I know Nokia is Finnish. I believe you brought up Asia at some point and I was responding to that. India does in fact have Apple retailers my mistake but several tariffs make the products ridiculously expensive. Here's the article I was referencing: "iPod Gray Market Booms in India" http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2006/08/7163 9
If you can't log in I'll just C&P the entire article for you here:
Rival Manufacturers Chasing the iPhone
By MARTIN FACKLER SEOUL, South Korea, June 29 -- While Americans have been blitzed with news about the iPhone's debut, many in South Korea's and Japan's technology industries initially greeted Apple's flashy new handset with yawns.
Cellphones in these technology-saturated countries can already play digital songs and video games and receive satellite television. But now that analysts and industry executives are getting their first good look at the iPhone, many here are concerned that Asian manufacturers may have underestimated the Apple threat.
Analysts and executives in South Korea say that the iPhone, with its full-scale Internet browser and distinctive touch screen with colorful icons, is more than just another souped-up cellphone. They fear this Silicon Valley challenger could leap past Asian makers into the age of digital convergence by combining personal computing and mobile technologies as no device has before.
"Apple's impact will be bigger than Asian handset makers think," said Kim Yoon-ho, an analyst in Seoul at Prudential Securities. "The iPhone is different from previous mobile phones. It is the prototype of the future of mobile phones."
The fear now is that Apple may repeat in wireless communications what it accomplished in portable music with the iPod: changing the industry. And just as when the iPod came out six years ago, big Asian manufacturers like Samsung Electronics and Sony could find themselves wondering what hit them, say analysts and industry executives.
Here in South Korea, manufacturers are taking the threat seriously, and are rushing out their own iPhone-like handsets. By the end of the year, Samsung, South Korea's biggest cellphone maker, will unveil its Ultra Smart F700, with a large touch-controlled screen displaying rows of icons, much as the iPhone does.
LG Electronics, another large Korean handset maker, has begun selling a smartphone in Italy that can view full-size Web pages. Pantech, which sells most of its phones in the United States under the carriers' brand names, will also unveil its first touch-screen smartphone this fall.
Sony Ericsson plans this fall to introduce its latest Walkman phone, the W960i, which will feature a touch screen and memory space for 8,000 songs. Nokia of Finland, whose N95 is probably the closest competitor to the iPhone in the United States, said it also plans a touch-screen cellphone called the Aeon, though the company has not said when it will go on sale.
Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Ill., plans to sell this summer the Razr 2, the successor to its once-popular Razr upgraded with a Linux operating system and full-scale Web browser.
"If the iPhone changes the rules in the cellphone market, then we have to adapt as soon as possible," said Yi Seung-soo, a cellphone designer at Pantech. "We can take advantage of being a follower," he said.
It's the same method Korean manufacturers have used before -- quickly developing similar products that are cheaper but which contain a few more features than Apple, he said. That strategy has not diminishe
iPods are rare in India because there's no official Apple retailer there yet. I've read stories of people going to other contries and buying iPods in bulk just to bring them back to India to sell at greatly inflated prices. I've also read stories that Asian manufacturers are worried about the iPhone because even they concede that thy suck at user interfaces.
Features are pointless if most folks never use them because the UI sucks so badly that they cannot figure out how to in the first place
All of the technial bonuses you just listed for your Nokia phone are things only a geek could appreciate. Non-geek users won't even know how to use those features and this is why I Belize the iPhone will sell well in Europe too. Your solution of having the mobile store clerks help people insert SIM cards shows you don't get the whole "seamless experiece" thing that Apple is all about.
Ive seen Nokia Symbian based phones. Robert Scoble, and many others, are giving up their N95s to get yhe iPhone. Nokia really needs to up their game with the UI if they want to remain competitive with Apple, raw features alone just aren't enough anymore.
First of all the iPhone is one very HIGH quality piece of hardware. Its build quality is excellent and its VERY sturdy.
Second this shows you know next to nothing about the Mac using community. The level of hacking and shareware development on Macs has been HIGH for decades. There were folks tinkering around with source code and resource editors on Macs before Linux was even created. When you move to an open platform you only gain ONE thing, software freedom. When you move to an Apple platform you gain ease of use. I've seen TONS of geeks in #freebsd and #linux channels moving to Mac OS X because they're tired of fighting with their operating system when they just want to get simple common tasks done (like playing DVDs, burning DVDs, getting onto a WPA encrypted wifi networks, good power management, simple software updates, decent office suites, no trouble video codec playback....etc.) When these same folks WANT to get down to something complicated the terminal is always there for them in/Applications/Utilities
So to recap, you are wrong. The contributions of hackers is very much appreciated on the Mac OS X platform and will be the same for the iPhone. What we DON'T want is for Apple itself to be distracted from its core mission of making its products ridiculously easy and joyful to use. Perhaps if your own operating system were more pleasureable to use you (and a good number of other open source users) wouldn't be such miserable, bitter and spiteful people. Here's to hoping.
