Why would a company pay repeatedly for an add to be placed in some one else's content when it can create it's own and get people to redistribute it for free.
Because not every company is in the content creation industry. And not every business is large enough to have people to dedicate to creating content.
There's tons of content out there on the internet and elsewhere. But the fact of the matter is that most of it isn't very good.
A cellphone should not have a Task Manager. You should never have to worry about quitting programs because you've used up too much memory.
Amen! I also love how the phone has a knack for running out of memory right when an important call comes in. There's nothing more frustrating than a ringing phone that won't show me the phone screen and where the buttons suddenly don't work.
WM6 has this feature, too? Geez. I thought it was just SonyEricsson/Symbian that had the craptastic feature of dropping incoming phone calls if you have too many programs open. It's only worse when you're watching a movie and the phone starts to ring, but gets paralyzed somewhere in the screen switch so all you can do is sit there and listen to it ring, but not actually answer the thing.
No, SonyEricsson. You had three chances to get it right. Never again. I've gone from paying $400 for crappy phones that don't work from SE and Nokia to paying $400 for excellent phones that always work from Apple. The handset companies did this to themselves.
I just read that, and everyone else should, too. It sums up the last five years of cell phone technology frustrations and why it was so easy for Apple to eat everyone else's lunch.
As I stated elsewhere, people shouldn't be mad at Apple for the iPhone. They should be mad at Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola for feeding us such crap all these years. With 30+ years of experience, it shouldn't have been so easy for Apple's phone to be so much better.
Because the mobile network you're paying $1000 a year to use is only designed to provide minimal voice quality. Perhaps you should blame the provider, not the iPhone.
While I agree with you about the carrier stuff, my wife and I have both been VERY surprised by the voice quality of the iPhone. Hers replaced an LG KE820. Mine replaced a SonyEricsson M600i. The iPhone quality is noticably better. Significantly better than the other two. We've been very pleased.
You can't fit great optics in the size of a typical mobile phone, so the camera is a toy.
It's not a toy. You're a snob.
There are cameraphones out there that take 5MP pictures with Carl Zeiss lenses. Those specs were state of the art for DSLRs only a handful of years ago. You need to update yourself on what's out there these days.
Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.
That person must have gotten fired at United Airlines in the last bankruptcy. I've never been able to get its voice system to recognize anything I'm saying, even in a quiet room, let alone a noisy airport terminal.
I never thought I'd beg to have my call transferred to India.
Personally, I HATE any website that has animated advertising of any type. When I'm trying to read an article, whether its somebodies personal blog or a major news corporation, I find animation of any type highly distracting. The animation always distracts my eyes from reading the article that I'm actually interested in.
Note, I am not against advertising.. I click on web ads if they inform me of inventive stuff I could really use.
I do the same thing, but it's all problematic, isn't it?
Advertising wouldn't be so annoying if it didn't show me ads I don't care about. If I could watch the Discovery Channel without ads for car insurance (don't have a car), mortgage refinancing (don't have a mortgage), or intimate feminine products (don't have girly bits) I would be happier.
If the shows had ads for things I actually cared about I might watch through the commercial break. But in order for that to happen, I'd have to give up a lot of personal information, which we're all reluctant to do. Properly targeted ads will get watched. But there's no way to generate targeting without raising privacy concerns.
Internet ads are slightly better because they can at least geo-target me and have an idea what kind of page I'm already looking at. But when it comes to TV, radio(!), and other media I'm not sure what the solution is.
The production companies LOVE when people watch TV shows on DVD -- it's another big revenue stream with virtually no overhead.
Unfortunately, as long as people are happy paying through the nose for what they used to record for free the TV production companies won't see any reason to offer shows at a reasonable price on iTunes or another service.
Sometimes I wonder if all the schedule changing isn't just a ploy to keep people from regularly recording the shows they like, so they end up getting them on DVD beacuse it's easier.
Cable companies don't get the ad revenue for ads, except for shows they own, and they would get that anyway.
Depends on your cable company. On most cable TV shows on popular channels, the last couple of ads of the break are inserted by the cable company which gets the money. The technology for doing so has become so cheap over the years that even small cable companies can do it. Most people don't notice until they change to satellite or move to a place with a different cable company.
