Apple did a terific deal with AT&T - they reversed the model from "carrier pays for the phone and customer gets it free" to "customer pays the phone and phonemaker gets a cut from monthly revenue". This is extremely brilliant move (and what I have heard and this is pretty reliable source, the money Apple is getting from this deal could make them give iPhone for "free" with contracts and still make a profit, but because it sells for the set price they make even more money).
There was a demand for this kind of device and Apple did it's marketing good. Their next device will be a much tougher sell to carriers though if they can't somehow make ap a product which has the same kind of novelty value as the iPhone.
My guess is that this is a one-time deal for Apple and once their honeymoon is over they have to compete by the same rules everyone else does. But for a launch product and a product with such "coolness factor" and genuinely good features (I like the browser, it is indeed good, maybe even the best there is for that form factor but I dislike the phonebook and the "virtual keyboard") they did like a smart company must do - get the most out of it.
It's funny when every time this subject comes up there are people crying "but network must have speacial features to have visual voicemail". This is the single feature that is not standard on every GSM network and it is also very easy to implement ("visual voicemail" is just mms messages and the phone does the rest).
There is no single reason but money from exclusive deal not to publish this information for all to implement - there is nothing wrong with that but you must realize that Apple is doing this for money - not because it is best for consumers.
I mean, what the hell could they be? Really ugly fat green gelatinous blob monster? Seen that. Gaseous purple clouds? Seen that, too (although the comic version looks kinda different).
Arthur C. Clarke has a nice take about that in Childhood's End...
Unlike the Segway, the iPhone isn't a hyped tease. Apple introduced the device six months ago with a full demonstration of how it actually worked, assigned it a firm price tag, published its technical specifics down to the millimeter and gram, and provided a comprehensive look at its features and underlying technologies.
"Full demonstration"? Full demonstration would have been unlimited access to phone, not some pre-written demo. Journalists did not get full access to phone (features were missing so they were basically allowed to test the features apple wanted them to see) and had very little time to play with the device. I'll wait for first proper review, thank you. "down to millimer and gram" are just empty words - of course they know the dimensions of an electronic device which hardware spec is final. Yes, we had "comprehensive look" but still, days before launch we really don't know for an example is it possible to develop offline widgets or not and how those technologies are used. There definitely were and still are unclear things about the features, you just don't mention them. Every mobile phone announcement from every manufacturer can be desribed as you did. Nothing new.
And you do your comparasion to Zune which was clearly a bad product, marketed and launched badly and an overall flop. This is what I call reality-distorting. By choosing your "point of reference" this way you basicly just rant Zune - not describe what iPhone is or is not. You could have chosen some other mobile phone announcement and launch as your reference point but no...
I don't live in the US so I don't comment on the Gizmodo article - maybe it is reasonable, maybe not, I don't know. But tying the iPhone to AT&T makes AT&T an important factor and iPhone can be critisized because of AT&T.
And you ask: How exactly is Apple failing to support the iPhone for business users?
By failing to provide tools to manage the device (OMA DM would be nice but there are other ways), by failing to provide sync to calendar and contacts via SyncML (OMA DS) - enterprise IT is not going to let users install iTunes just to sync their calendar, and we don't know if there is another way (just speculation, Apple has been very quiet about this - how's this for unclear features?). And believe me, enterprise users want calendar syncronization - and of those very large percent require OTA syncronization. This has an advantage in enterprise - if the device supports OMA DS you don't have to install manufacturers own buggy apps to support the phone (Nokia Data Suite, whatever it is called by Motorola etc.). You just provide users with syncronization settings and of they go - no need to support another desktop app (and keep it up-to date with security fixes etc.).
You mention the mail support and basicly say that Apple supports enterprise because it supports POP and IMAP. Yes, in ideal world we all would use just IMAP and IMAP IDLE but in real world IMAP is often turned off in Exchange and IT requires Exchange or Notes plugin in mobile devices. Don't get me started on blackberry support.
"Management without IT team" is just not acceptable - you have to have a way to disable the device if it gets stolen or lost, you have to have an easy way to install company mail settings to it. (And install company VPN and apps but let's forget that because it's not possible in iPhone). OMA DM accomplishes just this, and it is readily available. Yes, you need additional server to support it, but it is an absolute must when you have thousands or even hudreds of users. Anything else is a support nightmare and potentialy insecure.
