Thanks, but I like being able to install apps on my phone without relying on dodgy exploits and be confident that they will not be disabled by a later firmware update.
unlike my previous Treo it is seamless to install apps OTA. Actually the best I've seen on any phone/PDA to date.
On my Windows Mobile phone (HTC Hermes), I can browse (using a browser of my choice) to a link, click to download and run a CAB installer, and the program installs is ready to go. I don't have to hack my firmware using bizarre buffer exploits and pray that the manufacturer won't disable my applications without my consent next time I update my firmware.
I would seriously like to know if other phones get software updates (optional or otherwise)
Yes, it'scommon. Other manufacturers and carriers don't make a big fuss out of it because, well, they do not have planet sized chips on their shoulders like Apple. They also have thousands of ready-made programs and games ready to add on to their smartphones that don't require buffer exploits.
Visual Voicemail is trivial to do even on the EDGE network. Voce is extremely low bandwidth
I guess so, although I'd still be wary of an interactive EDGE connection for voice. One thing EDGE can't do, really, is visual VOIP. I've been pleasantly surprised by Microsoft Portrait over the EVDO, which works quite well. Skype Mobile has an easier interface, but it doesn't yet do video.
People keep waving this one around, but honestly, I'd rather have 8G of internal storage than fumble with a handful of mini-SD cards at $75 apiece.
What use is that 8GB to users who have not exploited buffer overflows when you CAN'T USE IT TO STORE YOUR DATA?
4GB mini SD is currently around $35-$40. I expect the 8GB cards will come in at around $60. Also, with a 3G phone, I stream my audio and video from my home server to my phone which saves me carrying around several TB's worth of cards.
[video] Is this really that commonly-used of a feature?
Yes, when you have a good camera and a good network with high bandwidth that can upload to YouTube et al with a single click. This is the same shit I heard from ipod fans when, three years after other people had brought out video players, they were still saying, hey, who needs video? Then Apple releases the ipod with video and suddenly it's hey, video is cool and we did it first!
I frankly don't see the use, since most cellphones have such shitty cameras that you can't tell what it is you're looking at anyway
I agree, if you're using something like the iphone's camera than most things look like shit. However, real camerphones have 3-5 MPs with flashes, and they are great.
Apple is releasing an SDK, and in the meantime, there are tons of homebrew apps.
FUDish vapourware and me-too trinket apps. "tons"... heh. Do you have any idea how many Symbian, Windows CE, or J2ME apps there are?
[Voice UI] Motorola thinks it's so amazing and important that they assign a physical button to it, which I always end up hitting inadvertantly.
My phone has that as well and if it's a problem, you know what I do about my clumsy fingers? I RE-ASSIGN the button, or just de-assign it. I am sorry your iphone UI is the usual unconfigurable Apple thing that's either Jobs' ways ot the high way, but being able to re-assign buttons rules. Voice is the only responsible way to use a phone while driving, for example, and it's all Star Trekky when you use it just walking down the street.
[IM] considering other phones I've used also don't have this feature
Yes, those millions of people using AIM and YIM on their phones must be delusional.
Agreed, [Visual Voicemail is] a great feature. Unfortunately, for that to be accomodated, you needed the telco to modify the way their voice-mail system works.
VV was around before the iphone (CallWave, Simulscribe) and Google/GrandCentral's implementation works on any phone currently, for free, and it's good. VV is just not that hard to do. It's easy if you have a real 3G connection, so that you can download the audio on-the-fly in response to user clicks. What's impressive about the Apple/AT&T implementation is that they managed to pull it off using super-slow EDGE. That's what required "epic" phone-carrier cooperation, clever caching, and why the companies involved feel it's a big deal. On that network, it is. On any modern network, trivial.
The iPhone does several things that no other phone in the world does.
Yes, in the etch-a-sketch app, you can shake it to erase the screen. That's pretty cool... if you're three.
In terms of actual new things, the iPhone has visual voicemail.
VV was around before the iphone (CallWave, Simulscribe) and Google/GrandCentral's implementation works on any phone currently, for free. It's just not that hard to do.
Other phones don't even have real web browsers, much less tabbed web browsers
Opera *invented* tabbed browsing - it's been around a lot longer than you think. And the neat Mobile Safari zooming effect? That was on ThunderHawk.
