I dunno. An Apple TV (screen, not set top box) would be a massive hit IMO. All they need to do is make the UI simple and integrated seamlessly with peripherals. My tech-phobic parents absolutely HATE having umpteen random remote controls sitting around (TV, DVD, STB blah blah) and can't wrap their head around the concept of switching between inputs etc. There's a lot of people like that. A magical box that replaces all that current junk and is dead easy to use would be hugely successful.
What kind of phones are you using? I think my smartphone (iPhone 4) has crashed once in the 3 years I've owned it. Certainly not every couple of days or hours.
Some badly written third party apps might crash occasionally, but that's not the ~phone~ crashing... it just dumps you back on the home screen, no harm done. Plus you're not really making a fair comparison between 'ancient' phones and modern smartphones if you are including the third party apps. Those ancient phones weren't running any code other than the limited stuff that the manufacturer explicitly included and tested. If you take a modern smartphone and install NOTHING (i.e. just leave the base install of the OS and the built-in basic apps like phone/SMS/contacts/etc.) it too will almost never crash.
Hmm? Personally I think iPhone was ALWAYS the phone to get for your parents. From day 1. Precisely ~because~ it's locked down and more difficult to screw things up. That was always true, even in the beginning. And it was a nice change from the mess of buggy, unsupported, unpatched, carrier-bloatware-infested crap that came before it.
That's also the reason it's the phone for me too. I don't want to fiddle with it or run arbitrary code. I just want something that's easy to use, makes calls, sends emails and SMSs, browses the web, has a nice smooth UI that doesn't glitch or have random little framerate slowdowns, doesn't crash too much and a good range of apps to pick from.
It's an appliance for me, not a computer. (Nothing wrong with those that DO want to fiddle with their phones to the n'th degree... been there and done that, but just haven't got time for it these days). Apple was always the phone for people that wanted things to 'just work' (which includes parents!) But I'm no technical luddite, I'm as geeky as they come. I just don't want to do that kind of stuff on a ~phone~... any more than I want to do it on my microwave. So yeah, iPhone for me. Simple and elegant, does what I need it to and doesn't add more digital 'clutter' and confusion to my life.
Well it's only anecdotal, but one reason I didn't buy the first iPhone was because you couldn't even send an MMS. The phone I had in 2001 could send an MMS!
Yes it's only one feature but it's one I used all the time. And was a really, really BASIC feature... every phone's SMS software had been able to do MMS as well for a long time. Not only that, they released the iPhone with a nice (for phones at the time) camera, making people even more likely to want to MMS pictures to people. But nope.
Uh really? That has never happened to me on Vodafone (AU), on either iPhone 4 or 4S. I was just considering switching to Optus too...
I have one friend that I can think of that's on Optus with an iPhone and I don't recall her mentioning having to reboot it often (or ever, for that matter). Wonder if it's specific to your area (the fact that even a Blackberry exhibits the issue suggests it's not an iOS issue).
Map in that article is inaccurate when it comes to the Great Lakes area. The 'border' is not the shore of the lakes - it runs through the middle. Also, Lake Michigan is entirely within the US. So for instance, that map includes Chicago, most of Wisconsin etc. in the "border" zone, when in fact, they aren't.
Still the point stands of course. Was just pointing out a slight inaccuracy. And if we're counting international airports, O'hare basically throws all that area back into the 'border' anyway...
Um, this may be my non-Americanness speaking here but what is a carrier doing providing support for a handset? The carrier's role is to provide a signal. They shouldn't care what handset you're using, let alone provide tech support for it. Maybe that's why US cell plans are so expensive compared to most other places - support costs?
Bad analogy maybe but this to me seems like a TV station providing viewers with technical assistance for their umpteen dozen different brands of TV.
If I have a problem with my signal or my 3G data speeds or something, I call my carrier. If I have a problem with the phone itself (or just want to know how to connect it to WiFi/VPNs etc) I'd contact Motorola/Samsung/Apple/Nokia/etc. You guys are 'doing it wrong' from my perspective:)
This argument would be pretty sound if the US had free tertiary education. People would come, get an education at the US taxpayers' expense, and leave, benefiting other countries. That would indeed suck.
