"One of our... colleagues... I suppose you could say," I reply. "Seems to have turned out to be a complete basket case."
"Had a breakdown?" the Boss asks. "Worse." "Hurt himself?" "Worse than that."
"Is he dead?" the Boss gasps. "No, but he probably wishes he was." "You mean he hurt others?!" "Uh-huh."
"He was such a quiet bloke too," the PFY says shaking his head.
"Kept to himself a lot?" the Boss prompts.
"Yeah, but he was an IT person, so that hardly counts," I reply.
"So he was... a serial killer?"
"What?! No, no. He was... uh... late... for a Linux users group last week... and so the geeks started to get a bit worried about him..." "And?"
"And so they went round his place fearing he might have had an accident, you know, open chassis, high voltage, cup of coffee that sort of thing..." "Yes?"
"So they broke in when there was no answer to the door..." "Yes?!"
"And when they got to his front room they found..." "YES?!?!" the Boss gags.
"Macs. Stacks of them!" "Macs?" "Apple Mac 'computers'." "He was a MAC USER!" the PFY said. "For years he'd been living a lie!"
"I don't see..." "He was a MAC USER!" I say. "I mean it's bad enough being an Apple user, but Macs as well! He'd been at it for years, too. When they broke into his basement they found Power Macs, Quadras... They even found... a Lisa."
"No!" the PFY gasps. "It's true!" I say. "And it was still warm!" "So he wasn't just experimenting!" the PFY says in hushed tones.
"Oh he inhaled alright! I talked to his family and friends, but none of them had any idea."
"They're always the last to know," the PFY says, shaking his head.
"So let me get this straight," the Boss says. "You're concerned because your friend..."
"Colleague," the PFY says, but even that makes him twinge. "...Uses Apple computers."
"I think you mean Apple 'computers'," the PFY says, inserting the missing quote marks. "And that's a problem?"
"Look, for years he seemed like a normal person!" the PFY says. "He ate with us, drank with us - we thought he WAS one of us. But all along he was hiding a nasty secret!"
"What's wrong with Apples?" "They're just not real computers," the PFY says. "They're the piano accordion of the computing world, entertaining, but not made for professionals."
"Our Graphics people..." "Yeah, but they're not professionals. They'd be just as happy with crayons and finger paints!"
Actually, it doesn't - or doesn't have to. A recent firmware update to my HTC 6800 (Sprint Mogul) phone just enabled the A-GPS chip (and ~2 Mbps EVDO, very useful for tethering!). I have been testing it in several modes. In the full "Assisted GPS" mode, which narrows your location down to within a metre or so, the A-GPS does use more battery (if you leave it on) because it is pulling data down over the net connection. But if you select just basic GPS mode it becomes just a *receiver* and the power delta is not noticeable. The biggest energy hog continues to be running the backlight at a brightness sufficient to be seen clearly in strong sunlight, Now that will kill the battery dead within an amazingly short space of time.
Many scifi writers have been riffing on Herman Nesse's Glass Bead Game since he published it in the 1940s. See also: Iain Banks' Player of Games (I asked Banks about this directly and he confirmed that GBG was one of his favourite future history books).
"Losses" due to iPhone unlocking are even less plausible than the inflated "losses" from software piracy.
I agree. However, over the past year, most of the dittoheads that "cover" Apple stock on TV and in the business magazines factored in every iphone sale according to the rosy future revenue stream projections that Apple gaves them. During November/December, these people (who tend to know very little about the actual dynamics of technology markets) became increasingly skittish because of news filtering out of Asia from the iphone component sellers and assemblers regarding Apple's reduction in 2008 anticipated order volumes. Coupled with the increasing disparity between Apple's reports on iphone volume sales versus official telco activation, this accounted for a good deal of the crash in Apple stock before the general market crash.
