My dad was in the market for a new cellphone and had come under the spell of
Apple's impressive marketing campaign.
"You can browse the Web on it!" he said excitedly before expounding on the
iPhone's other eye-catching capabilities, including an impressive media
player and a cool mapping application. "You can take photos and upload them
to the Internet from the phone!"
Well, yeah, I acknowledged. "But you can probably do that stuff on the phone
you already have. I can do them on my crappy free phone."
Really? he asked.
Sigh. Steve Jobs' marketing wizardry had managed to convince Dad not only
that the iPhone is a fully connected multimedia computer in miniature -
which, of course, it is - but also that it's the only such device on the
market... [MORE]
"Todd Allcock" <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote in news:T7tLj.11694
$Mf4.6931@fe085.usenetserver.com:
> fully connected multimedia computer in miniature
No it's not. "Computers" run SOFTWAVE have ACCESSIBLE STORAGE and PORTS to
connect things to.
Iphone is just a WebTV MP3 player in a neat package.....another Ipod
extension with a sellphone in it.
I guess it's a matter of certain expectations one has for a phone and
computer.....like REPLACEABLE BATTERIES not hard soldered to the
motherboard like a cheap MP3 player.
In article <T7tLj.11694$Mf4.6931@fe085.usenetserver.com>, "Todd
Allcock" <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote:
> No, this isn't an iPhone bash- just an interesting column from RCR Wireless
> News that highlights what Apple does well...
>
>
> http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...911988777/1051
> /newsletter16
>
> My dad was in the market for a new cellphone and had come under the spell of
> Apple's impressive marketing campaign.
>
> "You can browse the Web on it!" he said excitedly before expounding on the
> iPhone's other eye-catching capabilities, including an impressive media
> player and a cool mapping application. "You can take photos and upload them
> to the Internet from the phone!"
>
> Well, yeah, I acknowledged. "But you can probably do that stuff on the phone
> you already have. I can do them on my crappy free phone."
>
> Really? he asked.
>
> Sigh. Steve Jobs' marketing wizardry had managed to convince Dad not only
> that the iPhone is a fully connected multimedia computer in miniature -
> which, of course, it is - but also that it's the only such device on the
> market... [MORE]
It's not so much that the iPhone is the "only" device to do such
things, but that it does them so easily and so user-friendly. Most
people don't know or use most of their current phones functions simply
because it's so damn difficult to access them.
> It's not so much that the iPhone is the "only" device to do such
> things, but that it does them so easily and so user-friendly. Most
> people don't know or use most of their current phones functions simply
> because it's so damn difficult to access them.
Maybe I'm jaded from using smartphones for so long, but exactly what's so
difficult about using a phone? My Nokia 3650- my first smartphone, bought
four or five years ago, had two big "softkey" buttons on the front- one
preprogrammed to launch it's browser and one to start the camera. Hardly
"difficult to access." Right after you snapped a picture or shot a video,
MMS-ing it or e-mailing it was two button presses away- Menu, Send. It
didn't have a touchscreen or the slick iPhone UI, but unless your IQ was
less than that of a cactus, you could take pictures, use e-mail or browse
the web without any real effort (except entering a long URL by 12-key- that
phone really taught me to use favorites!)
Personally, I prefer a touchscreen based UI like the iPhone's or my Windows
Mobile-based phone to a 12-key like my 3650 used (except, of course, when
trying to make a phonecall!) but despite Steve Jobs' keynote rantings of a
year ago, cellphones were not some sort of arcane indecipherable objects!
Frankly, I think a large part of the iPhone's "lead" in mobile internet use
(i.e. "most used mobile browser", etc.) is due partly to the fact that
Apple and AT&T held a gun to their users' heads with respect to buying a
data plan. "All you can eat data" was "included" with all iPhone plans, so
many people now had the ability to try mobile internet that perhaps never
plunked down the $20/month in the past because they didn't perceive the
value. (A similar product in that respect, IMO, is TiVo, or any DVR- those
who've never tried it wonder what all the fuss is about, but once someone
uses one, they're typically hooked.)
My wife, for example (my oft-used luddite example!) never fooled with a
data plan despite my urging, until she was issued a Blackberry at work and
became hooked on mobile e-mail. Now she has a data plan and smartphone for
her personal use as well. She never would've "discovered" the value of
mobile internet unless it was forced on her (in this case, by work.) If
her personal plan had "included" data, she'd have embraced it much sooner.
Similarly, I suspect quite a few iPhone owners may have had phones with e-
mail and browsing capability that went unused not because of "difficulty"
but because the users never before opted to pay for data, again due to
carrier's lack of marketing- part of the iPhone marketing genius was also
the single "forced" data option- at the time of launch, Cingular had a
plethora of confusing data options with varying MB "buckets", different
rates depending on phone classification (feature phone, smartphone, PDA,
etc.) For most (non-iPhone) customers, buying data was probably more
confusing than using it!
