Is it that you don't think $10 for a yearly update bringing major new functionality is worth it? Is it that you can afford the hundreds for the device, but not $10 a year for upgrades?
It is a matter of principle. Using that logic you could say 100 bucks is worth it, or whatever. It is about milking the customer plain and simple.
Obviously iPhone owners are paying every month, but iTouch users aren't. So you pay for the upgrade. It really sounds quite fair to me.
Peter bought his iphone in italy, fully unlocked and without any compulsory data plans: 500euro. (and for the sake of the argument, he doesn't even need to use it) Daniel bought his ipod touch: 280euro.
So both devices are fully paid for, but can anyone give me one good reason why Daniel has to pay for software updates, and Peter doesn't?
mobby_6ki answered you pretty well, but I wanted to connect my post (the post you are replying to) and his post.
The problem is that the shuffle *doesn't* have any hardware controls (aside from on/off) on the the unit itself. The controls are *only* on the right earbud cable. Why is this a problem? Because there is no other way besides an adapter (*sold separately*) or "made for shuffle" earphones. That is the biggest problem. The consumer doesn't have a clear choice in headphones. The shuffle out of the box can't be used with normal headphones (that was my point with magsafe-like connector). If they included the adapter you probably wouldn't see this or my previous post. But the adapter isn't included so eventually you have additional cost after you bought the shuffle. And that is lock-in.
Let me be clear about this, I hate proprietary stuff and the consumer is always the one paying for it, be it through money or lack of choice. I wouldn't say a word if the headphone market is non-existent and there aren't independent manufacturers. But that market clearly exists and lets say some manufacturer made headphones1, headphones2, and headphones3. But shuffle comes out and their competitor is going to release "made for shuffle" certified headphones. So our mentioned manufacturer has to produce say headphones1 "made for shuffle" and pay apple for the certification. And who is footing the bill for certification? Users who bought those headphones of course.
I hate lock-in from sony, apple, iriver, whatever. But apple has huge market share (not a monopoly though) so when sony releases some locked-in stuff, pretty much nobody blinks. But with apple this isn't the case which is completely understandable.
Hehe, I did try that method before though, and it barely worked for me because the timing with the flame has to be just right not to melt the tiny copper fibers too;) That was around two years ago, and I only did it once though. Maybe it is not that difficult though.
But in any case, my only point was that it isn't too simple to splice those wires if you are doing it for the first time.
"Made for X" is inverse of "make it simple" (aka works with 99.8% players in the market). For all intents and purposes, that 3.5mm jack on the shuffle isn't standard at all. They could have made the connector in a say, magsafe style and call it a revolution. In either way you need an (unreleased) adapter (to connect normal headphones) or "made for X" headphones to use the shuffle properly. This is analog to putting apple "enhanced" usb ports on apple computers. "Well it works great if you have apple hardware connected to the usb ports, but if you want to use your usb printer/memory stick/whaterver, you should buy just this small adapter (link to apple store)." It is a lock-in coupled with royalities (which are transferred to you and me) plain and simple.
How fun would be to go into a store wanting to buy some pair of earphones, but you have to buy only sony XLX branded ones because you only have compatible sony player. Or you want to buy that excellent sounding Shure headphones, but alas, those work only with yamaha pianos. Or you want to buy computer keyboard for your dell, but the store only has "made for hp" ones.
I don't want to live in that world, world of lock-in (I'm not saying that there is no lock-in today too, quite the reverse), high prices and most of all completely unnecessary and artificial limitations. But lock-in is ultimately for consumers good isn't it?
I spliced the cable of my mobile phones headphones which had control buttons on the cable as well. It was great PITA. Those wires inside the cable are extremely tiny and are joined with nylon thread (probably for endurance) which makes those signal wires almost impossible to handle by hand. So unless you have some special tools and alot of patience I can't recommend cutting the cables.