These are the "momentum" media people and investors that bid up Google to ~$700, and during the previous bubble bid up the dotcoms and Cisco/Sun to ridiculous levels. If you get them on your side, it's great and your execs can make a fortune selling their option stock at wild prices. But once you lose them they will ignore fundamentals and overshoot any selloff.
they are very happy that people all over the world use (unlocked) iPhones, and Apple executives have probably spent a lot of time thinking about how they could have played the game differently with AT&T to still get the contract with them (which you'll remember took a major infrastructural investment on AT&T's part to bring the iPhone -- and only the iPhone -- visual voicemail)
I'm always impressed at how some people can apparently divine altruistic motives from Apple's management decisions. Every unlocked phone deprives Apple of a large chunk of potential revenue from the sale of its device in the form of monthly cash payments. Several reports last year estimated the cost to Apple of so many unlocked phones as ranging from $500m to well over $1 billion (the difference comes about depending on whether you account for the "missing" devices as languishing in the supply chain or reshipped to Asia).
But critically, apparently believing Apple's propaganda regarding the "difficulty" of implementing visual voicemail functionality leads me to lose trust in any of your assertions. Visual voicemail is not hard to do - it was around for several years before Apple's version, and if it's so difficult, how is it that companies like GrandCentral/Google can retrofit visual voicemail onto basically any phone with either a WAP browser or SMS facility? Add in a 3G+ network and a real web browser and it really shines. Given enough network neutral bandwidth, many things are possible. Microsoft can add Visual VOIP to phones with Portrait. Apple's continued invocation of the Herculean nature of its visual voicemail is a marketing smokescreen designed to convince its more fannish customers that bedding down with the telcos comes from necessity, not avarice.
As an iPhone owner myself, I was really excited to see what was possible with the apps people were writing for jailbroken phones, and it was really cool.. some were quite buggy, but there was definitely potential, even in this unsanctioned way. Now there will be an official SDK and even better apps i am really excited. Now sure, these apps may already exist for winmobile or rim or palm even, but that is taking out the very most important factor, the interface and interaction with an iphone. some folks may not like it, or want one, but I've found it to be incredibly useful with myself using for more features on it then i did on any previous phone.
The fact that the iPhone is the "most open" platform say it all.
Given that without Apple's corporate blessing, to develop apps on the iphone up to now has required buffer exploits and security holes, I am having trouble understandig how this counts as "open". I have a Sprint Mogul (HTC Hermes/Titan) running WM6. I have installed literally hundreds of apps and have yet to find one that won't install just by copying a CAB over and clicking it (including, yes, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini as a MIDLet). And with a single registry edit on the phone (also open, easy access) I got unlimited PC tethering on EVDO. That's not to say that there isn't a hacking underground. Last week I installed a homebrew firmware from that activated the GPS unit and upgraded it to WM 6.1 (but apparently the "official" GPS firmware is out this week anyway). Although I don't develop Windows Mobile apps, I understand one of the attractions of the rather ugly platform is that there are multiple, easily available SDKs for it. It's ironic that one of the more "open" platforms seems to be a Microsoft product.
I for one refuse to buy high end phones for this reason. I want to run my own apps
I think it's just on the lower end phones that the DRM lock-in is enforced. I have a Sprint Mogul (HTC Hermes/Titan) running WM6. I have installed literally hundreds of apps and have yet to find one that won't install just by copying a CAB over and clicking it. And with a single registry edit on the phone (also open access) I got unlimited PC tethering on EVDO. Last week I installed a homebrew firmware from that activated the GPS unit and upgraded it to WM 6.1 (but apparently the "official" GPS firmware is out this week anyway). Although I don't develop Windows Mobile apps, I understand one of the attractions of the rather ugly platform is that there are multiple, easily available SDKs for it.
applications will be signed.. which means some kind of approval method, and its associated cost. No great surprise there - all mobile platforms have something like it
My phone (Spring Mogul AKA HTC Titan/Hermes) is a Windows CE device. I've yet to find a single native application that I can't install on the device because of some problem signing it. In fact, it's only with the Java sub-system that I run into these kind of issues.
