iPhone hardware supports worldiwe GSM/UMTS standards, also those that are rarely (never?) used in the US.

Re:I love this....

[Graff]

Yes, the base station would appear to have a higher signal strength because the signal would spread less and yes, the device's signal would be gathered and focused so it would have a better chance of working than no directional antenna system. However, there would still be considerable interference from the rest of the devices. Would a single directional antenna be enough? Possibly but it's not certain.

Some of those "unused" GSM bands are actually being used by other types of devices in the US, that's why they are unavailable for cellular use. You might be able to find something that's not currently in use, get a special dispensation from the FCC, and get the specialized equipment to use the bands but that's a lot of ifs and maybes. It's still easier, if you can, just to make people in the audience stop using their devices for an hour.

Re:I love this....

[sznupi]

Getting approval for one microcell operating on those frequencies, just good enough to certainly cover a stage, should be quite easy; especially for Apple.

With how much people attending those events want to be online, the easiest would be probably enabling BT networking. But I have a feeling Apple doesn't want to do that - if the method would leak out, they could be "forced" to enable it on all iPhone devices; and that's something Apple definatelly wants to avoid... (iPod Touch + cheap "feature phone" would suddenly become just barely worse from iPhone, but significantly cheaper)

Re:iAds

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know what the "Retina display" means?

It means in Soviet Russia, iPhone 4 looks at you!

Re:iAds

[Anonymous Coward]

They are 'optional' if a developer dosn't want any feedback from the app in terms of usage data. If you want that, you MUST sign up to iAd's: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/with-new-developer-agreement-apple-unlevels-the-iad-playing-field/

Re:iAds

[poetmatt]

change position of 1 letter and you have Aids.

That's reflective on how good this is for the mobile networks, aka it's not.

No wonder the office is empty today...

[roc97007]

That explains why I'm holding down the fort by myself. The Macheads must be waiting in line at the iStore.

Re:No wonder the office is empty today...

[Wuhao]

I hope you like working solo, because it won't be selling until June 24.

Re:No wonder the office is empty today...

[Locke2005]

Only for a week; they're waiting in line to preorder it on June 15.

Re:iAds

[matt_hs]

R2 was out with Luke at the time. They had to fix the hyperdrive and C3-PO had to talk to the computer to find out what was wrong. He needed to do it because R2 wasn't around.

Re:FaceTime: The open industry standard

[toriver]

No but it is patent encumbered.

Don't video game companies do this?

[wandazulu]

I've been thinking the same thing, and I think that (though I don't know for sure as I'm not a video game developer), that Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft won't even let you write the game without putting through a proposal. I doubt it's much more than a general form that describes the overall gameplay, maybe a pic of some concept art or somesuch, and assuming the game isn't based on the characters from goatse.cx, they presumably give you the tentative go-ahead. Of course, when I say "won't let you develop" the game, I mean that they wouldn't consider approving it unless you submit the proposal ahead of time.

I suppose that would double the work on Apple; they'd need a staff to review the finished apps, as well as a group of people to sift through the proposals. Also, I could see the process being abused; even if the proposal site was limited to official developers, that's only $99 that would give some the idea that they could write an automated script to flood the system with boilerplate proposals.

Still, even if that were the case, I'd still want to do that. Like you said, it's hard to think you've spent time on something only to be rejected for some arbitrary reason. My ideas for apps are, I think, totally in the mainstream, but I can imagine being rejected simply because some faceless reviewer didn't like my choice of background wallpaper in the app.

Re:iAds

[migla]

I think Bill Hicks summed advertising up quite accurately:
"There's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers. Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself."
 

Re:FaceTime: The open industry standard

[jo_ham]

Which is not the same thing.

But it's ok, because copyright infringement is theft, right?

Re:Great features but...

[CoffeeDog]

Hell, Apple's own WiFi network couldn't handle it.

I can't wait for people in a crowded internet cafe yelling for people to turn off their laptops and WiFi so their iPhone 4 can work.

FaceTime, a NEW way to Annoy People in Public

[BBF_BBF]

Thank-you Mr. Jobs, now we won't just have to put up with people talking loudly into their cell phones, but we'll have to put up with iPhone users screaming into their speakerphones using "FaceTime" while mooching off a coffee shop's free wi-fi.

Re:Unicorns!

[TaoPhoenix]

"There goes your ability to focus"? I think there was an article about that ...

----

(Can I get a +1 Kurt Godel mod?)

Re:iAds

[The Grim Reefer2]

As for actually navigating an asteroid field, Pioneer 10, 11, Voyager 1 & 2, Galileo, Cassini, and New Horizons had no problems :)

Obviously physics have changed a little from what they were a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Or the next 26,040 space probes are in deep shit.

FREE HUMANITY!

[Xanavi]

They can put CPU-GPU-Sound-Touch-Wifi-BT-Cellradio in one chip, but not GSM & CDMA in the same chip?>??>>>>???? Cmon qualcomm/samsung, make some money here.....free humanity!

Re:FREE HUMANITY!

[Xanavi]

well, free america, lolfer LTE HALP!

Add a taser and I'll buy.

[strong_epoxy]

That's the last thing I can think of that's lacking...

Re:iAds

[Xanavi]

"We'll see how it pans out but I bet that the advertisement bandwidth will not count towards your total bandwidth." LOL.

Re:iAds

[fermion]

If you choose an ad supported App, then you are choosing to trade some of you allotted bandwidth for a free app. I only use a fraction of the 2 gig plan, but more than the 250 meg plan, so for me there is going to be no real costs to download ads, as long as my normal browsing plus the ads do not go over 2 gig. In any case I have the unlimited plan. I suspect many people are in my boat.

Let take the television example. I can watch a TV show and have 18 minutes of commercials for each hour of TV. I can invest in significantly in hardware and record the show and then watch it later without commercials. Both of these may require significant cable bills. I can watch the show on hulu with five minutes of commercials per hour of TV show, commercials using bandwidth I pay for. Or I could pay that magical 1.99 and watch the show without commercials. Frankly I often go the commercial route, though sometimes I pay the 1.99. And frankly, I feel that 18 minutes, or even five minutes, of my time is worth more than $2.

Still no keyboard...

[tekrat]

And no mention of bluetooth drivers to support a bluetooth keyboard. How is it that my 5yr old TREO can still be used at meetings to take notes, but the frigging iDoesEverything doesn't seem to do that? I guess Steve just assumes we'll all be emailing videos of ourselves to each other, and yet, if we try that, we'll eat through our "unlimited" AT&T data plan with the very first email!

Jesus, do I have to use a jailbroken phone?
Is that really the only way to get something that actually "just works"?

I'm always amazed at just how far off apple's hype from reality is.
I guess Steve's reality Distortion field just grows larger each year.

Re:Still no keyboard...

[KylePflug]

OS4 supports bluetooth keyboard. This was announced at the OS4 event. Keep up.

Re:Still no keyboard...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

And no mention of bluetooth drivers to support a bluetooth keyboard. How is it that my 5yr old TREO can still be used at meetings to take notes, but the frigging iDoesEverything doesn't seem to do that? I guess Steve just assumes we'll all be emailing videos of ourselves to each other, and yet, if we try that, we'll eat through our "unlimited" AT&T data plan with the very first email!

Jesus, do I have to use a jailbroken phone?
Is that really the only way to get something that actually "just works"?

I'm always amazed at just how far off apple's hype from reality is.
I guess Steve's reality Distortion field just grows larger each year.

Boy, you single-issue people really like having your buttons pushed.

Re:Still no keyboard...

[sexconker]

Boy, you single-issue people really like having your buttons pushed.

And with the new 4th generation iPhone, you now have ACTUAL BUTTONS to press!

Power! With our patented on/off technology, the Apple-designed power button will let you control the power state of your device!

Home! Making a return appearance is the always popular enter key! We call it a "Home" button but it might as well be a big red "Easy!" button from Staples.

Volume up and volume down! Control that volume, bitches!

Mute! Control that volume again, bitches!

Re:Still no keyboard...

[dwightk]

And no mention of bluetooth drivers to support a bluetooth keyboard.

how hard did you look?

Wireless keyboard support
Pair a keyboard based on Bluetooth wireless technology with your iPhone.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

Re:Still no keyboard...

[Moofie]

It's funny how infrequently people respond when they get served like that. Me? I'm often gracious enough to throw up an "I stand corrected! Thanks for setting me straight."

But I'm a weirdo.

So, Internet high-five. *

Re:Still no keyboard...

[jbeach]

From what I read, this new "iOS4" (ugh, I am so iFreaking TIRED of that little iMarketing iShtick...) will be able to do bluetooth keyboard...but I still don't know if it's for the new phone only, the new phone and the 3GS, or the 3G too. I have a 3G and I don't think I'm upgrading. So yeah, if the bluetooth keyboard doesn't work for the 3G, I may be getting the Jailbreak Cydia version of that too. I don't mind paying for it, rather than knuckle under to Jobs' further exploitation of my techie addiction.

Re:Still no keyboard...

[alexo]

Re: iPhone4
Am I wrong to want "something like it" but with a physical sliding QWERTY keyboard?

Re:iAds

[cayenne8]

"Will a user be winning when an ad for an ap that would have cost $1.99 for the ad-free version sends them over their monthly cap and results in a $10 bill from AT&T?"

What monthly cap? I've got 'unlimited'...and I'm keeping it that way!!

:)

Re:iAds

[Altus]

certainly any time you are displaying a progress bar gathering data from the net for your app (not applicable to all apps of course) that is a pretty reasonable time to display an ad. Especially if that Ad allows you to give your application away rather than sell it.

There is nothing wrong with iAd, some developers will use it poorly im sure, but those that use it well will likely be very successful with it.

Re:iAds

[audunr]

What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.

I hear Flashblock works great on it!

Re:Biggest Announcement

[tyrione]

Hey, I think the Farmville thing *is* significant, because the client is written in Flash... I wonder how do they get it running on the iPhone. A full rewrite is the most obvious possibility, but I wonder if there's a more interesting technology there.

You're wondering how they managed OpenGL with Compositing, Vector graphics and native hardware acceleration and no Flash? Seriously?

Re:Biggest Announcement

[0100010001010011]

The client is written in flash, but all the data back and forth is XMLish. People have written FarmVille bots in php, perl and python.

Re:iAds

[colinrichardday]

At what distance?

Re:iAds

[dmesg0]

The reason to choose 960x640 resolution is purely technical: to overcome their bad 3-year old decision to stick to a single resolution for application development. Quadrupling pixels is the only working solution for all the legacy apps out there.

However once they are at it, why not use this solution for PR? They now have the highest resolution on a cellphone ever, and 99% of potential buyers aren't aware of the real reason. The higher - the better, it's just like the megapixel wars in cameras.

I just hope the megapixel story won't be repeated with cellphone resolution, and we are not going to see stuff like 400-dpi 3" screens.

Re:iAds

[Flipao]

Firewall IP is fantastic, it's amazing how many apps phone home without telling the user.

The problem with iAd is developers are going to get greedy, sooner or later even paid apps will have ads, the same way paid TV now has ads.

Re:Biggest Announcement

[ggambett]

No, I was wondering if there was some kind of AS3 to ObjectiveC compiler or something similar. I recently wrote a C++ to AS3 "translator" and the possibilities are interesting.

Re:Biggest Announcement

[SuiteSisterMary]

Rock Band has been on the iPhone for quite a while now, anyway.

Re:FaceTime: The open industry standard

[pantherace]

I agree, they aren't the same thing. Actually, patent encumbered is worse than proprietary in a lot of ways.

If I clean room reverse engineer the protocol/specification for something proprietary, I can talk to it/play it/build a replacement part/whatever. I can then sell it if I wish.

For patents, I do the exact same thing, and sell it, I could get sued, and lose the case.

Re:iAds

[Amouth]

i would assume that as ppi is pixels per inch - and that an inch as it is displayed to the "unaided eye" is relative to how close you put it to your eye, that it would be any distance.

There is a point where too close and you can't focus - sure you could use a magnifying glass BUT then it wouldn't be the "unaided eye".

Re:iAds

[SimonTheSoundMan]

I also hear the new iPhone is powered almost entirely by the user's sense of self-importance, hence the extra few hours of call time.

Unsure if that is a new feature, though.

I like Apple's focus on fine-pitch displays...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, for smaller portable devices, you never want fixed layout like PDF. Reflowed content is much better than doing some horrible viewport scrolling around a page larger than your screen. People get a fetish about all the multitouch scroll and zoom, but frankly that is no way to read a large document.

