iphone

[Nikolas]

OT but I can't help it...

I have a different problem with Apple in general: The price.

I was at a mall the other day and went into an official Apple store, just for fun. Asked for a Mac Pro. 4 hard drives, 8 Gig memory, duo core MacIntel and these were the main points. Cost? £ 5,500!

Then went on a PC store. Asked for a duo Core 2.something, 3 Gig (that's the bad thing with windows XP, but Vista are on their way), 4 hard drives etc... Price? 2700 euros!

Now ok Mac, maybe a little better (don't think that they're hugely better though, as I have worked 2 years in Macs), but nothing can justify a price gap of 1 Mac= 4 Pcs...

On ipods... I really can't understand it. I went on and bought a small 512 Mb MP3 something name (or no name) for 20 quid and I'm perfectly happy with it! why an ipod and spend so many money?

Mobile phones: I have an Ericson for about a year and I'm happy. I do play some java games when bored, do have 3G so everything seems ok. And most importanly I can receive calls from my wife, yelling at me for being late or something...

But this new iPhone looks ultra cool, I have to be honest... And since it's brand new, it's bound to have problems to be solved... Apple is good at solving bugs quickly...

Sorry for the semi-rant...

[dasjoe]

zoot, the battery degrades with time, which is a fact
i just like being able to fix stuff myself, which is impossible here.
i do like the design of ipods and i guess they're fine when they're running the rockbox firmware, but the not-being-able-to-change-the-battery-myself really put me off from buying one two years ago - and put me off from considering to buy this phone

[Gregjazz]

Can I tell you something interesting?

Six to seven million people in Congo have died since 1996 as a result of invasions and wars sponsored by western powers attempting to gain control of the region's mineral wealth, most significantly coltan and niobium, which are two minerals necessary for the production of cell phones and other electronics.

So when people buy new cell phones as almost a "vanity" thing--to look cooler, or because they were negligent with their old phone--that upsets me, because people are dying to bring you the materials used to make cell phones and other electronics.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the whole matter.

[Steel Drummer]

Very true. A lot of technology nowadays is wasteful and useless. As Nikolas said- a 512MB MP3 player is fine! You don't need 30 gigs for an MP3 player- you'll never use all of that space anyways.

[ManicMatt]

Says you! I could fill that 30gig up!  8)

[Adamski]

£5500? Yowza! Although I think I would pay the price just for the convenience of being able to run the entire VI Instruments cube without having to have use multiple computers, and also insuring that I'd never need to even look at a copy of Windows Vista! When we were selling G4s for £2500 (not including the price of a monitor) a few years ago I thought the price was completely ridiculous, but I guess if you're a professional musician that needs daft amounts of RAM and processing power the price tag becomes trivial. Deferred payment suddenly starts to sound like a good idea too!

[Sam.]

The price is an issue with macs, I think this is partly (not wholly) due to shops overcharging for them. Macs and iPods are often charged fro alot more at shops over the apple store, leading to the perception that they are too spensive, however, a mac laptop or desktop IS a serious investment, they havent quite got the "buying one just to have one" market that Windows and PCs enjoy, maybe vista will change the balance.

[DGMacphee]

Hold the phone, people. Apple is being sued by Cisco:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=211

I knew they were in negotiations prior to the unveiling, but it looks like the negotiations fell through. 

[vict0r]

you'll never use all of that space anyways.

I've filled about 5 gigs of my 6 gig iPod, and it's nice to know that I actually have a little extra space. And my dads cd collection fills about 32 gigs of his 40 gig iPod, and he still buys music, so it prolly won't take too long for him to fill it. And the new iPods support video, so that makes the space even more nescessary.

£5500

Yeah, the apple products do seem to be over priced from time to time. I bought my 20" iMac (dont have the specs right here) for about £1600, and it never* lags, crashes or do anything I dont want it to.

*Compared to the PCs I've used in the past.

[Nikolas]

£5500? Yowza!

Memory alone costs around £2000!!!! That's part of the reason...

But yes, I do change rather frequently the mp3s in my mp3 player (which is also a voice recorder). But for 0.5 Gb I get around 50 songs, which are more than enough for a month or so... :-/ 30 Gb would get me 3000 mp3s and I really don't see the reason... Unless I have a free income of mp3s somehow... :p

[DGMacphee]

I've thought about this a little and realised this: my phone already has an option to play MP3s (via SD card) and pretty much does most of the stuff iPods do. And one thing I don't like about iPods is you can't use them as external HD (from my understanding) -- I don't know if this is the same with iPhone, probably not since it has net surfing options so I['m guessing you can download stuff. But I still don't see what all the hubbub is about.

