Do any of us really have a format loyalty or do we just want it to work?
First and foremost I want it to just work. Second, and equally as important, I want the best quality and performance possible. Some people want "features" (whatever the hell that is) and "value". In otherwords, the cheaper, worst quality one will win out, just like VHS, General Motors, and Microsoft.
I am just holding out for the death of spinning laser disks altogether before I start buying gear again.
Who DOESN'T have a cell phone or land line independent from said T1 line? Do companies actually depend 100% on VOIP for all their telephony needs? I seriously have never heard of this, so if it is true, my ignorance..
Can you point out these hundreds of millions of people still using dial-up? DSL is different, because you don't need an actual phone account to use a DSL line for internet connectivity.
People who rely on these little flags lack management skills.
All a "read receipt" tag does is confirm an e-mail has been opened. There is nothing confirming if it was read, understood, followed up on, etc; only management skill can do that. When I'm quickly going through hundreds of emails, I can easily open a "read receipt" email and quickly disregard it as not important and delete it without reading it.
I hate when people slap "read receipt" on every email they ever send. It is disengenious for them to think they are so important that I have to read the "Mandatory Company BBQ Details" e-mail.
If my boss can't depend on me to be professional enough to read my emails (i.e., do my job) without having to check up on me with email flags, then I don't want to work for that person.
On the flipside, my employees (all less than 10 of them) are expected to use email. Ignoring email, or hiding behind "technology problems" is grounds for dismissal in my book. If my employees don't respond or react to an email in the appropriate way, a reminder email or phone call or personal visit is well in order. Actually, most everything I've given in email instructions (or received) is coupled WITH in-person instructions. The email is usually a "courtesy copy" reminder.
Writing is the prefered form of communication for intellectual types. My wife would much rather write out her thoughts and read a review than tell somebody about them or listen to a radio review. I prefer discussion forums and e-mail, because it lets me think before I say. I'm an awful live debater, but I can hold my own behind a keyboard (most of us can, with all the resources available to us this way).
E-mail is relatively new? I had e-mail in college (1988-1992) so forgive me if I don't consider it to be new. I would say that it isn't even new to the mainstream (I'd guess email became mainstream in about 1996-1998, but just guessing?)
Also, in a strangely inverse correlation, the more we become dependent on e-mail, the LESS spam I've been getting over the years. Maybe it is my operating system (Mac OS X), my.mac e-mail account or my Time Warner internet service provider, but I haven't received a single SPAM since I moved back to the US a month ago. At my old job (US School overseas) our Outlook Server did a great job of eliminating all junk email (zero in two years). England (BT in specific), was pretty bad in that I'd get about 10-15 porn/spam emails a day. But that is still far from 90% of all of my email.
I used to hate voice mail because cell phones suck so hard that it is difficult to receive them and you gotta sit and listen through them all. With my new (shameless plug) iPhone though, that is a thing of the past. By picking and choosing which voicemail I listen to (or delete), I get the asynchronous-style communication of e-mail. I like to think of it as voice e-mail.
Such a simple feature! Why hasn't EVERY cell phone done this before (or yet)?
Sounds like the problem might just be you and not everyone else. Seriously, your post has all the earmarks of the Saturday Night Live computer guy...someone calls for technology help (sounds like that is your job) and you get mad at them for not knowing how to do something computer related...."MOVE!"....
Couple that with your unwillingness to shave for a paycheck? Seriously? Dude, you need to be self-employed, and not be in the business of helping people.
To stay on topic, as an Instructional Designer (technology related), I find e-mail to be an excellent medium for me to deliver instruction, because I can insert screen shots and multi-media elements that help the end user accomplish a task ON THEIR OWN time. I wouldn't be able to talk somebody through many technology issues in training over the phone, but a simulation or multi-media presentation can, and they can run it as many times as they need. Educational theory shows that people learn and retain better when they figure things out on their own instead of people telling them something, so in this regard, I find e-mail to be excellent. Break their dependency from calling you every 2 minutes and you'd be a happier guy all around.
Are you in sales, customer service, or management? These are the only positions I can think of where a phone call is more important. In sales you need to "show off your communication skills" by hawking your wares. People like email because they can delete you instantaneously, where it is harder (but I still do it) to hang up on you. If you are in Customer Service, most people expect to be stuck on the phone for an hour talking to multiple levels of people who either don't speak English or have no idea what they are customer servicing. I guess that is better than waiting days/weeks to get an automated email response that says "do not respond to this"? Finally, most managers aren't nearly as important as they think they are, and it is in their personality to call somebody up and make them do something on-the-spot with absolute disregard for the employees other tasks.