It makes me wonder how many MS shills and bloggers they have on the payroll
However many thay have, it can't compare to the staggering number of *unpaid* shills and bloggers that Apple gets basically everywhere. Actually, I take that back - some are "paid". There's a huge ecology out there of Apple Polishers furiously blogging about their Apple, getting high-rate gadget AdSense, and relying on each other for clickthroughs.
there are certain feature sets unique to the iPhone that required a carrier to change their services to work with the iPhone(I believe the visual-voice mail is the example being thrown around)
Others have responded to you, and I did above, but I will repeat again. Given a fast 3G service, visual voicemail is trivial to implement. Google/GrandCentral and others have been doing it before last year browser and then, even better, using just SMS. No carrier backhaul massive reingineering required. That's what network neutrality gets you. The real deal with 3G now is doing video VOIP - so far Microsoft is ahead of the others with Portrait.
The one that talks in length about how the iPhone will pretty much break the existing stranglehold the carriers hold over phones? That alone is the most innovative "feature" any cell phone has come up with thus far.
You're just repeating the article's assertions, which are unfounded. Apple has shipped GSM phone with the ultimate lock in: non-easy-user-accessible SIM card. And Google's Visual Voicemail works fine on lots of phones, so it's obviously not that big a deal. And the Samsung touchscreens with the haptic feedback - they are the touchy hotness, not Apple's dead glass screen that can;t be operated without eyeballing it.
Soon or later Skype[1] or any other VOIP/instant messenging app will be available.
Skype Mobile runs fine on my Windows phone (Sprint Mogul / HTC Titan). Microsoft Portrait (video VOIP) also rules. 3G necessary here though, wifi connection better.
I find that caring is oftentimes a more crucial component to treating someone than posessing a mass of dormant, apathetic book-learning.
That homeopath may care deeply for you or your child, but if you/they were uninfected previously, they wont be able to stop you/them being infected with measles or diptheria without a vaccination.
Sadly I think I'll have to tell the Network Solutions CEO, Champ Mitchell that, whereas champ-mitchell-fucks-babies.com was available before I did a whois at Network Solutions, Register.com now sadly reports it as unavailable and it seems to be parked at Network Solutions. Thankfully, though, Register.com has helpfully suggested some convenient substitutions:
The point of the system in use in the US is to ensure that as little as possible is actually accomplished.
So, the Interstates, the Internet, Social Security, and the Manhattan Project were little accomplishments?
People in the US have forgot, or been convinced to forget, what government of the people, by the people, and for the people can actually accomplish. This has happened before - a massive immigration of anti-tax, individualistic, anti-urban Germans so utterly changed the conception of the "res publica" that the Western Roman Empire simply faded away despite the best intentions and self-interest of everyone concerned. People stopped believing that they should pay taxes to build roads, public works, and to maintain the security of transnational trade. The new arrivals believed that their taxes should be light, and spent locally, with nothing going to remote urban centres. They simply stopped believing in the idea of Rome, and within a couple of centuries the infrastructure collapsed or was destroyed and unrepaired to such a degree that a massive economic depression swept Europe. The idea of the res publica, or Republic, would not take hold again until the 14th century.
I am confused by use of the term "The West". The overwhelming majority of countries in what is usually termed the "West" abandoned plurality voting either last century or the century before that. Like slavery and the ancien regime, it came to be regarded as a system that had become untenable and that could be replaced by something that worked better in terms of expressing democratic interests. Only in the most of the US, and portions of Canada and the UK, is such an antiquated, simplistic system still used. That is why the current hoopla in the US over its impending voting orgy amuses me -- so much money is being spent devising better ways and techniques and propaganda to wage a political war that, compared to most other political theatre in "The West", is about as complex as a child's Punch and Judy show. Without pluralism, these people would be hopelessly adrift. All they understand is the exclusive-or and the politics of negation and attack. There is little room for negotiation, finding common ground, creating consensus, and involving as many points of view as practicable. Pluralism creates simplistic politics, and the tyranny of the largest minority. It also enables small, unaccountable ideological groups to seize control of the larger minority parties and dominate national politics to a degree undeserved by their actual, demographic political support.
That's an interesting video, but I suspect the issue with that dinky little phone is that it's running an older Symbian OS on a 200 MHz CPU with a dodgy renderer. I did my own test on EVDO and found that a 400 MHz phone CPU was limiting the bandwidth - tethering the phone and using my laptop to render enabled a 100% bandwidth increase.