Exactly. Computer and internet companies are like 14-year-old girls. They like to pretend that only they can invent new things and anything older than them is obsolete.
Media companies change. Even the giants. It's the part that IBM, Google, et.al. don't see or won't admit. Both Google and IBM use newspapers to advertise. What does that tell you?
150 years ago newspaper was going to drive the spoken word out of business. It didn't. 70 years ago radio was going to drive newspapers out of business. It didn't. 50 years ago TV was going to drive radio out of business. It didn't. 30 years ago CompuServe was going to drive wire companies out of business. It didn't. 10 years ago AOL was going to drive TV out of business. It didn't.
Ten years from now there will be some new technology that someone will declare is going to drive the internet out of business. It won't. Technology changes. It rarely just ends.
Crap like the N95 with 3G, HSDPA, a 5mp camera, installable applications, MMS, GPS and so forth?
Yes, exactly. It's a fine phone. But it's not revolutionary. Apple has shown us that Nokia probably could have put it out years ago. Nokia was just bleeding us for extra money.
Apple aren't exactly killing Nokia. They had less than 2% of all sales in July - which may have been a blip due to pent-up demand.
Using your numbers, Apple got 2% of the market IN ONE MONTH!. That should scare the crap out of Nokia and friends. Nokia, SE, Motorola (and to a much lesser extent Samsung and LG) have had decades of lead time on this.
Thanks - installing your own ringtones - something else the iPhone can't do.
You fail to see the big picture because you're hung up on feature lists. Aside from MIDI, only recently have the big cell phone companies let you install your own MP3 ringtones. Why all of a sudden? Because the iPhone was coming. Also, you can install your own limited set of ringtones on an iPhone.
The rest of your comments are not worth responding to because they demonstrate that you really don't understand what I'm saying. You're being too much of a pendant to see the big picture. Sounds like you got p0wned by Nokia all these years, and don't want to admit it. I understand. We both wasted a lot of money on Nokia phones over the years.
If it bothers you so much, move. Move to the city. One of the big reasons people live in cities is services. You'll also be doing the environment a favor.
Also, you're forgetting wireless. If you're really just 15 miles from San Francisco, you should have several wireless internet options. Plus satellite.
I've never understood why so many people harbor such resentment toward Apple and it's iPhone. I'm starting to believe it's a lot of mis-placed anger.
Instead of being mad/jealous/outraged with Apple for producing such a great phone (at whatever price point), people should be made at Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola for feeding us SUCH CRAP for so many years.
Apple shouldn't have been able to beat the big cell phone companies at their own game so easily. The iPhone should have been the sort of phone that the masses (not geeks) looked at and thought was OK, but not a showstopper. That didn't happen. Why? Because the big three have been selling us garbage phones for years at high prices and we've lapped it up, believing that they were bleeding edge. But they weren't.
Apple couldn't have put more than four or five years into R&D for the iPhone. What has Nokia been doing for the last 30 years? Ericsson? Motorola? Coming up with crappy little phones with crappy little keypads that play crappy little dee-dee-dul-dee ringtones. Put simply: Apple ate their lunch.
Sure, the recent offerings from Nokia are approaching iPhone quality, but SE and Moto are still far behind. And if there wasn't an iPhone to push them in this direction? We'd be happily consuming whatever underfunctioning turd of a handset the big three told us was state of the art.
You don't have to like the iPhone. You don't have to buy an iPhone. You don't have to believe it's the best phone out there. But you can't help but realize that for years we've been sold a big fat lie about what a mobile phone could be. Thanks to the iPhone, we don't believe the Nokia/SE/Moto lie anymore.
Add onto that mess situations like in Houston a few years ago when Disney forced Time-Warner to carry ToonDisney and a bunch of other Disney-owned channels the cable customers don't want in order for the cable company to continue to have access to KTRK, the local ABC (Disney) station.
So, it's not just the cable companies that are bastards. It's a horrifying patchwork of deals and forced negotiations that leave customers with crappy channels they don't want to watch at rates they don't want to pay. There's plenty of bastard to go around.
Opening up the cable markets would certainly be a good thing. It would be nice to be able to pay for the services I use instead of having to pay for 150 channels when I only watch 15.