I'm with you though, in wondering what happened to the people skill of speaking to someone in person?
*sigh*. I guess the "and runs it too" was implied. I can't drive anywhere with just a set of tires.
Sigh all you want, but your feeble desire to somehow slam Apple Inc. for only making OS X for Macintosh computers is thinly veiled. Your implication is that one must buy a Mac to use OS X, which is only stating the obvious...yeah, we get it...common sentiment on slashdot. Apple makes money by selling hardware, not by selling $130 full/upgrade/whatever you wanna call it CDs. If you don't like it, don't buy a Mac. In turn, I'll direct you to the beginning of this thread to see just what consumers get into when they choose Windows crappiness over Mac OS X's closed system.
I think you are confused. With Windows, they sell two very different versions of Windows XP. You can buy a "full" version and an "upgrade" version. "Full" versions work on any hard drive (like OS X) and cost a lot more. I know this because I had to buy WinXP for the PC I built. "Upgrade" disks, while indeed having all the info of a full version, only work on machines that have a version of Windows on them already, and they cost less.
With Mac OS X, you can take any hard drive (hell from a PC if you want) and slap it into a Mac, then boot the computer up from the CD, then install the OS onto the computer. In the past, it never checked for old version, but I think that is changing. With all the different builds, and the transition to Intel macs, I think you have to have some sort of previous version for the latest build. BUT, you can still run at least (to my best recall), OS X.3 from a CD with no previous OS.
So I ask again, find me a piece of hardware to install OSX on that did not originally come with some version of Mac OS/OSX, and I won't consider it an upgrade.
I have done this two or three times already. A hard drive is a piece of hardware, no?. I've purchased hard drives (or swapped hard drives from spare pcs) and installed Mac OS X on them. It is safe to say that Maxtor hard drives and hard drives from my PC didn't have have OS X originally installled on them.
And MY case is much more prevalent than is portrayed. Not everyone is a cell-phone junkie. Some of us are successful, working adults, with two teenagers two, yet are able to somehow manage our lives without 5 cell phones and 10000000 minutes per month. The providers LOVE the fact that there are tons of people like you and really don't care about me and the millions of other mes out there, because, surprise, we aren't the ones spending hundreds of dollars a month on minutes. Therefore, we very under-represented in these conversations.
On a side note, can someone seriously, with credibility, explain to me why these people just HAVE to have a bluetooth phone thingy in their ear 24/7? Is it some sorta geek image thing, or am I just getting to the point where I yell at the neighborhood kids to get off of my lawn? \
In the past (not sure about the most current version), you've been able to take a completely formatted hard drive and use the "upgrade" disc to install a full version of Mac OS X, as long as it is on compatible hardware (i.e., a Mac). This is in start contrast to Windows "upgrade" cds, where you are REQUIRED to have a previous version installed. Either you have some lame OEM version, or you are one of the stupid people like me who actually bought a "full install" version of Windows.
So yes, it is an upgrade, but unlike the Windows world, it is also a full install. I understand you are disgruntled because you want to use OS X on cheap PC hardware (or you want to buy a Mac without paying for OS X being installed), but that doesn't make your post correct. You are playing word games and not looking at the issue objectively.
As long as PC-tweakers keep thinking like this, Microsoft PC's will be stuck in the Model-T age. A better metaphor would be stuck in the muscle car era. Microsoft fans remind me of the guy across the street always "tweaking" his crappy 1972 Nova. Someday, after he's done with the engine, he'll actually paint the thing. Unfortunately, he never seems to finish his tweaking, and the thing never runs.
I've achieved excellent performance with zero tweaking now for more than 15 years with Mac OS. The problem is defining performance, however. For me, I get stuff done, and spend zero time maintaining my computer and its settings. No spyware, no adware, no virus protection or system doctors, no defragmenting, nada...I use it then I walk away. For others, performance deals with building your own computer and over-clocking stuff, all-the-while tweaking, tweaking and more tweaking, only to realize they've not actually accomplished anything.