A "smart" phone deals with data integration and extended functionality. It simply offers a greater level of service than a simple phone with voice and text functions.
Your point has a great deal of merit, and we could engage in trading definitions of "open" vs "smart" for a long time. For example, Windows Mobile is most definitely a closed system, yet the ease and plentitude of development environments for it means that it has a mind-bogglingly wide array of applications and games available for it (or greatly varying quality!). Compared to the alternative "open" phone systems available, it seems to have an undue edge in application availability. This is some sort of paradox.
However, what the iphone does, it does well considering how rushed Apple seems to have been where many of the canned applications lack integration or that sense of "finished". However, how easy is it today to actually *buy* a phone with just "voice and text functions"? Pretty difficult. Strip away the UI glitz and Apple's phone has a set of applications about equal to a mid-range non-smartphone from Verizon or AT&T, and lacks certain taken-for-granted phone features like MMS, TV, and video. It's contacts/calendar synchonisation is also nothing to write home about. In terms of data integration, it can't hook up easily to BB or Exchange servers, and it has no on-device database browser to parse SQLite or other formats. And I can't simply copy, say, a CSV spreadsheet or a PPT presentation to it for quick viewing.
Americans can't just buy a new phone and swap their SIM cards particularly easily.
Actually, they could, if they wanted, buy unlocked phones with no carrier subsidy and plug in contract or pay-as-you-go SIMs. However, the vast majoirty have not because the US mobile market has generally seen a much lower average per-device price point than other markets. One good thing about the pseudo-smartphone from Apple is that it has encouraged manufacturers to market high-end, high-price phones for the US market.
What I find amazing is that so many people proved themselves so willing to pay so much to AT&T for apple's phone, accept a lock-in, yet received no real carrier subsidy from AT&T for this. Apple's phone is about on a feature level with a Helio or a Sidekick so it should have been $100-$200 with contract (or even free). Kudos to Apple for convinving people to pay so much!
there's over a million iPhone owners who might disagree with you
The key problem with this logic is that the iphone is not actually a smartphone. It is a dumbphone in pretty drag. Maybe in a couple of years, after its putative SDK has enbled people to write some applications that Apple has seen fit to bless then, and only then, could it be called smart.
Until then it's really just a fancy Helio with lamer social networking.
not all workplaces are going to be happy about downloading music on the Internet all day
Oh, I route through my tethered phone to avoid any workplace/college firewalls or snoops without having to SSH everything and go through anonymous DNS. On a bad day the Sprint/Verizon EVDo gets around 800Kbps. On a good this this can go up to 1.5 Mbps. It's actually enough to do good DIV/H.264 video at decent framerates, and more than enough for video. $30/month for unlimited streaming including voice is a steal.
I just copy my home iTunes folder to a notebook drive in a USB enclosure, and take it to work.
Carrying disks?!? I just use Media Center to stream my audio and video over the internet from my server to whatever clients I like. I've used Media Center because of its single-click client-specific transcoding and its great tagging/smartlists. However, of late, I've been increasingly using VLC and Orb to stream more media to my phone. Anyway, the point is, carrying a physical disk is a postmodern sneakernet that should be left in the dustbin of history as soon as possible.
For someone who was ostensibly advocating natural selection, removing himself from the gene pool early and before creating as many offspring as possible is a staggering display of unfitness. Instead of all that pseudo crap on his profile, he should have taken the time to read Darwin's Origin of Species.
I'd like to see you dial without looking at the phone on a touchscreen.
My phone (HTC Hermes/Mogul) is voice activated. There's a single button that turns on the mic (wouldn't want it on all the time, would we, that's a hard boundary problem). I can tell it to call people, start apps, whatever. It works surprisingly well - I thought I wouldn't use it very much because it's so nerdy looking but it's actually really handy if you're in a hurry and don't even want to take the time to look at the screen or punch numbers.
They would only use the Cell phone when they are on the road and normally they just need to do some rather low bandwidth things
When I am on the road I am usually using Google Maps on the non-iphone almost constantly. My average monthly download for that alone seems to be a couple of hundred MBs. Without 3G that would be impossible.