If carriers tossed in a free month or two of their extra features (data, GPS,
mobile TV, whatever) like satellite and cable companies often toss in a
free month of HBO, I suspect they'd be surprised by the adoption rate once
people saw how convenient these features are to use. But as long as the
advertising pitch remains how long you gab, and to whom, for $39.99, data
will remain a niche product, and the Apple marketing message- you can only
check the weather or the NBA all-time high-score leader on the iPhone- will
ring true on many eyes and ears.
> Frankly, I think a large part of the iPhone's "lead" in mobile internet use
> (i.e. "most used mobile browser", etc.) is due partly to the fact that
> Apple and AT&T held a gun to their users' heads with respect to buying a
> data plan. "All you can eat data" was "included" with all iPhone plans, so
> many people now had the ability to try mobile internet that perhaps never
> plunked down the $20/month in the past because they didn't perceive the
> value. (A similar product in that respect, IMO, is TiVo, or any DVR- those
> who've never tried it wonder what all the fuss is about, but once someone
> uses one, they're typically hooked.)
A large part of the lead is that they included Wi-Fi, something which is
still not all that common, and that it's a half-way decent browser.
I went looking for a quad-band GSM smart phone earlier this month, and I
considered an unlocked iPhone, but there were just too many features
missing from the iPhone that were no-compromise requirements for me.
What I would like is something similar to the Nokia N96, but that has
both WCDMA 850/1900 and HSDPA. Nokia looks like it could give Apple a
run for the money with the N96, though not at the $800 that the U.S.
retailers are charging for it.
> A large part of the lead is that they included Wi-Fi, something which is
> still not all that common, and that it's a half-way decent browser.
Perhaps, but I suspect it'd have sold well with or without WiFi- as nice as
a phone as it is, the brand is selling it more than the feature set is.
> I went looking for a quad-band GSM smart phone earlier this month,
> and I considered an unlocked iPhone, but there were just too many
> features missing from the iPhone that were no-compromise
> requirements for me.
You might consider looking at the Velocity Mobile 103 when it debuts in
June or July. It's a quad-band 3G WinMo 6.1 phone with VGA display, TV/VGA-
out, WiFi and GPS that Velocity claims will be sold unlocked at a much
lower price than competing models. WinMo 6.1 promises an improved browser
(with iPhone like "zoom in/out") and supports a variety of VoIP clients.
> What I would like is something similar to the Nokia N96, but that has
> both WCDMA 850/1900 and HSDPA. Nokia looks like it could give
> Apple a run for the money with the N96, though not at the $800 that
> the U.S. retailers are charging for it.
Agreed- high-end smartphone pricing is out of whack.
Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 11 Apr 2008 07:05:05 -0700 SMS wrote:
>
>> A large part of the lead is that they included Wi-Fi, something which is
>> still not all that common, and that it's a half-way decent browser.
>
>
> Perhaps, but I suspect it'd have sold well with or without WiFi- as nice as
> a phone as it is, the brand is selling it more than the feature set is.
Except most buyers didn't even realize the missing features until after
they bought it, and probably couldn't even spell 3G.
> You might consider looking at the Velocity Mobile 103 when it debuts in
> June or July. It's a quad-band 3G WinMo 6.1 phone with VGA display, TV/VGA-
> out, WiFi and GPS that Velocity claims will be sold unlocked at a much
> lower price than competing models. WinMo 6.1 promises an improved browser
> (with iPhone like "zoom in/out") and supports a variety of VoIP clients.
I guess I'd pay $400 for something like that. It'd be nice to not carry
a notebook PC when traveling.
>> What I would like is something similar to the Nokia N96, but that has
>> both WCDMA 850/1900 and HSDPA. Nokia looks like it could give
>> Apple a run for the money with the N96, though not at the $800 that
>> the U.S. retailers are charging for it.
>
> Agreed- high-end smartphone pricing is out of whack.
Yes, and that's where the iPhone really excels due to the Apple
requirement that the iPhone be sold without a contract. For $25 or so
you can get it unlocked, and you have a decent quad-band phone, good
music player, and web pad for $425. If you don't care about stuff like a
memory card slot, good camera, voice-dialing, keyboard, 3G, GPS, Office
document display and editing, or PDA functions, the iPhone is a very
good deal. I'm not really criticizing the iPhone (except for the lack of
voice dialing!), Apple just isn't interested in competing against true
PDAs, or being adopted by businesses that need some of these other
capabilities.