I think Steve Jobs knows how to run his business just fine, thank you very much. Apple has very long term plans for the iPhone and you'll be eating crow in about 4 years when millions have shifted from their carriers to AT&T just to get the iPhone. There have been a LOT of good replies to your initial comment, why have you yet to respond?
Apple's goal isn't to open the carrier market for YOUR purposes. You are applying your wishful thinking onto Apple's business plans. First of all why are you saying Apple limited themselves to the US Market? Have you been in a cave that has prevented you from knowing that European and Asian launches are coming in 2008 if not sooner? As for offering the phone SIM-less thats not Apple's style. Apple makes things EASY and SIMPLE to use. If the purchaser of the phone has to figure out what carrier they're going to use and then find a SIM card for it thats just not easy enough. Its too hard. I know you're going to scoff because you are a geek but you aren't Apple's target market. No geek is. Ease of use, ease of use, ease of use. Thats Apple's DNA. Your method introduces uncessary complexity.
When you purchase the iPhone, you take it home, connect it to your computer and iTunes pops up to take you thru the activation process. Its EXTREMELY simple. Now imagine had it been sold SIM less. Each person would have to get the appropriate SIM for the carrier they wanted to go with. Thats just far too messy for Apple's tastes.
Ironically long term Apple will still bring about a healthy carrier market anyway. When the 5 year contract with AT&T is up the other carriers will certainly jump to offer the iPhone just to stop the bleeding of their own subscriber numbers. I wouldn't bet on Google coming to the rescue. They've got a lot of industry inertia and lobbyists to combat against which could take YEARS.
Yes I do think the sales rate will increase after this launch. Anyone who follows Apple closely knows that their initial product splashes are dwarfed by later sales. The original iPod which only worked with Macs sold far far fewer than its selling now. The iPod Nano's initial sales weren't that impressive either and now its selling like hotcakes. The cell phone market is 10x as large as the personal music player market. So Apple only needs to get say, 15% of the cell phone market to outsell its own iPods. They're on track to sell 1 million iPhones by September and probably another 1.5 to 3 million between October and December. Me and my buddy jumped despite having to pay cancellation fees from Sprint. Some folks will definitely be waiting till their contracts run out but every month a huge swath of people time out of their contracts. I'm not seeing it as a barrier to sales in the short or long run.
The iPhone is like the iPod and iPod Nano. Once people see it in person they want to buy one. In my office I used to be a Palm Treo user (5 years with Palm OS over 5 different smartphones) and convinced most of my office (50 people) to buy Treos. I had to talk them into it though. Wasn't a hard sell, most already had a Palm PDA and a cell phone and just wanted to combine the two. But now they have iPods so they're back to 2 devices again. With the iPhone I didn't have to sell them on it. They already wanted one, BEFORE they got to play with mine. Now they can go back to having just one device again. Funny thing is I already had my Treo playing music via its SD card and sync'ing with iTunes using 3rd party software but the user interface of the Treo (and all other smartphones) SUCKS compared to the iPhone.
The iPhone just started selling. How long did it take RIM to get up to 2 million sales per quarter? In its first full quarter Apple is on track to sell 1 million iPhones. So unless you think iPhone growth is going to stall or RIM growth is going to take off Apple will surpass RIM in probably under a year.
RIM won't be able to catch up once they're passed. If you can't see that the iPhone is going to be even BIGGER than the iPod then well, you need eye surgery.
Not in the least. The iPhone is the first device that will get the masses to actually use their phones like smartphones for the first time in history. All the other smartphones that came before it were limited to niche markets, geeks/nerds/SOME businessmen..etc.
Of course most geeks simply can't grok that simply adding features isn't impressive, creating an interface that gets folks to actually USE said features is whats important and thats why you think his comparison is over the top.
It works just fine for Apple. Apple's sales of Macs are up and a part of it is iTunes for Windows. Many of my co-workers, all of whom are non-geeks are impressed with how well iTunes works and are interested in Macs since thats the only way to get a LOT more software from Apple.