But, I remember being impressed by the LCD on my ipod nano. I hope for the day they push the industry towards 300 ppi in a larger format display, such as ipad or a laptop. I think with resolution like that, PDF can really start to be nice, e.g. it looks like a printed page for most purposes.

You've got to ask yourself one question..

[u01iz]

With 5 times stronger than steel and glass 30 times harder than plastic..

Will it Blend?

Re:You've got to ask yourself one question..

[sexconker]

Of course it will.
Diamonds will blend. (Yes, even if they used real diamonds in that video they would have blended. The diamonds hitting each other at high speed causes the damage.)

The only that didn't blend (they didn't even try) was a crowbar.

The strength of the material isn't the only factor in determining the strength of an object/structure. The amount and positioning of that material play a huge role as well.

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

Yeah, I mean, who wants the world's largest selection of quality apps, all vetted to be reasonably sure of being malware-free and of at least a minimum level of quality and stability!

Yeah, because fart apps are considered quality. Quantity != quality. Plenty of quality apps have been denied, while plenty of crap is available in the app store.

Even though, at present, the "walled garden" provides a superior all-around app experience for most people

New Kids on the Block had a number 1 hit. "Superior" is very subjective.

there are some for whom ideology trumps reality. And I'm the one that gets called "fanboy"?

You are defending the fact that your device is artificially limited. That, to me, is the very definition of a fanboy.

Nothing I can do or say will change the fact that Apple retains control over what you can and can't do with your device. The only thing I can do is vote with my wallet, so that's what I do. Forgive me for being a consumer who pays attention.

Re:iAds

[node 3]

Does anyone know what the "Retina display" means?

The resolution exceeds that of the retina.

Is it just a marketing term (a la "Powerglide transmission") or does it actually describe some innovation in the display?

Yes, it's a marketing term.

And can we please pitch in and buy Steve Jobs a sandwich? Even Kate Moss says he's too skinny.

Dude just recovered from cancer. Not just cancer, but a type of cancer that is to cancer what most cancers are to not having cancer at all, which fucked up his liver and he had to get that replaced after getting past the cancer. I usually don't comment on personal attacks, but this one is exceptional in its lack of class, and not even at least being funny enough to make up for it.

Fring

[earlymon]

You want free videoconferencing on your forward-camera phone? Use Fring - I'm using it on my EVO on travel, and I'm Skype videoconferencing our offices just with my phone.

http://www.fring.com/fring_is/what_is_fring/

It's too simple:

1. Create Fring account

2. Attach Fring to whatever xport you want. I don't have any special skype app installed, I just told Fring that I wanted to use Skype and AIM, logged in to each and I was good to go.

Won't support video or audio thru AIM, so I'm SOL for my iChat only friends - but Skype - works great.

They did it again!!

[UglyMike]

Read it and weep, puny feature^^^^^^smartphone makers!!

1. This baby has 2 cameras, one of which is a whopping 5Mpel! This wipes the floor with everything that came before!
2. It can now even do sci-fi like video calls (ok, Wifi only, but still...) Bet you never though of that one!
3. The ebook reader can even read PDF! Ha!! In your faces!
4. It even runs more than 1 program at the time! Emulate this, suckers!

Yes sir, visionary Steve (all blessings be upon him) did it again!

PS Just kidding. Look like real nice kit, but a tad too expesive for me.

Other Carriers?

[Doc Ruby]

FaceTime, live video chat from one iPhone 4 to another. It is Wi-Fi only at the moment, but they're working with carriers to expand that in the future.

That statement implies that not only AT&T, but other carriers, will be carrying the iPhone. Which other carriers? That fact would be by far the biggest news about the new iPhone. And one step away from the total vertical monopoly Jobs has managed to lock people into if they want to "Think Different" about their phone.

Re:Other Carriers?

[dwightk]

Which other carriers?

any of the plurality of carriers the iPhone is available on around the world.

Re:Other Carriers?

[ArtDent]

Actually, it only implies Steve Jobs is aware that the US is not the only country in the world.

Re:Other Carriers?

[painandgreed]

That statement implies that not only AT&T, but other carriers, will be carrying the iPhone. Which other carriers? That fact would be by far the biggest news about the new iPhone. And one step away from the total vertical monopoly Jobs has managed to lock people into if they want to "Think Different" about their phone.

Probably the carriers for all the other countries. AT&T is only the carrier for the USA. Other countries have other carriers and due to local laws, perhaps even not locked to a carrier. Buy your iPhone in Belgium, Luxembourg, Russia, Greece, or Italy and you can use it with any carrier as it's not locked. Many other carriers in Europe will unlock your iPhone after your contract is over.

Re:Other Carriers?

[cyberworm]

It could also imply that they'd like to see this function across carriers and platforms. I'd love to use something like this with my friends, not all of whom can afford or want an iPhone. Steve Jobs has a fair amount of charisma and could be a catalyst to help push this sort of tech forward. Think about how fractured MMS/SMS was for the longest time. You couldn't get a photo out of your network to another network. Thankfully market forces encouraged this to change. Perhaps something like this will be a shortcut to accomplishing the same kind of interoperability between phones/networks.

Apple is not a monopoly

[sjbe]

How are we not affected by the dictatorship of Steve Jobs?

Because you don't have to buy an iPhone. Seriously. I like the iPhone well enough but it's hardly the only usable smartphone out there. Presently I use a Nokia smartphone and it works well enough for my purposes that I'm in no hurry to trade it in. Don't like Apple's policies? Don't buy from Apple. I'm sure the makers of Android, Blackberry and other smart phones will be happy to take your money.

We're not allowed to use GPL'd software;

If that bothers you buy one of the other phones that permits the use of GPL software. They certainly exist.

we're not allowed to use applications that replicate included functionality; we're not allowed to modify the UI to our liking; we're not allowed to watch porn;...

Again, there are other products that permit all of this. You realize you don't have to like the iPhone right? It's completely ok if you buy something else. Furthermore if you don't care about Apple's blessing you can even do all this on a jailbroken iPhone.

This is different from shopping at Wal-Mart, Target, etc. because those companies might not sell what you're interested in, but they aren't going to stop you from buying the products you want from another source.

You can buy competing phones that are functionally equivalent to an iPhone. No they aren't identical but that's ok - Mac's and PCs aren't identical but you can do most of the same things on each. Economists even have a term for that. Apple isn't stopping you from buying products you want from another source either. My Nokia phone does essentially everything the iPhone 3G does, albeit with a fair bit less panache. Your analogy is quite simply wrong because you are defining the product too narrowly. If your definition of the product is "something that works on an iPhone" then yes, you will be frustrated. But if your definition is "useful smartphone software", there are vast options available to you. Don't paint yourself into a corner and you won't have a problem.

Please, stop glossing over the fact that this "walled garden" blows; it's insulting to my intelligence.

So buy somewhere else and stop whining. Plenty of very intelligent people have looked at the facts and come to a different conclusion. They obviously are not bothered by the same things that bother you. Speaking for myself, if the built in apps suit my needs I don't care if I can't replace them. I want a device that is well enough designed that I don't need to alter the interface. I don't remotely care if porn is available on the iPhone because I'll never use it for that purpose. Despite my being a big fan of the GPL, I don't even care if the iPhone has any GPL software because if I want GPL software I can get it elsewhere. The iPhone is there if I want it and I can buy some very good competing products if they suit my needs better. You are free to do the same.

I suppose if I embraced the lack of freedom, I'd be happy. Not unlike the Patriot Act, I might add.

That's a profoundly stupid argument. Comparing the federal government taking away civil liberties to a manufacturer of a technology product not producing exactly the product you rather arrogantly feel entitled to? That is amazingly lacking in perspective.

Re:Apple is not a monopoly

[Mike Buddha]

How arrogant of me to feel entitled to use something I paid for any perfectly legal way that I please.

If you read the OP, then you'd know that he was defending Apple's draconian policies, which set the tone for my response. Please do your research before going off about whining. You'd also know that he directly compared shopping at the App Store with shopping at any other of these "curated experiences" like Wal-mart or Target, hence the direct reference to his own metaphor. Now, that I've read his posting back to you, feel free to STFU and RTFOP for yourself, lazybones.

Re:Apple is not a monopoly

[zuperduperman]

> Because you don't have to buy an iPhone

Sadly, even those who try to escape Steve's clutches are affected by the iPhone, as evidenced by the fact that nearly every mobile platform is copying the App Store model, some of them with exactly the same kind of draconian lock-in policies. So this is not something we can just sit by and watch, it is an industry wide phenomenon that we must fight on every front that opens up, or one day we will get out of bed and there will be no platforms left where we have the legal right to run our own software any more.

So yes, even those of us who escaped the prison camp (or were never captured in the first place) will be coming back to help more of you get out, because there is more at stake here than just a few apps on a phone.

Coming up on /. in 2011

[vlueboy]

So wait, you mean its impossible to post an article and then have people post continuing updates in the thread? The mind reels.

Go easy, man. Usually the complaint about Slashdot is that its news stories are days old. Give us time to adapt!

We have just experienced a failed slashcode test.
Slashdot 3.0 will be able to post dupes prior to an event's conclusion ;)

Re:FaceTime: The open industry standard

[Skuld-Chan]

Isn't it? I can't download the official spec anywhere - so it isn't open. I have to sign a license agreement and pay a fee to use it or ship products with it.

Sounds proprietary to me.

Re:Biggest Announcement

[xaxa]

Maybe Apple supporting it will change things, but plenty of phones already support video calls. People simply aren't that bothered to use it.

Re:FaceTime: The open industry standard

[jo_ham]

It is an open standard, and interoperable with anyone who conforms to the spec. You need a licence to ship a decoder and an encoder due to the patents.

It is not proprietary.

It is if Linux is Unix though, I suppose. Or if copyright infringement is theft, or Android is a cellphone.

Divx support?

[ACAx1985]

Huge selling point will be Divx support. Obviously, it will need a jailbreak.. but even with a jailbreak, my iPhone 3G can't properly play Divx.

Re:iAds

[autophile]

At 10-12 inches. As Jobs said in the speech.

boring

[yyxx]

Front-facing camera, video conferencing, HD recording, multitasking all have been around for a while. 960x640 at 326ppi is not different in any practical sense from the 800x480 272ppi screens found on many other phones; the oddball resolution is probably mainly a concession to lack of resolution independence in many iPhone apps, allowing for simple pixel-doubling (hello, Palm!).

This device is a nice upgrade for iPhone users, but it just gives them parity with other smartphones, nothing more.

Re:iAds

[tylersoze]

Once again from the consumer point of view, I'm a huge believer in try before you buy. As soon as they enabled in-app purchase in free apps, I got rid of all my lite versions and converted them all to free with in-app purchase to enable full functionality. Now I know that may not be appropriate for all apps, but that was my solution to that problem.

Re:iAds

[dwightk]

why are you assuming that iAds will ever be transmitted over the cell network?

Re:iAds

[bhtooefr]

I have bifocals on top of 20/20 vision in my left eye (long story, involving lazy eye and farsightedness in the right eye.) Bring 400 ppi screens on.

Re:iAds

[Miseph]

As GP pointed out, the joke sucked. That is a perfectly valid reason to criticize it.

June 24; an important day

[kimvette]

Which event is the more important? The debut of the iPhone 4, or the return of Futurama as a television series?

For me it's no question. I am planning my schedule around Futurama but will be waiting on a jailbreak being released before I upgrade my iPhone.

Re:iAds

[grub]

I installed Atomic Web Browser ($.99) on my iPad as I wasn't sure about jailbreaking it. My 3GS is jailbroken but it's caused a few issues. And os 4 looks pretty nice.
but year, Firewall IP is awesome, the calls home you mention are quite the eye opener.

Re:iAds

[node 3]

That, or learn to read. I made it clear I don't give two shits if you make fun of Steve Jobs. There's plenty about him to ridicule. But to ridicule a cancer surviver for being skinny after losing his fucking liver? I don't care who the target of such a comment is, it's out of line.

Re:iAds

[grub]

Whoops, replied to my comment not the first reply. Damn iPhone... ;)

See gaming consoles...but better than before.

[acomj]

Hopefully andriod and other competition keeps them honest. Game consoles are even worse as I can't even figure out how to get a development kit or get my applications on one.

People want "just works" over "I can code on it". Most consumers aren't coders.

