Read the goddamn press release before spouting nonsense. Apple and AT&T (the sources that, you know, KNOW anything) state the following:
In addition, iPhone customers can choose from any of AT&T's standard service plans. Emphasis added. So, to recap, there are 3 special iPhone plans. There are also dozens of standard plans, most of which do NOT include data, all of which are available to iPhone customers.
All 3 iPhone-specific plans have data included. But you are not limited to those three plans.
In addition, iPhone customers can choose from any of AT&T's standard service plans. Emphasis added.
It is not a function of only coverage, which you'd know if you'd read the comment and applied some comprehension skills which you undoubtedly have. It's a function of network availability and practical connection speeds. Most of AT&T's 3G networks are not providing full bandwidth at the present time. Check any of the major cell phone forums for the complaints--it may be a 3G infrastructure in many metro markets, but it's not 3G speed most of the time. It's not substantially better than switching to the GPRS radio. This includes my home bay area market, which *does* have a "3G" market according to the provider map.
Hardly. What you're really saying is that lack of a CDMA/PCS version is a great reason not to buy the iPhone. Since the iPhone is fundamentally incompatible with their networks, what Verizon/Sprint have to offer has no bearing on anything.
Since we are talking about the iPhone--which I'll repeat--is a GSM phone, I'll stick to my original comment. There's no 3G network to speak of for the iPhone to use, so we're right back at the beginning, where 3G is of no utility in 90% of the United States for the iPhone.
Yes, one day it might become an important feature, but welcome to the world of being an early adopter. Better things come along tomorrow to take advantage of new technologies. Shocking!
I saw that, but didn't find it indicative of a problem. Unless he meant to say "any" and not "all," it could just be a simple firmware problem typical of any prerelease device, since I'm sure "testing with accessories" is something that happens toward the end after "get the damn thing working." Note that I'm not dismissing the possibility of them breaking compatibility, since it wouldn't be the first time, but I think that they wouldn't cut off the entire accessory market in one fell swoop.
The iPhone is available with any of Cingular/AT&T's current plans in addition to the iPhone-only plans, many of which do not include data. 100% of iPhone users will not have data plans, and unlimited data is nothing even resembling mandatory. See the press release.
If AT&T is rolling out 3G as miserably as it currently exists on their network, I'll pass, especially since they're rolling it out in places with high wifi availability, where the real genius of 3G is to offer it in places where you CAN'T find a wifi hotspot.
The recessed port doesn't seem to cause problems in the 5G iPod, which appears to be the exact same configuration. As with current devices with oversized plugs, you may need an extension cable to get it to fit. This is not unique to the iPhone, nor to Apple products generally.
As for the non-response to the Alpine product, this is the first I've heard, and a casual Google search revealed no confirmation. Do you have a source?
So history starts at the founding of the USA? When discussing the legal realities of the American court system, yeah, that's a good place to start. Unless you're interested in academic discussions about how we got what we did and what was and was not inherited from Common Law systems, which is far beyond what most people want to know about.
Your patent says who cannot use your invention/formula/code, I have no idea how you got the idea I said you need to defend the actual "object"; that wouldn't make any sense. From your "control of information" line of nonsense. You, in your previous comment, disagreed with the assessment of IP as the protectable legal documents with a glib line about 'copying patent forms' out of nowhere. If the information were the property, that would be of interest in legal proceedings. But you'll not that that is never the case. If you rail against "control of information" you're not talking about intellectual property at all. You're talking about the fake IP that exists only in the minds of a few rabid loons. Our entire society is based on intellectual capital (i.e. the product) and the property laws which govern it. Every employment contract, license, and business is built upon it.
So was slavery. Slavery has nothing to do with legal philosophy. Its existence in a legal framework is purely a reflection of a defunct social order. Intellectual Property isn't a fad and it isn't a moral wrong, unless you're willing to concede that all property is likewise an abomination and have some alternate structure for society you'd like to propose. If your point is that society evolves to correct its wrongs, then I agree. Intellectual Property certainly isn't one of them, and no one who knows anything can seriously suggest otherwise. That is, of course, excepting those who don't believe a service-based economy should exist.