Of course if by "enterprise support" you mean that users are able to read their mail with IMAP if it's allowed then iPhone can be great (if it is easy enough to configure, which it probably is being Apple product).
Your conspiracy about Gartner just makes me smile. "Open standards in music" - how on earth this is an eterprise feature w
Nothing new. As I've said before - if Slashdot absolutely must link to roughly drafted rants which always use the same tactics to twist the reality into something else than it is - can we pretty please with sugar on top have an own category for them? I'm interested in iPhone and Apple products in general but this stuff...yuck.
The problem is not with the bandwidth, it's with the latency. GPRS/EDGE has a latency of 200-300ms to default gw in the best scenarios, and it can be as high as 1000ms. That makes designing interactive apps "challenging" - AJAX or not. In fact - traditional web pages can be more intuitive on slow connections because you don't have to guess if the page is updating part of it or not.
Can we please have an own category for roughly drafted stories?
They are sometimes interesting but for the most part I would like to ignore them for being outright false and so strongly biased that they smell like rotten apple for miles.
I've had some serious problems with joker.com when trying to transfer domains from Network Solutions. New domains are ok, the service is fast and ok, but constantly failing transfers (be it joker or NSI) have kept me from using them as the only registrar. godaddy.com is working flawlessly for me also on transfers.
I'm sorry that English is not my native tongue so I'm not completely clear - are you implying that bars are somewhere liable if their employees leave their premises with a drunk person driving?
I don't understand - why go after the bar instead of the invidual? (Well, I live in Finland and in the last few days here has been going on a conversation if the bar should be responsible for reporting to the crowd "anonymous" calls they receive that reveal where police patrols are looking for drunk drivers - but here's the difference - in these cases the bar has acted *actively* telling the customers where the cops are. In comparision MySpace has "just" not maybe told where the predators are (should they have an effective mean of identifyind them...).
I have to agree - my (international) company puts strict limits to overtime (althought law permits overtime here in some amounts).
I work 38 hours a week and that's it, and I do get paid just fine. I also have 5 weeks of paid vacation per year, and I would never change that for 30% better salary which I could get working in the US.
Sony has used a "scroll wheel" type selection in MiniDisc players in the late 90s - take a look for an example at the MZ-R30 - I used to own this. The wheel works just like in the later Sony models (including SonyEricsson cell phones).
I've build a system like this, only the ammount of data is smaller. Our system is written in Java and has MySQL backend. On stress test it could perform about 1000 updates per second on single-processor x86 hardware. With better hardware and a few optimizations even our system could perform at 2000 updates / sec.
It's great to see WoW being such a great success also in Europe, however Blizzard should really do something about their servers.
Right now logging in is impossible to many European servers (just check the EU tech support forums...) and people have been experiencing disconnects and signup-problems from day one not to mention the huge queues on some servers.
The ridiciously short beta and the problems they had in the US should have warranted a more thorough analysis about what is required to serve the big audience. For a subscription (time) -based game this is quite unacceptable.
You are correct in that those features are propably the 2 most widely security-hole causing things in php. register_globals is now off by default, which it should have been from the start. fopen-wrappers for urls are "shoot yourself in the foot" -thing, if you want similiar functionality in perl, you can propably get it from CPAN. My point is that it's not really the languages fault people are not competent enough to write secure code, and checking intput and sanitizing output must be done also in perl - that's the main problem with fopen_url -wrappers also.
It might be good to turn that off by default as well (I do turn it off in every server installation where I allow customer-made code to run).
And how exactly Perl helps you around these common pitfalls found in web-based applications?
You have to filter input and escape output just the same way in Perl.
You can shoot yourself in the foot with PHP as you can with C - it's not the programming languages fault people don't know how to write secure code, and these people are promoting safe practices, which is very nice and respectable.
If you don't know how to write secure web applications from the ground up, you are better off with some "frameworks" that do the sanity-checking for you. Oh, wait, those contain bugs too...
While there is nothing wrong with the idea of RedHat charging whatever they want with their "enterprise" versions, what I really want is security errata for at least 3 years. I don't want no 'freakin "enterprise version" - just gime me the errata. This is not good, I like Debian, I use it at home, but migrating all the servers at work is a real PITA. While I accept that Linux is way better in many ways compared to Windows our clients necessarily don't think the same way. For them, Linux has been always the flexible, cost-efective solutions. By pricing their distribution in the same league as W2k Server RedHat really is pissing off a lot of customers.
