Recent Comments:
Black Friday Giveaways (part 16): T-Mobile Shadow {Engadget Mobile}
Nov 24th 2007 4:03AM Why not me?
Black Friday Giveaways (part 18): Neuros OSD + 160GB drive {Engadget}
Nov 24th 2007 4:01AM Why not?
Black Friday Giveaways (part 19): Wii + Metroid Prime 3 and more {Engadget}
Nov 24th 2007 3:58AM Random, eh? No prizes for cleverness.
Court clears way for suit hating on T-Mobile's locking, ETF policies {Engadget Mobile}
Oct 17th 2007 1:45AM The iPhone is both unsubsidized and locked. It provides none of the trade-off for consumers you refer to, and thus reveals the intentions of some combination of Apple and/or AT&T. Further, there is no compensatory savings on monthly rates; my phone bill actually went up $20/month for the same service which had included unlimited data, because AT&T withdrew the corporate discount from accounts which added the iPhone.
"iPhone Dev Team" issues statement {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Sep 26th 2007 3:00AM There is nothing wrong with a cellular company offering a phone that only works on their system. It is done all the time. The selling proposition for the iPhone was just that--AT&T. And the terms and conditions made it clear that modifying software without Apple sanction was a no no.
The DMCA says it's legal to unlock your phone, not that a company has to support you after you do it.
The UCC says the phone, as sold, must be fit for the purpose offered. Apple has complied with that by stating the technical characteristics, software, etc. with demo after demo and web info and literature out the kazoo.
Apple is both smart and has good attorneys. Note carefully that they took great pains to say they were not going to proactively disable phones that were unlocked; just that they made no guarantee that user-modified phones would be compatible with software upgrades. This is both a legally and practically sound condition--they cannot be expected to support software about which they know little and have even less control; that is the developer's responsibility and at least some of those developers seem to be taking their responsibilities seriously.
Don't get me wrong--I have nothing against third party programs. In at least one case, a navigation program, a major addition to the iPhone capability, along the lines of GPS without satellites, is available which very cleverly uses cell towers to triangulate your location. It can even locate you through some magic with your Wi-Fi base station, though how it does that is beyond me. And it is cleverly programmed as a mash-up with a popular mapping and routing web site.
I would hope Apple would try to insure compatibility with such major improvements to iPhone functionality, just as they support compatibility with major Mac software packages, But they are under no obligation to do so.
Alternatively, they could buy or license such applications, and then make them available through official channels, either free or for a fee, along with a support warranty.
I don't know why some here seem to think the world, including Apple, owes them a living, but many of the posts here, from those whose grammar and sentence structure suggests that they have not completed their basic education, seem to reflect an attitude of unwarranted and, I must say, undeserved entitlement.
Steve Jobs live -- Apple's "The beat goes on" special event {Engadget}
Sep 5th 2007 9:09PM Yes; I'm getting it from my wife, also a frequent Apple buyer, for the same reason.
Steve Jobs live -- Apple's "The beat goes on" special event {Engadget}
Sep 5th 2007 9:01PM The issue isn't the price drop. It is the magnitude after two months. There is no way it can be rationalized away using Moore's law.
More likely Apple was facing a catastrophic sales drop from plan after the initial orders and the pipeline was filled. It had to be more than the usual tapering off, which would have been expected.
Hints to that effect can be found from Jobs' comment that they expected to hit a million by the end of September. This had to include the planned price drop, and yet we have also heard that the sales in the first month were said to be about 700,000. It's not hard to do the math. 300,000 in the next two months, including the effects of the price drop?
My own experience with the iPhone and AT&T in the Los Angeles area is that it is glacially slow when one is on EDGE instead of Wi-Fi. That is everywhere except my home and office (where I already have a Mac connected to the net via broadband, so I don't get much benefit from the iPhone), and the odd coffee shop with free wi-fi. Surely I'm not the only one who has noticed this; comments about the lack of 3G have been endemic since last January.
The high price premium was justified mainly because the iPhone is an internet appliance, and that has been difficult to achieve in practice. The times when I needed iPhone internet access (searching for information while out and about) have been wrestling matches with EDGE speed web browsing, largely unsuccessful. If the word is getting out about this it would account for some of the sales drop. And many new phones, motivated by the iPhone, also have internet appliance characteristics, at 3G and even 3.5G wireless speeds.
For a few seconds during the press conference I though Steve was going to solve the problem at least partially by announcing free Wi-Fi access for iPhones at Starbucks, which are pretty ubiquitous, but no such result--what he did announce was another sales channel for the iTunes store.
David Sternlight
Steve Jobs live -- Apple's "The beat goes on" special event {Engadget}
Sep 5th 2007 2:39PM Apple can set whatever price they wish, and change it whenever they wish. But there are consequences. In the case of the iPhone, unless they do something to make previous purchasers whole, they will have lost the early adopter market forever. Given the short time before the price drop, this is a matter of trust, not Apple's right. Let's recall that Apple is a company built in part on trust; that's part of the "Goodwill" that has cash value on a balance sheet.
If some naive economist at Apple calculated that the additional profits from sales at $399 will vastly offset the loss of Goodwill among early adopters, he simply doesn't understand Apple's business. It is early adopters that made Apple, and loss of both them and their opinion leader role in influencing others to buy can be the transformation of Apple into just another white box maker.
Steve just shorted out his "reality distortion field" and the damage, without swift action for those who paid $599, is, I predict, irreperable. When this all sinks in, applause will be replaced with horselaughs among the cognoscenti.
He might have gotten away with dropping the price so dramatically after 9 months or a year, but this soon without compenstory action is just a blunder.
David Sternlight, Ph.D.
Consulting Economist
Los Angeles
Dear Palm: It's time for an intervention {Engadget}
Aug 25th 2007 8:44AM I have owned almost every Palm since the beginning The greatest flaw in the Palm is that the OS has never been stable. Phone operations, in particular, are very vulnerable to even the simplest third party software. And a phone is worthless if it's going to reboot during critical activities.
Portable Windows is little better.
The most stable OSs appear to be Symbion and OSX (Unix) and/or Linux. Get the Kernel right on a Palm and many other problems will go away.
Another Apple "secret" is giving developers for the old system an easy upgrade path. There are a wealth of unique applications for the old Palm OS, including many catering to special niches which, taken together create a substantial user base. As one simple example the Jewish community has so many special-purpose applications for the Palm that there is even a website called "PalmYid". If the OS changes, it must be quick and easy for these developers to rewrite their apps or a lot of the user base won't come back. Here it is important to note that substitutes for most of these special-purpose Palm apps exist as web sites, and the iPhone (which is actually a Web appliance) accesses them easily. So an alternative would be to make a "new" Palm another easy-to-use, fast web appliance.
Finally, the form factor is crucial. I went from my Treo 650 to LG and Nokia phones with 3G and 3.5G, which Palm (with the original OS) still lacks. Since then the 650 has felt like a brick, and just sits on my desk at home unused.
The weaknesses of the LG and Nokia UI now have driven me to an iPhone and except for the lack of 3G/4G, it is closer to the ideal.
Palm has its work cut out for it if it is to survive, and a total rethink is what's needed and wanted. As Einstein said, you can't solve today's problems by the methods that got you there. Or as another commentator observed, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
AT&T's data network down for the iPhone? {Engadget Mobile}
Jul 3rd 2007 2:44AM I considered Verizon because of the coverage, but the data prices are outrageous. I pay $19.95 a month on top of my GSM voice plan for unlimited internet (not just Verizon's unlimited email).
