"If I use it intermittently, it lasts the whole day, alternating between text, data, and PDA."
Of course, the iPhone is also supposed to be a phone and a video iPod. So factor that usage in and its impact on battery life as well. I'd much rather have an extra couple of hours of usage in those modes and not have to manage power, or as opposed to getting an email or web page a few seconds faster on those rare occasions when I don't have WiFi access or I'm not near a hotspot.
But since home, work, friends, and most of my favorite restaurants all do have WiFi, the presence (or not) of 3G is pretty much a non-issue.
Most 3G chipsets consume just as much power if you take them down to EDGE. And if you turn if off completely, you lose mail, messages, maps, internet, weather, etc.. Or in other words, pretty much all of the things that make an iPhone an iPhone.
Of course, I could just go to Home, Settings, Wireless, turn it on, go to Home, SMS, send a message, go to Home, Settings, Wireless, turn it, off, wait a bit, then go to Home, Settings, Wireless, turn it on...
Yeah, manual power management sounds like just the thing I want to dick around with.
When the network is there, and the power management is there to the point where it's as good or better, then I'm there. Until then, I'll take battery life over nearly any other feature you can name.
RE: Search through contacts by business or other methods
If you're on a Mac go to the Address book and start making groups, adding contacts to them (work, play, businesses, etc.). Then you can selected 'em while on the phone.
RE: 7 & 8, we should get those when Leopard is released.
And BTW, my only "must have" ability would be the option of using a Bluetooth headset in iPod mode. While it would probably suck for music, mono would be just fine for audiobooks, podcasts, and TV shows.
I bought the Apple headset, but don't use it simply because it's too much of a pain to switch back and forth between it and earbuds when I go from phone to pod mode (and back again).
I simply do not understand the cry for GPS. How many people don't know where they are? Or where they're going?
And if I ABSOLUTELY had to have directions, I probably would have printed out a Google map beforehand. Or could manage to spend 30 seconds typing in an address (assuming that the person I was visiting wasn't already in my address book).
Thinking that an iPhone even WITH GPS is going to be a substitute for a true automotive GPS nav system is kind of laughable. Nor would it probably even be a halfway decent substitute for a handheld Garmin GPS unit if you need one for hiking, camping, or other "outdoors" use.
So, if you're visiting someone you don't know, in a completely unknown location, with no advance warning whatsoever, and you're not driving a car, and there are no street signs available ANYWHERE (in which case Google maps probably isn't going to work anyway, since you're now in a place with no EDGE connection), THEN having GPS COULD save your completely unprepared butt.
So they should have added the feature so it can be turned off?
Further, I think you should check out AT&T's 3G coverage. Until their network gets a MAJOR set of upgrades, having 3G on the phone isn't going to do you a lot of good.
Quotes off page one of a Google search for HTC battery life, giving 1,750,000 results...
"The only gripe I have about this device is the poor battery performance.... I usually need to recharge it in the late afternoon because the battery gets below 10%."
"I'm very disappointed with the battery life on my 8525, especially compared to the 8125.... I lost 10% on my 35 minute drive to work This included no voice calls but a fair amount of text messaging, internet use, and emails."
"The battery on the htc tytn sucks,... using wifi on it for 20 minutes drains 30-40 percent of the phone already! the phone's absolutely amazing but the battery life is it's downfall."
"However when I am using the built-in wireless extensively, when I am traveling, or when I am not able to recharge at some point during the day, I have noticed a definite need for a backup power solution."
IOW, battery life under 3G would appear to be a "bit" of an issue...
I hear what you're saying, but the real question is whether or not the gain balances out the pain. Assuming, and that's a big assumption, that there's some improvement to be had, the question is: how much?
Let's assume that you fork the kernel, tweak it to meet "desktop users' needs", and find that your real world improvements offer no significant advantage? So what if you get an extra FPS in Quake? Would that really be worth all of that effort?
Personally, I think all of the effort on eking out the last iota of performance is misplaced. Personally I'd rather have a system with more internal checks and layers to ensure stability and to protect the kernel from hacks and attacks.
