The Edsel was actually an excellent tech testbed and spawned several ideas used in later products, despite being a financial failure as a product itself.
Either way, I'm not sure that I can take the word of an AC on slashdot that the iPad, which has been on sale for about a month is a "dismal failure" and a "turd of a product". From what I have seen of a broad range of reviews, both positive and negative, I don't think it can really be classified as that.
Perhaps your anti-Apple anger is making you resort to hyperbole. Perhaps that is also why you accidentally checked the "post anonymously" checkbox.
"Apple is one of the worst" - if by that you mean "tech blogs desperate for advertising hits who will post any/all rumours about Apple products" are one of the worst then perhaps you might be right.
There is no doubting that Apple is like Marmite when it comes to news and rumours.
As any parent with a kid will (or should!) tell you, giving them access to things like that is all part of a managed activity schedule, much like access to TV or the computer. You can set aside times when your children can use these things, and for how long, and various other rules. In car entertainment is just another medium where this occurs.
in the same way that multiple TV sets in homes added more flexibility for families where someone wants to watch channel A while others watch channel B, the in car systems mean not everyone has to listen to the radio, which can be a total blessing if your kids really want to listen to the high school musical soundtrack *again*, or the Bob the Builder greatest hits.
Like anything involving parenting though, not everyone makes good parents, but allowing kids access to things like this doesn't automatically put people into that category.
So the kids listen to the iPod built into it, or the built in audio part of the car entertainment system. Or read a book.
I think it's a huge (and totally disingenuous) leap to go from "has ICE" to "does not pay attention or know how to engage their kids". It is just one of several options available to parents, or even as a perk for adult passengers on a long road trip.
Just because they have a system like this does not make them bad parents, which seems to be the inference here.
Well, the stories that appear on slashdot are submitted by slashdot readers, so clearly some people are interested.
They're obviously news for someone. Might I suggest submitting stories that *are* news for nerds if you think the iPad is not worth it to you.
Or just turn off the "Apple" section in your preferences, which is much more effective than moaning about it on the actual story, as many people seem to do.
It's the software equivalent of hooking up your battery directly to a dummy load so it drains very quickly without anything really showing on the screen.
He called tech support and claimed to have a 4G iPhone. Also known as "crank calling" - I'm not surprised he didn't get taken seriously. For one thing, the Apple tech support call centres are not even run by Apple - they are handled by third party companies and staffed by people who are not direct employees of Apple (although I know at least two of them are in the USA - I know someone who worked at one after college). None of them are going to be privvy to prototypes or the loss of one of them that day.
Knowing what he had (and he clearly did) he would know that calling the tech support people wouldn't get the response he didn't want (double negative!) He just wanted the appearance of doing the right thing before doing what he was going to do all along - sell it to an unethical rag who will do anything for advertising clicks.
What are you smoking? Product secrecy is extremely important to large companies.
VW built their 60 mile test track in a no fly zone on purpose so that competitors couldn't fly aircraft or helicopters near it and obtain pictures of prototype vehicles. Land Rover employs people to "annoy" (since they cannot legally do anything else on public land) photographers that hang out near their factory and send out test vehicles disguised with cardboard body panel covers and false detailing.
It is utterly standard practice for a company to keep an upcoming, unannounced product secret - the only reason Apple gets such severe press is that a lot of people are interested in those products and are willing to go the extra mile to get them.
Whether the device is boring or not, and as an incremental update to the iPhone it's hardly the second coming, this is unlikely to be a stunt from Apple. For a start, Gizmodo bought the device for $5000 knowing it was stolen - or rather "found" and not reported to the police.
"No reason to keep it secret" - how do you know? What if the prototype is one of several different designs? What if it contains features that are ultimately not included for some reason? Nothing like the public scrutinising your prototype and drawing up a list of features only for one of them to be dropped in the release product. Now you have a disappointed group of people who were expecting it to do something it doesn't do. Without the knowledge of the prototype, that issue doesn't arise. Ask Blizzard about being bitten by that one many times, which is why they do not release information about unfinished patches or games unless they are 100% certain of the feature now - they no longer discuss their thought process and testing iteration because it leads to some fans calling them on "promised" features or mechanics that were never promised in the first place.