Stream music to your iPhone. Open-source, no hacking required
You know you can do this really easily with any Windows, Palm, or Symbian phone using VLC, right? Some people use web pages for control whereas I prefer to VNC in. Or if you want an even more turnkey approach, Orb is all set up and ready to go. I think Orb probably even works with iphones, as long as you have the right codecs loaded on your phone. It browses your local disk media and publishes them on ready-to-go web pages. It even indexes tags.
Try finding a 3G signal when you're in a car driving down the freeway.
I think you'll find that it's AT&T's 3G that is extremely lacking. I just finished a cross-country drive. I got 3G most of the way and was using Google Maps on the phone all the way to check out the terrain. Even in the depths of the western deserts I was still getting 1xRTT which brought me down to, shudder, iphoney speeds and Google Maps took forever to scroll. But 3G was usable across the shared Verizon/Sprint network for an amazing length of the journey.
MP3 players prefered by some slashdotters did not sell better than the iPod because they were harder to use, sync and setup for average consumers.
Know what else was popular for a while because it was "easier" to use for "average people" than the more fully featured Internet alternative? AOL.
tablet computers were not a big enough market for Apple to spend its limited resources chasing. And even if the market grew, it would not reach a size to be of interest.
Yes, you're right. Apple *has* lost its will to attack new markets. That's why it took *5* years after the Koreans invented MP3 portables before Apple entered with the ipod. Similarly, Apple waited 3 years after others had introduced video handhelds before releasing a video ipod.
The trailblazers have been working diligently on Tablet PCs for a few years now, and some of them are into their second and third generations. That's long enough for Apple to come in, grab what works, and call it its own.
I've yet to see a cell phone that's a good basic communication device first.
You're just saying that because you've probably not used yet a mobile with Skype and Portrait video calling loaded. Three-year-old HTCs can do this - it's not that hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Done: AppTapp [nullriver.com]
Thanks, but I like being able to install apps on my phone without relying on dodgy exploits and be confident that they will not be disabled by a later firmware update.
unlike my previous Treo it is seamless to install apps OTA. Actually the best I've seen on any phone/PDA to date.
On my Windows Mobile phone (HTC Hermes), I can browse (using a browser of my choice) to a link, click to download and run a CAB installer, and the program installs is ready to go. I don't have to hack my firmware using bizarre buffer exploits and pray that the manufacturer won't disable my applications without my consent next time I update my firmware.
I would seriously like to know if other phones get software updates (optional or otherwise)
Yes, it's common. Other manufacturers and carriers don't make a big fuss out of it because, well, they do not have planet sized chips on their shoulders like Apple. They also have thousands of ready-made programs and games ready to add on to their smartphones that don't require buffer exploits.
Visual Voicemail is trivial to do even on the EDGE network. Voce is extremely low bandwidth
I guess so, although I'd still be wary of an interactive EDGE connection for voice. One thing EDGE can't do, really, is visual VOIP. I've been pleasantly surprised by Microsoft Portrait over the EVDO, which works quite well. Skype Mobile has an easier interface, but it doesn't yet do video.
The idea to make it consistent and a part of the baseline for a phone.
You're right, just like Cisco did for years (thanks to Net6).
People keep waving this one around, but honestly, I'd rather have 8G of internal storage than fumble with a handful of mini-SD cards at $75 apiece.
What use is that 8GB to users who have not exploited buffer overflows when you CAN'T USE IT TO STORE YOUR DATA?
4GB mini SD is currently around $35-$40. I expect the 8GB cards will come in at around $60. Also, with a 3G phone, I stream my audio and video from my home server to my phone which saves me carrying around several TB's worth of cards.
[video] Is this really that commonly-used of a feature?
Yes, when you have a good camera and a good network with high bandwidth that can upload to YouTube et al with a single click. This is the same shit I heard from ipod fans when, three years after other people had brought out video players, they were still saying, hey, who needs video? Then Apple releases the ipod with video and suddenly it's hey, video is cool and we did it first!
I frankly don't see the use, since most cellphones have such shitty cameras that you can't tell what it is you're looking at anyway
I agree, if you're using something like the iphone's camera than most things look like shit. However, real camerphones have 3-5 MPs with flashes, and they are great.
Apple is releasing an SDK, and in the meantime, there are tons of homebrew apps.