It's the integration between the hardware, the software, the pods, the phones, and all the other "non mac" stuff that helps make the entire system what it is...
"Special privileges because they feel their work is special."
As I've repeatedly attempted to point out, it's different because the circumstances are different. Most of the people out there have jobs, go to work, get paid by the hour or have a salary, have benefits and get paid vacations. In other words, barring the failure of the business their level of risk is low. They go to work. They get paid. EOS.
They're not self-employed. They're not paying their own benefits. They're not spending a year or more producing work, often entirely on spec, in the hope that others will like it and pay them for it. Higher risks, higher "potential" rewards. No guarantees.
And I also suspect that we have differing definitions of what it means to be creative. If it were something that could be easily and simply learned I suspect that we've have millions of best-selling novels and platinum albums and award-winning movies and shows.
"Every application looks like it was made with a different tool kit."
That should settle down in Leopard. For a few years now Apple has been dinking with interfaces trying to see what works best for most people. That's pretty much resolved now and is down to two main "looks" for all of their "user" applications (iLife, iWork) and for their Pro applications (Aperture, Final Cut).
Actually, you're probably not dumb, nor unskilled (nor a mechanic). But again, changing oil is a task that millions of people can perform, and even more can do so with no training whatsoever. Heck, even I can do it. But I pay for the service because I have better things to do with my time. I don't pay a lot, because there's lots of competition, and there's a limit to how much that service is worth to me. Supply and demand.
Now, does my mechanic deserve my respect? Sure, to a certain extent. But do I have even more respect for my doctor, who's undergone nearly a decade of advanced study and training and sweated bullets to get his degree? You better believe it.
"And denies millions of more that are just as worthy..."
Interesting choice of words there. Worthy. As in "deserving effort, attention, or respect". They DESERVE it. Not a far leap to they're ENTITLED to it, is there?
I'll let you in on a little secret. They're not. I worked one summer as an intern for a publishing house, reading the "slush" pile of unsolicited manuscripts. And there are most certainly not millions more who're just as worthy. The majority of submitters, for whatever reason, couldn't even put a coherent paragraph together, much less an entire book. You see, in any field you care to name the number of truly creative people number a few handfuls at most.
And as such you have it exactly backwards. Copyright doesn't exist for the benefit of the creative people, it exists for the rest of us. Because we, as a society, are the ones that benefit when our most creative one tenth of one percent are working on new works for us to read, to hear, to watch, to ponder, to wonder, to discuss, and to enjoy. Because true creativity is a rare gift, and because finding it combined with knowledge and skill and dedication is even rarer. Because we want those people writing and singing and directing for us, and not spending their time begging for money or working at Wal-Mart.
The founding fathers understood this, even if you do not.
"There's very little in the available extra metadata that's meaningful for creating "subsets of music"."
Oh please. I have playlists with new music, old '60s music, favorite music by ratings, by genres, by year, by specific playlists, and so on. And the "notes" field is great for tagging songs and albums.
Use that and the other fields (type, grouping, rating, and so on) and I can create hundreds of meaningful custom "subsets" of music. (Classic Rock Female Vocalists, Classic Rock Background Music, Favorite Female Vocalists, etc.) In fact, I often create a new smart playlist depending on my mood and end up finding stuff I'd forgotten about.
I think the real problem is that you spent no time whatsoever exploring what could be done with it. iTunes has a LOT of power hidden under that hood.
"And no, you don't have to wait for the work to be completed before you get paid..."
Tried getting a book advance recently? And even if you do it's an ADVANCE (hence the name) against future sales. You get no more money until your payment has been recouped.
"I should receive a royalty payment for 75 years after I change your oil."
Convince me you should. Other than the fact that there are millions of mechanics out there doing exactly the same identical, relatively unskilled work, and that the "service" you performed took five minutes, and if you're working in a garage or shop you're already getting paid by the hour, and the customer is paying immediately for value rendered.
Other than that the situations are nearly identical...