Just give me the errata for a smaller fee, please.
This is already second time this happens to Nokia. My roommate's Nokia 5110 had originally buggy firmware (which he later upgraded for obvious reasons...) which locked the phone if someone sent him an SMS-message with 160 dots. The phone locked up completely, only removing the battery brought it back to life.
The cost of communicatig over SMS-messages is not that simple - at current rates here (I live in Finland, BTW) sending an SMS-messages costs about as much as talking for a minute. (0,99 FIM, about $0,17) and even a "simple conversation" requires 2 messages - that's two minutes of talking compared to 320 character of text (one message is 160 characters). On the other hand, SMS-message costs always the same, and voice rates depend very much on who you call and when. (Mobile network vs. fixed network, mobile operator, time of day etc...)
But as previous poster mentioned, this is very common among teens. My brother, who is 17 years uses more money for SMS-messages than he uses for voice-calls and he is quite conservative mobile-phone user.
The other very significant use of SMS-messages are different services - you can get new ringing tones, pictures to your phone (operator and other logos), different news-services, stock-quotes, the showing times of movies in your city, horoscopes, jokes - just about anything you can think of. (The newest "boom" are different dating-services where you can search for a date using your phone) I use the weather-service constantly - I skydive and wind it is important to know what the weather is at the airport (mainly how fast the wind blows) - I don't want to drive 40 minutes just to find out that it is impossible to jump. My mobile phone gives an answer in 10 seconds. These services are still awfully expensive - from FIM 1,99 to FIM 9,90 ($ 0,30 to about $2) - I hope that the upcoming GRPS-networks (promised to arrive early next year) will fix this when the phone is always connected to network and you pay only for transfered data - it makes "push" -services much more usable and hopefully will increase the use of services and bring prices down.
Is this really "News for Nerds" - even thought this piece is quite humorous, it is so well written and thought that I suspect Roblimo is at least half-serious. Do we really need this? Are we SO desperate? And why should everybody get a woman (or a man) anyway? Some people are perfectly comfortable with Linux kernel source and a compiler and like to be alone with them:) This really belongs somewhere else...
Slashdot Mirror
Apple did a terific deal with AT&T - they reversed the model from "carrier pays for the phone and customer gets it free" to "customer pays the phone and phonemaker gets a cut from monthly revenue". This is extremely brilliant move (and what I have heard and this is pretty reliable source, the money Apple is getting from this deal could make them give iPhone for "free" with contracts and still make a profit, but because it sells for the set price they make even more money).
There was a demand for this kind of device and Apple did it's marketing good. Their next device will be a much tougher sell to carriers though if they can't somehow make ap a product which has the same kind of novelty value as the iPhone.
My guess is that this is a one-time deal for Apple and once their honeymoon is over they have to compete by the same rules everyone else does. But for a launch product and a product with such "coolness factor" and genuinely good features (I like the browser, it is indeed good, maybe even the best there is for that form factor but I dislike the phonebook and the "virtual keyboard") they did like a smart company must do - get the most out of it.
-k
It's funny when every time this subject comes up there are people crying "but network must have speacial features to have visual voicemail". This is the single feature that is not standard on every GSM network and it is also very easy to implement ("visual voicemail" is just mms messages and the phone does the rest).
There is no single reason but money from exclusive deal not to publish this information for all to implement - there is nothing wrong with that but you must realize that Apple is doing this for money - not because it is best for consumers.
Arthur C. Clarke has a nice take about that in Childhood's End...
Unlike the Segway, the iPhone isn't a hyped tease. Apple introduced the device six months ago with a full demonstration of how it actually worked, assigned it a firm price tag, published its technical specifics down to the millimeter and gram, and provided a comprehensive look at its features and underlying technologies.
"Full demonstration"? Full demonstration would have been unlimited access to phone, not some pre-written demo. Journalists did not get full access to phone (features were missing so they were basically allowed to test the features apple wanted them to see) and had very little time to play with the device. I'll wait for first proper review, thank you. "down to millimer and gram" are just empty words - of course they know the dimensions of an electronic device which hardware spec is final. Yes, we had "comprehensive look" but still, days before launch we really don't know for an example is it possible to develop offline widgets or not and how those technologies are used. There definitely were and still are unclear things about the features, you just don't mention them. Every mobile phone announcement from every manufacturer can be desribed as you did. Nothing new.
