Most people don't buy phones for that reason. They buy iPods for that.
I'm struggling to understand how you can realize this but not make the connection. There are millions of people walking around right now with a cell phone in one pocket and an iPod in the other.
The 8GB storage means that it doesn't do "everything that the world's best-selling media player does", without frequent visits home, or docking to switch-out media.
What the hell are you talking about? Most of the iPods out there have less than 8GB of storage. Also, how would "frequent visits home" be a downside on a device that you're going to be carrying with you? Do you not ever go home?
Look at the Nokia N95
I'd really rather not, but if you insist. The N95 lists for 550 euro. That would be over $700. I say "would be" because the N95 isn't actually for sale in the US.
Pity, because I really wanted a phone with a display that was smaller than the iPhone and half the resolution, with no keyboard, and less than a GB of that storage that is oh so important to some people. On the other hand, as you pointed out, it supports MIDI, which almost makes up for it.
And it doens't overlap functionality with your iPod, so you can comfortably carry both around without asking yourself why you gave 1 company enough money for 2 devices, especially as one of said devices claims to do everything the other one does...
Why would you want to carry two devices around instead of one?
My comment was on an article about features the iPhone lacks, so I thought it went without saying. My point was that the articles premise that the iPhone will probably flop because it doesn't (for instance) open Excel documents only stands up if you completely ignore the ways in which it is superior to existing products.
'The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones.'
That's a smug way of saying "I don't get it.".
The "many media-oriented virtues" blow every other smartphone out of the water on that front. Plenty of phones will play music, videos, photos -- but they universally do a poor job of it, either because the feature was just tacked on to be a bullet point on a feature list, or because it's designed as a cash cow for the wireless provider (Verizon's V Cast, etc.). Maybe they come with only 64MB of storage, or don't let you load your own content over Bluetooth, or only support tiny 3GPP video, or don't support playlists at all, or have that fuck-you 2.5mm headphone jack--I've seen all of these faults. The iPhone, on the other hand, does everything that the world's best-selling media player does, and more. Brushing all of that aside in a sentence is probably the dumbest thing I've read in weeks.
Call me crazy, but I think iTunes is more likely to be 'iTunes for Books'. Here you have this hugely popular downloadable content store that already sells every other kind of media, versus Google, which, bless their hearts, has never had much success selling anything but ad space.
I don't think it's such big leap--the store is all ready there. iTunes already distributes some PDFs with music albums, and even supports them in podcast feeds. I assume PDF would be used because it's not yet-another-proprietary format, is extremely versatile, supports content protection, and is easy to produce.
The other part of the equation is the devices -- e-reader devices have traditionally sucked much ass through some combination of being bulky, low-resolution, greyscale, poor format support, poor battery life, and by virtue of being yet-another-device-to-carry-around. Regardless of what you think of the iPhone, I don't think you can argue that it's lacking in any of these areas: It'd make a damn-near perfect ebook reader. It already supports PDF, already syncs with iTunes -- it's begging for content. And I'm begging for a page-flipping gesture.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe Apple isn't planning to start selling ebooks -- but unless Google can make buying from them not suck (Google Video, I'm looking at you in disgust), and bring something more than a Blackberry as a reader, I still say Apple is in a much better position than Google is.
The most shocking thing is that there are multiple non-Microsoft websites devoted to the Zune. I mean, I kind of expect record companies and Microsoft to fuck over their customers; but people building a Zune news website? That's just perverse.
Second, even though they advertise it as "widescreen", it's not even truly widescreen
On a 480x320 display, the difference between 1.5:1 and 1.78:1 is 25 pixels of letterboxing on top and bottom. At 160ppi, that's about a quarter of an inch. Complaining about that is like complaining that it doesn't have surround sound.
Also, all of Apple's widescreen computer displays are 1.6:1, do they not qualify as "truly widescreen"? There are widescreen DVDs with 1.85:1 and 2.35:1, are they not "truly widescreen?
I play my favorite mmo (eve online) and I chat with the guys on that often, I idle on irc and chat with people I know there, and I've got the odd forum around the place....Seriously am I the only one that just doesn't get social networking sites?