"It's time to find another way besides the prohibition against distribution."
Why? The current system enables millions of creative people to create a ton of work on spec that I can examine after the fact, decide if I like it and if it has value to me, and if so pay a miniscule fraction of the development costs. No other system I've seen proposed (contracts) accomplishes the same thing, and covers the range in scale between books, music, and movies.
Don't forget integration, as the line between the iPod, iTunes, and the iTunes store is pretty seamless. Buy a song and it just shows up in iTunes. Plug in a pod and it automatically transfers over. Most of the time, things just work as they're supposed to, which is important to the rest of the world, most of whom aren't employed in computer-related fields...
"It's an equal rights issue to us who actually have to live under those conditions."
Ah. So someone who works for IBM works for nothing for a year or more, in the hope that their efforts will please their employers enough to pay them for it? They pay for their own health insurance and retirement funds? They have no paid vacations, sick days, and/or personal days? Huh.
Because a typical author works on a book for a year or more before it can be sold, in the meantime personally paying for EVERYTHING out-of-pocket.
Sorry, it's not an equal rights issue because the situations themselves aren't equal. And you see them "sitting" on their work, whereas I see the amount of effort and time and money and skill and training that it took to create that work in the first place. On spec. In the HOPE that the market will reward them for their efforts.
Is that the primary implementation of Ruby? Are all of the Ruby developers working on that version, or are there two, three, or six different development efforts and platforms out there?
It's hard to make real progress when all of your horses are running off in different directions.
Slashdot Mirror
Where will the entries be for the projects that were dropped or that failed completely? Not every Linux announcement ends up being a success story.
Cool! Then we can just grind up the used uranium and dump it into the sea to be extracted again!
"If I use it intermittently, it lasts the whole day, alternating between text, data, and PDA."
Of course, the iPhone is also supposed to be a phone and a video iPod. So factor that usage in and its impact on battery life as well. I'd much rather have an extra couple of hours of usage in those modes and not have to manage power, or as opposed to getting an email or web page a few seconds faster on those rare occasions when I don't have WiFi access or I'm not near a hotspot.
But since home, work, friends, and most of my favorite restaurants all do have WiFi, the presence (or not) of 3G is pretty much a non-issue.
Most 3G chipsets consume just as much power if you take them down to EDGE. And if you turn if off completely, you lose mail, messages, maps, internet, weather, etc.. Or in other words, pretty much all of the things that make an iPhone an iPhone.
Of course, I could just go to Home, Settings, Wireless, turn it on, go to Home, SMS, send a message, go to Home, Settings, Wireless, turn it, off, wait a bit, then go to Home, Settings, Wireless, turn it on...
Yeah, manual power management sounds like just the thing I want to dick around with.
When the network is there, and the power management is there to the point where it's as good or better, then I'm there. Until then, I'll take battery life over nearly any other feature you can name.
RE: Search through contacts by business or other methods
If you're on a Mac go to the Address book and start making groups, adding contacts to them (work, play, businesses, etc.). Then you can selected 'em while on the phone.
RE: 7 & 8, we should get those when Leopard is released.
And BTW, my only "must have" ability would be the option of using a Bluetooth headset in iPod mode. While it would probably suck for music, mono would be just fine for audiobooks, podcasts, and TV shows.
I bought the Apple headset, but don't use it simply because it's too much of a pain to switch back and forth between it and earbuds when I go from phone to pod mode (and back again).
I simply do not understand the cry for GPS. How many people don't know where they are? Or where they're going?
And if I ABSOLUTELY had to have directions, I probably would have printed out a Google map beforehand. Or could manage to spend 30 seconds typing in an address (assuming that the person I was visiting wasn't already in my address book).
Thinking that an iPhone even WITH GPS is going to be a substitute for a true automotive GPS nav system is kind of laughable. Nor would it probably even be a halfway decent substitute for a handheld Garmin GPS unit if you need one for hiking, camping, or other "outdoors" use.