You can get it done in the store if you like - but the mail in option is also there. They'll send you a prepay box if you don;t have a store near you or you don;t want to make the trip. The options are there, but it is clearly a more compromised setup than a user-removable battery - it's the compromise you pay for the smaller form factor.
The iPhone can't tether (without fees) *in the US* - everywhere else the iPhone is sold, it does. I can tether with mine *right now* and have been able to since I bought it with no fees and no jailbreaking. So, saying that "it cannot tether" is simply false.
The TomTom app is crazily expensive - I was so looking forward to it being released after the demo during the keynote, but then (after a much longer wait that suggested) they revealed the price, and the cost of the in-car mount, which is a further £90. The price for the app + car mount (which you really need since it charges your phone) is £150 in the UK, which is just stupid - it's more expensive than an actual TomTom satnav device and has drawn some serious ire from users expecting it to be more sensibly priced.
There are other turn by turn apps on the iPhone that are much cheaper - TomTom is the most expensive by far, but no free ones. The google one on Android looks excellent, and is the first compelling app I have seen that is making me consider a change of phone when my contract is up. It's an excellent selling point, which is why we're unlikely to see it on the iPhone from Google.
Incidentally, Apple refurbs are a little different - they are all either product returns, repaired units or unsold stock. Every refurb goes through an intensive test and QA process - they are better tested and checked than their new stock (the bulk of which are not tested before sale). You are not limited to taking a refurb though, you can keep your original phone, but have to deal with the extra time it takes for them to send it back to you, or have to wait in store/collect later depending on hours. Apple's refurbs are not "rental cars" - anything that isn't as good as new is simply discarded.
(also, in the UK there is no "regular" and "super" - only super)
A crap example? Two different window managers are "more similar" than a *mobile phone* and a desktop computer, even if they are made by different teams.
The iPhone and OS X devs are different teams too, just like the KDE and Gnome teams, except within the same company, and Apple make no assertions that it is trivially easy to port a desktop app without rewriting some parts of it. The KDE and Gnome teams also produce window managers that run on top of the same base system. The iPhone and OS X teams target totally different hardware platforms.
The example seems perfectly valid to me - the differences between porting apps between iPhone OS and OS X are even more pronounced than between KDE and Gnome, and it's not trivial for either setup, despite lots of common links between them (KDE, Gnome > on top of Linux versus iPhone, OS X > based on common software).
Yes, it's "don't buy a device with a built in battery.com"
If the lack of the battery door (and the reduced capacity or increased physical size of the device) is a dealbreaker for you, then it's not the right phone for you.
The convenience of the built in battery with the much smaller size and bigger capacity per size (I realise there are longer batteries) outweighs the fact that when it does need replacing I need to go to an Apple store and swap it out, or send it off for a few days for replacement.
If it ends up on a system with a mouse and keyboard then it will have some sort of brainlessly crippling DRM, like an active internet connection to play single player, and thus you still won't be able to control your character.
The free Turn by Turn from Google may in fact be a major selling point for an Android phone being a future purchase of mine - I wouldn't be surprised if we *didn't* see it on the iPhone for that very reason. Until then, I had not seen anything compelling enough to make me consider switching, this may be it. The TomTom app, that I was so desperately waiting for (and willing to buy!) was demoed at an Apple keynote, and when finally released was *absurdly* overpriced - might as well have bought a standalone sat nav device, so as yet I have not bought the app for my iPhone.
"Case closed"? - I told you, my iPhone has tethering for free out of the box. It is a carrier decision, not an Apple decision. AT&T chose not to allow it for free on the iPhone - take it up with them. Apple didn't tell them to have that policy, AT&T are just being crap there.
Turn by turn apps? I don't know if I can link to the US itunes store, but they include TomTom, one from Garmin and one from another supplier. Here is the UK iTunes Store: (in fact, in the App Store quick links on the home page the 4th one down is "Turn by Turn Navigation"). There are several apps of varied price, including TomTom, Navigon, CoPilot, Navmii etc. I can't link directly to the store, but they are there.