Social networking sites fulfill this same need for people that don't play MMOs or use IRC. There's nothing to "get" -- it's just people being social.
I think a more elegant solution would be for someone to write a virtual CD-R package:)
There is a less elegant solution that has the advantage of not requiring a CD: using iMovie. You just make an iMovie project with your protected audio track, and any video (even a still image), and export to QuickTIme using Expert Settings -- from there you can do AAC, AIFF, WAV, or anything else QuickTime supports -- just be sure to deselect the video track or you'll just have to remove it later.
Not elegant at all, but it doesn't require a CD or the associated burn times.
Even though Apple didn't advertise it, that was common knowledge, wasn't it?
No, and it wouldn't matter if it was.
If you buy a piece of hardware, I'd say you're entitled to use it--even the parts that aren't advertised--without paying for it again.
You're perfectly entitled to do what you please with it. You're just not entitled to get Apple's supported driver and firmware for free. You act as if the hardware is the only thing you need, and the only thing that costs any money to produce. You can't pretend that you're not getting anything in exchange for the $5.
Wow... you sound really authoritative, but it seems like you really don't know what you're talking about.
Nothing in these links contradicts what the parent said. You can't buy unencrypted music with PyMusique anymore, and the DRM encryption is still unbroken. QTFairUse extracts AAC frames from memory, it does not break the encryption.
They never claimed that the models they sold before would ever support 802.11n. If you bought b/g hardware expecting to get n support for free, you might want to adjust your sense of entitlement. No, you bought one thing (an AirPort adapter), and now they are offering another (the firmware to support 802.11n).
I mean truckloads of money that they wouldn't be getting with open development. If it's all sold through iTunes they'll be getting a cut on every bit of software that is sold for the iPhone, on top of the phones themselves. Cellular providers already make tons of money this way, though often through subscriptions (my provider charges $1.99/mo to use a WAP browser), and absurd overpricing ($3.99 ringtones). Apple is more likely to go with the same you-own-it model as the other content they sell.
Between the lines. Come on, it's transparent: iPhone syncs with iTunes. iPhone syncs with content from the iTunes Store. iPhone software will be available to buy in a "controlled environment". This isn't a leap, it's obvious.
I read your post, and I'm struggling to figure out just what the hell your question is. You ask "who is fixing this bug?" but in a place where nobody that could actually provide the answer will be looking. You've clearly already made up your mind that there is some sort of "power struggle" or conspiracy going on, so what, if anything, could someone tell you that would satisfy you? I don't know what the criteria for removal is on those forums, but I suspect yours was removed because it was pointless and inflammatory, not because of any conspiracy. That you feel that having one forum post removed is a crisis worth submitting to Slashdot reeks of paranoia.
Why don't you try Apple's bug reporting site instead of the Discussion forums? You know, the place where you actually report bugs?
"That doesn't mean there's not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn't mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment."
Remember that the iPhone syncs with iTunes: He's also saying that the iTunes Store is going to be the only place you can buy software for it. This has some interesting implications. One of them involves truckloads of money.
The phone I've had for the past two years...that you've neglected to mention the make and model of.
My point was that it's not out of the price range of existing phones, not to get in a pissing match over features, the value of which depends heavily on your needs. By "fewer features" I should have specified "fewer features that are valuable to vast numbers of people". The ability to run PuTTY or open Word documents is extremely important to a much smaller number of people.
Apple is going for the set of iPod users that also use cell phones (which is roughly all of them), or cell phone users that also use iPods (which is a hell of a lot of them). Not all of them will be interested, of course, but looking at it this way it doesn't seem like they're going to struggle to sell 10 million of the things.
The screen appears to be able to distinguish between light and firm pressure (IIRC, Apple has a patent to this effect). The on-screen keys enlarge with light pressure, and register a click with firm pressure, which I imagine significantly reduces the error rate from accidental presses vs. for example, a Palm touch-screen. I imagine it responds much more like a real keyboard, which probably matters more than the tactile feedback of a rubbery button.