However, US tertiary education costs are astronomical, particularly for international students. Assuming they are paying their way (i.e. covering the full cost of delivering their degree), then what's the problem? They inject money into the US economy (both through tuition and simply buying stuff while they are in the country), and they get an education they are paying for at their own expense.
I do believe that universities shouldn't preference high fee-paying international students over locals. Let locals get the first chance to grab spots. But if the university has spare capacity after interested locals have all applied... why not?
Actually many netbooks and laptops built in the last few years do indeed have a SIM slot and a GSM/HSDPA radio. Our standard corporate issue laptops at work have them - very handy not having to carry around a separate 3G data dongle for connecting on the go.
Yeah strange that the question was asked for "both the US and around the world", since the question barely needs answering in most countries outside the US. As you say, wander down the store and there's about freaking 20 different brands of prepaid PAYG SIMs sitting there, most of which are dirt cheap and would suit the OP's needs.
The question does make more sense in the US where prepaid plans are rare, not every phone/plan uses SIMs, and of those that do, most are far more expensive than they would be in other countries.
Huh? That may well be true but what's that got to do with anything? You go to a cafe when you want a coffee; you go to a fast food joint when you want a (fast, cheap) meal. Don't see that they are mutually exclusive.
It pretty much did fail - they closed ~2/3rds of their locations and abandoned some cities altogether. Australia always had a deeper cafe culture than the US so there was simply too much good competition.
Hear hear - there are many in Australia who completely agree with this (the majority, I would say). I don't think we'll be a republic for a very long time yet.
Despite who you may have talked to while here, there's no serious push for a republic in Australia. It'd need at least double or triple the support it has now to actually pass a referedum (and has utterly zero chance of happening while Elizabeth II is still on the throne).
Like you, I like the bonds that tie us to Canada and the other Commonwealth nations, and actually think the constitutional monarchy (and the Westminster system more generally) we have is a very good system of government. On paper it may not be as directly democratic as a US-style republic... but in practice it seems like the checks and balances we have, based partly in pure tradition, function more effectively than the black letter laws and constitutional rights enjoyed by the Americans.
Aussie politicians sprout empty platitudes about the US because when push comes to shove, the US is our closest military ally and it's in both nations' interests to have close ties in that area. We tag along in every conflict the US is involved with not because we actually want to, but because a) it's a treaty obligation (ANZUS) and b) if we're ever threatened, we'll need the Americans to help us. Also, despite its current economic woes, the US is a very important trading partner and the single biggest source of external investment into the Australian economy.
However you'll note that no politicians here, regardless of where they sit in the political spectrum, actually entertain much in the way of US-like domestic policies (in pretty much any sphere you want to look at - social services, economic management, immigration policy, gun control, healthcare etc...US-like options aren't even on the table because no-one wants them). Once you get past some of the surface similarities, Americans are fundamentally quite different than the Australians.
Don't get me wrong - we like quite a bit about America and consume a lot of its media. It's a beautiful country with overall very friendly people (even if sometimes a bit clueless about the rest of the world), and a popular travel destination. But few of us have a desire to emulate it here. Australia as it is now consistently scores higher than the US on almost any quality-of-life-related index you can imagine.
Yep - and now that they are rolling out 1900 Mhz 3GSM, phones from the rest of the world will actually work on T-Mobile properly (i.e. at speeds faster than EDGE).
That's a good point. All the talk on this thread is about the strategies needed to launch a large-scale military attack on NK without SK incurring too much artillery damage. But I wonder what would happen if you simply took out the leadership and the senior military figures, a few ranks deep?
Not that I question the loyalty of the citizenry and the rest of the military to their leaders. They would without a doubt keep fighting. But they might be so used to simply following orders from the top, that without that familiar hierarchy, things would be so chaotic and disorganised that the country would just fall apart within days...
As a fellow Aussie I have to admit I lumped "wtf, my phone doesn't work here!" in with the rest of 'stupid' differences in America. And it was true, a decade ago. But they've fixed it now - two of the four major networks are GSM/3GSM (HSDPA) which is good enough for travellers.