I agree somewhat. I really love the the huge screen, great pixel density, the nice and polished GUI (albeit somewhat too simplistic) and the best browser and music/video on the mobile. But the weight and size is really a bad side (first gen owner here) and so is weak vibrating alert and very weak external speaker. There comes a time when I really prefer my nokia 6500c because it is so much lighter, has much less volume and most of all, you don't feel it in your pocket, which is especially noticeable in the summer when people are dressed lightly so you don't have iphone weighing your shorts down. As I found out you don't have to have an expensive and somewhat fragile mobile phone all the time with you. I mean, phone calls, sms, mail (gmail mobile client is very good) is more then enough more than 70% of the time. So that part of time you are lugging around other parts of the iphone which you don't really need. When this iphone goes to the eternal hunting grounds, I'll probably buy an ipod touch, because it is lighter, thinner, has the same best mobile browser, excellent audio/video player and I can take it with me when I really need it.
Actually those pictures and text is mine so I can believe myself thank you very much;)
I don't like to contradict people, but four sets of basically the same earbuds where 3 where bought in usa and 1 in germany in the last 2 years suggests it isn't just some defective batch or anything else. Moreover, I've been to stores plenty of times meanwhile to see and feel other apple earbuds and they are *completely* the same. The build quality is simply poor. They look ok but they quicky change the tune when used.
I bought my little sister and her friend (still kids) a pair of some philips ear canal headphones around this time last year. They were not really dime a dozen, but not expensive, not even medium priced. As you probably know, kids don't really care much about handling stuff rough (and they shouldn't really) but even today these two pairs of earphones sound and look as the first day I bought them (minus the ear wax on the friend's pair). That is what I expect from the products I buy. I don't expect them to fail in a matter of months, not even years.
But as you say, and do not get me wrong, you have yours lasting for years, but I can imagine that only if they are handled more gingerly than diamonds. And that is not what, in my mind, personal electronics is about.
I had couple of pairs of apple ipod and one iphone headphones but they are all the same concerning the build quality.
The rubber rim on the earbuds start to crack and disintegrates whether you use them or not after couple of months. After that the rubber which is around the (male) connector likes to get loose because it dilates after a while. After it gets loose, it starts to crack, and in couple of weeks time it will fall apart too. Lastly, as the rubber around the connector is finished, the wire will snap just at the connection with the plastic at the connector itself. This happened 3.5 times now (I managed to save the last pair with alot of electrical tape and handling it like its a grat mogul diamond) out of 4 pairs I have. I have never seen such poor quality from so expensive players/phones before.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the pictures here and here.
Lastly, I would have bought some other iphone compatible headphones but there are none in croatia unfortunately. Moreover, I still haven't found the adapter to use any other headphones in my first gen iphone.
Just to give you an example more, I have ipod nano (previous gen) and iphone. I already had apple ipod radio remote from my previous ipod. Interestingly enough, the remote works with the nano, but it won't work with the iphone. It is completely unacceptable, because not only they use the same proprietary connector, they are made by the same company (apple).
I always wanted to have laptop's back lid logo something like alienware's alien head. But this one would be slightly bigger and with eyes connected to the inverse HDD activity. Just imagine how distracting that would that be.
I can understand the hassles of using the public airplane, but driving for ~11 hours is madness. There is no way one can convince me that you arrived in better shape then your coworkers, and at least driving for that much time is frankly extremely boring (can't sleep/surf/whatever at the time) and dangerous (fatigue etc).
And/or give him artificial smell so you can smell the leak. The gas we have in metal tank in our kitchen is naturally odorless but they added a smell so you can know when it leaks.
Your comment reminded me of my psychology textbook I've read short time ago.
Even though it isn't about paying for ideas but it does remind me of it. The problem with the book was that almost every couple of sentences there was a credit to some author of another book.
For example: Pre-school children rely on their parents much more than than teenage children who rely on their peers ($some_author, $some_year).
What is the problem with it?
Firstly, the sentence is blindingly obvious as saying that smart kids have better test results in general. Secondly, the $some_author didn't conduct a scientific experiment, he got that merely by observation (just as any healthy individual can), and finally I had the impression that with all these references to other books the autors of the textbook I read didn't have any data, opinion or observation on their own, the book was just a compilation of other people's "data" (which is completely obvious in like 90% cases). And the professor I was learning this subject remarked that this book is the best psychology book in recent Croatian history. Go figure.
... I'm not sure why not being able to back out afterwards if you change your mind is "absurd" - the whole point of a contract is that you stick with it.