Also, since it has a standard iPod dock connector, it's probable that you'll see 3rd party keyboards by the time it launches.
"OS X"? FreeBSD -- they mean that?
It's entirely possible (compare any number of Linux-based portable devices, like the Nokia 770), and I doubt Apple would choose not to use what they have available. The question is where does the iPhone's OS X diverge from Mac OS X, and how easy is Apple going to make it to develop for?*
(* if I put a quarter in my "end a sentence with a preposition" jar, I'll be able to afford an iPhone by june.)
That's way, way beyond most peoples' price points,
It's only slightly higher than existing smartphones that have fewer features.
and with "only" 4 or 8 gigs of storage, it's roughly useless for the people who WOULD use it.
How do you figure? Most smartphones include less than 1GB of storage, and are at best expandable (at added expense) to about 2GB. The Treo 750, at $399+2 year Cingular contract only includes 128MB.
Microsoft has a copyright on MS Word. Microsoft does not own copyright on any screenshots taken of MS Word. In this case CNN owns the copyrights on the footage in question.
1. It's CNET, not CNN. 2. The "footage" is a video recorded by the people responsible for the, er...penis attack, not CNET. 3. The DMCA complaints is that that video contains Anshe Chung's copyrighted avatar, not that the video itself is copyright Anshe Chung.
If you don't have any idea what you're talking about, then why bother posting?
Slashdot Mirror
Most people don't buy phones for that reason. They buy iPods for that.
I'm struggling to understand how you can realize this but not make the connection. There are millions of people walking around right now with a cell phone in one pocket and an iPod in the other.
The 8GB storage means that it doesn't do "everything that the world's best-selling media player does", without frequent visits home, or docking to switch-out media.
What the hell are you talking about? Most of the iPods out there have less than 8GB of storage. Also, how would "frequent visits home" be a downside on a device that you're going to be carrying with you? Do you not ever go home?
Look at the Nokia N95
I'd really rather not, but if you insist. The N95 lists for 550 euro. That would be over $700. I say "would be" because the N95 isn't actually for sale in the US.
Pity, because I really wanted a phone with a display that was smaller than the iPhone and half the resolution, with no keyboard, and less than a GB of that storage that is oh so important to some people. On the other hand, as you pointed out, it supports MIDI, which almost makes up for it.
And it doens't overlap functionality with your iPod, so you can comfortably carry both around without asking yourself why you gave 1 company enough money for 2 devices, especially as one of said devices claims to do everything the other one does...
Why would you want to carry two devices around instead of one?
Acknowledge that it lacks
My comment was on an article about features the iPhone lacks, so I thought it went without saying. My point was that the articles premise that the iPhone will probably flop because it doesn't (for instance) open Excel documents only stands up if you completely ignore the ways in which it is superior to existing products.
You don't hang around /. too much, do you?
I do, but I browse at +5, with the newest 33% of users automatically given -1, and a mile-long Foes list.
There's a whole world of options on the user preferences page that make Slashdot seem less like Digg.
'The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones.'
That's a smug way of saying "I don't get it.".
The "many media-oriented virtues" blow every other smartphone out of the water on that front. Plenty of phones will play music, videos, photos -- but they universally do a poor job of it, either because the feature was just tacked on to be a bullet point on a feature list, or because it's designed as a cash cow for the wireless provider (Verizon's V Cast, etc.). Maybe they come with only 64MB of storage, or don't let you load your own content over Bluetooth, or only support tiny 3GPP video, or don't support playlists at all, or have that fuck-you 2.5mm headphone jack--I've seen all of these faults. The iPhone, on the other hand, does everything that the world's best-selling media player does, and more. Brushing all of that aside in a sentence is probably the dumbest thing I've read in weeks.
Call me crazy, but I think iTunes is more likely to be 'iTunes for Books'. Here you have this hugely popular downloadable content store that already sells every other kind of media, versus Google, which, bless their hearts, has never had much success selling anything but ad space.
I don't think it's such big leap--the store is all ready there. iTunes already distributes some PDFs with music albums, and even supports them in podcast feeds. I assume PDF would be used because it's not yet-another-proprietary format, is extremely versatile, supports content protection, and is easy to produce.