And you do your comparasion to Zune which was clearly a bad product, marketed and launched badly and an overall flop. This is what I call reality-distorting. By choosing your "point of reference" this way you basicly just rant Zune - not describe what iPhone is or is not. You could have chosen some other mobile phone announcement and launch as your reference point but no...
I don't live in the US so I don't comment on the Gizmodo article - maybe it is reasonable, maybe not, I don't know. But tying the iPhone to AT&T makes AT&T an important factor and iPhone can be critisized because of AT&T.
And you ask: How exactly is Apple failing to support the iPhone for business users?
By failing to provide tools to manage the device (OMA DM would be nice but there are other ways), by failing to provide sync to calendar and contacts via SyncML (OMA DS) - enterprise IT is not going to let users install iTunes just to sync their calendar, and we don't know if there is another way (just speculation, Apple has been very quiet about this - how's this for unclear features?). And believe me, enterprise users want calendar syncronization - and of those very large percent require OTA syncronization. This has an advantage in enterprise - if the device supports OMA DS you don't have to install manufacturers own buggy apps to support the phone (Nokia Data Suite, whatever it is called by Motorola etc.). You just provide users with syncronization settings and of they go - no need to support another desktop app (and keep it up-to date with security fixes etc.).
You mention the mail support and basicly say that Apple supports enterprise because it supports POP and IMAP. Yes, in ideal world we all would use just IMAP and IMAP IDLE but in real world IMAP is often turned off in Exchange and IT requires Exchange or Notes plugin in mobile devices. Don't get me started on blackberry support.
"Management without IT team" is just not acceptable - you have to have a way to disable the device if it gets stolen or lost, you have to have an easy way to install company mail settings to it. (And install company VPN and apps but let's forget that because it's not possible in iPhone). OMA DM accomplishes just this, and it is readily available. Yes, you need additional server to support it, but it is an absolute must when you have thousands or even hudreds of users. Anything else is a support nightmare and potentialy insecure.
Of course if by "enterprise support" you mean that users are able to read their mail with IMAP if it's allowed then iPhone can be great (if it is easy enough to configure, which it probably is being Apple product).
Your conspiracy about Gartner just makes me smile. "Open standards in music" - how on earth this is an eterprise feature w
Nothing new. As I've said before - if Slashdot absolutely must link to roughly drafted rants which always use the same tactics to twist the reality into something else than it is - can we pretty please with sugar on top have an own category for them? I'm interested in iPhone and Apple products in general but this stuff...yuck.
The problem is not with the bandwidth, it's with the latency. GPRS/EDGE has a latency of 200-300ms to default gw in the best scenarios, and it can be as high as 1000ms. That makes designing interactive apps "challenging" - AJAX or not. In fact - traditional web pages can be more intuitive on slow connections because you don't have to guess if the page is updating part of it or not.
Can we please have an own category for roughly drafted stories?
They are sometimes interesting but for the most part I would like to ignore them for being outright false and so strongly biased that they smell like rotten apple for miles.
I've had some serious problems with joker.com when trying to transfer domains from Network Solutions. New domains are ok, the service is fast and ok, but constantly failing transfers (be it joker or NSI) have kept me from using them as the only registrar. godaddy.com is working flawlessly for me also on transfers.
I'm sorry that English is not my native tongue so I'm not completely clear - are you implying that bars are somewhere liable if their employees leave their premises with a drunk person driving?
I don't understand - why go after the bar instead of the invidual? (Well, I live in Finland and in the last few days here has been going on a conversation if the bar should be responsible for reporting to the crowd "anonymous" calls they receive that reveal where police patrols are looking for drunk drivers - but here's the difference - in these cases the bar has acted *actively* telling the customers where the cops are. In comparision MySpace has "just" not maybe told where the predators are (should they have an effective mean of identifyind them...).
http://www.totalvideogames.com/news/North_America_ And_Japan_Also_Hit_By_PS3_Component_Crisis_10566_0 _0.htm
400 000 units for USA and 100 000 for Japan - the launch starts to sound not-so-spectacular.
Or is this clever marketing?
I have to agree - my (international) company puts strict limits to overtime (althought law permits overtime here in some amounts).
I work 38 hours a week and that's it, and I do get paid just fine. I also have 5 weeks of paid vacation per year, and I would never change that for 30% better salary which I could get working in the US.
Sony has used a "scroll wheel" type selection in MiniDisc players in the late 90s - take a look for an example at the MZ-R30 - I used to own this. The wheel works just like in the later Sony models (including SonyEricsson cell phones).
http:///http://www.minidisc.org/r30_review.html>
Even MySQL can do this.