In article <47ffa5ae$0$36347$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>, SMS
<scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> Yes, and that's where the iPhone really excels due to the Apple
> requirement that the iPhone be sold without a contract. For $25 or so
> you can get it unlocked, and you have a decent quad-band phone, good
> music player, and web pad for $425. If you don't care about stuff like a
> memory card slot, good camera, voice-dialing, keyboard, 3G, GPS, Office
> document display and editing, or PDA functions, the iPhone is a very
> good deal. I'm not really criticizing the iPhone (except for the lack of
> voice dialing!), Apple just isn't interested in competing against true
> PDAs, or being adopted by businesses that need some of these other
> capabilities.
Apple has always said the iPhone is an iPod with phone capabilities,
rather than a phone with music player capabilities. The iTouch is of
course the iPhone without the phone capabilities, leaving just an iPod.
:-)
Some of the "deficifiencies" of the iPhone will of course be "fixed" by
the third party software developers now that the Softwre Developers Kit
is available.
The iPhone / iTouch will almost certainly lead to other products in the
future. Apple has already advertised jobs for handwriting recognition
which some people believe points to a proper PDA device at some stage
(with or without phone capabilities).
"SMS" <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote in message
news:47ffa5ae$0$36347$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net...
>> You might consider looking at the Velocity Mobile 103 when it debuts in
>> June or July. It's a quad-band 3G WinMo 6.1 phone with VGA display,
>> TV/VGA-
>> out, WiFi and GPS that Velocity claims will be sold unlocked at a much
>> lower price than competing models. WinMo 6.1 promises an improved
>> browser
>> (with iPhone like "zoom in/out") and supports a variety of VoIP clients.
>
> I guess I'd pay $400 for something like that. It'd be nice to not carry a
> notebook PC when traveling.
Rumors are circulating that it might be as low as $300 unlocked, but I'm
guessing $400 is closer to the real number. Any higher and I think people
will stick to established brands like HTC and HP.
> Yes, and that's where the iPhone really excels due to the Apple
> requirement that the iPhone be sold without a contract. For $25 or so you
> can get it unlocked, and you have a decent quad-band phone, good music
> player, and web pad for $425. If you don't care about stuff like a memory
> card slot, good camera, voice-dialing, keyboard, 3G, GPS, Office document
> display and editing, or PDA functions, the iPhone is a very good deal.
Yeah but if I "don't care" about that other stuff and am primarily looking
for a tablet, I'm better off with Larry's N800 for $200- it offers a larger
screen, remote terminal services (so I REALLY don't need to bring my
laptop!) and VoIP.
"Todd Allcock" <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote in
news:RgTLj.50041$j34.48346@fe113.usenetserver.com:
> Yeah but if I "don't care" about that other stuff and am primarily
> looking for a tablet, I'm better off with Larry's N800 for $200- it
> offers a larger screen, remote terminal services (so I REALLY don't
> need to bring my laptop!) and VoIP.
>
>
> > Yeah but if I "don't care" about that other stuff and am primarily
> > looking for a tablet, I'm better off with Larry's N800 for $200- it
> > offers a larger screen, remote terminal services (so I REALLY don't
> > need to bring my laptop!) and VoIP.
>
>
>
> Oh, oh....This is gonna be trouble.....(c;
Not at all- different devices for different needs. I still think Nokia was
nuts for not tossing a GSM module in a N8xx series tablet- it'd be a decent
"stopgap" competitor for the iPhone, and decimate the HTC Advantage
(http://www.pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=752) which sells for double what
an N810 sells for.
Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote in
news:ftp5r1$3li$1@aioe.org:
> Not at all- different devices for different needs. I still think
> Nokia was nuts for not tossing a GSM module in a N8xx series tablet-
> it'd be a decent "stopgap" competitor for the iPhone, and decimate the
> HTC Advantage (http://www.pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=752) which
> sells for double what an N810 sells for.
>
>
But, that would either lead to a device no carrier would allow to connect,
no matter how technically perfect they could make it, no danger at all to
the "system"...or...the N8xx would become like every OTHER device that has
a SELLphone built into it, a corrupted, nearly useless brick, locked by the
carrier to insure nothing of any consequence could be done on it that the
carrier couldn't turn into a profit center with some stupid monthly
"charge" against your SELLphone bill.
And, I believe, Nokia, an ardent supporter of the open source community,
did exactly what it did for that reason....INDEPENDENCE from carrier
interference.
iPhone is the perfect carrier toy. It has no GPS. It has no memory card
slot. It has no externally accessible, carrier bypassing interface ports
the customer can use against carrier revenue streams, and it has iTunes to
strictly control, at the pleasure of the companies, everything it does or
does not do. What is REQUIRED before any silly hacker's really neat
software can be installed on it?....SDK style?....APPLE'S PERMISSION, in
conjunction with the wishes of its ATT partner. It is and will always be,
a STRICTLY controlled device. SDK isn't going to open up iPhones to
anything that's NOT part of the REVENUE STREAM.
