gwschreyer's Profile

The iPhone is less than a week away and Apple has a new video on their website that demonstrates the features of the iPhone. This device looks like it might actually work as a convergent device. It is clearly a FAR better stab into this market, perhaps it is an entirely new market. iPhone detractors have wailed and whined about the "obvious" failures of the device. I suspect that this is just FUD because these "failures" seem to instead be conscious design decisions made by Apple. The camera sucks! (as if 2 megapixels isn't enough for snapshots and the lens couldn't be good enough to support the sharp focus that even 2 megapixels needs). There is only ONE camera and it can't used for videoconferences! Can you imagine how annoying it would be for someone to be talking on their phone in public AND doing a video conference. He would have to hold the phone in front of his face and speak loudly enough to complete tick off everybody nearby. No video conference = good plan. There isn't enough memory! Maybe for heavy duty music and video users, but its a phone! If one wants a portable entertainment device that will hold a whole video library, then buy a device intended for that niche job. No 3G! 3G takes more power to run, 2.5G is good enough for light duty work and 3G isn't implemented over nearly enough of the coverage area. No GPS! Again, takes power and not needed. Cell tower triangulation works well enough for E911 and finding a the user's location well enough to make Google Maps work. Battery life sucks! Apple just announced a moderate increase in battery life AND all the other stuff that is "missing" would all consume power. You can't have it all. No user replacable battery! Could be a problem but it would add to the size and weight of the device. Also, the iPods don't have "replaceable" batteries and that hasn't killed them. It would be nice, however, to have a hot spare battery though. Apple really ought to think hard about this one. However, the iPhone is still a convergent device and carries with it the woes that come with being a convergent device. It is expensive to buy It is horribly expensive to use (probably about $1000/year) It has good standby time, but as soon as the other neat stuff lis being used, the thing STILL may not last a whole workday, especially after the battery degrades over the life of the phone It will be expensive to replace if damaged and hand held devices often turn into hand dropped devices. If one function or feature becomes obsolete, the whole device needs to be upgraded. For example, Flash RAM storage would be hard to upgrade. If a future version has GPS and you decide that you MUST HAVE GPS, then it's new device time. If you just can't stand AT&T for any reason, then you are simply stuck. An iPhone won't be following me home, but I am certain that it will attract many others who really want what it offers now. I hope that it is wildly successful but primarily because it will give the rest of the cell phone industry a swift kick in the backside and force innovation. I also like it because MicroSoft has the most to loose with eventual failure of their Windows for Mobil plans as if they haven't failed already. If the iPhone is successful, it will also prod Apple into making more types of embedded devices and eventually one of them will be something that I could use.

Get rid of the chin, make it look more like a Cinema display and add a height adjustable foot so that it can go right down on the foot. The speakers may be a bit of a problem though....

I also want a smaller portable. A lighter ibook G4 would do. This is a long read, but I've put a lot of thought into it. http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/upgrades.html overall, it goes along the lines of the previous posters, smaller, lighter, cooler, longer battery life. - gws

I wish Nudge worked on Intel Macs.... - gws

"Right, because companies like Microsoft and Apple only support the latest version of their hardware." Uhhh... 10.4.6 seems to run fine on hardware more than 5 years old, long ago "obsolete." Some of this stuff predates OS X. 400 MHz G4 PowerMac (384M) 533 MHz G4 PowerMac (384M) 500 MHz G3 iBook (640M) - gws

"I think they’d just switch to rival services. Meaning iPod sales would drop." Maybe, maybe not. If the labels were to raise prices at iTMS, they'd turn around and do it with every other digital service when the contact expires. They want the money. However, if OVERALL digital sales dropped because people wouldn't pay, then the labels would adjust the pricing, this is called elasticity. If I had to pay $15 for an album download, I'd buy the CD instead of dealing with the DRM. This would hurt iTMS sales, but it may not hurt iPod sales because many of these CD's get ripped right to an MP3 player immediately anyway. I don't even listen to most of the CD's that I buy, they get ripped and put away. - gws

EASY (Efficient Assembly System, Honeywell)