I don't even watch 15. What I'd like to do is pay only for the individual shows I watch. If Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, The Soup were on iTunes, I wouldn't need cable service at all. I get more HD channels over the air than I do from Comcast.
The same Mrs. Feinstein who fiercely pushed raising the mimum wage in every American state and territory EXCEPT AMERICAN SAMOA. American Samoa's biggest employer is Starkist Tuna. Starkist Tuna is headquartered in Mrs. Feinstein's backyard. How every convenient.
Remember that "First 100 hours" hype? She and her ilk accomplished nothing. Another wasted opportunity. No wonder people vote Republican.
Unlike here in the US, where I pay $60 for the only carrier available in my area for 1.5 mbps down and 128k up.
The problem is that you pretend your situation is the same for everyone across the United States. Belgium is far smaller and more homogenous than the United States where there are plenty of places with low prices and tons of competition. Just because you choose live in the woods doesn't mean everyone in the country has your same problem.
To be accurate, what you should have written is, "Unlike here in my neighborhood" at which point your single data point ceases to be worth anything and you're unveiled for the whiner you are.
I know a few people who make their living simply trading stocks. They don't consider themselves "stock traders" by profession, just people who invest well enough that they move to a different city every couple of months so they can see the world.
Anyway, I occasionally run into them at Starbucks, because where there's wifi, there's an office. The interesting thing about this group of guys is that they all use tablet PCs (IBMs I think -- they're black and don't look cheap like a Dell) to track their finances (which they constantly do).
I don't know if there's something about tablet PCs that is useful to the financial+mobile set, but until it was mentioned above, I never considered tablets would be useful to artists and designers.
I love when someone yammering away on a cell phone in public gives out their cell phone number to the person they're talking to. I start calling them and interrupting their conversation. More fun than a cell phone jammer.
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There's tons of content out there on the internet and elsewhere. But the fact of the matter is that most of it isn't very good.
For the first time in /. history an AC has a good point.
No, SonyEricsson. You had three chances to get it right. Never again. I've gone from paying $400 for crappy phones that don't work from SE and Nokia to paying $400 for excellent phones that always work from Apple. The handset companies did this to themselves.
I just read that, and everyone else should, too. It sums up the last five years of cell phone technology frustrations and why it was so easy for Apple to eat everyone else's lunch.
As I stated elsewhere, people shouldn't be mad at Apple for the iPhone. They should be mad at Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola for feeding us such crap all these years. With 30+ years of experience, it shouldn't have been so easy for Apple's phone to be so much better.
There are cameraphones out there that take 5MP pictures with Carl Zeiss lenses. Those specs were state of the art for DSLRs only a handful of years ago. You need to update yourself on what's out there these days.
I never thought I'd beg to have my call transferred to India.
Advertising wouldn't be so annoying if it didn't show me ads I don't care about. If I could watch the Discovery Channel without ads for car insurance (don't have a car), mortgage refinancing (don't have a mortgage), or intimate feminine products (don't have girly bits) I would be happier.
If the shows had ads for things I actually cared about I might watch through the commercial break. But in order for that to happen, I'd have to give up a lot of personal information, which we're all reluctant to do. Properly targeted ads will get watched. But there's no way to generate targeting without raising privacy concerns.
Internet ads are slightly better because they can at least geo-target me and have an idea what kind of page I'm already looking at. But when it comes to TV, radio(!), and other media I'm not sure what the solution is.
The production companies LOVE when people watch TV shows on DVD -- it's another big revenue stream with virtually no overhead.
Unfortunately, as long as people are happy paying through the nose for what they used to record for free the TV production companies won't see any reason to offer shows at a reasonable price on iTunes or another service.
Sometimes I wonder if all the schedule changing isn't just a ploy to keep people from regularly recording the shows they like, so they end up getting them on DVD beacuse it's easier.
Exactly. Computer and internet companies are like 14-year-old girls. They like to pretend that only they can invent new things and anything older than them is obsolete.
Media companies change. Even the giants. It's the part that IBM, Google, et.al. don't see or won't admit. Both Google and IBM use newspapers to advertise. What does that tell you?
150 years ago newspaper was going to drive the spoken word out of business. It didn't.
70 years ago radio was going to drive newspapers out of business. It didn't.