Open source proponents often talk so glowingly over the fact that they're not limited to one or two distributions. They never seem to ponder the fact that too much choice is crippling for most folks. People who are new to linux don't want to have to make a choice. Why isn't there just one good linux distro to go with? Why are there like 10 major ones and 300+ in total? That first decision is so overwhelming most folks just drop the idea and stick with Windows or Mac OS X.
This is the #1 issue blocking wider Linux adoption but the hardcore folks who use open source software will never realize it because to them choice is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Its amazing but its actually a form of self-imposed marginalization. I honestly don't know why Microsoft is worrying so much about Linux adoption. This self sabotaging by the community will keep capping its progress as long the sentiment that "overwhelming choice is good" remains in place.
Isn't that line of reasoning awfully convienent for elitists who love to believe that they are more intelligent and more informed than the unwashed masses and thus their purchasing decisions are somehow "smarter" than everyone else's? I personally have owned 5 smartphones in my life. The iPhone kicks them all in the ass. That ain't marketing.
Second of all how is Mozilla tainted? Whats wrong with executives riding 1st class to a conference in the carribean?
Are you one of those people who is automatically supspicious of wealth and success and puts the poor/underdog up on a pedastal when in reality both groups consist of humans?
As for other options, there's Opera, Opera is free as in beer but not as in speech. Konquerer is open source. Since you seem to despise anything corporate you are probably running Linux already so I'm surprised you haven't heard of it yet. Making a browser requires a LOT of developer resources if you expect it to perform anywhere near decently. You may be dismayed to know that the source code for Konquerer, KHTML, is used to make Apple's Safari web browser and Apple has improved it so greatly that the KHTML guys are pretty much going to adopt Apple's changes wholesale instead of continuing with their original codebase. As Apple is a corporation that sells things for filthy evil money instead of giving things away for free this may make Konquerer unacceptable to you.
Perhaps you should try coding your own web browser? Because any other way you look at it based on your overly restrictive morals.....you're fucked.
Its not just Apple. Oracle, Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Lotus, Novell.....etc have all come up with things that the open source world has only been able to copy. Replication not innovation is the modus operandi for Free Software.
No I wasn't trolling. I was being 100% honest. I run 3 OS's, Mac OS X, Windows XP and Kubuntu Linux. No matter what GUI I pick to use on Linux it just doesn't match up to the other two. KDE and GNome are both pure crap. The ONLY thing you get from them is "software freedom" but you know that and $0.99 will buy me a hamburger at McDonalds.
The most important thing here is when I was a kid I was interested in technology for the TECHNOLOGY. I wanted the latest and the greatest and you know what? I STILL do. Never has software freedom factored into that. It may have more than a bit to do with the fact that most open source software isn't innovative but is instead merely trying to copy and replicate functionality that already exists in a proprietary form. For example did open source come up with multi-touch? Has it come up with Time Machine? What about iPhoto? Has open source come up things like Expose and the Dock or Fast User Switching? Bleh. If you want software freedom you pick open source. If you want new and exciting features as soon as they come out then you go proprietary.
We all only have a limited amount of time on this earth and I don't want to spend it waiting years for open source equivalents to catch up to whats already available in the proprietary world. I work and expect to be paid so I don't have a problem with programmers who expect to be paid so I don't have the religious hatred of proprietary software that RMS and folks who follow him have. In return for my money I get the new stuff NOW. You on the other hand have to wait.
This is all moot. In the end proprietary software will win because only a corporation can focus on a users's needs and wants, open source can only scratch whatever itch the particular developer at the time has.
Hence the crappy open source GUIs vs Mac OS X and even Microsoft Windows.
Yes you've nailed it for how it will go for regular consumers.
Keep in mind however that services like www.iresq.com are popping up that WILL replace your iPhone batteries for you. So in the future it may be cheaper to buy a used iPhone and then send it off to get its battery replaced. I also fully expect that a company like NewerTech will at some point offer increased capacity batteries that surpass the performance of the original OEM batteries.
Slashdot Mirror
You can. Welcome to 2005.
I know Nokia is Finnish. I believe you brought up Asia at some point and I was responding to that. India does in fact have Apple retailers my mistake but several tariffs make the products ridiculously expensive. Here's the article I was referencing: "iPod Gray Market Booms in India" http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2006/08/7163 9
Also here is the NYTimes article about asian manufacturers being worried about the iPhone: "Rival Manufacturers Chase the iPhone: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/technology/02cel lphone.html?ex=1185940800&en=692ba75438328700&ei=5 070
If you can't log in I'll just C&P the entire article for you here:
Rival Manufacturers Chasing the iPhone
By MARTIN FACKLER
SEOUL, South Korea, June 29 -- While Americans have been blitzed with news about the iPhone's debut, many in South Korea's and Japan's technology industries initially greeted Apple's flashy new handset with yawns.