But yeah, when I first visited the US in 2001, there was no GSM coverage at all. I'd travelled to 20+ countries in the late 90s and early 2000s and my Australian phone worked in every single one. Landed in the US and... nothing.
As a regular visitor to the US since I still remember the first time I landed in LAX, switched my phone on and actually got a signal. Think it was in 2003, 2004 or so. But only in a few spots - soon as you left a major city, nothing again:) These days though the GSM coverage is basically as good as the CDMA/TDMA coverage.
You're probably being facetious, but noone says "kilometerage" in metric countries. They either:
1. Say 'mileage'... except that the word 'mileage' generically means 'fuel efficiency' rather than have anything specific to do with any unit of measurement. So it's quite valid around here in metric-land to say "what kind of mileage do you get from your new car?" "oh pretty good, about 6 litres per 100 km".
or...
2. Simply use the words "fuel efficiency", "fuel consumption", "economy" etc. instead. I fit into this category. The only time I really use the word 'mileage' is as part of an expression like "I really got some mileage out of that joke" or something - nothing to do with vehicles or fuel really.
I don't agree. The changeover to metric here (Australia) occurred in the 60s, during my parents' early 20s. They speak and think purely metric now. It's the same with most of their generation. So you don't need two generations for the switch to succeed, you don't even need one. People are adaptable.
The switchover has to be done right, that's all. None of this optional, slow transition stuff (this is why the US conversion failed). You pick a deadline date and that's it. By law, by that date, stuff in the grocery store has to be labelled and sold in kg, road signs have to be changed. It's obviously not an overnight process but it's not as long or difficult as some people thing. Vestiges of the old system might hang around for a few years but pretty soon, they are forgotten.
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I dunno. An Apple TV (screen, not set top box) would be a massive hit IMO. All they need to do is make the UI simple and integrated seamlessly with peripherals. My tech-phobic parents absolutely HATE having umpteen random remote controls sitting around (TV, DVD, STB blah blah) and can't wrap their head around the concept of switching between inputs etc. There's a lot of people like that. A magical box that replaces all that current junk and is dead easy to use would be hugely successful.
What kind of phones are you using? I think my smartphone (iPhone 4) has crashed once in the 3 years I've owned it. Certainly not every couple of days or hours.
Some badly written third party apps might crash occasionally, but that's not the ~phone~ crashing ... it just dumps you back on the home screen, no harm done. Plus you're not really making a fair comparison between 'ancient' phones and modern smartphones if you are including the third party apps. Those ancient phones weren't running any code other than the limited stuff that the manufacturer explicitly included and tested. If you take a modern smartphone and install NOTHING (i.e. just leave the base install of the OS and the built-in basic apps like phone/SMS/contacts/etc.) it too will almost never crash.
Hmm? Personally I think iPhone was ALWAYS the phone to get for your parents. From day 1. Precisely ~because~ it's locked down and more difficult to screw things up. That was always true, even in the beginning. And it was a nice change from the mess of buggy, unsupported, unpatched, carrier-bloatware-infested crap that came before it.
That's also the reason it's the phone for me too. I don't want to fiddle with it or run arbitrary code. I just want something that's easy to use, makes calls, sends emails and SMSs, browses the web, has a nice smooth UI that doesn't glitch or have random little framerate slowdowns, doesn't crash too much and a good range of apps to pick from.
It's an appliance for me, not a computer. (Nothing wrong with those that DO want to fiddle with their phones to the n'th degree ... been there and done that, but just haven't got time for it these days). Apple was always the phone for people that wanted things to 'just work' (which includes parents!) But I'm no technical luddite, I'm as geeky as they come. I just don't want to do that kind of stuff on a ~phone~ ... any more than I want to do it on my microwave. So yeah, iPhone for me. Simple and elegant, does what I need it to and doesn't add more digital 'clutter' and confusion to my life.
Well it's only anecdotal, but one reason I didn't buy the first iPhone was because you couldn't even send an MMS. The phone I had in 2001 could send an MMS!
Yes it's only one feature but it's one I used all the time. And was a really, really BASIC feature ... every phone's SMS software had been able to do MMS as well for a long time. Not only that, they released the iPhone with a nice (for phones at the time) camera, making people even more likely to want to MMS pictures to people. But nope.