On the plus side for us developers Apple just paid out 1 billion dollars to app developers. thats a billion dollar phone market that wasn't there before.

Steve Jobs single handedly changed the mobile app market for the better as well:

http://cdixon.org/2010/06/06/steve-jobs-single-handedly-restructured-the-mobile-industry/

Re:iAds

[dave420]

Poor analogy. The phone is opt-in, so your analogy would be better if you asked the OP whether they'd want any limits on any consensual person-to-person interaction they want, which I'm sure you realise is fucking retarded. Like your analogy.

Facetime

[cyberworm]

I'm genuinely curious about how this works. I only read the live engadget blog, but I didn't see a mention of how this application connects to another iphone. Does it do it via phone number, mobileme/AIM, or jabber type of connection (via email addy)? Is there some sort of user agent checking that tells the application it's really talking to another iPhone or what?

What would be interesting to see, is if this is some way to appease the telcos until the feature goes live and then one day they just open it up to connect to all sorts of video confrencing/video IM applications.

Honestly, I would love to have this iPhone. It looks great and reminds me of a sony ericsson that I had quite a few years back. I agree that there really isn't anything super revolutionary about this particular iPhone, but I don't really think that Steve Jobs is an innovator in tech, as much as he is a diplomat with a keen eye for style. The real revolutionary stuff that comes from Apple is more in terms of design and simplified function than real technological progress. Even the Apple haters will give Apple some credit for the aesthetics of their machines. I could be wrong, but until Apple came along with bolder machine cases, everything was beige, white, and sometimes black. I don't really think that would have changed a whole lot in the mainstream had it not been for them. Even the newer phones are riding Apple's design coattails in form and function. For another company to de-throne Apple, that company would have to take some design risks and (I hate saying this,) think outside of the box. I'm not the guy to come up with it though. I really can't imagine something better than a rectangle for a mobile phone.

Re:iAds

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is just exactly what Steve Said in the keynote. That resolution also happens to be exactly 2x the current resolution in both x and y making scaling a breeze.

Think before you type.

Re:Really?

[peppepz]

Historically, majorities have often been wrong.

Re:iAds

[justin12345]

I just hope the megapixel story won't be repeated with cellphone resolution, and we are not going to see stuff like 400-dpi 3" screens.

On the contrary, I hope we do! Resolution like that would make the VR goggle aspirations of the 90s and augmented reality aspirations of the present a reality. If the initial resolution war is fought on cell phone screens, so be it.

Not only that, but while your casual snapshot taker doesn't need more then 5 megapixels, your professional photographer certainly does. Generally speaking, "the money is at the bottom". Selling a million iPhones at $200 could allow the development of $2000 HMD where you can't see the pixels at 1" from your eye.

not so fast

[jDeepbeep]

No, you see, the turtleneck can be pulled up and around the phone, for an intimate, and muffled experience.

Re:iAds

[jo_ham]

They might come as a bundled package that sits in memory on your phone, that is refreshed when you sync with iTunes. There's nothing to say one way or the other whether they will be downloaded via the cellular network.

iRoulette

[brownpau]

FaceTime video chat app lacks a "Next" button.

Re:iAds

[cowscows]

There are a whole bunch of websites that I've been browsing almost every single day for years, and have never personally given them even a dime of my money. If it wasn't for advertisers paying some bills, then I wouldn't get to do that.

Accept the reality. Content isn't free to produce. Someone has to pay for it. You can mumble whatever you want about subscriptions or micropayments or whatever, but the reality is that all of that stuff implemented on a large scale would be just annoying as your average web ad, and you'd rather not pay anyways.

That's not to say that some ads are more tasteful while others are purposefully aggravating and quite annoying. But to pretend that everything would be puppies and roses if web ads went away is to ignore how the world works.

Re:Biggest Announcement

[peppepz]

Lots of phones had browsers on them before the iPhone. They were completely useless.

This is false.

You understand how it works right? You call someone on the _phone_, and if they can support it, you can enter a video chat from _within the call_. I'm sorry, but that is a huge improvement on current tech.

Actually, that's how every 3G phone in the world works. And they have worked this way for 7 years or so.

Farmville for iOS...

[rickb928]

Another place to do chores for NOTHING.

What is this fascination with farming? Oh yeah, that's right. The computer version doesn't smell.

Re:iAds

[droopycom]

I believe I can do VPN on iPhone through 3G.... why cant you ?

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

Correct. That's why I wrote, "yeah, I mean, who wants the world's largest selection of quality apps". The App Store has the largest selection of quality apps, not just the largest selections of apps alone (which it also has).

You are limited to the app store. Android (and, even though as an OS it isn't as robust, Windows Mobile 6.5) are limited to anything written for them available anywhere on the Internet, with no hacking or modding required.

Yeah, like 5 or something. That doesn't change the fact that the App Store has more quality apps than any other mobile store out there.

Again, you are still limited to the store. For Android, for example, you have the choice of going through the official store or any other place online that provides applications.

Whereas the Android Marketplace has no crap apps?

It does, but once again, Android users aren't limited to the Marketplace.

You pay so close attention that you think fart apps are indicative of the overall App Store, that thinks that the iPhone is a locked down wasteland, while Android is a thriving metropolis?

No, I was merely using fart apps as an example. Overall, yes, the Appstore does have plenty to offer. However, I don't like being restricted to a single location as a means for finding applications for my phone, regardless of what that single location offers. Why wouldn't Apple enable you to download things from places other than the Appstore? People that actually need the walled garden can stick to the Store, and "power users" would be free to go elsewhere. So why doesn't Apple do that?

No, you're simply informed that the App Store is locked down, and that Android is less locked down, any any other fact be damned.

You're right. Unless I hack an iPhone, I am limited to the Appstore, again, regardless of what that may include. With Android, I have the option of the Appstore and other sources, without having to hack my phone.

Bullshit. Apple doesn't control what I can do, they merely control what apps I can get from the App Store, nothing more. I can buy a key and compile and run any app I want. I don't even have to buy a key, someone else can and distribute an app to hundreds of people for free. I can jailbreak. I can use HTML5 apps, which are extremely capable (Google's Voice webapp is fantastic).

See bold section. Having to hack your phone to leap over the walled garden isn't necessarily something to use in an attempt to sway my opinion, when I can already download anything I want from wherever I want for my unmodified device.

No, I'm defending the fact that the device has far more quality options than any other device out there. You are defending a device that is actually limited by actually not having as many quality apps for nothing more than ideology.

Once again, Android devices aren't limited to the Appstore.

That's the definition of a fanboy.

I don't have an iPhone primarily because I don't want to be stuck with a single location for applications. I'm sorry that seems stupid to you, but that is my requirement, and as of now the iPhone doesn't meet that requirement.

Not buying a product because it doesn't do what I want makes me a fanboy?

Re:iAds

[njvack]

the screen is higher than 300ppi, which is a resolution greater than the human eye can resolve.

Wouldn't it depend on how close the screen is to your eye?

Re:iAds

[Graff]

Yeah, I definitely agree that's a great way to reduce app clutter and confusion. The good thing is that Apple is offering these types of tools to developers so that we can be innovative and creative with how we finance the development. The more tools we have the better the apps can get.

Re:iAds

[theJML]

I actually have that setup on my WiFi at home... squid proxy. works well, and decreases the loading time of pages by quite a bit.

Though I'd have to say, along the same vein, I'm glad there's no flash on the iPhone, just imagine how much longer it'd take to pull all the flash based web ads. Bleh.

Re:Trademark infringement with FaceTime

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Come on Apple, how do you expect others to respect your trademarks if you don't respect other?

Ever think of checking your facts before commenting? From the FaceTime IM company web site:

"Our agreement with Apple to transfer the FaceTime trademark to them comes as we are rebranding our company to better reflect our capabilities. We will be announcing a new name in the coming months."

Re:Trademark infringement with FaceTime

[farnsworth]

Our Name - FaceTime As you've probably heard, Apple has announced that it will use "FaceTime" as the trademark for its new video calling application Our agreement with Apple to transfer the FaceTime trademark to them comes as we are rebranding our company to better reflect our capabilities. We will be announcing a new name in the coming months.

http://facetime.com/LearnMore.aspx

Re:iAds

[Tobenisstinky]

at about 12 inches.

Re:Trademark infringement with FaceTime

[cjyetman]

http://facetime.com/LearnMore.aspx "Our agreement with Apple to transfer the FaceTime trademark to them comes as we are rebranding our company to better reflect our capabilities. We will be announcing a new name in the coming months."

Re:iAds

[Altus]

Quantity != quality

You know, nobody bought that argument when mac users were saying the same thing about PC applications.

of course it does!

[commodoresloat]

this is the iPhone, after all!

Re:Biggest Announcement

[SETIGuy]

Guitar Hero on the iPhone. HOW?!? Kinda missing the guitar there...

Guitar Hero has been available on other phones for years. On touch screens you just touch the strings on the display. On non-touch screen phones you press keys on the phone.

Lame? Kinda.

iPhone in Asian and other foreign places?

[antdude]

Does this mean iPhone 4 will work in Korea, Japan, China, Europe, etc.?

Thank you in advance. :)

yeah I know how you feel

[commodoresloat]

I'd love to write a best-selling novel, but until Bedford St. Martin's gives me 100% assurance that they will publish and advertise my novel before I start writing it, I'm not going to write a word of it.

There is a fundamental risk in writing new books: "Will customers read this?" This risk can be calculated to a certain extent. My concern with writing a novel for Bedford St. Martin's is that an additional incalculable risk exists, and it is simply too much to bear.

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[xigxag]

iOS apps have only one publisher, one all-powerful gatekeeper. There's only one possible publisher for your book?

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[aylons]

Not a valid comparison.
You can write whatever book you want and try to sell it through any publisher. There are hundreds of them, surely you can find one that fits your work style. Damn, if you believe your book will sell a lot despite of the opinion of every publisher, you can even pay for print (it's actually cheap) and try to sell yourself! This is not a novelty, or even a rare thing.

However, if you develop for iOS, it takes less than a Steve Jobs' bad day and you will never be able to sell your software. There is no option, no alternative publishers, not even a self-publishing option. No, Cydia is not in scope here, it's hackery and demands users to violate the ToS.

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[bennomatic]

Man, I was going to do something parallel about a porn, but you had to go all high-brow with, like, books and stuff.

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[exomondo]

I'd love to write a best-selling novel, but until Bedford St. Martin's gives me 100% assurance that they will publish and advertise my novel before I start writing it, I'm not going to write a word of it.

That implies that there is only one publisher available, which is of course untrue. However the App Store is the only way to get out legitimate iphone apps so ANALOGY FAIL.

There is a fundamental risk in writing new books: "Will customers read this?" This risk can be calculated to a certain extent.

How is that relatable to the iphone/appstore whatsoever? The customers have no say in what will be approved for the appstore so again ANALOGY FAIL.

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[PiSkyHi]

You forget the costs involved for Apple to publish and distribute are close to nil compared to a real book in a publishing house.

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[Serious Callers Only]

Your analogy is illuminating, perhaps in more ways that you intend. If you write a book for a publisher, you can always shop it around as many publishers as you like till you find a buyer. If the book is good, presumably someone will like it.

Unfortunately if you write an app for iOS and Apple don't like it, you're out of luck. Or say you write the app, they like it, and then they don't like it : http://www.groundhog.com.au/myframe/. All that work you did for 6 months and thought was a success is now worthless, and you also have lots of disappointed customers.

The equivalent would be Bedford St. Martin's requiring you to write a novel in their own dialect of Klingon, which they will then translate for their customers. Your time spent learning Klingon and doing that is a sunk cost if they then decide they don't like it they will stop translating/selling it, and from time to time they change the rules as to what words are acceptable on a whim, so old novels are constantly being removed from publication. They also have a tendency to reject novels which they feel are too close to those their founder has written or is in the process of writing (which he also publishes through them in competition with yours). Sometimes phrases from your novels crop up in the founder's, but hey, what can you do, they own you...

Suddenly, writing for Bedford St. Martin's is a slightly worrying prospect, no matter how many customers they have.

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[ampathee]

Right, but there are other publishers.

What can you do with a rejected iOS app?

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[Just Some Guy]

I'd love to write a best-selling novel, but until Bedford St. Martin's gives me 100% assurance that they will publish and advertise my novel before I start writing it, I'm not going to write a word of it.

If you think your novel will sell, and BSM won't publish it, you're free to distribute it through other publishers. How well's that working out for an iOS app that Apple won't publish?