Cellphones in these technology-saturated countries can already play digital songs and video games and receive satellite television. But now that analysts and industry executives are getting their first good look at the iPhone, many here are concerned that Asian manufacturers may have underestimated the Apple threat.
Analysts and executives in South Korea say that the iPhone, with its full-scale Internet browser and distinctive touch screen with colorful icons, is more than just another souped-up cellphone. They fear this Silicon Valley challenger could leap past Asian makers into the age of digital convergence by combining personal computing and mobile technologies as no device has before.
"Apple's impact will be bigger than Asian handset makers think," said Kim Yoon-ho, an analyst in Seoul at Prudential Securities. "The iPhone is different from previous mobile phones. It is the prototype of the future of mobile phones."
The fear now is that Apple may repeat in wireless communications what it accomplished in portable music with the iPod: changing the industry. And just as when the iPod came out six years ago, big Asian manufacturers like Samsung Electronics and Sony could find themselves wondering what hit them, say analysts and industry executives.
Here in South Korea, manufacturers are taking the threat seriously, and are rushing out their own iPhone-like handsets. By the end of the year, Samsung, South Korea's biggest cellphone maker, will unveil its Ultra Smart F700, with a large touch-controlled screen displaying rows of icons, much as the iPhone does.
LG Electronics, another large Korean handset maker, has begun selling a smartphone in Italy that can view full-size Web pages. Pantech, which sells most of its phones in the United States under the carriers' brand names, will also unveil its first touch-screen smartphone this fall.
Sony Ericsson plans this fall to introduce its latest Walkman phone, the W960i, which will feature a touch screen and memory space for 8,000 songs. Nokia of Finland, whose N95 is probably the closest competitor to the iPhone in the United States, said it also plans a touch-screen cellphone called the Aeon, though the company has not said when it will go on sale.
Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Ill., plans to sell this summer the Razr 2, the successor to its once-popular Razr upgraded with a Linux operating system and full-scale Web browser.
"If the iPhone changes the rules in the cellphone market, then we have to adapt as soon as possible," said Yi Seung-soo, a cellphone designer at Pantech. "We can take advantage of being a follower," he said.
It's the same method Korean manufacturers have used before -- quickly developing similar products that are cheaper but which contain a few more features than Apple, he said. That strategy has not diminishe
iPods are rare in India because there's no official Apple retailer there yet. I've read stories of people going to other contries and buying iPods in bulk just to bring them back to India to sell at greatly inflated prices. I've also read stories that Asian manufacturers are worried about the iPhone because even they concede that thy suck at user interfaces.
Features are pointless if most folks never use them because the UI sucks so badly that they cannot figure out how to in the first place
All of the technial bonuses you just listed for your Nokia phone are things only a geek could appreciate. Non-geek users won't even know how to use those features and this is why I Belize the iPhone will sell well in Europe too. Your solution of having the mobile store clerks help people insert SIM cards shows you don't get the whole "seamless experiece" thing that Apple is all about.
Ive seen Nokia Symbian based phones. Robert Scoble, and many others, are giving up their N95s to get yhe iPhone. Nokia really needs to up their game with the UI if they want to remain competitive with Apple, raw features alone just aren't enough anymore.
First of all the iPhone is one very HIGH quality piece of hardware. Its build quality is excellent and its VERY sturdy.
/Applications/Utilities
Second this shows you know next to nothing about the Mac using community. The level of hacking and shareware development on Macs has been HIGH for decades. There were folks tinkering around with source code and resource editors on Macs before Linux was even created. When you move to an open platform you only gain ONE thing, software freedom. When you move to an Apple platform you gain ease of use. I've seen TONS of geeks in #freebsd and #linux channels moving to Mac OS X because they're tired of fighting with their operating system when they just want to get simple common tasks done (like playing DVDs, burning DVDs, getting onto a WPA encrypted wifi networks, good power management, simple software updates, decent office suites, no trouble video codec playback....etc.) When these same folks WANT to get down to something complicated the terminal is always there for them in
So to recap, you are wrong. The contributions of hackers is very much appreciated on the Mac OS X platform and will be the same for the iPhone. What we DON'T want is for Apple itself to be distracted from its core mission of making its products ridiculously easy and joyful to use. Perhaps if your own operating system were more pleasureable to use you (and a good number of other open source users) wouldn't be such miserable, bitter and spiteful people. Here's to hoping.