Microsoft Windows (all flavors) is the primer gray of computing, just like my neighbor's '72 Nova. "Someday" it will be painted....cherry red.....someday.....
I would say most people don't care, and more importantly, they don't KNOW their hardware is crippled by a specific plan. Therefore, I would argue, that it really doesn't matter. The only people who care are those slashdot/open source obsessed people that actually fact-check and look into things. Most people buy a phone because they like how it looks, sadly.
People use phones for different things. I could care less about minutes. Even with the minimum minutes on the AT&T iPhone plan, I'll never use that many in a month, and I will continue to rack up rollover minutes. I use my phone for business contacts, email, surfing the web and as my only home phone. In otherwords, I'm not one of those dweebs who walks around with a thing in their ear, thinking my world would end if I ever missed a single call. No, my phone sits in its charger base connected to my computer about 95% of the time. When I go on the road, I take it with me. When I go to the store, I leave it at home. I'm not as important as I would like to think I am. (True for 99% of you out there too).
I actually see the extended circle of friends plans to be just as manipulative as being tied to AT&T. It is all marketing, and I choose not to care about having the same plan as my family, because most plans offer me plenty of minutes. So, for me at least, the plan is absolutely irrelevant. I like the phone, not the service.
But you don't have to actually have a previous version of OS X to install said "upgrade". For $130, you get the newest version of the OS on CD....Period! It isn't an upgrade, because you don't have to have OS X installed for the "upgrade" to work (or at least not up through X.49, but that may change). So in effect, you are getting the "full" OS (even if it is able to be licensed on non-Macs...yet).
Why should any new customer be expected to "remember" to uninstall anything???? This mentality is everything that is wrong with the Windows-centric world.
Well I've been on board with Apple since 1989, so major changes are nothing new to me. I've lived through OS 6-7-8-9-X.0-X.49, 16-bit to 32-bit, 080 to PPC to Intel transisitions. One thing Apple does well is making sure it is right BEFORE jumping into something new and patching away for years. Particularly amazing were the jumps from 080 chips to PPC chips and maintaining backwards compatibility. The jump from 9 to X was pretty sweet too, although X.0 was pretty slow. It didn't take long, though, for that to be a distant memory. The mere fact that I could still run 100% of my OS 9 software on my new shiny OSX Mac was a Microsoft developer's wet dream.
Since I have nearly 20 years of pleasant transitions from Apple, why would I worry about the next one? The naysayers say wait for version 2, because that's what they are used to in the Windows world. In the Apple world, I'd say be wary of a product at the end of its lifetime, because Apple is preparing to abandon it as soon as the next great thing is ready for prime time.
Being an early adapter in the Apple world also ensures longer usable life span. Unlike early MS products, I'm not spending most of my time tweaking, patching, and installing driver updates, just to get the stupid thing to work. My Intel iMac will get several years of use, where as if I had bought a G5 iMac at the end of its life-cycle, I would have dumped it by now (in favor of an Intel iMac). Apple is pretty consistent with product release too, so I know that this recent bump in iMacs guarantees nothing new is in the works for a good year or two. By then, my Intel iMac will be three years old, and I'll gladly plop down another $2k for a shiny new Mac.
My home machines were Windows. Then I moved to OSX and I was all, wow, it's like Windows... but it works! And makes sense!
Small correction: "Windows is like OSX.... but it doesn't work." There, fixed that for ya. Let's not forget, just because MS is the big, bad, market-share monster, doesn't mean they lead and Apple follows.
Great post. What I don't get about it all is why do governments and industry rely on this crap when there are other, more stable options available? Why doesn't the most sensitive and secure stuff run on proprietary government OSes, to prevent hacking and malware altogether?
I would expect an expert in the personal computer industry to be enough of an expert to realize that PPC iMacs were on the way out. Maybe it wasn't his choice to buy a lame-duck product, but being the editor of a major PC magazine, he should at least have had enough clout to tell whoever bought a PPC iMac at the end of its product life to WAIT for the Intel iMacs. This is what I did, and I'm just your average Joe consumer. I expect to be using my two Intel Macs for at least a couple of more years. How much money does PCMag editor NOT make, that he doesn't buy a new computer every year, anyway? I don't even work in the industry, yet I like to buy new computers all the time.
The comment about buying a new Mac every year comment is equally disappointing. Had he purchased a 1st gen Intel iMac, he'd be using it for a total of two or three years, easily. I'm still using a G4 tower, 7 years on. Sounds like he let a little of his PC bias slip in with this comment.