Precisely why Nokia's decision to put Skype in their tablets, instead, was
the RIGHT decision.
Even Nokia has no control over what the tablet runs! I do.
.....and this empowerment feels very good, indeed.
> But, that would either lead to a device no carrier would allow to
connect,
> no matter how technically perfect they could make it, no danger at all to
> the "system"...or...the N8xx would become like every OTHER device that
has
> a SELLphone built into it, a corrupted, nearly useless brick, locked by
the
> carrier to insure nothing of any consequence could be done on it that the
> carrier couldn't turn into a profit center with some stupid monthly
> "charge" against your SELLphone bill.
No, I said "GSM."
Tell me how the N95 is a "corrupted, useless brick?" Over a half-million
unlocked, non-carrier branded units were sold in it's first year, and used
on various carriers across the globe.
> And, I believe, Nokia, an ardent supporter of the open source community,
> did exactly what it did for that reason....INDEPENDENCE from carrier
> interference.
How does selling a small line of Linux tablets make them "ardent supporters
of open source" when the bulk of their product line- the cellular phone-
runs their Symbian or proprietarty OS?
> iPhone is the perfect carrier toy. It has no GPS. It has no memory card
> slot. It has no externally accessible, carrier bypassing interface ports
> the customer can use against carrier revenue streams, and it has iTunes
to
> strictly control, at the pleasure of the companies, everything it does or
> does not do. What is REQUIRED before any silly hacker's really neat
> software can be installed on it?....SDK style?....APPLE'S PERMISSION, in
> conjunction with the wishes of its ATT partner. It is and will always
be,
> a STRICTLY controlled device. SDK isn't going to open up iPhones to
> anything that's NOT part of the REVENUE STREAM.
>
> Precisely why Nokia's decision to put Skype in their tablets, instead,
was
> the RIGHT decision.
>
> Even Nokia has no control over what the tablet runs! I do.
>
> ....and this empowerment feels very good, indeed.
Skype also runs on the N95, which is also a GSM phone, and has a GPS built-
in. Tell me again how the carrier is "controlling" it?
On 2008-04-12, Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:
> Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote in
> news:ftph56$12m$1@aioe.org:
>
>> Skype also runs on the N95, which is also a GSM phone, and has a GPS
>> built- in. Tell me again how the carrier is "controlling" it?
>
> The carrier can refuse it service by simply refusing to give service to any
> phone it is installed upon.
>
> You don't really think that just because you have a SIM card the carrier
> has no idea what phone it's plugged into, do you?
Oh, they can tell what kind of phone it is all right. They can also
probably tell the country where the phone was purchased and approximately
when the phone was manufactured. I don't see any way they could know
that a particular phone had Skype installed, but they could certainly
tell which phones were capable of running Skype.
But while there are many things a GSM carrier could do (just like
there are many things an Internet service provider, including one
providing WiFi access points, could do), the issue of what they
theoretically could do is way less interesting than the queston of
what they actually do. I don't know any GSM operator, certainly not
in the US, which seems to care at all about the particular model
or lineage of the phone you use. If it connects to their tower,
has their SIM in it and doesn't appear on their stolen phone list,
it gets service. And, in fact, blocking certain phone models
wouldn't keep Skype from their network anyway since, with standard
GSM equipment, it is extremely difficult for the operator to
tell whether an Internet connection is being used by software on
the phone or by some computer tethered to the phone. It all looks
the same from the network's point of view.
GSM carriers could control the phones, I guess, but all available
evidence says they don't. If you want to buy an N95 (there's even a
model supporting the AT&T 3G bands), and want to put Skype on it, the
GSM operators seem to be happy to take your money and provide you with
service.
> > Skype also runs on the N95, which is also a GSM phone, and has a GPS
> > built- in. Tell me again how the carrier is "controlling" it?
> >
> >
>
> The carrier can refuse it service by simply refusing to give service to
any
> phone it is installed upon.
>
> You don't really think that just because you have a SIM card the carrier
> has no idea what phone it's plugged into, do you?
Of course not. But like I, and others, have pointed out many times, they
just don't care. Name a single GSM carrier worldwide that has disallowed
the N95? Name a single phone AT&T or T-Mobile has barred from their
network?
You don't think Alltel couldn't shut down your webtablet by disallowing
tethering? Blocking ports that make it useful?
Interesting take on the iPhone's success... 
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