I've build a system like this, only the ammount of data is smaller. Our system is written in Java and has MySQL backend. On stress test it could perform about 1000 updates per second on single-processor x86 hardware. With better hardware and a few optimizations even our system could perform at 2000 updates / sec.
-Kari
It's great to see WoW being such a great success also in Europe, however Blizzard should really do something about their servers.
Right now logging in is impossible to many European servers (just check the EU tech support forums...) and people have been experiencing disconnects and signup-problems from day one not to mention the huge queues on some servers.
The ridiciously short beta and the problems they had in the US should have warranted a more thorough analysis about what is required to serve the big audience. For a subscription (time) -based game this is quite unacceptable.
-Kari
You are correct in that those features are propably the 2 most widely security-hole causing things in php. register_globals is now off by default, which it should have been from the start. fopen-wrappers for urls are "shoot yourself in the foot" -thing, if you want similiar functionality in perl, you can propably get it from CPAN. My point is that it's not really the languages fault people are not competent enough to write secure code, and checking intput and sanitizing output must be done also in perl - that's the main problem with fopen_url -wrappers also.
It might be good to turn that off by default as well (I do turn it off in every server installation where I allow customer-made code to run).
-ka
And how exactly Perl helps you around these common pitfalls found in web-based applications?
You have to filter input and escape output just the same way in Perl.
You can shoot yourself in the foot with PHP as you can with C - it's not the programming languages fault people don't know how to write secure code, and these people are promoting safe practices, which is very nice and respectable.
If you don't know how to write secure web applications from the ground up, you are better off with some "frameworks" that do the sanity-checking for you. Oh, wait, those contain bugs too...
-Kari
While there is nothing wrong with the idea of RedHat charging whatever they want with their "enterprise" versions, what I really want is security errata for at least 3 years. I don't want no 'freakin "enterprise version" - just gime me the errata. This is not good, I like Debian, I use it at home, but migrating all the servers at work is a real PITA. While I accept that Linux is way better in many ways compared to Windows our clients necessarily don't think the same way. For them, Linux has been always the flexible, cost-efective solutions. By pricing their distribution in the same league as W2k Server RedHat really is pissing off a lot of customers.
Just give me the errata for a smaller fee, please.
This is already second time this happens to Nokia. My roommate's Nokia 5110 had originally buggy firmware (which he later upgraded for obvious reasons...) which locked the phone if someone sent him an SMS-message with 160 dots. The phone locked up completely, only removing the battery brought it back to life.
The cost of communicatig over SMS-messages is not that simple - at current rates here (I live in Finland, BTW) sending an SMS-messages costs about as much as talking for a minute. (0,99 FIM, about $0,17) and even a "simple conversation" requires 2 messages - that's two minutes of talking compared to 320 character of text (one message is 160 characters). On the other hand, SMS-message costs always the same, and voice rates depend very much on who you call and when. (Mobile network vs. fixed network, mobile operator, time of day etc...)
But as previous poster mentioned, this is very common among teens. My brother, who is 17 years uses more money for SMS-messages than he uses for voice-calls and he is quite conservative mobile-phone user.
The other very significant use of SMS-messages are different services - you can get new ringing tones, pictures to your phone (operator and other logos), different news-services, stock-quotes, the showing times of movies in your city, horoscopes, jokes - just about anything you can think of. (The newest "boom" are different dating-services where you can search for a date using your phone) I use the weather-service constantly - I skydive and wind it is important to know what the weather is at the airport (mainly how fast the wind blows) - I don't want to drive 40 minutes just to find out that it is impossible to jump. My mobile phone gives an answer in 10 seconds. These services are still awfully expensive - from FIM 1,99 to FIM 9,90 ($ 0,30 to about $2) - I hope that the upcoming GRPS-networks (promised to arrive early next year) will fix this when the phone is always connected to network and you pay only for transfered data - it makes "push" -services much more usable and hopefully will increase the use of services and bring prices down.
Is this really "News for Nerds" - even thought this piece is quite humorous, it is so well written and thought that I suspect Roblimo is at least half-serious. Do we really need this? Are we SO desperate? And why should everybody get a woman (or a man) anyway? Some people are perfectly comfortable with Linux kernel source and a compiler and like to be alone with them :) This really belongs somewhere else...