It is null and void if the other side is not Ferengi. If you can prove that, you won't have trouble at all.
If e-mail is so much better (and I agree, with that part), why does the iphone have SMS?
If e-mail is better than MMS, then it must be better than SMS too. One could consider MMS legacy they don't want to support. But why support SMS then? Is there a reason why would you support only one part of the "legacy" system, and the other part you discard even though 99% of other mobile phones support it?
You are missing the point of what MMS is (or was) all about. It is very similar to instant/push e-mail. You can write as many text as you want, add some pictures and recipient will get the message virtually instantly, *on their mobile phone*. I can imagine that the e-mail is clearly superior if you have push system installed (exchange, mobileme, whatever) and you receive the e-mail immediately. But, if I'm not very much mistaken, large majority of mobile phones don't have push mail. I can see "smartphones" fairly frequently, but a very small fragment of those people even know about push mail, even less than those have it configured to work that way. I'm talking about Croatia here though, it probably is different from country to country.
I'm all for using e-mail for text communication between mobile phones but telecoms don't think the same. Apart of the push mail problem, the data charges are extremely expensive (especially for teens who probably send pics more than other part of population) so you are left with sms (which is not that much expensive, user-wise), and mms for sending your pics. MMS in the beginning was very expensive but they did lower the price a bit, but my observation is that it is seldom used.
My point is that the MMS is the push mail for the majority of people with non-push mail mobile phones. It is a bit arrogant in a way not to include it in the default sms iphone app. Other mobile phones handle mms pretty much as the sms with attachments. That means you don't need to have special mms apps nor additional interface bloat. I personally don't miss mms much on my iphone, but I do hate it when somebody asks "have you seen the $cool_picture, I've sent you 10 minutes ago?".
To expand your point, the last navy battle where ships rammed each other was at the Battle of Vis island in 1866 (the article has some minor innacuracies though). Ramming was still popular then because the ships armour was generally too thick for cannons to penetrate effectively so ramming was used to good effect. Italian flagship Re d'Italia was sunk because it was rammed by Austrian ship commanded by Vilhelm von Tegethoff.
The wreck was found and positively identified only few years ago at 115m of depth. Curiously, it was identified by the battering ram because of the poor visibility.
That ship was HMS Victory commanded by Nelson. Nelson blew a large chunk of Bucentauro's stern and killed large number of the crew in just two passes. But carronades aren't the guns which the article discusses actually, even though those kind of cannons were effective at close range. Carronades were generally used for killing/maiming/wounding enemy crew so were loaded with musket bullets. One can imagine carronades as shotguns (vs rifles) in our time.
I was on some symposium of archeology and I find out the commonly held fact that even in the ancient roman times, the price from transferring same amount of goods from two major dalmatian (croatia now) cities by road (that is something like 150km/93.2056788 miles to you americans;) was the same as transferring the same amount of goods from Gibraltar to Turkey. That is a staggering difference in price.
As the sea was the main trade route it is not a small wonder why the majority of shipwrecks in the adriatic are from those times. And there were many pirates at the time as well;)
I've got 6500classic and that is the only connector it has. So the transformer has the same connector for charging and data cable has the same connector. But contrary to E71 it does charge via this data cable too. I don't know if E71 would charge if you were to connect this transformer with micro-usb connector though.
I'm quite puzzled though because e71 is a newer model than the 6500c but the former has the older charger (AC-5) while the latter has newer (AC-6). Maybe they wanted to preserve some kind of backward compatibility as this is business phone and people probably already have car chargers with those round connectors.
As for the small (2.5mm?) audio connector, that completely sucks I know because I have first gen iphone which has recessed audio jack so only apple headphones go in. Sure there is an adapter to buy but I can't find it anywhere. So I'm in the same situation as with my nokia. Usb connector ->nokia headphones, iphone v1 -> apple headphones. I hate those non standard things (but which are not better in any way).
Slashdot Mirror
The iPhone users have to pay each month to get that "free" upgrade once a year.
Well, I pay $0 each month for owning an using my iphone. How does that fit into your theory?
It doesn't because what apple is doing is a plain old money grab.