That/. thread was full of people pouring scorn on Apple's new attempt at creating a pseudo-MHz Myth by claiming that its crappy 2G is sufficient. You can only run this confidence game for a limited duration until people figure out what's going on. In Apple's case, it became so laughable that it finally stopped dissing Intel and instead began to suckle at Intel's tit. I suspect it will take less time before Apple is dissing 2G as worthless.
other cell phones' UI suck so badly they don't dare show how badly they actually operate.
I disagree. Some phones are better at certain UI tasks than Apple's phone, others are worse - it's not an absolute. For many operations, Apple's UI or its phone makes certain tasks far more difficult than it should be - like going to random sites from a texted URL. Lack of simple copy/paste UI operations makes that suck, as does a lack of phrase-based autocomplete. Most companies are not in early adopter mode, so they do not stress mechanical operations or lean heavily towards adverts of that type. One notable exception is something like HTC, where it runs ads similar to Apple's demonstrating its version of a touch UI. Apple has always fetishised its UIs, and so its current reliance on ads of this type should come as no surprise.
One a more significant level, Apple's advertising for its phone is currently is early adopter mode, stressing the manual operations as a fetish over the ability to complete tasks. For certain things it is moving beyond task based presentation to goal-directed presentation, but it still lacks a lot of the "message" that other phone ads have been pushing for years: community, family, connectedness, sociality. The best UI is one that is not there. Personally, I like voice UIs more than many people. Rather than futzing with a screen to get ijn touch with someone, I like being able to say "call X" or "text X" or "Amazon" to get something done. It means I constrain the directing of my attentional focus on the communication device until it has successfully established the mode of operation that I desire. It's virtually impossible to get anything done on Apple's phone without focussing entirely on its screen and its UI. And that is exactly how Apple wants it.
it is still better than NO Internet access.
I confess I do not fully understand what point you are making here, because I haven't had a phone that did not possess the ability to access the Internet since the 1990s. Can you even get a new one today that is "internet-free"?
Normal users don't want to "update their phone" (which is a weird concept to many consumers in the first place) and have it break in some way.
Yeah you're right, outside of the Apple-verse, nobody updates their phones. Yes, those hundreds of millions of people downloading Java or Windows Mobile or Palm OS or Symbian or RIM games and applications to run on their phones though either commercial or "free" channels must be a figment of the multibillion dollar mobile phone industry. And I'm not even counting ringtones in this figure, the total dollar value of which far eclipses all "legal" music downloads sales combined.
Slashdot Mirror
As GPS uses a ton a battery power
Actually, it doesn't - or doesn't have to. A recent firmware update to my HTC 6800 (Sprint Mogul) phone just enabled the A-GPS chip (and ~2 Mbps EVDO, very useful for tethering!). I have been testing it in several modes. In the full "Assisted GPS" mode, which narrows your location down to within a metre or so, the A-GPS does use more battery (if you leave it on) because it is pulling data down over the net connection. But if you select just basic GPS mode it becomes just a *receiver* and the power delta is not noticeable. The biggest energy hog continues to be running the backlight at a brightness sufficient to be seen clearly in strong sunlight, Now that will kill the battery dead within an amazingly short space of time.
Many scifi writers have been riffing on Herman Nesse's Glass Bead Game since he published it in the 1940s. See also: Iain Banks' Player of Games (I asked Banks about this directly and he confirmed that GBG was one of his favourite future history books).
"Losses" due to iPhone unlocking are even less plausible than the inflated "losses" from software piracy.
I agree. However, over the past year, most of the dittoheads that "cover" Apple stock on TV and in the business magazines factored in every iphone sale according to the rosy future revenue stream projections that Apple gaves them. During November/December, these people (who tend to know very little about the actual dynamics of technology markets) became increasingly skittish because of news filtering out of Asia from the iphone component sellers and assemblers regarding Apple's reduction in 2008 anticipated order volumes. Coupled with the increasing disparity between Apple's reports on iphone volume sales versus official telco activation, this accounted for a good deal of the crash in Apple stock before the general market crash.