For 3, you don't have to take the new phone - you can have them send you back your original phone, it just takes longer since they have to swap out the battery for you. If you go for the exchange they send you a new or a refurb phone (and the refurbs are as new, and get more extensive QA than new phones) while your phone goes back to them in a pre-paid box. It's a convenience thing. You may even get a newer and better condition phone than your original (but in the same model type - 3G, 3GS etc).
The hard boot does work, I have used it a few times. The iPhone OS software *does* crash sometimes, and does do odd crap that requires a forced boot. I also had a failed update on the phone that left it in a bricked state (iTunes not seeing it, phone not usable) but I was able to force restart it this way and enable iTunes to begin the update again from scratch.
If your DVD drive breaks in your Mac, they just replace the drive.
Or you HD, or LCD panel, or any component.
The reason the battery exchange exists for the iPod is that it's quick to just send out a new iPod/iPhone while yours returns to them in the mail in a prepaid box that they send you. It's convenience. You can get your own iPhone changed it you like - it just takes a little longer since you have to send it in, have them swap the battery and send it back, unless you want to buy a third party iPhone battery and change it yourself - it does have a regular friction fit connector on the PCB, it's not soldered in).
They have this thing called "Wine" that can take care of your whine.
As for testing the apps on Linux first without having the phone, well you can't even do that on OS X - you can only browse them via the store. Still, that's one better than the official Android marketplace - without third party assistance you can't even search the Android marketplace from a browser. I would have thought a search box would be the first thing google put on the page. I hear they also run a search engine of some sort.
(ok, more seriously, you can run iTunes under Wine with success I have heard, although I don't. I only share my music between my OS X and Ubuntu box, I don't run iTunes on it)
So, in your world, the API for a variable resolution, mouse+keyboard driven GUI should be the same API as a fixed resolution touchscreen? And you think it's "incompetence" that the APIs are different for two interfaces that are different in size, input device and resolution, one of which can be rotated on the fly into different orientations?
You are surprised that an app that has existed for nearly 20 years on multiple platforms wasn't trivially easy to port to the iPhone because the developer was just too stubborn to understand that perhaps the API is a little different on the iPhone than on OS X despite them being "within spitting distance of each other" (which they are, below the GUI)?
Sure, there are a couple of inconsistencies that could have been in core frameworks shared by both platforms, but they are hardly game changing or enough to whine on the internet about.
Next you'll be telling me it should be super easy to make a KDE app look *identical* when running on a Gnome desktop with no inconsistencies or graphical issues at all. I'll bet that was super easy to get all the bugs ironed out of that. I'll bet it took less than an afternoon to fix it.
Apple does not stop me tethering, or charge me any money for it. My iPhone had tethering out of the box for free. Don;t blame Apple for a carrier decision. Carriers in the rest of the world are not stuck in the late 90s like the US.
You mentioned tethering twice in two separate bullet points.
You can buy turn by turn navigation for a one off cost from the app store for your iPhone with at least three different apps with no monthly charges.
User replaceable battery - similar to the iPod battery exchange, they just give you a reconditioned phone in exchange for your old one. They come from the refurb department.
Number 6 is just rubbish. You know you can hard-boot the phone right? If it crashes in software (and mine has) you can force restart it without the software running, or while it's frozen. This is the same as removing the battery and replacing it, it;s just done in the phone's base firmware. There's no "scary demerit" for a problem that you are making up.
There are enough points of comparison between the iPhone and Android to work with (and some where Android is better, some where iPhone is better) without you having to make stuff up. Do you work for Fox News when not posting on slashdot?
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying advertisers don't read slashdot?
The Edsel was actually an excellent tech testbed and spawned several ideas used in later products, despite being a financial failure as a product itself.
Either way, I'm not sure that I can take the word of an AC on slashdot that the iPad, which has been on sale for about a month is a "dismal failure" and a "turd of a product". From what I have seen of a broad range of reviews, both positive and negative, I don't think it can really be classified as that.