Is it that you don't think $10 for a yearly update bringing major new functionality is worth it? Is it that you can afford the hundreds for the device, but not $10 a year for upgrades?
It is a matter of principle. Using that logic you could say 100 bucks is worth it, or whatever. It is about milking the customer plain and simple.
Obviously iPhone owners are paying every month, but iTouch users aren't. So you pay for the upgrade. It really sounds quite fair to me.
Peter bought his iphone in italy, fully unlocked and without any compulsory data plans: 500euro. (and for the sake of the argument, he doesn't even need to use it)
Daniel bought his ipod touch: 280euro.
So both devices are fully paid for, but can anyone give me one good reason why Daniel has to pay for software updates, and Peter doesn't?
mobby_6ki answered you pretty well, but I wanted to connect my post (the post you are replying to) and his post.
The problem is that the shuffle *doesn't* have any hardware controls (aside from on/off) on the the unit itself. The controls are *only* on the right earbud cable. Why is this a problem? Because there is no other way besides an adapter (*sold separately*) or "made for shuffle" earphones. That is the biggest problem. The consumer doesn't have a clear choice in headphones. The shuffle out of the box can't be used with normal headphones (that was my point with magsafe-like connector). If they included the adapter you probably wouldn't see this or my previous post. But the adapter isn't included so eventually you have additional cost after you bought the shuffle. And that is lock-in.
Let me be clear about this, I hate proprietary stuff and the consumer is always the one paying for it, be it through money or lack of choice. I wouldn't say a word if the headphone market is non-existent and there aren't independent manufacturers. But that market clearly exists and lets say some manufacturer made headphones1, headphones2, and headphones3. But shuffle comes out and their competitor is going to release "made for shuffle" certified headphones. So our mentioned manufacturer has to produce say headphones1 "made for shuffle" and pay apple for the certification. And who is footing the bill for certification? Users who bought those headphones of course.
I hate lock-in from sony, apple, iriver, whatever. But apple has huge market share (not a monopoly though) so when sony releases some locked-in stuff, pretty much nobody blinks. But with apple this isn't the case which is completely understandable.
Hehe, I did try that method before though, and it barely worked for me because the timing with the flame has to be just right not to melt the tiny copper fibers too;) That was around two years ago, and I only did it once though. Maybe it is not that difficult though.
But in any case, my only point was that it isn't too simple to splice those wires if you are doing it for the first time.
This is a complete inverse logic here.
"Made for X" is inverse of "make it simple" (aka works with 99.8% players in the market). For all intents and purposes, that 3.5mm jack on the shuffle isn't standard at all. They could have made the connector in a say, magsafe style and call it a revolution. In either way you need an (unreleased) adapter (to connect normal headphones) or "made for X" headphones to use the shuffle properly. This is analog to putting apple "enhanced" usb ports on apple computers. "Well it works great if you have apple hardware connected to the usb ports, but if you want to use your usb printer/memory stick/whaterver, you should buy just this small adapter (link to apple store)." It is a lock-in coupled with royalities (which are transferred to you and me) plain and simple.
How fun would be to go into a store wanting to buy some pair of earphones, but you have to buy only sony XLX branded ones because you only have compatible sony player. Or you want to buy that excellent sounding Shure headphones, but alas, those work only with yamaha pianos. Or you want to buy computer keyboard for your dell, but the store only has "made for hp" ones.
I don't want to live in that world, world of lock-in (I'm not saying that there is no lock-in today too, quite the reverse), high prices and most of all completely unnecessary and artificial limitations. But lock-in is ultimately for consumers good isn't it?
I spliced the cable of my mobile phones headphones which had control buttons on the cable as well. It was great PITA. Those wires inside the cable are extremely tiny and are joined with nylon thread (probably for endurance) which makes those signal wires almost impossible to handle by hand. So unless you have some special tools and alot of patience I can't recommend cutting the cables.