Happy iPhone user now though :)
'VLC' would make a pretty good VLC equivalent :) - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html
Uh really? That has never happened to me on Vodafone (AU), on either iPhone 4 or 4S. I was just considering switching to Optus too...
I have one friend that I can think of that's on Optus with an iPhone and I don't recall her mentioning having to reboot it often (or ever, for that matter). Wonder if it's specific to your area (the fact that even a Blackberry exhibits the issue suggests it's not an iOS issue).
Map in that article is inaccurate when it comes to the Great Lakes area. The 'border' is not the shore of the lakes - it runs through the middle. Also, Lake Michigan is entirely within the US. So for instance, that map includes Chicago, most of Wisconsin etc. in the "border" zone, when in fact, they aren't.
Still the point stands of course. Was just pointing out a slight inaccuracy. And if we're counting international airports, O'hare basically throws all that area back into the 'border' anyway...
Hmm never noticed that before.
I'm Australian and:
different TO
different FROM
different THAN
all sound OK to me. Though in my head, they have subtly different usage contexts. I think I use 'different than' most of the time actually.
Um, this may be my non-Americanness speaking here but what is a carrier doing providing support for a handset? The carrier's role is to provide a signal. They shouldn't care what handset you're using, let alone provide tech support for it. Maybe that's why US cell plans are so expensive compared to most other places - support costs?
Bad analogy maybe but this to me seems like a TV station providing viewers with technical assistance for their umpteen dozen different brands of TV.
If I have a problem with my signal or my 3G data speeds or something, I call my carrier. If I have a problem with the phone itself (or just want to know how to connect it to WiFi/VPNs etc) I'd contact Motorola/Samsung/Apple/Nokia/etc. You guys are 'doing it wrong' from my perspective :)
Right!
This argument would be pretty sound if the US had free tertiary education. People would come, get an education at the US taxpayers' expense, and leave, benefiting other countries. That would indeed suck.
However, US tertiary education costs are astronomical, particularly for international students. Assuming they are paying their way (i.e. covering the full cost of delivering their degree), then what's the problem? They inject money into the US economy (both through tuition and simply buying stuff while they are in the country), and they get an education they are paying for at their own expense.
I do believe that universities shouldn't preference high fee-paying international students over locals. Let locals get the first chance to grab spots. But if the university has spare capacity after interested locals have all applied ... why not?
Actually many netbooks and laptops built in the last few years do indeed have a SIM slot and a GSM/HSDPA radio. Our standard corporate issue laptops at work have them - very handy not having to carry around a separate 3G data dongle for connecting on the go.
Yeah strange that the question was asked for "both the US and around the world", since the question barely needs answering in most countries outside the US. As you say, wander down the store and there's about freaking 20 different brands of prepaid PAYG SIMs sitting there, most of which are dirt cheap and would suit the OP's needs.
The question does make more sense in the US where prepaid plans are rare, not every phone/plan uses SIMs, and of those that do, most are far more expensive than they would be in other countries.
Huh? That may well be true but what's that got to do with anything? You go to a cafe when you want a coffee; you go to a fast food joint when you want a (fast, cheap) meal. Don't see that they are mutually exclusive.
It pretty much did fail - they closed ~2/3rds of their locations and abandoned some cities altogether. Australia always had a deeper cafe culture than the US so there was simply too much good competition.
Hear hear - there are many in Australia who completely agree with this (the majority, I would say). I don't think we'll be a republic for a very long time yet.
Despite who you may have talked to while here, there's no serious push for a republic in Australia. It'd need at least double or triple the support it has now to actually pass a referedum (and has utterly zero chance of happening while Elizabeth II is still on the throne).
Like you, I like the bonds that tie us to Canada and the other Commonwealth nations, and actually think the constitutional monarchy (and the Westminster system more generally) we have is a very good system of government. On paper it may not be as directly democratic as a US-style republic ... but in practice it seems like the checks and balances we have, based partly in pure tradition, function more effectively than the black letter laws and constitutional rights enjoyed by the Americans.