So, if you're visiting someone you don't know, in a completely unknown location, with no advance warning whatsoever, and you're not driving a car, and there are no street signs available ANYWHERE (in which case Google maps probably isn't going to work anyway, since you're now in a place with no EDGE connection), THEN having GPS COULD save your completely unprepared butt.
So they should have added the feature so it can be turned off?
Further, I think you should check out AT&T's 3G coverage. Until their network gets a MAJOR set of upgrades, having 3G on the phone isn't going to do you a lot of good.
Quotes off page one of a Google search for HTC battery life, giving 1,750,000 results...
... I usually need to recharge it in the late afternoon because the battery gets below 10%."
... I lost 10% on my 35 minute drive to work This included no voice calls but a fair amount of text messaging, internet use, and emails."
... using wifi on it for 20 minutes drains 30-40 percent of the phone already! the phone's absolutely amazing but the battery life is it's downfall."
"The only gripe I have about this device is the poor battery performance.
"I'm very disappointed with the battery life on my 8525, especially compared to the 8125.
"The battery on the htc tytn sucks,
"However when I am using the built-in wireless extensively, when I am traveling, or when I am not able to recharge at some point during the day, I have noticed a definite need for a backup power solution."
IOW, battery life under 3G would appear to be a "bit" of an issue...
I guess that's the difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. With the Pro model you need to be a professional to change the hard drive...
I hear what you're saying, but the real question is whether or not the gain balances out the pain. Assuming, and that's a big assumption, that there's some improvement to be had, the question is: how much?
Let's assume that you fork the kernel, tweak it to meet "desktop users' needs", and find that your real world improvements offer no significant advantage? So what if you get an extra FPS in Quake? Would that really be worth all of that effort?
Personally, I think all of the effort on eking out the last iota of performance is misplaced. Personally I'd rather have a system with more internal checks and layers to ensure stability and to protect the kernel from hacks and attacks.
It's the integration between the hardware, the software, the pods, the phones, and all the other "non mac" stuff that helps make the entire system what it is...
You're not supposed to know about the tin cans... err... e-meters. Next thing you know you're going to start talking about engrams.
Oops.
"Special privileges because they feel their work is special."
As I've repeatedly attempted to point out, it's different because the circumstances are different. Most of the people out there have jobs, go to work, get paid by the hour or have a salary, have benefits and get paid vacations. In other words, barring the failure of the business their level of risk is low. They go to work. They get paid. EOS.
They're not self-employed. They're not paying their own benefits. They're not spending a year or more producing work, often entirely on spec, in the hope that others will like it and pay them for it. Higher risks, higher "potential" rewards. No guarantees.
And I also suspect that we have differing definitions of what it means to be creative. If it were something that could be easily and simply learned I suspect that we've have millions of best-selling novels and platinum albums and award-winning movies and shows.
We don't.
"I care about computers, OS and software, not music players, phones, network appliances and design."
Which places you out of the target market. Most of us just want to get things done, as quickly and easily as possible.
"Every application looks like it was made with a different tool kit."
That should settle down in Leopard. For a few years now Apple has been dinking with interfaces trying to see what works best for most people. That's pretty much resolved now and is down to two main "looks" for all of their "user" applications (iLife, iWork) and for their Pro applications (Aperture, Final Cut).
"Just like us dumb, unskilled mek-uh-nics."
Actually, you're probably not dumb, nor unskilled (nor a mechanic). But again, changing oil is a task that millions of people can perform, and even more can do so with no training whatsoever. Heck, even I can do it. But I pay for the service because I have better things to do with my time. I don't pay a lot, because there's lots of competition, and there's a limit to how much that service is worth to me. Supply and demand.
Now, does my mechanic deserve my respect? Sure, to a certain extent. But do I have even more respect for my doctor, who's undergone nearly a decade of advanced study and training and sweated bullets to get his degree? You better believe it.
Respect is not just deserved. It is earned.
"And denies millions of more that are just as worthy..."
Interesting choice of words there. Worthy. As in "deserving effort, attention, or respect". They DESERVE it. Not a far leap to they're ENTITLED to it, is there?