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[commodoresloat]

exactly. These people are not whining that Apple won't let them develop, they are whining that Apple won't subsidize their development before they even start doing any work. They demand the right to sell their app through a specific store, and they demand a guarantee that their app will be distributed at Apple's cost no matter how bad it is and no matter whether Apple wants to sell it that way or not. I certainly will disagree with a lot of Apple's decisions about what to sell or not sell through their store, but you can't deny that those decisions are Apple's to make. Portraying this as some kind of Big Brother is nonsense -- it's their damn store.

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[commodoresloat]

Suddenly, writing for Bedford St. Martin's is a slightly worrying prospect, no matter how many customers they have.

Sounds like you should try a different publisher then. Even if you disagree with their decisions, do you really disagree that it is their decision to make? Or should the publisher subsidize the publication and distribution of every book anyone wants to write, no matter how bad it is?

Re:yeah I know how you feel

[commodoresloat]

Gosh it's too bad there isn't like a big network of computers connected together with some kind of protocol for transporting information that could be used by the writer to distribute his works directly. That would be really cool, wouldn't it? I guess in the meantime the only way to publish anything is through the Apple store, but maybe someone can look into inventing something like this -- what's Steve Wozniak doing these days?

job advertisement

[alobar72]

"Apple senior vice president of superlatives"
They need one for the next iPad/iPhone and such.
I think all superlatives and "oh my god is this cool"-words are used up.
I think their next product will be a wordbook that contains the words necessary to glorify the next but one product :-)
Anyway - I have to leave now - I am on my way camping for the iPhone - hope to be the first in line...

Re:iAds

[mgblst]

Except you can already get an adblocked browser for the iPhone, so I will take your odds quite happily.

You just can't get it on Safari, since it does not support plugins.

Rahm Emmanuel to Bill Clinton re: Lewinsky

[QuincyDurant]

"You did it backwards. You're supposed to marry the Jewish girl and fool around with the shiksa." So buy the iPad and steal software for your PC.

HTC... FTW

[meehawl]

Recent HTC CDMA phones such as TP2 support all the GSM/HS frequencies *and* the advanced CDMA ones as well. Phones for Korea market include both SIM and CDMA removable cards.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:iAds

[mgblst]

Some people do, most people don't. It is just not worth it for most developers to keep 2 versions of every app, considering now you have to also keep an ipad version, and a higher resolution version for the new iphone.

$199 what?

[DaveGod]

Why does the Engadget article say the phone will be available for $199 for the 16gb model? Is that for an unlocked phone that YOU own, or is that just the down payment for the lease agreement masquerading as a call plan?

An unlocked HTC Desire costs £400 in UK. The 16gb 3GS unlocked is £650 ($940), though £440 for PAYG, which has no committment but is locked to a carrier so you don't fully own it.

Re:$199 what?

[cheesybagel]

Down payment for lease masquerading as a call plan. All iPhones in the US are sold for the AT&T cellphone operator.

Re:iAds

[dmesg0]

Tiny 14 megapixels on latest batch of cameras are there to showcase the lens weaknesses and noise reduction algorithms.

No professional photographer needs more megapixels than his lens can resolve. And pros are often more pragmatic than regular consumers: some still shoot with first generation Canon 1D (4MP) - it works, and is enough for newspapers. A lot of pros shoot product photos for their customers' web sites - they don't need resolution at all, only good lighting.

For real VR glasses you need much higher resolution than what the new iphone offers (e.g. 1080p in a 1" display, ~2200dpi). I'm afraid it won't happen as a by-product of cellphone development, someone has to target that market specifically.

Re:Really?

[sznupi]

Sales numbers like 2%, so this year 3% probably, overall "tiny percent of the market"?

Re:iAds

[Lars T.]

What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.

Heh! Odds of that being approved for the App Store are approximately 3,720 to 1.

http://www.icab.de/mobile.html

http://www.appbird.com/adblockweb/

Re:Really?

[sznupi]

Though your phone depends, at the least, much less on such factories; its manufacturer owning all its fabs et al... (most of them not in China anyway)

Re:iAds

[Anonymous Coward]

Reality distortion field alert!

Your post is 100% iFail(tm)

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[account_deleted]

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Re:iAds

[Lars T.]

-1 offtopic for talking about what Jobs is showing in the unveiling powerpoint presentation? Apple fanboys have raided Slashdot, and they're retarded.

Powerpoint? Who is retarded, Tard?

Re:iAds

[batkiwi]

You mean the android that is aimed at phone manufacturers, not you? Whereby you likely cannot upgrade to the latest version, may not even be able to access the app store if your carrier locks it out (optus!!), and have to do a convoluted "root" proceedure which is different for every phone (and doesn't exist yet for some phones!) in order to have more access to the OS than you have on an iphone?

I honestly see no difference except that you have more choice over your form factor (a good thing) and that you can write apps in java instead of objc (another good thing)... not that you'll be able to INSTALL those apps if your carrier or phone manufacturer doesn't want you to.

Re:iAds

[angel'o'sphere]

Marketing - the screen is higher than 300ppi, which is a resolution greater than the human eye can resolve.

That is wrong.
The human eye can resolve nearly twice that resolution. How ever if you refer to computer/TV screens or printed media and the typical displayed images then you are right in so far: there is very rarely an image where this matters.
However if you have a 600 DPI print output of 3 pixels, black white black, then the human eye easy sees the gap between the 2 black pixels.

angel'o'sphere

Re:iAds

[Graff]

It is just not worth it for most developers to keep 2 versions of every app, considering now you have to also keep an ipad version, and a higher resolution version for the new iphone.

It can all be done in a single version. The iPhone and iPad versions can easily be made to run as a single app which run on either device, no matter the resolution. Also, with in-app purchases you can have a free version which converts into a paid version upon making the in-app payment. This means a developer can easily have a single version in the app store which covers all the bases.

There are quite a few apps in the app store which have consolidated themselves in this fashion. It's really very little extra work for the developer and because they only have to maintain a single app it actually ends up saving work. It also makes it less confusing for consumers so your app is more likely to be purchased.

Re:Biggest Announcement

[sznupi]

I guess that's why Opera Mini is the #1 mobile browser by web traffic?... (despite it being used, in large part, by people who are careful not to browse too many websites due to high costs of their data connection)

Plus you are simply totally unaware how 3G video calling works (hint: exactly like what you describe as "a huge improvement"). And is available on hundreds millions of devices already, assuring easy interoperability; but hardly anybody cares, probably partly due to some inherent issues with the idea (mobile use has another - can't coexist with a very typical method of using mobile phone while on the move, etc.)
The only moderately popular usage of 3G video calling seems to be sharing the view of your surroundings with somebody; but that doesn't even need front camera (and is in fact worse when videocall can use only the front one)

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

I honestly see no difference except that you have more choice over your form factor (a good thing) and that you can write apps in java instead of objc (another good thing)... not that you'll be able to INSTALL those apps if your carrier or phone manufacturer doesn't want you to.

The key thing is that you have a choice...if you don't like what a manufacturer/carrier has to offer, you can go with someone else.

Re:iAds

[dmesg0]

... involving lazy eye ...

They'll definitely bring 400ppi displays, but in 3D only. Just to make you feel bad.

Re:iAds

[justin12345]

Sure, glass is the most important thing when it comes to sharpness, but image resolution can really save your ass sometimes. There are times you're just not going to be close enough or fast enough to get the shot, or your going to find something in the background that really adds to the shoot (I'm talking event here). In those cases being able to crop in and maintain sharpness can save your ass.

Pros are pragmatic, and very often improvise, but I've never known a photographer that didn't want the best equipment that they could get their hands on. My fiancee is a professional photographer and I have a BFA in photography, in fact most people I know are either artists or professional photographers. My fiancee will shoot with her old Nikon D70 (hell she'll shoot with my F3 sometimes) if she has to, but she'd rather use her D300.

As far as VR goes, sure you need a lot more resolution then you'll ever need on a cell phone. My point is that the companies making the screens for the cell phones are the same companies that will be making the screens for VR. Its not just technological cross pollination, its money for R and D.

Re:iAds

[joh]

What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.

Heh! Odds of that being approved for the App Store are approximately 3,720 to 1.

It's actually exactly 1.

Re:iAds

[BasilBrush]

The reason to choose 960x640 resolution is purely technical: to overcome their bad 3-year old decision to stick to a single resolution for application development. Quadrupling pixels is the only working solution for all the legacy apps out there.

It wasn't a bad decision. Having a fixed resolution means that apps can be designed to a pixel perfect degree. And given that 3 years later, they have been able to up the resolution in a way that means all those apps remain pixel perfect means that fixing the resolution in the first place wasn't a technological dead end.

For a desktop windowing OS, variable resolution combined with resolution independence is a good thing. Apps run in windows that can be of any size, and the generous screen space allows plenty of flexibility for apps to rearrange themselves to suit. For a screen as small as a smartphone that just doesn't work. Designers have to design very carefully to fit the app UI on the screen in a good way.

Re:iAds

[BasilBrush]

Yeah, because fart apps are considered quality....
You are defending the fact that your device is artificially limited. That, to me, is the very definition of a fanboy.

On the one hand you are criticising Apple for not allowing enough freedom. On the other hand you are criticising the result of freedom - some developers choose to release fart apps. Get the logic of your criticism straight before you start ranting.

FaceTime App

[lionchild]

So, if FaceTime only works on WiFi, does that mean there will be an App for your MacBook or MacBook Pro so you can get FaceTime calls on your laptop? I mean if you can't use it over wireless, and doing WiFi-only (for now), then why not have an FaceTime app for the laptop so both users don't have to have an iPhone4?

Re:iAds

[michaelhood]

Sounds reasonable enough to me. I'm a developer myself and I don't think I'll be doing it either. However, I could see people doing it as a way to put out a clearly-labeled free version to defray development costs and serve as a try-before-you-buy.

It depends on a lot of factors but at least it's an option and easy to add into an app if you want to give it a whirl.

This is how the Android market works (in a de facto, not policy sense) presently. I'm hardly putting up the Android market (it's terrible, IMO as someone who has an iPad and an Android phone to contrast with) as an example of it being done right, but I'm pointing out this is what the Android app developers have chosen to do when presented with the choices you're about to face as iOS developers.

Many non-free apps have two versions: Appname, Appname Free. Where the 'Free' generally implies ad-supported, if it's not outright labeled as having trial-esque limitations.

This works generally well, for me at least, as I find the ads wasteful (in loading time, CPU, etc. (I have unlimited data)). So if it's an app I use for more than a day or so I'll buy the premium version to support development and skip the ads.

I suspect this will translate over to the App Store in a similar way.

Re:iAds

[dmesg0]

Well, that decision is probably the reason Apple didn't up the resolution much earlier - first WVGA phones appeared about 2 years ago. It may have cost Apple some sales (I know it was one of the factors for me).

In addition, the older apps are going to look worse than what they could have been (even those that are already capable of utilizing the full resolution and do it fine with FullForce from cydia). But it probably doesn't concern Apple much, everyone will be forced to update their apps eventually.

Re:iAds

[zuperduperman]

If you deliberately decide to buy a phone where the manufacturer has disabled the most useful features - being able to install non-market apps or even access the app store at all - then it's just dumb to complain about that afterwards. The fact is, there *is* choice, so choose! Don't reward old school dinosaur carriers and phone manufacturers with your business. It's a new world now.

Re:iAds

[soliptic]

Setting aside your disregard for the Star Wars reference (turn in your geek card as you leave)

Let's get this straight: referencing the solution to:

Consider an n-dimensional hypercube, and connect each pair of vertices to obtain a complete graph on 2n vertices. Then colour each of the edges of this graph using only the colours red and black. What is the smallest value of n for which every possible such colouring must necessarily contain a single-coloured complete sub-graph with 4 vertices which lie in a plane?

is not geeky, but awareness of a mainstream hollywood kids action movie is?

Someone must have changed the definition of geekiness while I wasn't looking.

Re:iAds

[anethema]

To be fair to use anything other than the market you have to go into settings and change an option, which takes about as long as jailbreaking :D

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:iAds

[node 3]

You are limited to the app store. ...
Again, you are still limited to the store. ...
It does, but once again, Android users aren't limited to the Marketplace. ...
However, I don't like being restricted to a single location as a means for finding applications for my phone, regardless of what that single location offers.

Exactly. You don't care about the reality of what's offered, but instead by your ideological aversion to having only one app store.

