Greg Alexander's Profile

I agree Telstra is charging too much, and I wish Apple could force Telcos to repackage their services. But really, I'm just happy the iPhone is on all 3 networks. As long as there's scope to let competition discover the best packages. Also, fortunately, the iPhone is changing people's usage AND teaching Telcos about that different type of usage.

I didn't think this article made much sense. Lower margins don't mean a price drop at all. They CAN mean that, but you're getting confused by the word "lower". If it helps, remember you can have a MUCH more expensive computer that has a LOWER gross margin than the cheaper - it just means Apple isn't making as much money for it's $$ invested. Also, if you had been right and they were lowering the price AND LOWERING THE MARGIN, then obviously they don't then remove components. That would instead mean a cheaper product with the SAME MARGINS.

We've had a few crashes but otherwise going well. Have just over one screen of apps installed, and pretty well only picked apps that had high ratings. Our biggest problems are 1) we're in a borderline 3G office, so we need to manually switch off 3G in the office to get clear (2G) phone calls 2) the ring can be quite quiet... working on some different rings now.

I think perhaps Apple is planning on "transitioning" us to a significantly new platform. So like the Intel transition, they try to make it look like nothing is really happening. The new OS runs side-by-side the old OS and nobody except us Mac fans realises that something amazing has changed. I don't know how they could charge for it if they want to make it seem 'insignificant'. Then again, if it really looks identical then perhaps they wouldn't care if hardly anyone thought it worth the upgrade. Apple might play it in the middle - this is a new OS for new machines and looks identical to the old. I'm leaning towards a minimal charge for this, but followed within a year by an upgrade with many features. ps. If I'm right we're talking OS 11 (vs OS 10)... though I think they like the whole "X" naming. In fact.... if Snow Leopard is OS 10.6, with no new bells and whistles, then could they be moving towards "OSX version 7" at the same time as "Windows 7" is released?

Faintdreams - the iPhone isn't a "smart phone" by the old standards. Until the iPhone, "smart phone" meant "business+email phone" - and most articles call the iPhone a smart phone because they have no other word for it. Apple has defined a new market and while I'm not sure how it'll play out, it's certainly a big market. Apple is selling a mobile internet & entertainment device... it came into the phone business because of the wireless data connections and because Nokia etc were adding music and movies to their phones. It's always great when someone comes at an industry from a different angle. Oh, by the way, you're right about customer loyalty - but there are many people who are loyal iPod customers and I'd say that iPod sales figures are a good indication of the iPhone's starting point. With Apple selling 20million iPods and about 4 million iPhones in the last 6 months, that's a substantial potential iPhone audience. Just checked - Nokia sells 240million in the same period...!. Well it's great to have competition.

MacPro2x4 - I very much doubt you're recording 1024x576i. More like 720x576i. When converted to AppleTV, your program would upscales it to 1024x576p to make it square pixels. While your broadcast is not as high as you think, the AppleTV iTMS TV show is actually worse. It's 640x480 for a 4:3 show, but 640x360 for a 16:9 show. So 720x576i vs 640x360p. I would certainly like to see the AppleTV standard quality bumped up. 960x540 would be a good step, and it's easily converted from both 720p and 1080i source material..

So you're saying they should add a web browser (plus link to IMDB) and add routing capability... is that it for "Take 3" :-) I have a few thoughts 1) AppleTV uses a cut down version of 10.4.7. It needs to be based on the FUTURE OSes not the past. I'm wondering if the iPhone OS should be the core. 2) While I agree that you can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, I think we need an upgraded processor that is capable of 1080p. Bandwidth is too much for now but useful as future proofing. (And Apple could send down a resolution test to people who reckon they can tell the difference, AND collect the results!) 3) We need the AppleTV to work with ratings. - When watching pictures or music we can't change volume, so why not make the volume change my ratings? - Use the volume while watching youtube to mark something from 1 to 5 stars (or higher as a "favourite"). - Watch a movie trailer and mark it as "great" through to "ignore" and when Apple releases the movie for rental remind us it's available! 4) We need some applications (port from iPhone? Dashboard?). Weather widget would be good. Today's calendar (in the morning) or tomorrows calendar (at night) combining my wife and my calendars. Synchronised TV postit notes. 5) For all of us who have parents using the AppleTV... let us 'send' their AppleTV our recommendations - rentals, trailers, podcasts, youtube, .mac slideshows, even a prepurchased song as a gift. 6) Split movie trailers into "coming soon" & "now showing", & "coming to rental". Link from movie trailers to local cinema info/times. 7) Interactive news. Why not work with ABC and make an interactive "summary of the news" - then have links to the individual articles you want to watch (and even link further to more detail). They can download on demand like movie trailers. 8) Not sure where or if a DVR fits in with the basic model. I certainly think there's room for an "AppleTV+" with DVR. But... I don't know if the above would attract people more. Perhaps they need to tightly integrate iPhone to AppleTV in some cool ways before it'll be noticed.

Robomac - I'm very against paying a 'tax' on my iPod that goes to the artists. The reasons are: a) I want my money going to the artists I personally listen to, not distributed between the major producers based on some fixed formula or based on sales of CDs. b) I have an 80GB iPod but most of that 80GB I use occassionally to move home videos & big graphic design files. Sure I have 8GB of music, but why should I pay for the extra 72GB I don't use? And if I have TV on my iPod, how does the tax get sent to the TV producers instead of music companies? c) I wonder if I pay a tax does that mean I can legally download any music or TV show from now on for a single once-off payment when I purchase the iPod? I really don't think the music/tv companies would give up their right to sell their content or sue people for pirate content. That said... a subscription fee that actually looked at the music I was listening to and split my (LOW) fee appropriately between bands would be fine.