The other part of the equation is the devices -- e-reader devices have traditionally sucked much ass through some combination of being bulky, low-resolution, greyscale, poor format support, poor battery life, and by virtue of being yet-another-device-to-carry-around. Regardless of what you think of the iPhone, I don't think you can argue that it's lacking in any of these areas: It'd make a damn-near perfect ebook reader. It already supports PDF, already syncs with iTunes -- it's begging for content. And I'm begging for a page-flipping gesture.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe Apple isn't planning to start selling ebooks -- but unless Google can make buying from them not suck (Google Video, I'm looking at you in disgust), and bring something more than a Blackberry as a reader, I still say Apple is in a much better position than Google is.
The most shocking thing is that there are multiple non-Microsoft websites devoted to the Zune. I mean, I kind of expect record companies and Microsoft to fuck over their customers; but people building a Zune news website? That's just perverse.
Second, even though they advertise it as "widescreen", it's not even truly widescreen
On a 480x320 display, the difference between 1.5:1 and 1.78:1 is 25 pixels of letterboxing on top and bottom. At 160ppi, that's about a quarter of an inch. Complaining about that is like complaining that it doesn't have surround sound.
Also, all of Apple's widescreen computer displays are 1.6:1, do they not qualify as "truly widescreen"? There are widescreen DVDs with 1.85:1 and 2.35:1, are they not "truly widescreen?
I play my favorite mmo (eve online) and I chat with the guys on that often, I idle on irc and chat with people I know there, and I've got the odd forum around the place....Seriously am I the only one that just doesn't get social networking sites?
Social networking sites fulfill this same need for people that don't play MMOs or use IRC. There's nothing to "get" -- it's just people being social.
I think a more elegant solution would be for someone to write a virtual CD-R package :)
There is a less elegant solution that has the advantage of not requiring a CD: using iMovie. You just make an iMovie project with your protected audio track, and any video (even a still image), and export to QuickTIme using Expert Settings -- from there you can do AAC, AIFF, WAV, or anything else QuickTime supports -- just be sure to deselect the video track or you'll just have to remove it later.
Not elegant at all, but it doesn't require a CD or the associated burn times.
Even though Apple didn't advertise it, that was common knowledge, wasn't it?
No, and it wouldn't matter if it was.
If you buy a piece of hardware, I'd say you're entitled to use it--even the parts that aren't advertised--without paying for it again.
You're perfectly entitled to do what you please with it. You're just not entitled to get Apple's supported driver and firmware for free. You act as if the hardware is the only thing you need, and the only thing that costs any money to produce. You can't pretend that you're not getting anything in exchange for the $5.
Wow... you sound really authoritative, but it seems like you really don't know what you're talking about.
Nothing in these links contradicts what the parent said. You can't buy unencrypted music with PyMusique anymore, and the DRM encryption is still unbroken. QTFairUse extracts AAC frames from memory, it does not break the encryption.
they are selling it to you twice
They never claimed that the models they sold before would ever support 802.11n. If you bought b/g hardware expecting to get n support for free, you might want to adjust your sense of entitlement. No, you bought one thing (an AirPort adapter), and now they are offering another (the firmware to support 802.11n).
It's amazing how infuriated people can get over $5 when you're going to have to spend $100-$200 an 802.11n access point anyway.
Ever try report a bug to apple?
Yes, and my experience was completely unlike yours. Yours: the one that doesn't invalidate anything I said in my post.
Since when iTunes implies truckloads of money?
I mean truckloads of money that they wouldn't be getting with open development. If it's all sold through iTunes they'll be getting a cut on every bit of software that is sold for the iPhone, on top of the phones themselves. Cellular providers already make tons of money this way, though often through subscriptions (my provider charges $1.99/mo to use a WAP browser), and absurd overpricing ($3.99 ringtones). Apple is more likely to go with the same you-own-it model as the other content they sell.
All in all it's a unique position.
Huh? Where did he say that?