Bullshit. Apple doesn't control what I can do, they merely control what apps I can get from the App Store, nothing more. I can buy a key and compile and run any app I want. I don't even have to buy a key, someone else can and distribute an app to hundreds of people for free. I can jailbreak. I can use HTML5 apps, which are extremely capable (Google's Voice webapp is fantastic).

See bold section. Having to hack your phone to leap over the walled garden isn't necessarily something to use in an attempt to sway my opinion, when I can already download anything I want from wherever I want for my unmodified device.

No, you read the bold section. You don't have to hack the iPhone to run apps from outside the app store. You don't even have to pay to do so.

Once again, Android devices aren't limited to the Appstore. ...
I don't have an iPhone primarily because I don't want to be stuck with a single location for applications. I'm sorry that seems stupid to you

Not wanting to be stuck with a single app store is not stupid, but choosing an inferior product for the primary reason that it has the option for additional sources of apps tends towards the irrational. I.e., fanboyism.

Now, if you truly think that Android will end up with more apps because of this, or at the very least, more high quality apps, then your decision to avoid the iPhone is rational, but the basis behind it is still based on ideology. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that third party Android app stores is going to result in more apps than the iPhone. What will result in more apps is more users and a higher-quality user experience. Android lags significantly behind iPhone in both categories.

Or put differently, if there was a third-party app store for iOS, how many more quality apps would there be? There'd be a native Google Voice (like I already said, though, the existing web app is excellent), there'd be that Squeak interpreter app. There'd be a bunch of porn apps. And...? Flash?

Oh, what a long list of things I can't have!

You repeat the "there's only one app store" thing over and over, but you completely fail to demonstrate how that's a problem. It's just ideology. It's fanboyism.

Re:iAds

[node 3]

Reality distortion field alert!

Your post is 100% iFail(tm)

Thanks for that well thought out rebuttal. It's so wonderfully full of Insight, you got modded up for it!

iAds, Registration

[rxan]

Is there a way to tell if an app had iAds before buying/downloading it? I think it should be a requirement that iAd apps are flagged as such in the app store. It would really piss me off if I paid for an app only to find ads inside.

For that matter, there are so many apps that require you to register before using them. These should be flagged as well.

I find it astounding that we have so much crap to deal with in the mobile realm. We thought desktop apps were annoying. They were just the beginning.

Re:iAds, Registration

[cowscows]

Well, understand that there are already lots of apps on the AppStore that have ads. There are a number of different companies that have systems that you can integrate into your App that will serve ads. The only big things that iAds is changing is that now Apple is the one serving the ads, and the ads will be able to display without exiting the app and going to safari.

If you're thinking about spending money to purchase an App, I'd suggest taking a few minutes to read some reviews of it on the web, they're bound to mention if it includes ads, iAd or otherwise. Or at least read the comments for that app in the App store. There's lots of information out there.

Re:iAds, Registration

[Wovel]

Well I usually read the comments before I buy an App, and I have never seen one with ads not be identified there. I do think it would be nice for some place that made note of an app using advertising, iAd or otherwise.

iPhone Death

[sznupi]

Is that why there's no MS Office 13 or no "13 anything" in hotels? (surely pandering to people "sufficiently educated to have grown out of that kind of nonsense"...)

Besides, those markets you so favorably speak of are the ones with most growth potential...and you have to realise that even on simple marketing & linguistic level the name of new iPhone is a very poor choice - it literally sounds like "iPhone Death"!

Re:Trademark infringement with FaceTime

[Rob_Bryerton]

Ever think of checking your facts before commenting?

You must be new here...

Re:iAds

[Bassman59]

What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.

Heh! Odds of that being approved for the App Store are approximately 3,720 to 1.

Install GlimmerBlocker on a machine that's always available, and use it as a proxy for your phone.

Ok, so it's completely ridiculous, but it works.

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

To clarify, I never said that the iPhone sucks, nor did I say that Android is the best. I simply said that it provides me with what I want. Again, not fanboyism, just my opinion. In fact, if you look at my original post that you replied to, I specifically stated that Android was where it was at for me.

Also, for what it's worth, the people modding you down because of your opinion can suck it.

Re:iAds

[Bassman59]

Tiny 14 megapixels on latest batch of cameras are there to showcase the lens weaknesses and noise reduction algorithms.

No professional photographer needs more megapixels than his lens can resolve. And pros are often more pragmatic than regular consumers: some still shoot with first generation Canon 1D (4MP) - it works, and is enough for newspapers. A lot of pros shoot product photos for their customers' web sites - they don't need resolution at all, only good lighting.

You need resolution to allow for cropping.

Re:iAds

[Man On Pink Corner]

How was the choice to stick with power-of-two resolution increases a "bad" decision? If you just want your programs to look like complete ass, then by all means, design them in a resolution- and aspect ratio-independent way.

Resolution-independent design and fractional scaling are two things that work a whole lot better in theory than they ever will in practice.

Re:iAds

[dmesg0]

You are absolutely right, but in a controlled environment (like product shots) it's much better to use proper focal length, frame well and crop only a little.

Usually cropping can get you at most 2x the focal length (even with 21MP you'll be left with 5MP after 2x crop; interpolation and the lens weaknesses will be much more apparent on the cropped picture).

Re:iAds

[grahamd0]

While I find most advertising to be boring, manipulative and a general waste of time for both the advertisers and their audience, and also find Bill Hicks very funny, I think a blanket statement like that betrays not only the useful purpose ads can serve (making people aware of consumer choice where they would otherwise be limited) and also the fact that many ads can be genuinely clever, creative and inherently entertaining.

Advertising makes possible the magazines people enjoy reading, the TV shows they enjoy watching, the web sites and newspapers that educate and inform them.

Re:iAds

[x102output]

It's already available if you jailbreak.

Re:iAds

[dmesg0]

Well, I'm not skilled enough to be a GUI programmer (can only do very simple stuff like device drivers). But I do see a lot of resolution independent GUIs around on all platforms I am using, including one particular non-human phone platform.

Somehow most of them manage to look good. Very weird, isn't it? Maybe not apple-good, but I guess I'm not refined enough to notice.

Substitute products

[sjbe]

How arrogant of me to feel entitled to use something I paid for any perfectly legal way that I please.

You clearly want to criticize Apple for not supporting what you want to do. Go ahead and hack on your iPhone. Nothing is stopping you. You CAN use GPL software an iPhone - just not with Apple's blessing. If it is so important to you, why the hell do you care what Apple thinks? Make your actions support your words.

If you read the OP, then you'd know that he was defending Apple's draconian policies, which set the tone for my response.

And your response was complete nonsense. I thought I'd made that clear enough. There are advantages and disadvantages to Apple's approach. Since you so clearly don't like what Apple is doing, buy a competing product from a different company. In fact doing so will probably force Apple to have a better and possibly more open product. Competition is good.

You'd also know that he directly compared shopping at the App Store with shopping at any other of these "curated experiences" like Wal-mart or Target, hence the direct reference to his own metaphor.

And he was right. Walmart doesn't sell the porn you seem so eager to get but you certainly can get it elsewhere. Likewise Apple doesn't sell it but that doesn't prevent you from getting it elsewhere. Walmart even sells products under its own labels just like Apple and you can't get them elsewhere. However that doesn't mean you can't get perfectly adequate substitutes elsewhere. In other words stop whining that Apple isn't making exactly what you want and find someone who is.

Now, that I've read his posting back to you, feel free to STFU and RTFOP for yourself, lazybones.

Interesting how your lack of a coherent and logical argument means I'm lazy. Curious.

Re:Substitute products

[amliebsch]

Go ahead and hack on your iPhone. Nothing is stopping you.

It is a literal violation of the DMCA, and no less than Apple itself has argued that jailbreaking is indeed a federal crime. So yes, *so long as you don't get caught*, nothing is stopping you, just like any other criminal activity.

Re:Substitute products

[Mike Buddha]

Hmm, OP says "its a bit of a stretch to call a curated app store a draconian experience", and when I counter with a list of draconian policies that illustrate this point I'm not making a logical argument? Again, please RTFOP, lazybones.

Your arguments for jailbreaking are compelling, but moot. FYI I did have an iPhone, two in fact (3G & 3GS) and ditched them in November for an Android, primarily due to being tired of having to jailbreak the damn thing to do what I wanted.

Re:FaceTime: The open industry standard

[Homburg]

You can download the official spec from ISO, or from you national standards body.

Cartoon villains

[sjbe]

Sadly, even those who try to escape Steve's clutches ...

"Steve's clutches"? What is he some cartoon villain now? I'm sure he's cackling in his lair right now plotting the next way he can make your life worse by forcing yet another industry to make better and more useful products.

...are affected by the iPhone, as evidenced by the fact that nearly every mobile platform is copying the App Store model, some of them with exactly the same kind of draconian lock-in policies.

Draconian? Let's take the WABAC machine back to the 1960s when AT&T was the only telecom company in town - LITERALLY. Back then you didn't even own the large and primitive phone in your house. It was leased to you by the phone company which was a government sanctioned monopoly and wired directly into the wall. If you didn't pay they came and took the phone from your house. Oh and you paid handsomely for the privilege of having this level of "service". The phone was robust but not remotely innovative and if you think Apple is being "draconian" you really have no idea what draconian is. You have more options now than you ever have had.

Really the enemy here isn't the phone manufacturers. The enemy is the telecom companies. The handset manufacturers main customers aren't you and me. Their customers are the telecom companies (AT&T etc) and the interests of the telecoms differ significantly from yours and mine. That's why most of them historically have paid little attention to the user experience. They didn't have to to sell products to their customers. Apple, despite their flaws, has forced the telecoms and handset manufacturers to pay more attention to the end users. Yes they are being restrictive but most of the worst restrictions come from the telecoms, not the handset makers.

I've met and spoken with Ed Whitacre when he was CEO of AT&T. I've never met a CEO who so bluntly held his customers in lower regard than he did and I've met quite a few Fortune 500 CEOs. My father and grandfather worked for AT&T and its successor companies for a combined 50 years between them. I know these companies well and they are not your friend.

So this is not something we can just sit by and watch, it is an industry wide phenomenon that we must fight on every front that opens up, or one day we will get out of bed and there will be no platforms left where we have the legal right to run our own software any more.

Excellent. Fight the good fight. I support you fighting for open platforms completely. But let's keep the hyperbole out of it shall we? Steve Jobs by all accounts can be a real ass but the phones we have today are better products because of his efforts. There are at least 3 other major phone platforms (Blackberry, Android and Nokia/Symbian) competing with Apple and the more they compete the better off you and I will be.

Re:Cartoon villains

[zuperduperman]

I agree with some of your points but I find it comical that you go all the way back to 1960 to tell me how better off I am now but manage to entirely overlook Windows Mobile which gave us ten times the supposed freedoms that you are crediting Apple with and did it circa 2003 (or earlier depending how you assess it). I'm sure you will wax eloquently on about how crap Windows Mobile is (and I will probably agree) but please don't tell me that Apple invented freedom here. They were late to the game and used their incredible power with consumers to take us backwards and entrench their own ecosystem, just as locked down but centralized around them instead of the carriers.

Re:iAds

[bhtooefr]

What's sad is, the most open OS on a smartphone you can buy from a carrier today (nobody buys unlocked GSM phones in the US, so the N900 is out,) from the user perspective, anyway, is WINDOWS FREAKING MOBILE 6.5.3.

Out of the box, you have root.

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

Not quite...my point was that things like fart apps are approved, while genuinely useful apps are denied. It wasn't a dig at fart apps, but rather Apple's approval policies.

Re:iAds

[node 3]

Exactly. You don't care about the reality of what's offered, but instead by your ideological aversion to having only one app store.

I see. So you're saying my opinion is wrong. Thanks.

No (this double-post is going to be a bit redundant, so I'll try to be brief). Not wrong, just not as objective as it's being portrayed. If you aren't meaning to say it's objective, then your claim that it's not fanboyism[*] loses much of its steam.

Not wanting to be stuck with a single app store is not stupid, but choosing an inferior product for the primary reason that it has the option for additional sources of apps tends towards the irrational. I.e., fanboyism.

opinion.

But based on reality. If your reasoning is not borne out by what actually exists, I don't see how calling it "irrational" is not an apt term.

Now, if you truly think that Android will end up with more apps because of this, or at the very least, more high quality apps, then your decision to avoid the iPhone is rational, but the basis behind it is still based on ideology. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that third party Android app stores is going to result in more apps than the iPhone. What will result in more apps is more users and a higher-quality user experience. Android lags significantly behind iPhone in both categories.