These are the "momentum" media people and investors that bid up Google to ~$700, and during the previous bubble bid up the dotcoms and Cisco/Sun to ridiculous levels. If you get them on your side, it's great and your execs can make a fortune selling their option stock at wild prices. But once you lose them they will ignore fundamentals and overshoot any selloff.
they are very happy that people all over the world use (unlocked) iPhones, and Apple executives have probably spent a lot of time thinking about how they could have played the game differently with AT&T to still get the contract with them (which you'll remember took a major infrastructural investment on AT&T's part to bring the iPhone -- and only the iPhone -- visual voicemail)
I'm always impressed at how some people can apparently divine altruistic motives from Apple's management decisions. Every unlocked phone deprives Apple of a large chunk of potential revenue from the sale of its device in the form of monthly cash payments. Several reports last year estimated the cost to Apple of so many unlocked phones as ranging from $500m to well over $1 billion (the difference comes about depending on whether you account for the "missing" devices as languishing in the supply chain or reshipped to Asia).
But critically, apparently believing Apple's propaganda regarding the "difficulty" of implementing visual voicemail functionality leads me to lose trust in any of your assertions. Visual voicemail is not hard to do - it was around for several years before Apple's version, and if it's so difficult, how is it that companies like GrandCentral/Google can retrofit visual voicemail onto basically any phone with either a WAP browser or SMS facility? Add in a 3G+ network and a real web browser and it really shines. Given enough network neutral bandwidth, many things are possible. Microsoft can add Visual VOIP to phones with Portrait. Apple's continued invocation of the Herculean nature of its visual voicemail is a marketing smokescreen designed to convince its more fannish customers that bedding down with the telcos comes from necessity, not avarice.
As an iPhone owner myself, I was really excited to see what was possible with the apps people were writing for jailbroken phones, and it was really cool.. some were quite buggy, but there was definitely potential, even in this unsanctioned way. Now there will be an official SDK and even better apps i am really excited. Now sure, these apps may already exist for winmobile or rim or palm even, but that is taking out the very most important factor, the interface and interaction with an iphone. some folks may not like it, or want one, but I've found it to be incredibly useful with myself using for more features on it then i did on any previous phone.
Translation: "Ooooh! Shiny!"
The fact that the iPhone is the "most open" platform say it all.
Given that without Apple's corporate blessing, to develop apps on the iphone up to now has required buffer exploits and security holes, I am having trouble understandig how this counts as "open". I have a Sprint Mogul (HTC Hermes/Titan) running WM6. I have installed literally hundreds of apps and have yet to find one that won't install just by copying a CAB over and clicking it (including, yes, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini as a MIDLet). And with a single registry edit on the phone (also open, easy access) I got unlimited PC tethering on EVDO. That's not to say that there isn't a hacking underground. Last week I installed a homebrew firmware from that activated the GPS unit and upgraded it to WM 6.1 (but apparently the "official" GPS firmware is out this week anyway). Although I don't develop Windows Mobile apps, I understand one of the attractions of the rather ugly platform is that there are multiple, easily available SDKs for it. It's ironic that one of the more "open" platforms seems to be a Microsoft product.
I for one refuse to buy high end phones for this reason. I want to run my own apps
I think it's just on the lower end phones that the DRM lock-in is enforced. I have a Sprint Mogul (HTC Hermes/Titan) running WM6. I have installed literally hundreds of apps and have yet to find one that won't install just by copying a CAB over and clicking it. And with a single registry edit on the phone (also open access) I got unlimited PC tethering on EVDO. Last week I installed a homebrew firmware from that activated the GPS unit and upgraded it to WM 6.1 (but apparently the "official" GPS firmware is out this week anyway). Although I don't develop Windows Mobile apps, I understand one of the attractions of the rather ugly platform is that there are multiple, easily available SDKs for it.
applications will be signed.. which means some kind of approval method, and its associated cost. No great surprise there - all mobile platforms have something like it
My phone (Spring Mogul AKA HTC Titan/Hermes) is a Windows CE device. I've yet to find a single native application that I can't install on the device because of some problem signing it. In fact, it's only with the Java sub-system that I run into these kind of issues.