I think Steve Jobs knows how to run his business just fine, thank you very much. Apple has very long term plans for the iPhone and you'll be eating crow in about 4 years when millions have shifted from their carriers to AT&T just to get the iPhone. There have been a LOT of good replies to your initial comment, why have you yet to respond?
Apple's goal isn't to open the carrier market for YOUR purposes. You are applying your wishful thinking onto Apple's business plans. First of all why are you saying Apple limited themselves to the US Market? Have you been in a cave that has prevented you from knowing that European and Asian launches are coming in 2008 if not sooner? As for offering the phone SIM-less thats not Apple's style. Apple makes things EASY and SIMPLE to use. If the purchaser of the phone has to figure out what carrier they're going to use and then find a SIM card for it thats just not easy enough. Its too hard. I know you're going to scoff because you are a geek but you aren't Apple's target market. No geek is. Ease of use, ease of use, ease of use. Thats Apple's DNA. Your method introduces uncessary complexity.
When you purchase the iPhone, you take it home, connect it to your computer and iTunes pops up to take you thru the activation process. Its EXTREMELY simple. Now imagine had it been sold SIM less. Each person would have to get the appropriate SIM for the carrier they wanted to go with. Thats just far too messy for Apple's tastes.
Ironically long term Apple will still bring about a healthy carrier market anyway. When the 5 year contract with AT&T is up the other carriers will certainly jump to offer the iPhone just to stop the bleeding of their own subscriber numbers. I wouldn't bet on Google coming to the rescue. They've got a lot of industry inertia and lobbyists to combat against which could take YEARS.
Yeah MS is in such deep trouble they made record profits this year.
Gimme a break.
Yes I do think the sales rate will increase after this launch. Anyone who follows Apple closely knows that their initial product splashes are dwarfed by later sales. The original iPod which only worked with Macs sold far far fewer than its selling now. The iPod Nano's initial sales weren't that impressive either and now its selling like hotcakes. The cell phone market is 10x as large as the personal music player market. So Apple only needs to get say, 15% of the cell phone market to outsell its own iPods. They're on track to sell 1 million iPhones by September and probably another 1.5 to 3 million between October and December. Me and my buddy jumped despite having to pay cancellation fees from Sprint. Some folks will definitely be waiting till their contracts run out but every month a huge swath of people time out of their contracts. I'm not seeing it as a barrier to sales in the short or long run.
The iPhone is like the iPod and iPod Nano. Once people see it in person they want to buy one. In my office I used to be a Palm Treo user (5 years with Palm OS over 5 different smartphones) and convinced most of my office (50 people) to buy Treos. I had to talk them into it though. Wasn't a hard sell, most already had a Palm PDA and a cell phone and just wanted to combine the two. But now they have iPods so they're back to 2 devices again. With the iPhone I didn't have to sell them on it. They already wanted one, BEFORE they got to play with mine. Now they can go back to having just one device again. Funny thing is I already had my Treo playing music via its SD card and sync'ing with iTunes using 3rd party software but the user interface of the Treo (and all other smartphones) SUCKS compared to the iPhone.
The iPhone just started selling. How long did it take RIM to get up to 2 million sales per quarter? In its first full quarter Apple is on track to sell 1 million iPhones. So unless you think iPhone growth is going to stall or RIM growth is going to take off Apple will surpass RIM in probably under a year.
RIM won't be able to catch up once they're passed. If you can't see that the iPhone is going to be even BIGGER than the iPod then well, you need eye surgery.
Best regards,
NDPTAL85
Not in the least. The iPhone is the first device that will get the masses to actually use their phones like smartphones for the first time in history. All the other smartphones that came before it were limited to niche markets, geeks/nerds/SOME businessmen..etc.
Of course most geeks simply can't grok that simply adding features isn't impressive, creating an interface that gets folks to actually USE said features is whats important and thats why you think his comparison is over the top.
No they aren't. They're expanding their company into other industries, not moving away from Macs.
There's a difference.
It works just fine for Apple. Apple's sales of Macs are up and a part of it is iTunes for Windows. Many of my co-workers, all of whom are non-geeks are impressed with how well iTunes works and are interested in Macs since thats the only way to get a LOT more software from Apple.