I haven't seen anything the iPhone OS can do that Android can't. Can you name some?

I've never said that iOS has capabilities that Android cannot also do. There are definite differences in the OS's, and in terms of APIs, iOS does offer the developer a much richer set of tools from which to build their app, but that's never been the basis of my claim. That basis is simply the fact that there are more apps (of quality, and not just fart sounds, or similarly vapid apps) for iOS than Android.

It's strange to call the iPhone limited, when the number of things you can actually do with it that actually exist are greater than the number of things that actually exist that you can do with Android. Theoretically, something like Apple's closed store would lead to fewer apps than a more open one like Android, but reality has failed to validate that theory. That's because the theory is not sound. It has too many assumptions. Assumptions that may be reasonable, but do not fit with reality. I'd suggest the main reason for that is that Apple tends to do things in a way that makes a lot of assumptions moot.

You repeat the "there's only one app store" thing over and over, but you completely fail to demonstrate how that's a problem. It's just ideology. It's fanboyism.

I told you why it's a problem.

But you haven't. Not in reality, only in theory (and even then without much of an argument other than "fart apps!" and a reference to the extremely small number of app rejections that are beyond simply being due to bugs or porn).

Yes, there are a few apps that would be great, but aren't allowed (and of those, only the Google Voice one stands out as being something of a special case, and not just, "well, the rules say no interpreters, so the Squeak app runs afoul of it, even though it probably should be allowed"). The number is very small, and definitely not enough to tilt the number of great apps in Android's favor.

I personally don't want to be tied to a single store. It's not fanboyism, it's what I want.

Of course it's what you want. I can't imagine that most people who get called "fanboys" don't want the thing they say they want either. The point is that the explanation for why you want what you want is not apparently rational, which is always the foundation for cries of "fanboy" against Apple users.

[*]As an aside (although maybe it shouldn't be), I'd like to point out that I wasn't initially calli

Re:iAds

[node 3]

To clarify, I never said that the iPhone sucks, nor did I say that Android is the best. I simply said that it provides me with what I want.

If you have any familiarity with my past posts, you'll know that I never, ever put anyone down for their opinion on buying the product that they most want, whether it's iPhone, Android, or whatever.

Again, not fanboyism, just my opinion.

What triggered my "fanboy" response was that you're saying that *THE* reason you won't buy one is the single-source App Store, without providing any evidence that the App Store is holding back the platform. By every metric, iOS has more apps, more quality apps, etc., than any other mobile OS, and it is in no danger of that changing.

Even so, I don't mean to imply in any way that that invalidates your opinion. Opinions are personal, and no one has the right to tell you that yours is wrong. I'm just pointing out that it's not as rationally based as it's being portrayed (based on the reasoning you gave). This is specially pertinent due to all the people constantly saying that anyone who says anything in defense of Apple is guilty of the same.

In fact, if you look at my original post that you replied to, I specifically stated that Android was where it was at for me.

And I never said it shouldn't be. I just said that your stated reason is based on ideology (or theory, if you prefer) and not on how things actually are.

Also, for what it's worth, the people modding you down because of your opinion can suck it.

Thanks. It generally doesn't bother me, that's just how the moderation system operates here (and the internet in general).

Re:iAds

[SolusSD]

That is absolute BS. The iPhone uses 'points' not pixels as a metric, which allows them to be resolution independent. Does it make everything easier to have an even multiplier? Sure- but they could have used any resolution. Look at the iPad, as an example- Much of the same widgets but at different display resolutions.

Re:iAds

[slimjim8094]

10-12". I'm not sure I buy it, but it sounds reasonable enough.

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

What triggered my "fanboy" response was that you're saying that *THE* reason you won't buy one is the single-source App Store, without providing any evidence that the App Store is holding back the platform. By every metric, iOS has more apps, more quality apps, etc., than any other mobile OS, and it is in no danger of that changing.

Even so, I don't mean to imply in any way that that invalidates your opinion. Opinions are personal, and no one has the right to tell you that yours is wrong. I'm just pointing out that it's not as rationally based as it's being portrayed (based on the reasoning you gave). This is specially pertinent due to all the people constantly saying that anyone who says anything in defense of Apple is guilty of the same.

And I never said it shouldn't be. I just said that your stated reason is based on ideology (or theory, if you prefer) and not on how things actually are.

Fair enough. I went back and reread what I had written...hindsight and all that, I can easily see what you're talking about.

Re:iAds

[dmesg0]

Please tell that to Steve Jobs. Apparently he forces you to use ugly pixel doubling on ipad for no reason at all, everything is ready for any resolution. What a BS.

Re:iAds

[Maury Markowitz]

One wonders how you do your PS3 reviews if you're really so unhappy with those walled gardens. Methinks you doth protest too much.

Maury

p.s. In case anyone's wondering, http://livingwithanerd.com/fairytale-fights-ps3-version/ Or check out their ebay auctions, with lots of PS3 and XB360 games for sale.

Re:iAds

[Maury Markowitz]

You need resolution to allow for cropping.

*sigh*

Read it again: "needs more megapixels than his lens can resolve"

If you have more pixels than the lens can resolve, then you're cropping noise.

But I disagree with the original post. Adding more megapixels than the lens can resolve makes the pictures *worse*, because the light gathering ability per-pixel is reduced. That's why I find the use of a back-illuminated sensor far more interesting than the extra pixels.

Maury

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

I don't subscribe to any kind of fanboyism, and when it comes to video games I want to be able to play as many as I possibly can. I don't want to miss out on a game because I'm not willing to own this console or that console. So, once there are five or more exclusives that I want to play on a system, I go buy it.

As far as the closed nature of consoles, that's why I have a gaming-capable PC :-) If it's available on PC, that's what I play it on:-)

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

Also, for reference, I would buy an iPod Touch if there were enough games out for it that I felt that I needed to play...alas, there isn't :/ It's just as well though, my fiancee would likely steal it from me anyway ;-)

Re:iAds

[Maury Markowitz]

Nothing I can do or say will change the fact that Apple retains control over what you can and can't do with your device. The only thing I can do is vote with my wallet, so that's what I do. Forgive me for being a consumer who pays attention.

And forgive me for being a netizen that does the same.

For those that didn't bother to click through to Pojut's blog, I'll save you the trouble of poking about: Pojut reviews many games for the PS3, PSP, XBox 360, DS, etc., and his ebay store is filled with used games for these platforms. These platforms are, obviously, "walled gardens" that he protests to hate so much that he won't buy them.

Seriously, glass houses.

Maury

Re:iAds

[Maury Markowitz]

Exactly. You don't care about the reality of what's offered, but instead by your ideological aversion to having only one app store.

Indeed, note the lack of concrete examples.

Not wanting to be stuck with a single app store is not stupid, but choosing an inferior product for the primary reason that it has the option for additional sources of apps tends towards the irrational. I.e., fanboyism.

Sure, but the world is filled with such behavior all around. I find embracing it all to be excellent for the brain cells.

But in this particular case the broader consumer base has already voted with their dollars, in spite of impediments. Outside the US, where there are multiple carriers, I have seen very very few platforms other than RIM and iPhone. Android appears extremely rare here in Toronto, and yes, I do look. I don't believe that to be a case of myopia, but I would argue the opposite may be true: sales figures in the US may be a reflection of carriers, not platforms?

Maury

Re:iAds

[smash]

This won't happen (otherwise no one will buy the app), but if it does, it would have happened without iAd anyway. Except instead of a well tested framework, you'd have a myriad of shitty, harder to firewall, insecure coded ads out there.

Re:iAds

[Totenglocke]

Not wanting to be stuck with a single app store is not stupid, but choosing an inferior product for the primary reason that it has the option for additional sources of apps tends towards the irrational. I.e., fanboyism.

Android is far from inferior to the iPhone. I'm actually getting rid of my iPhone to change to an Android phone. Especially once the 2.2 update comes out in a month, Android will be significantly superior to the iPhone OS. Also, since there are multiple manufacturers making handsets, I can choose between a touch screen or a touch screen with a slideout keyboard, a big screen, iPhone size screen, and all sorts of different hardware. With the iPhone, you're limited to what Lord Jobs gives you and nothing else.

There's no reason whatsoever to believe that third party Android app stores is going to result in more apps than the iPhone.

Yes, there is a reason to believe that. Haven't you seen all the good apps that have been denied from the App Store because Lord Jobs whim of the day was to deny that particular app? There is no limit to what an app can do on Android. You can't even come close to saying that about the iPhone. Hell, you can't even just change your color scheme on an iPhone because Lord Jobs demands that all users have exactly the same colors and it would be an affront to him if you changed your battery charge screen to show a blue battery instead of a green battery.

Or put differently, if there was a third-party app store for iOS, how many more quality apps would there be?

There are third party app stores for the iPhone - Cydia being the most well known. I've had a jailbroken iPhone and most of the apps I downloaded were through Cydia since most of the apps in the App Store are, to be kind, utter garbage. It's being very optimistic to say that 1% of the apps in the iPhone App Store are actually worthwhile.

You repeat the "there's only one app store" thing over and over, but you completely fail to demonstrate how that's a problem. It's just ideology. It's fanboyism.

It's been demonstrated that it's a problem by Lord Jobs refusing to allow people to make a large variety of apps. The fact that you defend his "rule with an iron fist" approach to software is pure fanboyism.

I have to ask - have you ever actually used an Android phone or looked at the apps available for it?

Re:iAds

[Rocketship Underpant]

I think he qualifies as a nerd rather than a geek.

Re:iAds

[LingNoi]

Oh man that's horrible. The ad takes up the whole screen. If I had a ton of apps that did that it'd really annoy the hell out of me.

Re:iAds

[nacturation]

6" is considered reasonable by many, but I'm not going to get hung up on details.

Re:iAds

[Yahma]

I find this one the most interesting feature.

iAds [blogcdn.com]

What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.

Article 3.3.4.1 of the Apple iPhone SDK prevents any software "that disables certain functionality of the core Apple API, including AdBlockers..."

Re:iAds

[Yahma]

The reason to choose 960x640 resolution is purely technical: to overcome their bad 3-year old decision to stick to a single resolution for application development. Quadrupling pixels is the only working solution for all the legacy apps out there.

It wasn't a bad decision. Having a fixed resolution means that apps can be designed to a pixel perfect degree. And given that 3 years later, they have been able to up the resolution in a way that means all those apps remain pixel perfect means that fixing the resolution in the first place wasn't a technological dead end.

For a desktop windowing OS, variable resolution combined with resolution independence is a good thing. Apps run in windows that can be of any size, and the generous screen space allows plenty of flexibility for apps to rearrange themselves to suit. For a screen as small as a smartphone that just doesn't work. Designers have to design very carefully to fit the app UI on the screen in a good way.

Meanwhile, Android phones have been resolution independent since v1.5 (somewhere around 2008).

Re:iAds

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Why was that a bad decision, exactly?

Kind of worked out well for them -- how doubling the size also made it as high a PPI as they'll ever need. Perhaps you meant to say "good"?

Re:iAds

[bennomatic]

No, your reference would be nerdy, not geeky.

Amused in Japan

[lindseyp]

Here in Japan the majority of phones on sale have had the ability to 'video call' over 3G using a front camera for several years. My wife's crappy old sharp which is ready to be thrown in the bin included.

My current iPhone was a step back in that regard, and it'll be pretty amusing once Softbank starts selling the iPhone alongside phones which can video-call over 3G and has to tell customers that the iPhone is 'wifi only' for some goddamned reason.

uart

[jcr]

The reason to choose 960x640 resolution is purely technical: to overcome their bad 3-year old decision to stick to a single resolution for application development. Quadrupling pixels is the only working solution for all the legacy apps out there.

That would be a clever observation, except that it's completely wrong. We've had resolution independence all along on the iPhone, whether you're working with Quartz2D or OpenGL ES. Developers will probably want to use higher resolution images for icons and the like to take advantage of the improved display, but their apps would have worked the same if the resolution had been increased by any other amount.

-jcr

Re:iAds

[mxh83]

You might want to rethink that. I know many people who like ads and do not disable them. They know about adblock plus and the like.

Trouble Incident Tracking System

[DragonHawk]

Many moons ago, I was working helpdesk at a tiny software company, and started to put together a mickey-mouse database to help me keep track of calls. I named it "Trouble Incident Tracking System".