Perhaps your anti-Apple anger is making you resort to hyperbole. Perhaps that is also why you accidentally checked the "post anonymously" checkbox.
"Apple is one of the worst" - if by that you mean "tech blogs desperate for advertising hits who will post any/all rumours about Apple products" are one of the worst then perhaps you might be right.
There is no doubting that Apple is like Marmite when it comes to news and rumours.
As any parent with a kid will (or should!) tell you, giving them access to things like that is all part of a managed activity schedule, much like access to TV or the computer. You can set aside times when your children can use these things, and for how long, and various other rules. In car entertainment is just another medium where this occurs.
in the same way that multiple TV sets in homes added more flexibility for families where someone wants to watch channel A while others watch channel B, the in car systems mean not everyone has to listen to the radio, which can be a total blessing if your kids really want to listen to the high school musical soundtrack *again*, or the Bob the Builder greatest hits.
Like anything involving parenting though, not everyone makes good parents, but allowing kids access to things like this doesn't automatically put people into that category.
I meant "readers", as I stated in the post.
So the kids listen to the iPod built into it, or the built in audio part of the car entertainment system. Or read a book.
I think it's a huge (and totally disingenuous) leap to go from "has ICE" to "does not pay attention or know how to engage their kids". It is just one of several options available to parents, or even as a perk for adult passengers on a long road trip.
Just because they have a system like this does not make them bad parents, which seems to be the inference here.
Well, the stories that appear on slashdot are submitted by slashdot readers, so clearly some people are interested.
They're obviously news for someone. Might I suggest submitting stories that *are* news for nerds if you think the iPad is not worth it to you.
Or just turn off the "Apple" section in your preferences, which is much more effective than moaning about it on the actual story, as many people seem to do.
You'd better move like the Flash! Err, I mean the HTML5!
It's the software equivalent of hooking up your battery directly to a dummy load so it drains very quickly without anything really showing on the screen.
Bullshit they did it for his benefit - they did it for *their* bottom line - it was purely to generate page hits (and thus, advertising dollars).
There was no altruism in this *at all*.
And you trust Gizmodo to tell the truth... the same Gizmodo who just outed the guy's name in the pursuit of advertising hits. Right.
Well, like they say, karma has lousy aim.
You think after 5 goes it would have managed to complete the job by now.
Perhaps it left the "how to succeed" manual in a bar while drunk.
He called tech support and claimed to have a 4G iPhone. Also known as "crank calling" - I'm not surprised he didn't get taken seriously. For one thing, the Apple tech support call centres are not even run by Apple - they are handled by third party companies and staffed by people who are not direct employees of Apple (although I know at least two of them are in the USA - I know someone who worked at one after college). None of them are going to be privvy to prototypes or the loss of one of them that day.
Knowing what he had (and he clearly did) he would know that calling the tech support people wouldn't get the response he didn't want (double negative!) He just wanted the appearance of doing the right thing before doing what he was going to do all along - sell it to an unethical rag who will do anything for advertising clicks.
What are you smoking? Product secrecy is extremely important to large companies.
VW built their 60 mile test track in a no fly zone on purpose so that competitors couldn't fly aircraft or helicopters near it and obtain pictures of prototype vehicles. Land Rover employs people to "annoy" (since they cannot legally do anything else on public land) photographers that hang out near their factory and send out test vehicles disguised with cardboard body panel covers and false detailing.
It is utterly standard practice for a company to keep an upcoming, unannounced product secret - the only reason Apple gets such severe press is that a lot of people are interested in those products and are willing to go the extra mile to get them.
Whether the device is boring or not, and as an incremental update to the iPhone it's hardly the second coming, this is unlikely to be a stunt from Apple. For a start, Gizmodo bought the device for $5000 knowing it was stolen - or rather "found" and not reported to the police.