I'll let you in on a little secret. They're not. I worked one summer as an intern for a publishing house, reading the "slush" pile of unsolicited manuscripts. And there are most certainly not millions more who're just as worthy. The majority of submitters, for whatever reason, couldn't even put a coherent paragraph together, much less an entire book. You see, in any field you care to name the number of truly creative people number a few handfuls at most.
And as such you have it exactly backwards. Copyright doesn't exist for the benefit of the creative people, it exists for the rest of us. Because we, as a society, are the ones that benefit when our most creative one tenth of one percent are working on new works for us to read, to hear, to watch, to ponder, to wonder, to discuss, and to enjoy. Because true creativity is a rare gift, and because finding it combined with knowledge and skill and dedication is even rarer. Because we want those people writing and singing and directing for us, and not spending their time begging for money or working at Wal-Mart.
The founding fathers understood this, even if you do not.
"meta data isn't always the solution to everything"
No, but it's the solution to a lot of things. Just ask Google.
"There's very little in the available extra metadata that's meaningful for creating "subsets of music"."
Oh please. I have playlists with new music, old '60s music, favorite music by ratings, by genres, by year, by specific playlists, and so on. And the "notes" field is great for tagging songs and albums.
Typical notes field: rock, classic, 60s, folk, female, vocal, soft, background
Use that and the other fields (type, grouping, rating, and so on) and I can create hundreds of meaningful custom "subsets" of music. (Classic Rock Female Vocalists, Classic Rock Background Music, Favorite Female Vocalists, etc.) In fact, I often create a new smart playlist depending on my mood and end up finding stuff I'd forgotten about.
I think the real problem is that you spent no time whatsoever exploring what could be done with it. iTunes has a LOT of power hidden under that hood.
"And no, you don't have to wait for the work to be completed before you get paid..."
Tried getting a book advance recently? And even if you do it's an ADVANCE (hence the name) against future sales. You get no more money until your payment has been recouped.
"I should receive a royalty payment for 75 years after I change your oil."
Convince me you should. Other than the fact that there are millions of mechanics out there doing exactly the same identical, relatively unskilled work, and that the "service" you performed took five minutes, and if you're working in a garage or shop you're already getting paid by the hour, and the customer is paying immediately for value rendered.
Other than that the situations are nearly identical...
"It's time to find another way besides the prohibition against distribution."
Why? The current system enables millions of creative people to create a ton of work on spec that I can examine after the fact, decide if I like it and if it has value to me, and if so pay a miniscule fraction of the development costs. No other system I've seen proposed (contracts) accomplishes the same thing, and covers the range in scale between books, music, and movies.
Ummm.... isn't that what playlists, smart playlists, compilations, groupings, genres, and notes is for?
Seems like a tagging system is MUCH more flexible than some arbitrary folder hierarchy.
Don't forget integration, as the line between the iPod, iTunes, and the iTunes store is pretty seamless. Buy a song and it just shows up in iTunes. Plug in a pod and it automatically transfers over. Most of the time, things just work as they're supposed to, which is important to the rest of the world, most of whom aren't employed in computer-related fields...
"It's an equal rights issue to us who actually have to live under those conditions."
Ah. So someone who works for IBM works for nothing for a year or more, in the hope that their efforts will please their employers enough to pay them for it? They pay for their own health insurance and retirement funds? They have no paid vacations, sick days, and/or personal days? Huh.
Because a typical author works on a book for a year or more before it can be sold, in the meantime personally paying for EVERYTHING out-of-pocket.
Sorry, it's not an equal rights issue because the situations themselves aren't equal. And you see them "sitting" on their work, whereas I see the amount of effort and time and money and skill and training that it took to create that work in the first place. On spec. In the HOPE that the market will reward them for their efforts.
Is that the primary implementation of Ruby? Are all of the Ruby developers working on that version, or are there two, three, or six different development efforts and platforms out there?
It's hard to make real progress when all of your horses are running off in different directions.