As you can prolly guess, there weren't any female employees.

Re:iAds

[miike]

Am I the only one missing a new iPod touch? Haven't the next gen iTouches previously also been announced at the WWDC keynote?

Re:iAds

[RMH101]

If by "best of both worlds" you mean as expensive and on long contract as iPhone, whilst not actually working properly or having a stable version of Android that supports some of the more advanced features like making calls and the GPU, then sure. It's an interesting experiment, but the Android-on-iPhone ROMs are for shits'n'giggles, not for serious use, and I'm sure their developers would be the first to admit it.
If you want an iPhone, buy one. If you want Android, get an Android handset.

Re:iAds

[BasilBrush]

Meanwhile, Android phones have been resolution independent since v1.5 (somewhere around 2008).

No, resolution independence came in in v1.6, just 9 months ago. And it is a perfect example of my point. From the Wiki page on Android:

"Developers have reported that it is difficult to maintain applications on multiple versions of Android, owing to compatibility issues between versions 1.5 and 1.6,[114][115] especially the different resolution ratios in use among various Android phones.[116] Such problems were poignantly brought into focus as they were encountered during the ADC2 contest.[117]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

Old news for old time Symbian programmers like me. We were dealing with these issues 10 years ago. For small screen devices, fixed screen dimensions (plus the possibility of doubling) is certainly the best way to go.

Re:iAds

[BasilBrush]

Not quite...my point was that things like fart apps are approved, while genuinely useful apps are denied.

Or to be equally selective: fantastic apps are approved, whilst horrible apps are denied.

It wasn't a dig at fart apps, but rather Apple's approval policies.

Clearly it was. But it was a misguided one, if your ideal is freedom to publish anything, to then criticise the sort of crappy apps that such freedom inevitably brings. The thing is: in the App Store as stands, fart apps are the worst example you can come up with. Given the complete freedom you commend, the worst will be far more awful.

I don't want it, it's human blood stained

[master_p]

While it sounds damn sexy, I don't want it. It is stained with blood from Foxconn employees that make Apple products.

Did you know that the average Foxconn employee is paid 113 euros per month?

I am so shocked, I can't believe it. I read it today in the local newspaper.

I deeply apologize for the offtopic comment;I am going back to the high-tech /. nirvana. It's just that I am so shocked about this.

Re:I don't want it, it's human blood stained

[yabos]

You'd better stop buying almost every single product in every single store then since nearly all of it is made in China or some other country with similarly low wages. I don't know how anyone can be shocked about Chinese workers getting paid a low wage, it's very common knowledge & the reason everything is made there in the first place.

Are you swearing off all Chinese made products? If not you are a hypocrite. Foxconn also makes non-Apple devices & products. Are you going to swear off buying these too?

"Foxconn produces the Mac mini, the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone for Apple Inc.; Intel-branded motherboards for Intel Corp.; various orders for American computer manufacturers Dell and Hewlett-Packard; motherboards for UK computer manufacturer Zoostorm; the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 for Sony; the Wii for Nintendo; the Xbox 360 for Microsoft, cell phones for Motorola, the Amazon Kindle, and Cisco equipment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

Re:I don't want it, it's human blood stained

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

While it sounds damn sexy, I don't want it. It is stained with blood from Foxconn employees that make Apple products.

It's deeply sad that you're just now realizing one product in the US is made by poor people being exploited in foreign countries. That applies to almost everything you buy these days because the market shifted in the direction, long ago. It's also almost ironic that you pick out the iPhone as the example of this product, since Apple has been one of the very few companies actually pushing back and not only auditing their suppliers for human rights violations, but openly publishing those audits and requiring changes from their suppliers. Heck Steve Jobs pioneered a better way when he ran NextStep, creating computers that were technologically superior to anything else in the market and were made in the US using high tech robotics for no exploitation of the poor in foreign countries. How many did you buy? You pick the flagship product from the one guy who gave everyone a chance to buy a product that was not "stained with blood" (as you put it) and choose that as where you're going to make a stand? I don't know if that's more sad or funny at this point.

Re:I don't want it, it's human blood stained

[master_p]

Are you swearing off all Chinese made products? If not you are a hypocrite. Foxconn also makes non-Apple devices & products. Are you going to swear off buying these too?

I am swearing off everything that is not necessary for me to live. I don't have an iPod, iPad, iPhone, Intel-branded motherboard, Dell, HP, PS2, PS3, WII, XBox, Motorola phone, Kindle and Cisco. I will try to buy as few as possible products made in China.

Re:I don't want it, it's human blood stained

[RedWizzard]

Are you swearing off all Chinese made products? If not you are a hypocrite. Foxconn also makes non-Apple devices & products. Are you going to swear off buying these too?

I am swearing off everything that is not necessary for me to live. I don't have an iPod, iPad, iPhone, Intel-branded motherboard, Dell, HP, PS2, PS3, WII, XBox, Motorola phone, Kindle and Cisco. I will try to buy as few as possible products made in China.

But you're still going to use the net even though Cisco produce the majority of hardware it's made from?

Re:I don't want it, it's human blood stained

[Just Some Guy]

Did you know that the average Foxconn employee is paid 113 euros per month?

Did you know that we have no idea whether that's a good or bad local wage? I wouldn't work for that salary, but the economy's different where I live.

Re:I don't want it, it's human blood stained

[Avalain]

You'd better stop buying almost every single product in every single store then since nearly all of it is made in China or some other country with similarly low wages. I don't know how anyone can be shocked about Chinese workers getting paid a low wage, it's very common knowledge & the reason everything is made there in the first place. Are you swearing off all Chinese made products? If not you are a hypocrite. Foxconn also makes non-Apple devices & products. Are you going to swear off buying these too?

Extending this a bit, if you don't swear off all Chinese made products you're a hypocrite, but if you do swear off all Chinese made products you are effectively doing your part to weaken the Chinese economy which of course keeps those wages low and people poor. 113 euros a month is pitifully small to us, but in China it's (probably) a living wage. No they can't afford much in the way of luxuries, but they're doing much better WITH that job than without a job at all. In fact, all of the Chinese made products and companies like Foxconn are actually helping to create the largest middle class in China in modern history.

Re:I don't want it, it's human blood stained

[Wovel]

Should have kept reading, or write a nasty letter to your newspaper for incomplete coverage.

Re:Great features but...

[teh kurisu]

I was quite surprised when I heard that video calls were going to be WiFi only, given that I have video call support on my old Samsung, which came out before the original iPhone, and my network has supported it since then too.

Does AT&T not support video calling on its 3G network at all? It was meant to be 3G's killer app at the beginning in the UK, although it never really took off.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Really?

[teh kurisu]

You can walk into an Apple Store, pick up an iPhone and try it out without anybody looking over your shoulder. It gives you a good opportunity to try out the user interface, which is one of the iPhone's big selling points.

I remember seeing what was once a working model of the T-Mobile G1 in a T-Mobile shop once, but the hinge had snapped, so it wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

Whats up with the iPhone 4 WiFi

[Kuruk]

Well from watching the keynote. The 3GS wifi worked and the 4 didnt work at all. Steve had to ask everyone to turn off there wifi devices several times just to demo the phone. Then at the end demoing the new video chat he constantly complained about people not turning off there wifi devices.

Considering the 3GS worked that is not a good sign for the new stainless steel antenna. I really dont wont to spend my days yelling turn off your wifi in the shopping center.

iSlaves can't handle the truth

[FreeUser]

Except that the Droid phones typically have none of those problems. As shocking as it may seem, somebody besides Apple actually does make a phone that works well.

Don't tell him that. iSlaves don't cope well when non-Jobsian reality intrudes into their walled garden...you might traumatize him for life.

Re:iAds

[Russellkhan]

That may be true, but I've never heard of anyone's Android device getting bricked after changing that option and then installing an official update.

Re:iAds

[SenseiLeNoir]

Changing a single option in the settings (on android) to enable use of apps from other sources takes at most 5 seconds. Jailbreaking is THAT quick? I hope you are being sarcastic!

And changing that "option" doesnt void my warranty, nor start a cat and mouse game of updates undoing the jailbreak.

No one gets firmware from HTC

[brunes69]

Anyone worth their salt knows the only place to go to get firmware updates for HTC phones is www.xda-developers.com.

Developers there always have the latest Windows Mobile or Android roms backported to all HTC phones within a week of them releasing.

Re:No one gets firmware from HTC

[MemoryDragon]

Problem with all those backported roms is it really depends on the drivers if they can get further, if htc or another company does not leak additional drivers (thanks to closed source drivers and linuxs constantly changing driver api) things never will work as expected in future versions.

Re:iAds

[Pojut]

Gaming consoles and phones are two very different devices. Don't go selling me oranges while trying to convince me they are apples. If you want to talk about the walled gardens surrounding consoles, I will be happy to do so, but that is an entirely different conversation.

Re:iAds

[SenseiLeNoir]

I know.... its kinda ironic isnt it? Though you can also add Symbian to that mix, that is also pretty open on what you can install. I believe it was the same for Palm as well.

In fact, all three OSs were doing custom apps without havign an "app store". the norm was to download from various sources, and install.

But does it do flash?

[Snaller]

No? Ah, now i get it - you pay twice the price for less flash, eh?

RE:

[helix2301]

Iphone has defiantly came a long way as anything else everyone will have there likes and dislikes. Personally liked the Netflixs on the Iphone I thought that was very cool as well as the face to face chat. I am personally waiting to here if Apple is going to release the Iphone to other carriers.

I wonder why nobody mentions this "feature"

[Kartu]

Can't copy your own non DRM stuff back from device. Can't upload stuff to device from more than one source. This has nothing to do with being developer, is shockingly draconian and nobody bloody ever mentions it so I had to discover it myself, when buying iPod Touch as a present for my mom.

Re:The major leak of the the iPhone paid up for us

[mjwx]

Now, finally a Keynote from Steve about an existing product that finally delivers what people where asking for

Things like:
- true multitasking
- installing applications from the web
- removable battery
- removable storage or MSC
- WIMAX/4G
- not AT&T

Re:iAds

[ifrag]

Changing a single option in the settings (on android) to enable use of apps from other sources takes at most 5 seconds. Jailbreaking is THAT quick?

Damn near anyway. Assuming that blackrain or whatever is already downloaded, it is probably closer to like 20 seconds or something after docking, but it is very quick.

Re:iAds

[Russellkhan]

Thank you! I'm very glad to hear not only that you as a developer won't be doing this, but also that I'm not the only one left who hates adware. I've lately feeling like I'm the only one around who learned anything from the days of Aureate/Radiate, Gator, and similar slimy companies. And now Apple wants to be the new Aureate!

Re:iAds

[Russellkhan]

If it's clearly labeled as adware I never download it. If it is adware and is not clearly labeled that way, I delete it and rate it one star.

Re:iAds

[Reservoir Penguin]

Worked pretty well in the era of usenet and gopher. People created lots of excellent add free content.

Re:iAds

[AmiMoJo]

There is a handy Android app called AdFree which blocks most in-app advertising.

Re:iAds

[Russellkhan]

Ads are only annoying when they're disruptive.

Says you. I say ads are always annoying.

Re:The major leak of the the iPhone paid up for us

[jbssm]

Well, although I can certainly see your point. Most of the stuff you refer to don't really have interest for me.

I don't need 4G, since HDSPA in where I live is quite well developed and can deliver the 7.2 mbps Apple claims. I also don't care about AT&T since I'm not from USA. The removable battery ... well, I've never ever in my life bought a spare battery for any mobile device ... I usually sell them and buy new one before the battery gets too old (which lets be real, takes about 5 years to happen). I also think the multitasking should be made this way Apple is presenting (At least in theory since I haven't seen it in practice).

I do completely agree with the other 2 points tough. I would like to install whatever I want that exists outside App Store, and I would like to be able to use Micro SD cards.

Also another interesting article

[DarrenE6]

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2264305/apple-unveils-iphone

Re:Also another interesting article

[BSDetector]

Interesting - why??? Just yet another re-hash of the Apple party line!

Re:iAds

[jht]

Already available now with iPhone 3. Funny post, though.

More seriously, Apple lets you write your own wrapper for WebKit if you want on the iPhone OS. A few 3rd parties are doing it now, adding features like ad blocking, side-by-side display, and so on. What Apple won't let you do is create your own rendering engine (Opera does it by rendering web pages on Opera's own servers and just sending down the optimized display) or add plugins to MobileSafari itself (not only will they not allow that, but they also don't have any frameworks to do it).