Please, do not talk down to people. It just makes you look like you have no actual ammunition against their augment No, I'm afraid it just makes you look like you have no way of responding to anything other than the form of response. You're dodging the substance. If I wanted to go there, I'd address some of your serious English-language shortcomings and declare that your response is vacuous because it is ill-formed. I didn't do that. If you feel you're being talked down to, so be it.
Ah, I see. I think everyone (myself included) thinks you are replying to this post at the top of the thread, rather than the AC one that doesn't appear in most view settings. The comment break appears in the exact same place as your joke.
I use screen dialing all the time, and apart from glancing before hitting the call button to ensure that the right number has been entered (which I do on flip phones, too), it doesn't take any more effort.
I'm not sure what sort of touch screens you've used, but if my finger touches the screen, it registers a button press, 100% of the time (same cannot be said for some of my Motorola phones with actual buttons). I've also never seen anyone dial a cell phone without holding it in front of them. This is mostly why I asked.
"Read the rest of this comment..." appears in the VERY NEXT LINE after "add fea"--I thought it was an intentional funny, but based on this comment, it looks like that may not be the case.
h, so IP always existed? That's news to me. I thought it was a relatively new western invention... Uh, yeah. We've had patents, copyrights, contracts, and licenses as long as we've had courts in this country. "Intellectual Property" is a relatively new term, but so is "Family Law"--the specifics bundled under the umbrellas of specialties have existed for centuries.
So I can't illegally copy your patent form?... WTF? Your statement makes no sense. Uh, no. I can't tell whether you're being cute just to argue or whether you're actually as dense as you make it seem. You can't copy something I've patented because I have a legal document guaranteeing that I'm the only one allowed to make commercial use of it. That document defines my intellectual property, not the invention/formula/code itself. Without the patent, my work is of no particular value because it has no protections. It is the patent that you must defend in court, not the drug you've created or the whatever you've patented.
That excuse is overly used and is a case of the fallacy of division. Hogwash. You've clearly demonstrated that you don't even know what IP is, which simply supports the conclusion. It is something frequently talked about but poorly understood outside of professional circles. Most lawyers don't fully understand it because it's only an elective pit stop in law school on the way to family law, international law, or some other specialty. Most professionals don't understand it because they don't deal directly with the legal aspects of it. As for "people in the IP industry tend to support it," that is a complete tautology. There isn't an industry in existence that does not employ or support intellectual property.
"IP" has become a buzzword for something to be attacked and destroyed, but it is a fundamental component of the legal system and of society. There is a great need to differentiate between IP as it exists in the legal framework and "IP" as it exists to represent "bad laws about music and movies I don't like." RMS is guilty of major manipulation in this regard, twisting the term to embody what is "evil" rather than what actually exists.
90% of the US doesn't even have a real 3G network in place yet. My connectivity on 3G with my Windows Mobile device (both on T-Mobile and Cingular) has been no better than GPRS, and I live in the SF Bay Area and travel to other "big name" cities all the time.
While traveling around the world, I definitely love my 3G-capable device. In the US, I hardly see the point. Just something for the spec-sheet geeks to bitch about. Why support something that most people don't have access to, and even those that do can't get up to speed?
90% of the people 90% of the time can't get 3G access speeds, even assuming 100% of cell phone users had data plans, which of course they don't. I think you need to re-assess what "people do 90% of the time."
I'm not going to buy an iPhone, and for all the reasons not to, this is pretty much the most lame.
Intellectual property isn't "control of information." It's not the information that's restricted; it's commercial use of that information, or use that affects the commercial uses of the rightsholder.