"No reason to keep it secret" - how do you know? What if the prototype is one of several different designs? What if it contains features that are ultimately not included for some reason? Nothing like the public scrutinising your prototype and drawing up a list of features only for one of them to be dropped in the release product. Now you have a disappointed group of people who were expecting it to do something it doesn't do. Without the knowledge of the prototype, that issue doesn't arise. Ask Blizzard about being bitten by that one many times, which is why they do not release information about unfinished patches or games unless they are 100% certain of the feature now - they no longer discuss their thought process and testing iteration because it leads to some fans calling them on "promised" features or mechanics that were never promised in the first place.
You can get it done in the store if you like - but the mail in option is also there. They'll send you a prepay box if you don;t have a store near you or you don;t want to make the trip. The options are there, but it is clearly a more compromised setup than a user-removable battery - it's the compromise you pay for the smaller form factor.
The iPhone can't tether (without fees) *in the US* - everywhere else the iPhone is sold, it does. I can tether with mine *right now* and have been able to since I bought it with no fees and no jailbreaking. So, saying that "it cannot tether" is simply false.
The TomTom app is crazily expensive - I was so looking forward to it being released after the demo during the keynote, but then (after a much longer wait that suggested) they revealed the price, and the cost of the in-car mount, which is a further £90. The price for the app + car mount (which you really need since it charges your phone) is £150 in the UK, which is just stupid - it's more expensive than an actual TomTom satnav device and has drawn some serious ire from users expecting it to be more sensibly priced.
There are other turn by turn apps on the iPhone that are much cheaper - TomTom is the most expensive by far, but no free ones. The google one on Android looks excellent, and is the first compelling app I have seen that is making me consider a change of phone when my contract is up. It's an excellent selling point, which is why we're unlikely to see it on the iPhone from Google.
Incidentally, Apple refurbs are a little different - they are all either product returns, repaired units or unsold stock. Every refurb goes through an intensive test and QA process - they are better tested and checked than their new stock (the bulk of which are not tested before sale). You are not limited to taking a refurb though, you can keep your original phone, but have to deal with the extra time it takes for them to send it back to you, or have to wait in store/collect later depending on hours. Apple's refurbs are not "rental cars" - anything that isn't as good as new is simply discarded.
(also, in the UK there is no "regular" and "super" - only super)
A crap example? Two different window managers are "more similar" than a *mobile phone* and a desktop computer, even if they are made by different teams.
The iPhone and OS X devs are different teams too, just like the KDE and Gnome teams, except within the same company, and Apple make no assertions that it is trivially easy to port a desktop app without rewriting some parts of it. The KDE and Gnome teams also produce window managers that run on top of the same base system. The iPhone and OS X teams target totally different hardware platforms.
The example seems perfectly valid to me - the differences between porting apps between iPhone OS and OS X are even more pronounced than between KDE and Gnome, and it's not trivial for either setup, despite lots of common links between them (KDE, Gnome > on top of Linux versus iPhone, OS X > based on common software).
Yes, it's "don't buy a device with a built in battery.com"
If the lack of the battery door (and the reduced capacity or increased physical size of the device) is a dealbreaker for you, then it's not the right phone for you.
The convenience of the built in battery with the much smaller size and bigger capacity per size (I realise there are longer batteries) outweighs the fact that when it does need replacing I need to go to an Apple store and swap it out, or send it off for a few days for replacement.
YMMV.
If it ends up on a system with a mouse and keyboard then it will have some sort of brainlessly crippling DRM, like an active internet connection to play single player, and thus you still won't be able to control your character.
As an update to my above reply.
The free Turn by Turn from Google may in fact be a major selling point for an Android phone being a future purchase of mine - I wouldn't be surprised if we *didn't* see it on the iPhone for that very reason. Until then, I had not seen anything compelling enough to make me consider switching, this may be it. The TomTom app, that I was so desperately waiting for (and willing to buy!) was demoed at an Apple keynote, and when finally released was *absurdly* overpriced - might as well have bought a standalone sat nav device, so as yet I have not bought the app for my iPhone.
"Case closed"? - I told you, my iPhone has tethering for free out of the box. It is a carrier decision, not an Apple decision. AT&T chose not to allow it for free on the iPhone - take it up with them. Apple didn't tell them to have that policy, AT&T are just being crap there.