So if you want to write a WebKit wrapper that handles ad blocking, go for it. But you've already got competition out there.

Plus iAds isn't a framework for inserting ads on websites. It's a framework to allow app developers to distribute ad-supported software, using a pretty transparent revenue model. There's a bunch of third parties (AdMob, the Deck, etc.) providing that right now for developers, and iAds is joining them.

Re:iAds

[PopeRatzo]

By the way, in the nineties, I battled lymphoma for four years and I managed to shave and comb my hair when I went in public (or when I couldn't I stayed home). I had enough respect for my position that despite the weight loss from chemo I endeavored to look presentable.

Re:iAds

[hattig]

Looking at an iPad on the train earlier today with the iPhone Metro newspaper application, it certainly looked to me as if the scaling up for text and certain imagery (zoomable images) was at the higher resolution, not pixel doubling.

Most apps don't scale perfectly because they come bundled with (e.g.) 320 pixel wide images, so they need resolution specific imagery supplied for the iPad (and now the iPhone 4). Which is how Android handles things anyway.

Anyway, for many apps the iPad is such a larger screen it demands a redesign of the app's UI to make best use of it.

Re:iAds

[Lars T.]

Yeah, I mean, who wants the world's largest selection of quality apps, all vetted to be reasonably sure of being malware-free and of at least a minimum level of quality and stability!

Yeah, because fart apps are considered quality. Quantity != quality.

Yeah, the dozens of fart apps for Android - now that is both proof of quality and diversity! And that's just the ones available from Google's store - the porn fart apps are even better!

Prediction

[mdwh2]

For years, the Iphones had a relatively low resolution - even my 2 year old far cheaper 5800 has a much higher resolution than the latest Iphone. If I pointed this out, people would dismiss it as not something that's important.

But when this is released, you can bet that suddenly having a high resolution will be important, and a bragging feature...

(What are the resolutions of other future expensive high end phones? They may well be comparable anyway, but you'd never hear about them here.)

apple didn't double pixels per space

[Uksi]

The new sensor is bigger now, maintaining the same pixel size.

So you get more megapixels due to a larger sensor AND you get better sensitivity due to backside illumination.

I have a DSLR for quality pictures... for the rest, social situations and what not, 5 megapixels is plenty good and better low light performance just might make this good enough to obviate the need for a separate point & shoot camera.

I'd love to see some HTC Evo 8MP vs iPhone 4 5MP camera quality comparisons.

Re:iAds

[phorwich]

So, if you toggle a pixel and nobody can see it, is it on?

Re:iAds

[SiChemist]

"Never tell me the odds..."

Re:iAds

[bingoUV]

which fucked up his liver and he had to get that replaced after getting past the cancer

Hopefully it inspires him to make the battery user-replaceable in Apple devices.

Re:iAds

[Zebedeu]

I did it on my Android app mostly because I wanted a way to push users to buy the "full" version.

It was either that, or limiting the feature set in the free version, or worse -- inserting some kind of annoying artificial limitation. This way I'm pushing people to buy it, but in the end if they don't, I still get something for my trouble, and the users get the full functionality.

I think mobile ads offer a good compromise between asking the users to pay for the app, and making it available to as many people as possible. If the ads annoy you that much you can pay the 1 Euro, hack it (it's not that hard), or pirate it.

Re:Biggest Announcement

[jo_ham]

If it's C++ then it's not in violation of any developer rules/licences.

Video calls on a mobile?

[mrawhimskell]

you can do video to video calls using fring [fring.com] app on a humble Nokia E71, or a phone that has a front facing camera. I do salute them on their ability to hype 'NEW' features. interestingly the first time i used that app was two days ago, when i called my girlfriend on her iPhone 3GS. she could see me but i couldn't see her cos she didn't have frontfacing cam. I think everyone should learn about marketing, it really brings in the money!

Data goes elsewhere

[SuperKendall]

What grinds my gears is that he is claiming that the camera can shoot in HD (720p) yet the display area on the device is less than what the specs of HD 720p demand (Down coding?) So how can he make this claim?

A Flip has no display and can do 720P, are you claiming that is impossible?

Because the actual video is 720p and can be moved to other devices (like a home PC).

Re:iAds

[oblivionboy]

is not geeky, but awareness of a mainstream hollywood kids action movie is?

You must be new here!

Re:iAds

[macs4all]

Does anyone know what the "Retina display" means? Is it just a marketing term (a la "Powerglide transmission") or does it actually describe some innovation in the display? And can we please pitch in and buy Steve Jobs a sandwich? Even Kate Moss says he's too skinny.

I believe that Jobs more or less explained that term in the Keynote. It refers to the fact that, at 10 to 12 inches, the display actually has more resolution than a human retina (and lens). So yes, it is a marketing term; and yes, it actually describes an innovation (326ppi) in the (Apple designed) display.

In case you have been offworld for the past year; Mssr. Jobs had a liver transplant, you insensitive clod. That means he gets to LIVE; but it doesn't mean he isn't still sick.

For one thing, he has to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life. That basically gives him chemically-induced AIDS (no jokes, please!). And, since you obviously know absolutely nothing about human anatomy and the functions of the various organs (like the liver), one of the liver's MANY functions (besides that whole chemical-processing thing it does!) is to help regulate insulin/glucose levels in the bloodstream. When those go whacky, you can either eat nearly nothing and gain weight, or eat everything in sight and remain gaunt.

And if you look at Steve's physique, he isn't THAT much skinnier than he was in pictures from 30+ years ago. He's always been pretty thin.

Re:iAds

[macs4all]

"artificially limited"

You are assuming this is inherently a bad thing. Unless you'd like my behavior to not be artificially limited by laws and authority. Because if you don't want anything to be artificially limited, you won't mind me coming over there to strangle your stupid short-sighted ass for making dumb assumptions.

I tip my hat to you, sir! That was one FINE analogy, and directly on-point!

Re:iAds

[SakuraDreams]

Dude just recovered from cancer. Not just cancer, but a type of cancer that is to cancer what most cancers are to not having cancer at all,

Cachexia is common to all cancers when they become sufficiently advanced.

Re:iAds

[macs4all]

Especially once the 2.2 update comes out in a month, Android will be significantly superior to the iPhone OS.

Better in what way(s), specifically? Especially since "better" is often a purely subjective term. And don't just fall back on that tired, old "Because it's open" argument. Open Source stuff has yet to storm ANY market, and it's had NINETEEN YEARS to do so.

Re:iAds

[macs4all]

Oh man that's horrible. The ad takes up the whole screen. If I had a ton of apps that did that it'd really annoy the hell out of me.

It only takes up the whole screen if you ASK it to.

Moron.

Re:iAds

[macs4all]

But then again, I make $texas (relative to my normal income) in giving sites ways to detect Adblock and ban you, or serve up less content, or just not display anything to you at all. "But adblock filters will find a way!" Mmmhmm, and I'll be given more money to get around the fixes.

And it is YOU (and others just as despicable as you) that are clogging the tubes and our inboxes with unwanted, unwarranted, and ILLEGAL crap! FUCKING STOP IT!!!!

Thanks for your help in making the internet HELL for the rest of us, while you line your pockets, you disgusting fucker!

I think I speak for most of the internet-using population in saying EAT SHIT AND DIE A HORRIBLE, PAINFUL DEATH YOU DISGUSTING, GREEDY, ANONYMOUS LITTLE COWARDLY SLIMEBALL!!! WHY DON'T YOU POST UNDER YOUR REAL NAME SO WE CAN DDOS YOUR ASS INTO SUBMISSION. YOUR KIND GIVES ALL OF GEEKDOM A BAD NAME, YOU FUCKING LITTLE COWARDLY BITCH!!!

Re:iAds

[NateTech]

It's funny... when it's poor folks, everyone says they can "wear what they want" and hollers and screams that they're just "being themselves"...

Put a millionaire on stage in a pair of jeans, and the world freaks out that he's "not properly dressed".

WTF? Who cares what he's wearing. Or if he's shaving. Or whatever.

Aren't we over this by now? (And yeah, I know the answer is no, but I still want folks to actually take a second and THINK about it.)

It's not like you can look at your future mate and tell if they're a financial winner from the shoes they have on... in modern society... but we're still wired that way, so we buy shit that NO ONE needs... in our "Consumer" economy.

I read about a brilliant naval engineer who gave it up finally, and bought identical sets of the same clothes to put in his closet... Short and Long sleeve blue oxford/collared shirts, navy blue pants and shorts (like dress shorts), black socks, and black loafers, and a couple of identical black belts.

He kept one pair of shoes for Sunday church, as he was a churchgoer, the next most worn out set for daily wear, and an almost worn out pair of loafers for mowing the lawn. He kept enough shirts/pants/shorts to get him through a few weeks of travel.

When he was recognized for one of the U.S. highest Intelligence awards for his work during the Cold War, he had to borrow a navy blue jacket and tie.

Eccentric, yup. Predictable on budget, yup. No worries ever again in your whole LIFE about "what should I wear?" or farting around looking in the closet, yup. Just dressy enough and also non-dressy enough for just about any situation, yup to that too.

Most of the world would look at him and say, "How boring!" But the guy built things no one else on the planet has ever built, and cared just enough to pick sane items to make up his wardrobe that if you worked with him regularly, you'd know he "always had the same clothes on", but if you'd never met him, you thought he looked downright normal. And then never worried about clothes ever again.

His self-worth came from within, knowing what he'd done in his life. Clothes were just a "uniform" so he wasn't running around nekkid.

Re:iAds

[LingNoi]

It only takes up the whole screen if you ASK it to.

Moron.

You're mistake is taking jobs cock out your mouth long enough to talk. Why would you ever fucking what that "feature". The only moron is you mac fag.

Re:iAds

[Totenglocke]

Better because it does more things, does them faster, and allows you to run whatever the hell you want. I couldn't care less about if an OS is "open" or not. What I do care about is being able to run software written by whoever writes something worthwhile. With Apple, not only do you get less features in the OS, but you can only run software on your phone if Apple decides they're feeling kind enough to let you.

Re:iAds

[bhtooefr]

Symbian doesn't give you root, though, as I understand, and apps have to be signed to get root permissions.

Palm OS was the same, but Palm OS is completely dead.

WebOS isn't far off, Palm doesn't make the password to install unsigned apps and get root hard to find.

itSucks

[trlynxx]

Even an useless product named ''iSuck' would be successful if the marketing is done by apple.

Re:FaceTime: The open industry standard

[toriver]

It's worse than that, as seen in the MPEG-LA "rumblings" about WebM where they hint that there might be infringements: Some awarded patents are so vague they cover many possible solutions when a patent is supposed to describe one particular, letting inventors do things differently and succeed with that. Plus patents are more like legal weapons where the threat of a lawsuit is enough to stop people who might not even be infringing but who cannot take the legal costs associated with a suit.

Re:iAds

[anethema]

As the poster mentioned, it really is about that quick.

but..
"And changing that "option" doesnt void my warranty, nor start a cat and mouse game of updates undoing the jailbreak."

This part is a very valid point. It really is a cat and mouse game. Not the warranty part though as it is a software only mod and it is essentially impossible to truly brick your device these days. And if its bricked how could they tell? Unless you actually tell them you were jailbreaking there is no way for them to find out.

Re:iAds

[Totenglocke]

I know you're just a troll, but you can read on multiple websites that features that Android has that iphones don't have.

Why should I pay a $99 a year fine to write software for MY device? Android lets me write an app for free - AND I can distribute it to anyone I want without having to beg Lord Jobs approval.

BTW, just WHAT is it that you want to run SO badly, that DOESN'T exist in the App Store?

Useful apps. The majority of worthwhile apps that get submitted to the App Store get rejected (probably because Lord Jobs is pissy he didn't think of it first).

Please tell me in what fucked-up version of reality do you think it is that Apple doesn't want the largest USEFUL (booby apps are arguably NOT in that category) software catalog?

Again, you fail to realize that they'll only let in a useful app if Lord Jobs feels like it - too often he doesn't because he's focused purely on his ego and couldn't care less about the peons who use the device.

And with 250,000 apps (and counting!) in the App Store, they must be "feeling kind enough" to approve a new App about every 15 seconds.

Yes, and as an iPhone owner I can tell you from experience that just about all of those apps are utter crap. The quantity of apps available means nothing. The quality of apps and the ability to run any app you want is what matters.