It makes me wonder how many MS shills and bloggers they have on the payroll
However many thay have, it can't compare to the staggering number of *unpaid* shills and bloggers that Apple gets basically everywhere. Actually, I take that back - some are "paid". There's a huge ecology out there of Apple Polishers furiously blogging about their Apple, getting high-rate gadget AdSense, and relying on each other for clickthroughs.
I doubt they'll be impressive, otherwise I'm sure they would be widespread knowledge by now.
Your lack of faith in the power of the RDF is disturbing.
there are certain feature sets unique to the iPhone that required a carrier to change their services to work with the iPhone(I believe the visual-voice mail is the example being thrown around)
Others have responded to you, and I did above, but I will repeat again. Given a fast 3G service, visual voicemail is trivial to implement. Google/GrandCentral and others have been doing it before last year browser and then, even better, using just SMS. No carrier backhaul massive reingineering required. That's what network neutrality gets you. The real deal with 3G now is doing video VOIP - so far Microsoft is ahead of the others with Portrait.
The one that talks in length about how the iPhone will pretty much break the existing stranglehold the carriers hold over phones? That alone is the most innovative "feature" any cell phone has come up with thus far.
You're just repeating the article's assertions, which are unfounded. Apple has shipped GSM phone with the ultimate lock in: non-easy-user-accessible SIM card. And Google's Visual Voicemail works fine on lots of phones, so it's obviously not that big a deal. And the Samsung touchscreens with the haptic feedback - they are the touchy hotness, not Apple's dead glass screen that can;t be operated without eyeballing it.
Soon or later Skype[1] or any other VOIP/instant messenging app will be available.
Skype Mobile runs fine on my Windows phone (Sprint Mogul / HTC Titan). Microsoft Portrait (video VOIP) also rules. 3G necessary here though, wifi connection better.
I find that caring is oftentimes a more crucial component to treating someone than posessing a mass of dormant, apathetic book-learning.
That homeopath may care deeply for you or your child, but if you/they were uninfected previously, they wont be able to stop you/them being infected with measles or diptheria without a vaccination.
And never let it be said that Network Solutions is not without innovation. It offers me alternatives if I can't get the
The point of the system in use in the US is to ensure that as little as possible is actually accomplished.
So, the Interstates, the Internet, Social Security, and the Manhattan Project were little accomplishments?
People in the US have forgot, or been convinced to forget, what government of the people, by the people, and for the people can actually accomplish. This has happened before - a massive immigration of anti-tax, individualistic, anti-urban Germans so utterly changed the conception of the "res publica" that the Western Roman Empire simply faded away despite the best intentions and self-interest of everyone concerned. People stopped believing that they should pay taxes to build roads, public works, and to maintain the security of transnational trade. The new arrivals believed that their taxes should be light, and spent locally, with nothing going to remote urban centres. They simply stopped believing in the idea of Rome, and within a couple of centuries the infrastructure collapsed or was destroyed and unrepaired to such a degree that a massive economic depression swept Europe. The idea of the res publica, or Republic, would not take hold again until the 14th century.
I am confused by use of the term "The West". The overwhelming majority of countries in what is usually termed the "West" abandoned plurality voting either last century or the century before that. Like slavery and the ancien regime, it came to be regarded as a system that had become untenable and that could be replaced by something that worked better in terms of expressing democratic interests. Only in the most of the US, and portions of Canada and the UK, is such an antiquated, simplistic system still used. That is why the current hoopla in the US over its impending voting orgy amuses me -- so much money is being spent devising better ways and techniques and propaganda to wage a political war that, compared to most other political theatre in "The West", is about as complex as a child's Punch and Judy show. Without pluralism, these people would be hopelessly adrift. All they understand is the exclusive-or and the politics of negation and attack. There is little room for negotiation, finding common ground, creating consensus, and involving as many points of view as practicable. Pluralism creates simplistic politics, and the tyranny of the largest minority. It also enables small, unaccountable ideological groups to seize control of the larger minority parties and dominate national politics to a degree undeserved by their actual, demographic political support.