I agree somewhat. I really love the the huge screen, great pixel density, the nice and polished GUI (albeit somewhat too simplistic) and the best browser and music/video on the mobile. But the weight and size is really a bad side (first gen owner here) and so is weak vibrating alert and very weak external speaker. There comes a time when I really prefer my nokia 6500c because it is so much lighter, has much less volume and most of all, you don't feel it in your pocket, which is especially noticeable in the summer when people are dressed lightly so you don't have iphone weighing your shorts down. As I found out you don't have to have an expensive and somewhat fragile mobile phone all the time with you. I mean, phone calls, sms, mail (gmail mobile client is very good) is more then enough more than 70% of the time. So that part of time you are lugging around other parts of the iphone which you don't really need. When this iphone goes to the eternal hunting grounds, I'll probably buy an ipod touch, because it is lighter, thinner, has the same best mobile browser, excellent audio/video player and I can take it with me when I really need it.
Actually those pictures and text is mine so I can believe myself thank you very much;)
I don't like to contradict people, but four sets of basically the same earbuds where 3 where bought in usa and 1 in germany in the last 2 years suggests it isn't just some defective batch or anything else. Moreover, I've been to stores plenty of times meanwhile to see and feel other apple earbuds and they are *completely* the same. The build quality is simply poor. They look ok but they quicky change the tune when used.
I bought my little sister and her friend (still kids) a pair of some philips ear canal headphones around this time last year. They were not really dime a dozen, but not expensive, not even medium priced. As you probably know, kids don't really care much about handling stuff rough (and they shouldn't really) but even today these two pairs of earphones sound and look as the first day I bought them (minus the ear wax on the friend's pair). That is what I expect from the products I buy. I don't expect them to fail in a matter of months, not even years.
But as you say, and do not get me wrong, you have yours lasting for years, but I can imagine that only if they are handled more gingerly than diamonds. And that is not what, in my mind, personal electronics is about.
I had couple of pairs of apple ipod and one iphone headphones but they are all the same concerning the build quality.
The rubber rim on the earbuds start to crack and disintegrates whether you use them or not after couple of months. After that the rubber which is around the (male) connector likes to get loose because it dilates after a while. After it gets loose, it starts to crack, and in couple of weeks time it will fall apart too. Lastly, as the rubber around the connector is finished, the wire will snap just at the connection with the plastic at the connector itself. This happened 3.5 times now (I managed to save the last pair with alot of electrical tape and handling it like its a grat mogul diamond) out of 4 pairs I have. I have never seen such poor quality from so expensive players/phones before.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the pictures here and here.
Lastly, I would have bought some other iphone compatible headphones but there are none in croatia unfortunately. Moreover, I still haven't found the adapter to use any other headphones in my first gen iphone.
That is if you still have original headphones... Mine disintegrated after 6 months of very light use.
Not only that, but the shadows are ALL wrong! This is clear as day. Next please.
Just to give you an example more, I have ipod nano (previous gen) and iphone. I already had apple ipod radio remote from my previous ipod. Interestingly enough, the remote works with the nano, but it won't work with the iphone. It is completely unacceptable, because not only they use the same proprietary connector, they are made by the same company (apple).
I always wanted to have laptop's back lid logo something like alienware's alien head. But this one would be slightly bigger and with eyes connected to the inverse HDD activity. Just imagine how distracting that would that be.
I can understand the hassles of using the public airplane, but driving for ~11 hours is madness. There is no way one can convince me that you arrived in better shape then your coworkers, and at least driving for that much time is frankly extremely boring (can't sleep/surf/whatever at the time) and dangerous (fatigue etc).
And/or give him artificial smell so you can smell the leak. The gas we have in metal tank in our kitchen is naturally odorless but they added a smell so you can know when it leaks.
Your comment reminded me of my psychology textbook I've read short time ago.
Even though it isn't about paying for ideas but it does remind me of it. The problem with the book was that almost every couple of sentences there was a credit to some author of another book.
For example: Pre-school children rely on their parents much more than than teenage children who rely on their peers ($some_author, $some_year).
What is the problem with it?
Firstly, the sentence is blindingly obvious as saying that smart kids have better test results in general. Secondly, the $some_author didn't conduct a scientific experiment, he got that merely by observation (just as any healthy individual can), and finally I had the impression that with all these references to other books the autors of the textbook I read didn't have any data, opinion or observation on their own, the book was just a compilation of other people's "data" (which is completely obvious in like 90% cases). And the professor I was learning this subject remarked that this book is the best psychology book in recent Croatian history. Go figure.