50 years ago TV was going to drive radio out of business. It didn't.
30 years ago CompuServe was going to drive wire companies out of business. It didn't.
10 years ago AOL was going to drive TV out of business. It didn't.
Ten years from now there will be some new technology that someone will declare is going to drive the internet out of business. It won't. Technology changes. It rarely just ends.
The rest of your comments are not worth responding to because they demonstrate that you really don't understand what I'm saying. You're being too much of a pendant to see the big picture. Sounds like you got p0wned by Nokia all these years, and don't want to admit it. I understand. We both wasted a lot of money on Nokia phones over the years.
If it bothers you so much, move. Move to the city. One of the big reasons people live in cities is services. You'll also be doing the environment a favor.
Also, you're forgetting wireless. If you're really just 15 miles from San Francisco, you should have several wireless internet options. Plus satellite.
I've never understood why so many people harbor such resentment toward Apple and it's iPhone. I'm starting to believe it's a lot of mis-placed anger.
Instead of being mad/jealous/outraged with Apple for producing such a great phone (at whatever price point), people should be made at Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola for feeding us SUCH CRAP for so many years.
Apple shouldn't have been able to beat the big cell phone companies at their own game so easily. The iPhone should have been the sort of phone that the masses (not geeks) looked at and thought was OK, but not a showstopper. That didn't happen. Why? Because the big three have been selling us garbage phones for years at high prices and we've lapped it up, believing that they were bleeding edge. But they weren't.
Apple couldn't have put more than four or five years into R&D for the iPhone. What has Nokia been doing for the last 30 years? Ericsson? Motorola? Coming up with crappy little phones with crappy little keypads that play crappy little dee-dee-dul-dee ringtones. Put simply: Apple ate their lunch.
Sure, the recent offerings from Nokia are approaching iPhone quality, but SE and Moto are still far behind. And if there wasn't an iPhone to push them in this direction? We'd be happily consuming whatever underfunctioning turd of a handset the big three told us was state of the art.
You don't have to like the iPhone. You don't have to buy an iPhone. You don't have to believe it's the best phone out there. But you can't help but realize that for years we've been sold a big fat lie about what a mobile phone could be. Thanks to the iPhone, we don't believe the Nokia/SE/Moto lie anymore.
Add onto that mess situations like in Houston a few years ago when Disney forced Time-Warner to carry ToonDisney and a bunch of other Disney-owned channels the cable customers don't want in order for the cable company to continue to have access to KTRK, the local ABC (Disney) station.
So, it's not just the cable companies that are bastards. It's a horrifying patchwork of deals and forced negotiations that leave customers with crappy channels they don't want to watch at rates they don't want to pay. There's plenty of bastard to go around.
I agree with much of what you propose. But several of your ideas won't fly because they interfere with free speech and federal election laws.
The same Mrs. Feinstein who fiercely pushed raising the mimum wage in every American state and territory EXCEPT AMERICAN SAMOA. American Samoa's biggest employer is Starkist Tuna. Starkist Tuna is headquartered in Mrs. Feinstein's backyard. How every convenient.
Remember that "First 100 hours" hype? She and her ilk accomplished nothing. Another wasted opportunity. No wonder people vote Republican.
To be accurate, what you should have written is, "Unlike here in my neighborhood" at which point your single data point ceases to be worth anything and you're unveiled for the whiner you are.
I know a few people who make their living simply trading stocks. They don't consider themselves "stock traders" by profession, just people who invest well enough that they move to a different city every couple of months so they can see the world.
Anyway, I occasionally run into them at Starbucks, because where there's wifi, there's an office. The interesting thing about this group of guys is that they all use tablet PCs (IBMs I think -- they're black and don't look cheap like a Dell) to track their finances (which they constantly do).
I don't know if there's something about tablet PCs that is useful to the financial+mobile set, but until it was mentioned above, I never considered tablets would be useful to artists and designers.
Is Wang still popular? I haven't seen a Wang terminal since the 90's.
Your post is full of facts and information supportive of Apple.
Prepare to be modded into oblivion by vengeful Microserfs.
I love when someone yammering away on a cell phone in public gives out their cell phone number to the person they're talking to. I start calling them and interrupting their conversation. More fun than a cell phone jammer.