FUDish vapourware and me-too trinket apps. "tons"... heh. Do you have any idea how many Symbian, Windows CE, or J2ME apps there are?
[Voice UI] Motorola thinks it's so amazing and important that they assign a physical button to it, which I always end up hitting inadvertantly.
My phone has that as well and if it's a problem, you know what I do about my clumsy fingers? I RE-ASSIGN the button, or just de-assign it. I am sorry your iphone UI is the usual unconfigurable Apple thing that's either Jobs' ways ot the high way, but being able to re-assign buttons rules. Voice is the only responsible way to use a phone while driving, for example, and it's all Star Trekky when you use it just walking down the street.
[IM] considering other phones I've used also don't have this feature
Yes, those millions of people using AIM and YIM on their phones must be delusional.
Agreed, [Visual Voicemail is] a great feature. Unfortunately, for that to be accomodated, you needed the telco to modify the way their voice-mail system works.
VV was around before the iphone (CallWave, Simulscribe) and Google/GrandCentral's implementation works on any phone currently, for free, and it's good. VV is just not that hard to do. It's easy if you have a real 3G connection, so that you can download the audio on-the-fly in response to user clicks. What's impressive about the Apple/AT&T implementation is that they managed to pull it off using super-slow EDGE. That's what required "epic" phone-carrier cooperation, clever caching, and why the companies involved feel it's a big deal. On that network, it is. On any modern network, trivial.
The iPhone does several things that no other phone in the world does.
Yes, in the etch-a-sketch app, you can shake it to erase the screen. That's pretty cool... if you're three.
In terms of actual new things, the iPhone has visual voicemail.
VV was around before the iphone (CallWave, Simulscribe) and Google/GrandCentral's implementation works on any phone currently, for free. It's just not that hard to do.
Other phones don't even have real web browsers, much less tabbed web browsers
Opera *invented* tabbed browsing - it's been around a lot longer than you think. And the neat Mobile Safari zooming effect? That was on ThunderHawk.
A "smart" phone deals with data integration and extended functionality. It simply offers a greater level of service than a simple phone with voice and text functions.
Your point has a great deal of merit, and we could engage in trading definitions of "open" vs "smart" for a long time. For example, Windows Mobile is most definitely a closed system, yet the ease and plentitude of development environments for it means that it has a mind-bogglingly wide array of applications and games available for it (or greatly varying quality!). Compared to the alternative "open" phone systems available, it seems to have an undue edge in application availability. This is some sort of paradox.
However, what the iphone does, it does well considering how rushed Apple seems to have been where many of the canned applications lack integration or that sense of "finished". However, how easy is it today to actually *buy* a phone with just "voice and text functions"? Pretty difficult. Strip away the UI glitz and Apple's phone has a set of applications about equal to a mid-range non-smartphone from Verizon or AT&T, and lacks certain taken-for-granted phone features like MMS, TV, and video. It's contacts/calendar synchonisation is also nothing to write home about. In terms of data integration, it can't hook up easily to BB or Exchange servers, and it has no on-device database browser to parse SQLite or other formats. And I can't simply copy, say, a CSV spreadsheet or a PPT presentation to it for quick viewing.
Maybe with the SDK things will improve...
Americans can't just buy a new phone and swap their SIM cards particularly easily.
Actually, they could, if they wanted, buy unlocked phones with no carrier subsidy and plug in contract or pay-as-you-go SIMs. However, the vast majoirty have not because the US mobile market has generally seen a much lower average per-device price point than other markets. One good thing about the pseudo-smartphone from Apple is that it has encouraged manufacturers to market high-end, high-price phones for the US market.
What I find amazing is that so many people proved themselves so willing to pay so much to AT&T for apple's phone, accept a lock-in, yet received no real carrier subsidy from AT&T for this. Apple's phone is about on a feature level with a Helio or a Sidekick so it should have been $100-$200 with contract (or even free). Kudos to Apple for convinving people to pay so much!
I very rarely was able to do all of that on my old Treo, since web browsing was such an atrociously clunky experience
Couldn't you run Opera on your Treo? Anyway, I find, for quick results, that 411 is faster.
there's over a million iPhone owners who might disagree with you
The key problem with this logic is that the iphone is not actually a smartphone. It is a dumbphone in pretty drag. Maybe in a couple of years, after its putative SDK has enbled people to write some applications that Apple has seen fit to bless then, and only then, could it be called smart.