Aussie politicians sprout empty platitudes about the US because when push comes to shove, the US is our closest military ally and it's in both nations' interests to have close ties in that area. We tag along in every conflict the US is involved with not because we actually want to, but because a) it's a treaty obligation (ANZUS) and b) if we're ever threatened, we'll need the Americans to help us. Also, despite its current economic woes, the US is a very important trading partner and the single biggest source of external investment into the Australian economy.
However you'll note that no politicians here, regardless of where they sit in the political spectrum, actually entertain much in the way of US-like domestic policies (in pretty much any sphere you want to look at - social services, economic management, immigration policy, gun control, healthcare etc...US-like options aren't even on the table because no-one wants them). Once you get past some of the surface similarities, Americans are fundamentally quite different than the Australians.
Don't get me wrong - we like quite a bit about America and consume a lot of its media. It's a beautiful country with overall very friendly people (even if sometimes a bit clueless about the rest of the world), and a popular travel destination. But few of us have a desire to emulate it here. Australia as it is now consistently scores higher than the US on almost any quality-of-life-related index you can imagine.
Or indeed, virtually any other country.
Yep - and now that they are rolling out 1900 Mhz 3GSM, phones from the rest of the world will actually work on T-Mobile properly (i.e. at speeds faster than EDGE).
That's a good point. All the talk on this thread is about the strategies needed to launch a large-scale military attack on NK without SK incurring too much artillery damage. But I wonder what would happen if you simply took out the leadership and the senior military figures, a few ranks deep?
Not that I question the loyalty of the citizenry and the rest of the military to their leaders. They would without a doubt keep fighting. But they might be so used to simply following orders from the top, that without that familiar hierarchy, things would be so chaotic and disorganised that the country would just fall apart within days...
Shhh don't give them any ideas - they could achieve first dishwasher in orbit!
As a fellow Aussie I have to admit I lumped "wtf, my phone doesn't work here!" in with the rest of 'stupid' differences in America. And it was true, a decade ago. But they've fixed it now - two of the four major networks are GSM/3GSM (HSDPA) which is good enough for travellers.
But yeah, when I first visited the US in 2001, there was no GSM coverage at all. I'd travelled to 20+ countries in the late 90s and early 2000s and my Australian phone worked in every single one. Landed in the US and ... nothing.
As a regular visitor to the US since I still remember the first time I landed in LAX, switched my phone on and actually got a signal. Think it was in 2003, 2004 or so. But only in a few spots - soon as you left a major city, nothing again :) These days though the GSM coverage is basically as good as the CDMA/TDMA coverage.
You're probably being facetious, but noone says "kilometerage" in metric countries. They either:
1. Say 'mileage' ... except that the word 'mileage' generically means 'fuel efficiency' rather than have anything specific to do with any unit of measurement. So it's quite valid around here in metric-land to say "what kind of mileage do you get from your new car?" "oh pretty good, about 6 litres per 100 km".
or...
2. Simply use the words "fuel efficiency", "fuel consumption", "economy" etc. instead. I fit into this category. The only time I really use the word 'mileage' is as part of an expression like "I really got some mileage out of that joke" or something - nothing to do with vehicles or fuel really.
Ugh, that could get confusing. 'Mils' is the colloquial/casual way of saying millimetres around here!
How tall is that bookshelf? Oh about 1400 mil.
How much rain did we get yesterday? 45 mil.
Etc.
Didn't know that 'mil' could mean one-thousandth of an inch! This is important for me to learn as I'm moving to the US shortly...
I don't agree. The changeover to metric here (Australia) occurred in the 60s, during my parents' early 20s. They speak and think purely metric now. It's the same with most of their generation. So you don't need two generations for the switch to succeed, you don't even need one. People are adaptable.
The switchover has to be done right, that's all. None of this optional, slow transition stuff (this is why the US conversion failed). You pick a deadline date and that's it. By law, by that date, stuff in the grocery store has to be labelled and sold in kg, road signs have to be changed. It's obviously not an overnight process but it's not as long or difficult as some people thing. Vestiges of the old system might hang around for a few years but pretty soon, they are forgotten.