I wish people would quit raggin' on about this. Yes we know the US system sucks. Deal with it. Or don't move here. Or move/stay to/in England (or for even better phone service, Germany).
As much as I hate the US system, you still miss the main point about it: a single US carrier is probably bigger (more money), than every UK carrier combined. It's all about the money, and in this case, the US consumer is the loser. (Sound familiar, cough, Microsoft, cough). However, successfully large monopolistic powerful companies are the backbone of the US economy, so I for one am not going to complain too loudly.
As far as USA vs. the Rest of the World goes...enjoy your 10x cost-of-living and your 50%-ish income taxes (and your 18% VAT on everything you buy). Tp each his own, and I've tried both. I'll gladly trade poor cell phone service for affordable cost-of-living. You know, the one where I can buy a four bedroom house on my own property for less than $250,000 and the same place in the UK would go for at least a million pounds (two million dollars). Or my drum equipment that I bought in the US for roughly $10,000 that easily costs 15,000 pounds ($30,000).
Don't get me wrong, I loved my time in the UK but I just couldn't justify throwing my income away every year to live in an overpriced, crowded town house-quality "flat", just so I could enjoy my choice of mobile phone service providers.
I think too many people overlook the actual product when considering a "carrier". Frankly, I could care less what carrier my iPhone works on, because the iPhone is great. I didn't buy my phone because of or in spite of the carrier; I bought it because it is a good phone. Seriously, how many people go into a store thinking what carrier they want to buy? No, people go in wanting the product, not the service provider. I blame the US business model because in the UK I had the option to use any carrier with any phone.
Until the US legislators do something meaningful, we have to deal with imposed market monopolies and being stuck with a provider (cell phone, cable tv, usually the phone and electricity too). The Digital Millenium Act or whatever it's called was supposed to free up these markets, but I think all it did was make large market monopolies stronger. Follow the money, and I bet a lot of the cable companies' money will be found in the politicians' campaign funds. I live in San Antonio and there is ONE FREAKING cable provider. ONE provider for the 30th largest metropolitan area in the US. 2 MILLION PEOPLE get to choose from ONE FREAKING provider! The sad thing is they (Time Warner) are worse than my one freaking provider I had in the UK (Sky).
Yeah, these slashdotters will come to any conclusion, as long as they get to call somebody a fanboy. I think his post highlights just how irrational the anti-Apple crowd will always be and how they are only growing angrier correlating to the market share growth of Mac OS X/iPods/iPhone.
As for the discussion at hand, at least for me (and I assume hundreds of thousands of others), the BlackBerry was never an option for me. I don't want to be THAT guy walking around with his 3 pound belt-brick, trying to look as important as I think I am. I doubt AT&T thinks they have to cripple other products to make the iPhone look better. I bought an iPhone because it is the first phone that was acceptable to me and the first phone that I actually wanted. Every other phone in the past 10 years has been a big steamy pile of dung. After a month with my iPhone, I made the right choice *FOR ME*; a phone that is easy to use, has email and fast wireless. Everything is else is just bonus. (Now if they could just keep Safari from crashing every 10 minutes...) Other phones may do more, but none do it as elegantly or simply. The manual for the iPhone contains no technical instructions at all and I've never had to look up anything online on how to use it. This is how EVERY consumer eletronic product should be.
Slashdot Mirror
I am just holding out for the death of spinning laser disks altogether before I start buying gear again.
Who DOESN'T have a cell phone or land line independent from said T1 line? Do companies actually depend 100% on VOIP for all their telephony needs? I seriously have never heard of this, so if it is true, my ignorance..
Can you point out these hundreds of millions of people still using dial-up? DSL is different, because you don't need an actual phone account to use a DSL line for internet connectivity.
All a "read receipt" tag does is confirm an e-mail has been opened. There is nothing confirming if it was read, understood, followed up on, etc; only management skill can do that. When I'm quickly going through hundreds of emails, I can easily open a "read receipt" email and quickly disregard it as not important and delete it without reading it.
If my boss can't depend on me to be professional enough to read my emails (i.e., do my job) without having to check up on me with email flags, then I don't want to work for that person.