It does no one any good to claim otherwise. Slashdot likes to attack a big, giant straw man that doesn't exist. You get all foaming-at-the-mouth about a legal framework and a philosophical approach that doesn't exist.
It's one thing to look at the flaws in the system; it's certainly a good idea to point out the giant, flagrant abuses and be exasperated at the relative ignorance both inside and outside of the law. It's quite another to rant about oppression and assaults on "freedom of speech."
You want to know why you can't get judges and lawyers to agree with you? It's because you talk like crazy people lamenting a loss of rights you never had, bitching about intellectual property as "control of information." Here's a hint: IP is *not* the idea. It's not the formula of the drug and it's not the code of a software product. It's not the waveforms of audio. The intellectual property IS the copyright, the patent, the trade mark, the contractual components, and/or the license that you own and may legally enforce.
People outside the "IP industry" look at it all backwards--just like the very insightful comment about the broadcasting industry a few days ago: the commercials are the content to them; the programming is just a vehicle for getting people to the advertising.
This is what everyone keeps claiming, but who exactly is forcing anyone to pay Sound Exchange? Do they have some sort of kill switch? If they're trying to collect royalties for non-members on music which has been duly licensed for use on internet radio, who cares what Sound Exchange demands? They can sue, but it's a pretty open-and-shut case.
Just don't pay the bastards. What is the problem? Unless Sound Exchange is the supplier of content to be streamed, I don't see how their demands have any teeth.
The SIM card and account are tied to the phone's IMEI on a GSM phone. The phone number simply carries over on the card--but the SIM-hardware interface is via the IMEI, which is reported to the network when a call is made. You can usually switch your card into a new phone because carriers don't usually monitor that the account and IMEI match. So sure, you can switch SIM cards in your handsets (after activating the iPhone), but if activation is tied to the phone IMEI, which seems likely, you'll still have to activate on the provided SIM card, so you'll still have to pay the cancellation fee to unload the iPhone account.
So wait. You give people opened CDs as gifts? I hope for the recipient's sake that they're used to begin with. Talk about bad form, to say nothing of the copying.
That's like giving someone a six pack of beer with one missing. Sure, it could be really good beer and the six pack might exceed some arbitrary spending limit, but how tacky can you get?
I get that the gift market point is why you got modded up, but I still think that's a stretch at best. I can't think of anyone who cares about getting the actual disc vs. getting identical data via download (I realize that this is not offered at present by any major store). In fact, not having something to worry about losing or storing cases is a godsend in our smaller, urban dwellings. iTunes does a pretty good job of displaying cover art in much the same way as a full CD tower gives some bragging rights. I can look all the lyrics up online and store it as metadata with the file itself. Between that and the cover art, I'm not missing anything from the physical medium that I care about. Fun anecdotes I can read on the group's website; posters I can buy or print from a high-quality PDF (without the permanent folds in mini-posters imposed by the CD case dimensions). I'm approaching 30, so maybe I'm part of some contaminated younger generation lacking in appreciation for bits of plastic and delicate paper slips.
It's not an actual mystery--the entire response was a rhetorical device ("these are sugar free cookies! --funny how there's sugar all over the counter, buddy"). The lawyer isn't paid for the legislative research services used to examine these bills; in fact, attorneys pay outrageous sums for these binders which they then have to recoup from their incensed clients. The legislation has practically no impact on the billable hours of a case, unless it's a case where there is otherwise almost no reading material to be handled. The research is the time consuming portion, and the collection and assembly of relevant bits of communication. None of this is performed by most attorneys, and all of it has to be paid up front, out of the lawyer's pocket with only the hope that the case will be successful and that the client will pay.
"Follow the money" is precisely my point. It is not the lawyers who do this.
Yes, it is, in fact. It uses the same 30-pin dock connector as all current iPods and will physically fit in Made for iPod products. Whether or not they do some weird things with the software that prevent the iPhone from responding to these accessories is something no one outside of a very small number of people at Apple know, but I'd guess no.