That's an interesting video, but I suspect the issue with that dinky little phone is that it's running an older Symbian OS on a 200 MHz CPU with a dodgy renderer. I did my own test on EVDO and found that a 400 MHz phone CPU was limiting the bandwidth - tethering the phone and using my laptop to render enabled a 100% bandwidth increase.
/. thread was full of people pouring scorn on Apple's new attempt at creating a pseudo-MHz Myth by claiming that its crappy 2G is sufficient. You can only run this confidence game for a limited duration until people figure out what's going on. In Apple's case, it became so laughable that it finally stopped dissing Intel and instead began to suckle at Intel's tit. I suspect it will take less time before Apple is dissing 2G as worthless.
That
I jumped on the dual-processor bandwagon pretty much the instant that commodity CPUs officially supported it. Namely, the Athlon MP. I got a Tyan
Actually, I got a Tyan a while earlier (~1995) that supported dual Pentiums. That board ruled. Tyan kicks arse.
people have done direct comparisons of the speed of web browsing on 2G vs. 3G phones, and found very little real-world difference.
Who are these people? Video URLs or GTFO.
t's a shame you NZ people are so self centered
I'm in the US, in ur 2G, teln u it sux.
Apple was the one that broke the DRM stranglehold
How did it do that now? What company is the biggest purveyor of DRM-bollixed media in the world today?
2G isn't as bad as you think
I can't believe you're still pushing the party line. Will you think different when Apple's new phone is a 3G? Two legs good, four legs better?
wireless is more prevelant than you think
Tell me more about the state of WiFi in New Zealand...
the iPhone UI is about 10,000x better than you seem to be making out.
The OP said nothing about Apple's UI. But it's nice to get a concrete figure nailed down here.
They are just Japanese, and thus don't care that something takes five years to become dominant rather than dropping everything else out of the gate.
Still banking on MiniDisc sweeping the world?
we saw the music industry crack and bow to demands for DRM free music.
Yes, here's hoping that one of the last, strongest bastions of vendor-controlled DRM caves. Maybe 2008 will be when Apple stops being evil.
other cell phones' UI suck so badly they don't dare show how badly they actually operate.
I disagree. Some phones are better at certain UI tasks than Apple's phone, others are worse - it's not an absolute. For many operations, Apple's UI or its phone makes certain tasks far more difficult than it should be - like going to random sites from a texted URL. Lack of simple copy/paste UI operations makes that suck, as does a lack of phrase-based autocomplete. Most companies are not in early adopter mode, so they do not stress mechanical operations or lean heavily towards adverts of that type. One notable exception is something like HTC, where it runs ads similar to Apple's demonstrating its version of a touch UI. Apple has always fetishised its UIs, and so its current reliance on ads of this type should come as no surprise.
One a more significant level, Apple's advertising for its phone is currently is early adopter mode, stressing the manual operations as a fetish over the ability to complete tasks. For certain things it is moving beyond task based presentation to goal-directed presentation, but it still lacks a lot of the "message" that other phone ads have been pushing for years: community, family, connectedness, sociality. The best UI is one that is not there. Personally, I like voice UIs more than many people. Rather than futzing with a screen to get ijn touch with someone, I like being able to say "call X" or "text X" or "Amazon" to get something done. It means I constrain the directing of my attentional focus on the communication device until it has successfully established the mode of operation that I desire. It's virtually impossible to get anything done on Apple's phone without focussing entirely on its screen and its UI. And that is exactly how Apple wants it.
it is still better than NO Internet access.
I confess I do not fully understand what point you are making here, because I haven't had a phone that did not possess the ability to access the Internet since the 1990s. Can you even get a new one today that is "internet-free"?
Normal users don't want to "update their phone" (which is a weird concept to many consumers in the first place) and have it break in some way.
Yeah you're right, outside of the Apple-verse, nobody updates their phones. Yes, those hundreds of millions of people downloading Java or Windows Mobile or Palm OS or Symbian or RIM games and applications to run on their phones though either commercial or "free" channels must be a figment of the multibillion dollar mobile phone industry. And I'm not even counting ringtones in this figure, the total dollar value of which far eclipses all "legal" music downloads sales combined.