Sure, it has a lot of space. But I don't see the point if my current phone does all that iPhone offers. It seems more like they're playing catchup and hey here's a bigger HD!

[vict0r]

I would guess that you have a large cd collection you could fill it with, for trips and such.. (i assume this from the fact that you are a musician and, well... my stereotype musician has lots of cds )

But for 0.5 Gb I get around 50 songs, which are more than enough for a month or so... :-/ 30 Gb would get me 3000 mp3s

Well, if 0,5 Gb gives you 50 songs, wouldnt 30 Gb then store around 15000 songs?

Actually, a 30gb iPod would store appoximately 7000-7500 songs..

And one thing I don't like about iPods is you can't use them as external HD (from my understanding)

Actually, you can!Ã, 

[Tuomas]

Well yeah, I could easily fit 30Gb of music there from my albums and my hard drive, but I don't see the point. I don't travel that much. If I went away for a year, I'd just get an external hard drive and put my music there, then find a cheap way of playing them.


Ok, there are smaller iPods, but still any other product with the sam size is cheaper. with macs, the thing is always the price for me. The Price.

[Nikolas]

Well, if 0,5 Gb gives you 50 songs, wouldnt 3000 Gb then store around 15000 songs?

0,5 -> 50
1 -> 100
10 -> 1000
30 -> 3000

At least the math are correct.

Now of course mp3s come in different sizes and compression rates of course. A 96 bpm mp3 is around 1 Mb per minute, a 320 Bpm is around 2.5 Mb per minute...

I can understand the need for more space, but I can also understand the need to spent, even though you don't need something... Commercialism... Until last year I was strolling around with a normal CD walkman! Usually got in 1-2 CDs with me, and that's all! It broke so I went to the next level. My CD Walkman was more or less 10 years old! Phone, same story. Kept the same monophonic, colorless phone 'till 2 years ago, when Imoved to London.

Nothing wrong, nothing right, different perspecitves...

[vict0r]

Nothing wrong, nothing right, different perspecitves...

Seconded!

And I like to be able toÃ,  have more music to choose from, instead of the CDs I can fit on my person.
Even though I actually had my CD player until I got the iPod! Prolly 6 or 7 years!

But it is true what you say, I often want stuff I don't have any actual need for. But what can I say? I'm a gadget freak ^-^Ã, 



And I fucked the math up, yeah...

[Tuomas]

Use it before you lose it!

There's my motto when it comes to money. Think of it, you have say, 500 euors on your account. You buy some food, some beer, some more beer, and whoops, it's gone. When you could have bought, say something useful, like a used minibus vokswagen that smells like pot.

[voh]

I kind of like the design, but I simply can't understand why people are going ZOMG about it. It's just a smartphone, 's all. When I need a new phone, I look around and look at what my budget will let me get. I'll get the most awesome phone I can find for the amount of money I can spend, but I won't hold out for a certain phone, or buy a new one before my subscription renewal comes up.

When I can get a free phone with a renewal (or new subscription), why the eff would I *buy* a cellphone? Especially something that excells in eye candy, but otherwise seems fairly limited?

*posted this using his SE W850i as a bluetooth modem for his macbook*

Okay, so maybe I am kind of susceptible for awesome things. But this iPhone? Not so much

[deFineLicht]

Well, this is what I think after been hearing the keynote. I think the greatest advantage the iphone will have is that it's very easy to use. My experience is that that is what apple stands for, I know because I switched from a pc to a mac a while ago and the mac is so much easier to use.
I belive that the iphone will be sold to many of those who thinks that it's way to tricky to use the other cellphones to connect to internet and and stuff like that. And it doesn't look that geeky as computerphones use to do, it's very well designed.

What worries me: is the iphones touchscreen gonna work, and why don't they got 3G.

[ManicMatt]

No?

Unless they have some kind of anti-fingerprint screen I don't know about.

[Steel Drummer]

iPhone looks good, but I recently heard that Apple got sued by Sisco (I think that's how it's spelt) Systems for using Sisco's iPhone trademark. Not sure if it's true or not. Did any of you guys know that?