They're selling this thing as a full-featured iPod nano (with some new features, even). I'd imagine that the small reserve of people who still haven't bought an iPod (ignoring those who never, ever will, no matter what) would further translate into an accessory market. The thing is almost exactly the width of a current iPod, the dock connector is the same and in the same location, and it syncs with iTunes and not some new application just for the iPhone. All signs point to "yes, it will work with iHome and all of those other dock accessories."
Strange, then, how these lawyers who created the laws seem to require so much research and time to prepare a case based on them. If they'd lobbied for them, one might think they'd be more familiar with the contents.
Just more Slashdot bullshit. You get sued, you call a lawyer. Your car gets hit, you call your insurance company. You break your arm, you call a doctor. You buy a house, you call an inspector.
I sure as hell don't want to live in your Fisher-Price world, free of things like nuance and jurisprudence. The last thing anyone needs is a set of overly simple, absolutist laws that fail to take each other into consideration.
Yeah, you missed something. This is a training/reference document, not an internal sales bulletin. As you can see by reading the document (or hell, even the excerpts), these are the answers to questions that customers would be asking, providing an official answer for sales representatives to use. iPhone hardware is not subsidized by AT&T because Apple wouldn't let them. Whether that is Apple arrogance or a brilliant attempt to expose cell phone pricing scams remains to be seen.
My fear is that the plan price will be comparable to any other data device, but without the benefit of a portion of that monthly bill being sent back to the manufacturer to pay the artificially low price of the handsets.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not a function of only coverage, which you'd know if you'd read the comment and applied some comprehension skills which you undoubtedly have. It's a function of network availability and practical connection speeds. Most of AT&T's 3G networks are not providing full bandwidth at the present time. Check any of the major cell phone forums for the complaints--it may be a 3G infrastructure in many metro markets, but it's not 3G speed most of the time. It's not substantially better than switching to the GPRS radio. This includes my home bay area market, which *does* have a "3G" market according to the provider map.
Hardly. What you're really saying is that lack of a CDMA/PCS version is a great reason not to buy the iPhone. Since the iPhone is fundamentally incompatible with their networks, what Verizon/Sprint have to offer has no bearing on anything.
Since we are talking about the iPhone--which I'll repeat--is a GSM phone, I'll stick to my original comment. There's no 3G network to speak of for the iPhone to use, so we're right back at the beginning, where 3G is of no utility in 90% of the United States for the iPhone.
Yes, one day it might become an important feature, but welcome to the world of being an early adopter. Better things come along tomorrow to take advantage of new technologies. Shocking!
I saw that, but didn't find it indicative of a problem. Unless he meant to say "any" and not "all," it could just be a simple firmware problem typical of any prerelease device, since I'm sure "testing with accessories" is something that happens toward the end after "get the damn thing working." Note that I'm not dismissing the possibility of them breaking compatibility, since it wouldn't be the first time, but I think that they wouldn't cut off the entire accessory market in one fell swoop.
The iPhone is available with any of Cingular/AT&T's current plans in addition to the iPhone-only plans, many of which do not include data. 100% of iPhone users will not have data plans, and unlimited data is nothing even resembling mandatory. See the press release. If AT&T is rolling out 3G as miserably as it currently exists on their network, I'll pass, especially since they're rolling it out in places with high wifi availability, where the real genius of 3G is to offer it in places where you CAN'T find a wifi hotspot.
Sprint and Verizon are not GSM networks. The iPhone is a GSM phone.
The recessed port doesn't seem to cause problems in the 5G iPod, which appears to be the exact same configuration. As with current devices with oversized plugs, you may need an extension cable to get it to fit. This is not unique to the iPhone, nor to Apple products generally.
As for the non-response to the Alpine product, this is the first I've heard, and a casual Google search revealed no confirmation. Do you have a source?