How cool would be to have -100% market share?
On a more serious note is there a difference between -2% and -100% market share?
It is null and void if the other side is not Ferengi. If you can prove that, you won't have trouble at all.
If e-mail is so much better (and I agree, with that part), why does the iphone have SMS?
If e-mail is better than MMS, then it must be better than SMS too. One could consider MMS legacy they don't want to support. But why support SMS then? Is there a reason why would you support only one part of the "legacy" system, and the other part you discard even though 99% of other mobile phones support it?
You are missing the point of what MMS is (or was) all about. It is very similar to instant/push e-mail. You can write as many text as you want, add some pictures and recipient will get the message virtually instantly, *on their mobile phone*. I can imagine that the e-mail is clearly superior if you have push system installed (exchange, mobileme, whatever) and you receive the e-mail immediately. But, if I'm not very much mistaken, large majority of mobile phones don't have push mail. I can see "smartphones" fairly frequently, but a very small fragment of those people even know about push mail, even less than those have it configured to work that way. I'm talking about Croatia here though, it probably is different from country to country.
I'm all for using e-mail for text communication between mobile phones but telecoms don't think the same. Apart of the push mail problem, the data charges are extremely expensive (especially for teens who probably send pics more than other part of population) so you are left with sms (which is not that much expensive, user-wise), and mms for sending your pics. MMS in the beginning was very expensive but they did lower the price a bit, but my observation is that it is seldom used.
My point is that the MMS is the push mail for the majority of people with non-push mail mobile phones. It is a bit arrogant in a way not to include it in the default sms iphone app. Other mobile phones handle mms pretty much as the sms with attachments. That means you don't need to have special mms apps nor additional interface bloat. I personally don't miss mms much on my iphone, but I do hate it when somebody asks "have you seen the $cool_picture, I've sent you 10 minutes ago?".
To expand your point, the last navy battle where ships rammed each other was at the Battle of Vis island in 1866 (the article has some minor innacuracies though). Ramming was still popular then because the ships armour was generally too thick for cannons to penetrate effectively so ramming was used to good effect. Italian flagship Re d'Italia was sunk because it was rammed by Austrian ship commanded by Vilhelm von Tegethoff.
The wreck was found and positively identified only few years ago at 115m of depth. Curiously, it was identified by the battering ram because of the poor visibility.
That ship was HMS Victory commanded by Nelson. Nelson blew a large chunk of Bucentauro's stern and killed large number of the crew in just two passes. But carronades aren't the guns which the article discusses actually, even though those kind of cannons were effective at close range. Carronades were generally used for killing/maiming/wounding enemy crew so were loaded with musket bullets. One can imagine carronades as shotguns (vs rifles) in our time.
I was on some symposium of archeology and I find out the commonly held fact that even in the ancient roman times, the price from transferring same amount of goods from two major dalmatian (croatia now) cities by road (that is something like 150km/93.2056788 miles to you americans;) was the same as transferring the same amount of goods from Gibraltar to Turkey. That is a staggering difference in price.
As the sea was the main trade route it is not a small wonder why the majority of shipwrecks in the adriatic are from those times. And there were many pirates at the time as well;)
Despite what it's called, is it a standard USB?
Wikipedia says so though.
I've got 6500classic and that is the only connector it has. So the transformer has the same connector for charging and data cable has the same connector. But contrary to E71 it does charge via this data cable too. I don't know if E71 would charge if you were to connect this transformer with micro-usb connector though.
I'm quite puzzled though because e71 is a newer model than the 6500c but the former has the older charger (AC-5) while the latter has newer (AC-6). Maybe they wanted to preserve some kind of backward compatibility as this is business phone and people probably already have car chargers with those round connectors.
As for the small (2.5mm?) audio connector, that completely sucks I know because I have first gen iphone which has recessed audio jack so only apple headphones go in. Sure there is an adapter to buy but I can't find it anywhere. So I'm in the same situation as with my nokia. Usb connector ->nokia headphones, iphone v1 -> apple headphones. I hate those non standard things (but which are not better in any way).
...and the adapter won't be fully compatible with the device. Cough, display cough port cough adapter