Turn by turn apps? I don't know if I can link to the US itunes store, but they include TomTom, one from Garmin and one from another supplier. Here is the UK iTunes Store:
(in fact, in the App Store quick links on the home page the 4th one down is "Turn by Turn Navigation"). There are several apps of varied price, including TomTom, Navigon, CoPilot, Navmii etc. I can't link directly to the store, but they are there.
For 3, you don't have to take the new phone - you can have them send you back your original phone, it just takes longer since they have to swap out the battery for you. If you go for the exchange they send you a new or a refurb phone (and the refurbs are as new, and get more extensive QA than new phones) while your phone goes back to them in a pre-paid box. It's a convenience thing. You may even get a newer and better condition phone than your original (but in the same model type - 3G, 3GS etc).
The hard boot does work, I have used it a few times. The iPhone OS software *does* crash sometimes, and does do odd crap that requires a forced boot. I also had a failed update on the phone that left it in a bricked state (iTunes not seeing it, phone not usable) but I was able to force restart it this way and enable iTunes to begin the update again from scratch.
If your DVD drive breaks in your Mac, they just replace the drive.
Or you HD, or LCD panel, or any component.
The reason the battery exchange exists for the iPod is that it's quick to just send out a new iPod/iPhone while yours returns to them in the mail in a prepaid box that they send you. It's convenience. You can get your own iPhone changed it you like - it just takes a little longer since you have to send it in, have them swap the battery and send it back, unless you want to buy a third party iPhone battery and change it yourself - it does have a regular friction fit connector on the PCB, it's not soldered in).
They have this thing called "Wine" that can take care of your whine.
As for testing the apps on Linux first without having the phone, well you can't even do that on OS X - you can only browse them via the store. Still, that's one better than the official Android marketplace - without third party assistance you can't even search the Android marketplace from a browser. I would have thought a search box would be the first thing google put on the page. I hear they also run a search engine of some sort.
(ok, more seriously, you can run iTunes under Wine with success I have heard, although I don't. I only share my music between my OS X and Ubuntu box, I don't run iTunes on it)
Windows NT was awesome, actually.
Had a lot of good memories with that thing.
So, in your world, the API for a variable resolution, mouse+keyboard driven GUI should be the same API as a fixed resolution touchscreen? And you think it's "incompetence" that the APIs are different for two interfaces that are different in size, input device and resolution, one of which can be rotated on the fly into different orientations?
You are surprised that an app that has existed for nearly 20 years on multiple platforms wasn't trivially easy to port to the iPhone because the developer was just too stubborn to understand that perhaps the API is a little different on the iPhone than on OS X despite them being "within spitting distance of each other" (which they are, below the GUI)?
Sure, there are a couple of inconsistencies that could have been in core frameworks shared by both platforms, but they are hardly game changing or enough to whine on the internet about.
Next you'll be telling me it should be super easy to make a KDE app look *identical* when running on a Gnome desktop with no inconsistencies or graphical issues at all. I'll bet that was super easy to get all the bugs ironed out of that. I'll bet it took less than an afternoon to fix it.
Apple does not stop me tethering, or charge me any money for it. My iPhone had tethering out of the box for free. Don;t blame Apple for a carrier decision. Carriers in the rest of the world are not stuck in the late 90s like the US.
You mentioned tethering twice in two separate bullet points.
You can buy turn by turn navigation for a one off cost from the app store for your iPhone with at least three different apps with no monthly charges.
User replaceable battery - similar to the iPod battery exchange, they just give you a reconditioned phone in exchange for your old one. They come from the refurb department.
Number 6 is just rubbish. You know you can hard-boot the phone right? If it crashes in software (and mine has) you can force restart it without the software running, or while it's frozen. This is the same as removing the battery and replacing it, it;s just done in the phone's base firmware. There's no "scary demerit" for a problem that you are making up.
There are enough points of comparison between the iPhone and Android to work with (and some where Android is better, some where iPhone is better) without you having to make stuff up. Do you work for Fox News when not posting on slashdot?