True enough :)
Ah, I see. I think everyone (myself included) thinks you are replying to this post at the top of the thread, rather than the AC one that doesn't appear in most view settings. The comment break appears in the exact same place as your joke.
I use screen dialing all the time, and apart from glancing before hitting the call button to ensure that the right number has been entered (which I do on flip phones, too), it doesn't take any more effort.
I'm not sure what sort of touch screens you've used, but if my finger touches the screen, it registers a button press, 100% of the time (same cannot be said for some of my Motorola phones with actual buttons). I've also never seen anyone dial a cell phone without holding it in front of them. This is mostly why I asked.
So, um, what do you do about the oil on your current phone's screen?
How does the single "answer" button press (universally located in the lower-left just like Windows smartphones) cause fumbling?
What buttons do you push without looking at the device?
Just questions, not an attack.
What is the whole "except if you want to use it with 3rd party headphones or in your car's iPod dock" all about?
It's got a standard 3.5mm minijack headphone port and a standard (for iPod) 30-pin dock connector.
"Read the rest of this comment..." appears in the VERY NEXT LINE after "add fea"--I thought it was an intentional funny, but based on this comment, it looks like that may not be the case.
"IP" has become a buzzword for something to be attacked and destroyed, but it is a fundamental component of the legal system and of society. There is a great need to differentiate between IP as it exists in the legal framework and "IP" as it exists to represent "bad laws about music and movies I don't like." RMS is guilty of major manipulation in this regard, twisting the term to embody what is "evil" rather than what actually exists.
90% of the US doesn't even have a real 3G network in place yet. My connectivity on 3G with my Windows Mobile device (both on T-Mobile and Cingular) has been no better than GPRS, and I live in the SF Bay Area and travel to other "big name" cities all the time.
While traveling around the world, I definitely love my 3G-capable device. In the US, I hardly see the point. Just something for the spec-sheet geeks to bitch about. Why support something that most people don't have access to, and even those that do can't get up to speed?
90% of the people 90% of the time can't get 3G access speeds, even assuming 100% of cell phone users had data plans, which of course they don't. I think you need to re-assess what "people do 90% of the time."
I'm not going to buy an iPhone, and for all the reasons not to, this is pretty much the most lame.
Intellectual property isn't "control of information." It's not the information that's restricted; it's commercial use of that information, or use that affects the commercial uses of the rightsholder.
It does no one any good to claim otherwise. Slashdot likes to attack a big, giant straw man that doesn't exist. You get all foaming-at-the-mouth about a legal framework and a philosophical approach that doesn't exist.
It's one thing to look at the flaws in the system; it's certainly a good idea to point out the giant, flagrant abuses and be exasperated at the relative ignorance both inside and outside of the law. It's quite another to rant about oppression and assaults on "freedom of speech."
You want to know why you can't get judges and lawyers to agree with you? It's because you talk like crazy people lamenting a loss of rights you never had, bitching about intellectual property as "control of information." Here's a hint: IP is *not* the idea. It's not the formula of the drug and it's not the code of a software product. It's not the waveforms of audio. The intellectual property IS the copyright, the patent, the trade mark, the contractual components, and/or the license that you own and may legally enforce.
People outside the "IP industry" look at it all backwards--just like the very insightful comment about the broadcasting industry a few days ago: the commercials are the content to them; the programming is just a vehicle for getting people to the advertising.
This is what everyone keeps claiming, but who exactly is forcing anyone to pay Sound Exchange? Do they have some sort of kill switch? If they're trying to collect royalties for non-members on music which has been duly licensed for use on internet radio, who cares what Sound Exchange demands? They can sue, but it's a pretty open-and-shut case.
Just don't pay the bastards. What is the problem? Unless Sound Exchange is the supplier of content to be streamed, I don't see how their demands have any teeth.