Until then it's really just a fancy Helio with lamer social networking.
not all workplaces are going to be happy about downloading music on the Internet all day
Oh, I route through my tethered phone to avoid any workplace/college firewalls or snoops without having to SSH everything and go through anonymous DNS. On a bad day the Sprint/Verizon EVDo gets around 800Kbps. On a good this this can go up to 1.5 Mbps. It's actually enough to do good DIV/H.264 video at decent framerates, and more than enough for video. $30/month for unlimited streaming including voice is a steal.
I just copy my home iTunes folder to a notebook drive in a USB enclosure, and take it to work.
Carrying disks?!? I just use Media Center to stream my audio and video over the internet from my server to whatever clients I like. I've used Media Center because of its single-click client-specific transcoding and its great tagging/smartlists. However, of late, I've been increasingly using VLC and Orb to stream more media to my phone. Anyway, the point is, carrying a physical disk is a postmodern sneakernet that should be left in the dustbin of history as soon as possible.
For someone who was ostensibly advocating natural selection, removing himself from the gene pool early and before creating as many offspring as possible is a staggering display of unfitness. Instead of all that pseudo crap on his profile, he should have taken the time to read Darwin's Origin of Species.
I guess it's lucky, then, that Melinda French was a frisky 20-something single when she and Bill started shagging. And out of that union came Bob...
show off! :P
If you're in the US, it's not that difficult to get... SERO. $30/month for unlimited is pretty sweet.
The single greatest online game is the Korean Arse Shooter.
I'd like to see you dial without looking at the phone on a touchscreen.
My phone (HTC Hermes/Mogul) is voice activated. There's a single button that turns on the mic (wouldn't want it on all the time, would we, that's a hard boundary problem). I can tell it to call people, start apps, whatever. It works surprisingly well - I thought I wouldn't use it very much because it's so nerdy looking but it's actually really handy if you're in a hurry and don't even want to take the time to look at the screen or punch numbers.
They would only use the Cell phone when they are on the road and normally they just need to do some rather low bandwidth things
When I am on the road I am usually using Google Maps on the non-iphone almost constantly. My average monthly download for that alone seems to be a couple of hundred MBs. Without 3G that would be impossible.
Stream music to your iPhone. Open-source, no hacking required
You know you can do this really easily with any Windows, Palm, or Symbian phone using VLC, right? Some people use web pages for control whereas I prefer to VNC in. Or if you want an even more turnkey approach, Orb is all set up and ready to go. I think Orb probably even works with iphones, as long as you have the right codecs loaded on your phone. It browses your local disk media and publishes them on ready-to-go web pages. It even indexes tags.
Try finding a 3G signal when you're in a car driving down the freeway.
I think you'll find that it's AT&T's 3G that is extremely lacking. I just finished a cross-country drive. I got 3G most of the way and was using Google Maps on the phone all the way to check out the terrain. Even in the depths of the western deserts I was still getting 1xRTT which brought me down to, shudder, iphoney speeds and Google Maps took forever to scroll. But 3G was usable across the shared Verizon/Sprint network for an amazing length of the journey.
MP3 players prefered by some slashdotters did not sell better than the iPod because they were harder to use, sync and setup for average consumers.
Know what else was popular for a while because it was "easier" to use for "average people" than the more fully featured Internet alternative? AOL.
tablet computers were not a big enough market for Apple to spend its limited resources chasing. And even if the market grew, it would not reach a size to be of interest.
Yes, you're right. Apple *has* lost its will to attack new markets. That's why it took *5* years after the Koreans invented MP3 portables before Apple entered with the ipod. Similarly, Apple waited 3 years after others had introduced video handhelds before releasing a video ipod.
The trailblazers have been working diligently on Tablet PCs for a few years now, and some of them are into their second and third generations. That's long enough for Apple to come in, grab what works, and call it its own.
I've yet to see a cell phone that's a good basic communication device first.
You're just saying that because you've probably not used yet a mobile with Skype and Portrait video calling loaded. Three-year-old HTCs can do this - it's not that hard.
one button, picture messaging is hideously expensive
My picture/audio/video (and text) messages are free (Sprint) and my internet is unlimited.