Open source proponents often talk so glowingly over the fact that they're not limited to one or two distributions. They never seem to ponder the fact that too much choice is crippling for most folks. People who are new to linux don't want to have to make a choice. Why isn't there just one good linux distro to go with? Why are there like 10 major ones and 300+ in total? That first decision is so overwhelming most folks just drop the idea and stick with Windows or Mac OS X.
This is the #1 issue blocking wider Linux adoption but the hardcore folks who use open source software will never realize it because to them choice is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Its amazing but its actually a form of self-imposed marginalization. I honestly don't know why Microsoft is worrying so much about Linux adoption. This self sabotaging by the community will keep capping its progress as long the sentiment that "overwhelming choice is good" remains in place.
Isn't that line of reasoning awfully convienent for elitists who love to believe that they are more intelligent and more informed than the unwashed masses and thus their purchasing decisions are somehow "smarter" than everyone else's? I personally have owned 5 smartphones in my life. The iPhone kicks them all in the ass. That ain't marketing.
First of all how is Google evil?
Second of all how is Mozilla tainted? Whats wrong with executives riding 1st class to a conference in the carribean?
Are you one of those people who is automatically supspicious of wealth and success and puts the poor/underdog up on a pedastal when in reality both groups consist of humans?
As for other options, there's Opera, Opera is free as in beer but not as in speech. Konquerer is open source. Since you seem to despise anything corporate you are probably running Linux already so I'm surprised you haven't heard of it yet. Making a browser requires a LOT of developer resources if you expect it to perform anywhere near decently. You may be dismayed to know that the source code for Konquerer, KHTML, is used to make Apple's Safari web browser and Apple has improved it so greatly that the KHTML guys are pretty much going to adopt Apple's changes wholesale instead of continuing with their original codebase. As Apple is a corporation that sells things for filthy evil money instead of giving things away for free this may make Konquerer unacceptable to you.
Perhaps you should try coding your own web browser? Because any other way you look at it based on your overly restrictive morals.....you're fucked.
To bring enlightenment to the unwashed masses.
Its not just Apple. Oracle, Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Lotus, Novell.....etc have all come up with things that the open source world has only been able to copy. Replication not innovation is the modus operandi for Free Software.
No I wasn't trolling. I was being 100% honest. I run 3 OS's, Mac OS X, Windows XP and Kubuntu Linux. No matter what GUI I pick to use on Linux it just doesn't match up to the other two. KDE and GNome are both pure crap. The ONLY thing you get from them is "software freedom" but you know that and $0.99 will buy me a hamburger at McDonalds.
The most important thing here is when I was a kid I was interested in technology for the TECHNOLOGY. I wanted the latest and the greatest and you know what? I STILL do. Never has software freedom factored into that. It may have more than a bit to do with the fact that most open source software isn't innovative but is instead merely trying to copy and replicate functionality that already exists in a proprietary form. For example did open source come up with multi-touch? Has it come up with Time Machine? What about iPhoto? Has open source come up things like Expose and the Dock or Fast User Switching? Bleh. If you want software freedom you pick open source. If you want new and exciting features as soon as they come out then you go proprietary.
We all only have a limited amount of time on this earth and I don't want to spend it waiting years for open source equivalents to catch up to whats already available in the proprietary world. I work and expect to be paid so I don't have a problem with programmers who expect to be paid so I don't have the religious hatred of proprietary software that RMS and folks who follow him have. In return for my money I get the new stuff NOW. You on the other hand have to wait.
Whats wrong with boundries? Without proper boundries we get out of control and may hurt ourselves.
It would be awesome if software freedom was as important as say human freedom or civil rights.
...its not.
But you know....
This is all moot. In the end proprietary software will win because only a corporation can focus on a users's needs and wants, open source can only scratch whatever itch the particular developer at the time has.
Hence the crappy open source GUIs vs Mac OS X and even Microsoft Windows.
It isn't always applicable though. Apple isn't becoming MS in their quest to defeat them. Apple's products remain attractive and easy to use.
What are you talking about? Psion made pieces of shit. Apple made the first PDA with the Apple Newton.
Its beasue the company that invented the PDA market has finally returned to it, to take us all home.
Yes you've nailed it for how it will go for regular consumers.
Keep in mind however that services like www.iresq.com are popping up that WILL replace your iPhone batteries for you. So in the future it may be cheaper to buy a used iPhone and then send it off to get its battery replaced. I also fully expect that a company like NewerTech will at some point offer increased capacity batteries that surpass the performance of the original OEM batteries.