On the flipside, my employees (all less than 10 of them) are expected to use email. Ignoring email, or hiding behind "technology problems" is grounds for dismissal in my book. If my employees don't respond or react to an email in the appropriate way, a reminder email or phone call or personal visit is well in order. Actually, most everything I've given in email instructions (or received) is coupled WITH in-person instructions. The email is usually a "courtesy copy" reminder.
E-mail is relatively new? I had e-mail in college (1988-1992) so forgive me if I don't consider it to be new. I would say that it isn't even new to the mainstream (I'd guess email became mainstream in about 1996-1998, but just guessing?)
Also, in a strangely inverse correlation, the more we become dependent on e-mail, the LESS spam I've been getting over the years. Maybe it is my operating system (Mac OS X), my .mac e-mail account or my Time Warner internet service provider, but I haven't received a single SPAM since I moved back to the US a month ago. At my old job (US School overseas) our Outlook Server did a great job of eliminating all junk email (zero in two years). England (BT in specific), was pretty bad in that I'd get about 10-15 porn/spam emails a day. But that is still far from 90% of all of my email.
Such a simple feature! Why hasn't EVERY cell phone done this before (or yet)?
Oh and by the way, excellent post!
Couple that with your unwillingness to shave for a paycheck? Seriously? Dude, you need to be self-employed, and not be in the business of helping people.
To stay on topic, as an Instructional Designer (technology related), I find e-mail to be an excellent medium for me to deliver instruction, because I can insert screen shots and multi-media elements that help the end user accomplish a task ON THEIR OWN time. I wouldn't be able to talk somebody through many technology issues in training over the phone, but a simulation or multi-media presentation can, and they can run it as many times as they need. Educational theory shows that people learn and retain better when they figure things out on their own instead of people telling them something, so in this regard, I find e-mail to be excellent. Break their dependency from calling you every 2 minutes and you'd be a happier guy all around.
I'm with you though, in wondering what happened to the people skill of speaking to someone in person?
With Mac OS X, you can take any hard drive (hell from a PC if you want) and slap it into a Mac, then boot the computer up from the CD, then install the OS onto the computer. In the past, it never checked for old version, but I think that is changing. With all the different builds, and the transition to Intel macs, I think you have to have some sort of previous version for the latest build. BUT, you can still run at least (to my best recall), OS X.3 from a CD with no previous OS.
I have done this two or three times already. A hard drive is a piece of hardware, no?. I've purchased hard drives (or swapped hard drives from spare pcs) and installed Mac OS X on them. It is safe to say that Maxtor hard drives and hard drives from my PC didn't have have OS X originally installled on them.On a side note, can someone seriously, with credibility, explain to me why these people just HAVE to have a bluetooth phone thingy in their ear 24/7? Is it some sorta geek image thing, or am I just getting to the point where I yell at the neighborhood kids to get off of my lawn? \
So yes, it is an upgrade, but unlike the Windows world, it is also a full install. I understand you are disgruntled because you want to use OS X on cheap PC hardware (or you want to buy a Mac without paying for OS X being installed), but that doesn't make your post correct. You are playing word games and not looking at the issue objectively.
I've achieved excellent performance with zero tweaking now for more than 15 years with Mac OS. The problem is defining performance, however. For me, I get stuff done, and spend zero time maintaining my computer and its settings. No spyware, no adware, no virus protection or system doctors, no defragmenting, nada...I use it then I walk away. For others, performance deals with building your own computer and over-clocking stuff, all-the-while tweaking, tweaking and more tweaking, only to realize they've not actually accomplished anything.
Microsoft Windows (all flavors) is the primer gray of computing, just like my neighbor's '72 Nova. "Someday" it will be painted....cherry red.....someday.....
People use phones for different things. I could care less about minutes. Even with the minimum minutes on the AT&T iPhone plan, I'll never use that many in a month, and I will continue to rack up rollover minutes. I use my phone for business contacts, email, surfing the web and as my only home phone. In otherwords, I'm not one of those dweebs who walks around with a thing in their ear, thinking my world would end if I ever missed a single call. No, my phone sits in its charger base connected to my computer about 95% of the time. When I go on the road, I take it with me. When I go to the store, I leave it at home. I'm not as important as I would like to think I am. (True for 99% of you out there too).
I actually see the extended circle of friends plans to be just as manipulative as being tied to AT&T. It is all marketing, and I choose not to care about having the same plan as my family, because most plans offer me plenty of minutes. So, for me at least, the plan is absolutely irrelevant. I like the phone, not the service.