Between the lines. Come on, it's transparent: iPhone syncs with iTunes. iPhone syncs with content from the iTunes Store. iPhone software will be available to buy in a "controlled environment". This isn't a leap, it's obvious.
I read your post, and I'm struggling to figure out just what the hell your question is. You ask "who is fixing this bug?" but in a place where nobody that could actually provide the answer will be looking. You've clearly already made up your mind that there is some sort of "power struggle" or conspiracy going on, so what, if anything, could someone tell you that would satisfy you? I don't know what the criteria for removal is on those forums, but I suspect yours was removed because it was pointless and inflammatory, not because of any conspiracy. That you feel that having one forum post removed is a crisis worth submitting to Slashdot reeks of paranoia.
Why don't you try Apple's bug reporting site instead of the Discussion forums? You know, the place where you actually report bugs?
"That doesn't mean there's not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn't mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment."
Remember that the iPhone syncs with iTunes: He's also saying that the iTunes Store is going to be the only place you can buy software for it. This has some interesting implications. One of them involves truckloads of money.
The phone I've had for the past two years ...that you've neglected to mention the make and model of.
My point was that it's not out of the price range of existing phones, not to get in a pissing match over features, the value of which depends heavily on your needs. By "fewer features" I should have specified "fewer features that are valuable to vast numbers of people". The ability to run PuTTY or open Word documents is extremely important to a much smaller number of people.
Apple is going for the set of iPod users that also use cell phones (which is roughly all of them), or cell phone users that also use iPods (which is a hell of a lot of them). Not all of them will be interested, of course, but looking at it this way it doesn't seem like they're going to struggle to sell 10 million of the things.
but lack of a physical keyboard? I don't know.
The screen appears to be able to distinguish between light and firm pressure (IIRC, Apple has a patent to this effect). The on-screen keys enlarge with light pressure, and register a click with firm pressure, which I imagine significantly reduces the error rate from accidental presses vs. for example, a Palm touch-screen. I imagine it responds much more like a real keyboard, which probably matters more than the tactile feedback of a rubbery button.
Also, since it has a standard iPod dock connector, it's probable that you'll see 3rd party keyboards by the time it launches.
"OS X"? FreeBSD -- they mean that?
It's entirely possible (compare any number of Linux-based portable devices, like the Nokia 770), and I doubt Apple would choose not to use what they have available. The question is where does the iPhone's OS X diverge from Mac OS X, and how easy is Apple going to make it to develop for?*
(* if I put a quarter in my "end a sentence with a preposition" jar, I'll be able to afford an iPhone by june.)
That's way, way beyond most peoples' price points,
It's only slightly higher than existing smartphones that have fewer features.
and with "only" 4 or 8 gigs of storage, it's roughly useless for the people who WOULD use it.
How do you figure? Most smartphones include less than 1GB of storage, and are at best expandable (at added expense) to about 2GB. The Treo 750, at $399+2 year Cingular contract only includes 128MB.
Microsoft has a copyright on MS Word. Microsoft does not own copyright on any screenshots taken of MS Word. In this case CNN owns the copyrights on the footage in question.
1. It's CNET, not CNN.
2. The "footage" is a video recorded by the people responsible for the, er...penis attack, not CNET.
3. The DMCA complaints is that that video contains Anshe Chung's copyrighted avatar, not that the video itself is copyright Anshe Chung.
If you don't have any idea what you're talking about, then why bother posting?
Well, that is what I wrote =-)
No, it wasn't.
It's not difficult. All contracts must be voluntary...blah blah blah
I said who not how. Clearly you think that it should be you, or those that share your shallow and unrealistic views.
a silly example, but it highlights the point.
No it doesn't, it conceals it behind a smokescreen in the vague shape of Bertrand Russell's head.
The very idea of a flying penis scares the hell out of me.
My high-school Latin teacher used every opportunity to remind the class that in ancient Rome, a winged phallus was a symbol of luck and protection.
Just thought you might want to know, in case you start having nightmares or something.
And even if it did, the content doesn't actually belong to her, it belongs to (if anyone) Second Life.
Um, no. In Second Life, you own the content you create. Presumably this includes one's avatar.