The SIM card and account are tied to the phone's IMEI on a GSM phone. The phone number simply carries over on the card--but the SIM-hardware interface is via the IMEI, which is reported to the network when a call is made. You can usually switch your card into a new phone because carriers don't usually monitor that the account and IMEI match. So sure, you can switch SIM cards in your handsets (after activating the iPhone), but if activation is tied to the phone IMEI, which seems likely, you'll still have to activate on the provided SIM card, so you'll still have to pay the cancellation fee to unload the iPhone account.
So wait. You give people opened CDs as gifts? I hope for the recipient's sake that they're used to begin with. Talk about bad form, to say nothing of the copying.
That's like giving someone a six pack of beer with one missing. Sure, it could be really good beer and the six pack might exceed some arbitrary spending limit, but how tacky can you get?
I get that the gift market point is why you got modded up, but I still think that's a stretch at best. I can't think of anyone who cares about getting the actual disc vs. getting identical data via download (I realize that this is not offered at present by any major store). In fact, not having something to worry about losing or storing cases is a godsend in our smaller, urban dwellings. iTunes does a pretty good job of displaying cover art in much the same way as a full CD tower gives some bragging rights. I can look all the lyrics up online and store it as metadata with the file itself. Between that and the cover art, I'm not missing anything from the physical medium that I care about. Fun anecdotes I can read on the group's website; posters I can buy or print from a high-quality PDF (without the permanent folds in mini-posters imposed by the CD case dimensions). I'm approaching 30, so maybe I'm part of some contaminated younger generation lacking in appreciation for bits of plastic and delicate paper slips.
It's not an actual mystery--the entire response was a rhetorical device ("these are sugar free cookies! --funny how there's sugar all over the counter, buddy"). The lawyer isn't paid for the legislative research services used to examine these bills; in fact, attorneys pay outrageous sums for these binders which they then have to recoup from their incensed clients. The legislation has practically no impact on the billable hours of a case, unless it's a case where there is otherwise almost no reading material to be handled. The research is the time consuming portion, and the collection and assembly of relevant bits of communication. None of this is performed by most attorneys, and all of it has to be paid up front, out of the lawyer's pocket with only the hope that the case will be successful and that the client will pay.
"Follow the money" is precisely my point. It is not the lawyers who do this.
Yes, it is, in fact. It uses the same 30-pin dock connector as all current iPods and will physically fit in Made for iPod products. Whether or not they do some weird things with the software that prevent the iPhone from responding to these accessories is something no one outside of a very small number of people at Apple know, but I'd guess no.
They're selling this thing as a full-featured iPod nano (with some new features, even). I'd imagine that the small reserve of people who still haven't bought an iPod (ignoring those who never, ever will, no matter what) would further translate into an accessory market. The thing is almost exactly the width of a current iPod, the dock connector is the same and in the same location, and it syncs with iTunes and not some new application just for the iPhone. All signs point to "yes, it will work with iHome and all of those other dock accessories."
Strange, then, how these lawyers who created the laws seem to require so much research and time to prepare a case based on them. If they'd lobbied for them, one might think they'd be more familiar with the contents.
Just more Slashdot bullshit. You get sued, you call a lawyer. Your car gets hit, you call your insurance company. You break your arm, you call a doctor. You buy a house, you call an inspector.
I sure as hell don't want to live in your Fisher-Price world, free of things like nuance and jurisprudence. The last thing anyone needs is a set of overly simple, absolutist laws that fail to take each other into consideration.
Yeah, you missed something. This is a training/reference document, not an internal sales bulletin. As you can see by reading the document (or hell, even the excerpts), these are the answers to questions that customers would be asking, providing an official answer for sales representatives to use. iPhone hardware is not subsidized by AT&T because Apple wouldn't let them. Whether that is Apple arrogance or a brilliant attempt to expose cell phone pricing scams remains to be seen.
My fear is that the plan price will be comparable to any other data device, but without the benefit of a portion of that monthly bill being sent back to the manufacturer to pay the artificially low price of the handsets.