But you don't have to actually have a previous version of OS X to install said "upgrade". For $130, you get the newest version of the OS on CD....Period! It isn't an upgrade, because you don't have to have OS X installed for the "upgrade" to work (or at least not up through X.49, but that may change). So in effect, you are getting the "full" OS (even if it is able to be licensed on non-Macs...yet).
Why should any new customer be expected to "remember" to uninstall anything???? This mentality is everything that is wrong with the Windows-centric world.
Since I have nearly 20 years of pleasant transitions from Apple, why would I worry about the next one? The naysayers say wait for version 2, because that's what they are used to in the Windows world. In the Apple world, I'd say be wary of a product at the end of its lifetime, because Apple is preparing to abandon it as soon as the next great thing is ready for prime time.
Being an early adapter in the Apple world also ensures longer usable life span. Unlike early MS products, I'm not spending most of my time tweaking, patching, and installing driver updates, just to get the stupid thing to work. My Intel iMac will get several years of use, where as if I had bought a G5 iMac at the end of its life-cycle, I would have dumped it by now (in favor of an Intel iMac). Apple is pretty consistent with product release too, so I know that this recent bump in iMacs guarantees nothing new is in the works for a good year or two. By then, my Intel iMac will be three years old, and I'll gladly plop down another $2k for a shiny new Mac.
Great post. What I don't get about it all is why do governments and industry rely on this crap when there are other, more stable options available? Why doesn't the most sensitive and secure stuff run on proprietary government OSes, to prevent hacking and malware altogether?
The comment about buying a new Mac every year comment is equally disappointing. Had he purchased a 1st gen Intel iMac, he'd be using it for a total of two or three years, easily. I'm still using a G4 tower, 7 years on. Sounds like he let a little of his PC bias slip in with this comment.
As much as I hate the US system, you still miss the main point about it: a single US carrier is probably bigger (more money), than every UK carrier combined. It's all about the money, and in this case, the US consumer is the loser. (Sound familiar, cough, Microsoft, cough). However, successfully large monopolistic powerful companies are the backbone of the US economy, so I for one am not going to complain too loudly.
As far as USA vs. the Rest of the World goes...enjoy your 10x cost-of-living and your 50%-ish income taxes (and your 18% VAT on everything you buy). Tp each his own, and I've tried both. I'll gladly trade poor cell phone service for affordable cost-of-living. You know, the one where I can buy a four bedroom house on my own property for less than $250,000 and the same place in the UK would go for at least a million pounds (two million dollars). Or my drum equipment that I bought in the US for roughly $10,000 that easily costs 15,000 pounds ($30,000).
Don't get me wrong, I loved my time in the UK but I just couldn't justify throwing my income away every year to live in an overpriced, crowded town house-quality "flat", just so I could enjoy my choice of mobile phone service providers.
Until the US legislators do something meaningful, we have to deal with imposed market monopolies and being stuck with a provider (cell phone, cable tv, usually the phone and electricity too). The Digital Millenium Act or whatever it's called was supposed to free up these markets, but I think all it did was make large market monopolies stronger. Follow the money, and I bet a lot of the cable companies' money will be found in the politicians' campaign funds. I live in San Antonio and there is ONE FREAKING cable provider. ONE provider for the 30th largest metropolitan area in the US. 2 MILLION PEOPLE get to choose from ONE FREAKING provider! The sad thing is they (Time Warner) are worse than my one freaking provider I had in the UK (Sky).
As for the discussion at hand, at least for me (and I assume hundreds of thousands of others), the BlackBerry was never an option for me. I don't want to be THAT guy walking around with his 3 pound belt-brick, trying to look as important as I think I am. I doubt AT&T thinks they have to cripple other products to make the iPhone look better. I bought an iPhone because it is the first phone that was acceptable to me and the first phone that I actually wanted. Every other phone in the past 10 years has been a big steamy pile of dung. After a month with my iPhone, I made the right choice *FOR ME*; a phone that is easy to use, has email and fast wireless. Everything is else is just bonus. (Now if they could just keep Safari from crashing every 10 minutes...) Other phones may do more, but none do it as elegantly or simply. The manual for the iPhone contains no technical instructions at all and I've never had to look up anything online on how to use it. This is how EVERY consumer eletronic product should be.