Highly offensive rage against oil and bicycles follows. Not my !-ing day. Don’t click unless you’re ready for lots of superfluous capitals and exclamation points.
Supporting the troops, MY BALLS
Not really my day
Today’s worse than I expected. It’s what I thought Thursday would be like – and oddly, Thursday came and went without too much angst or reflection or what have you, which was a good thing, all in all. I thought maybe for once I could pass a milestone without getting all bent out of shape about it. Then I woke up today, very late, and realized “nope.”
What’s done is done. Obviously, I’m not over it, or I wouldn’t be sullen in the corner counting the minutes until I can go down to the pub.
Happy Father’s Day, pops. Cast ’em straight and drive ’em long.
Ugh.
God knows I carried no brief for Tim Russert’s political capability, but to die at 58 – believe me when I say this – is just plain awful for everyone. Especially his family.
Hope he finds a better world than this. Hopefully one where Scott Norwood hits that kick.
Well, this explains it.
Free IPhone 3G: European Bastards to Get Free iPhone and Great Monthly Plans. This ultimately is not surprising, since the iPhone has essentially become just another smartphone in the eyes of the carriers. With O2 in the UK, you sign up for an 18-month contract at about $90 a month, and for your trouble get 1200 minutes, 500 texts, and free data, made even more attractive by the fact that your incoming calls and texts are always free AND by the fact that you get free access to TheCloud, which is the largest commercial Wi-Fi provider in the UK – basically the equivalent of getting free access to the T-Mobile Wi-Fi service. Long story short: 18-month obligation, $1620 total cost, because that 8 GB iPhone is FREE.
Meanwhile, America: $40 for the minimum service (450 night/5000N-W min), $5 for 200 texts a month, and $30 for the unlimited data service. So you’re paying $1350 for that 18 months, PLUS $200 for the 8 GB iPhone, PLUS you’re using up your alloted minutes and texts to receive as well, PLUS it doesn’t look like there’s any free service on otherwise-paid-for WiFi networks, PLUS you’re still on the hook for an additional 6 months because it’s a 2-year contract. If you actually wanted to replicate the O2 offer, consider the 900-minute plan ($60/month) and assume you’d use a lot of your free nights/weekends to make up the diff. Add in the next plan up, which goes from 200 to 1500 messages ($15 a month, and you’ll need those to cover the cost of what you would have received free) and the data plan (still $30) and you’re at $105 a month – or, when you factor in the cost of the phone, $2090 over the first 18 months.
It was a valiant effort, but Apple has failed to break the back of the steam-age telecommunications industry in the United States. The rest of the world has moved on, but between the kind of mobility offerings we get and the fact that 256kbps is considered “broadband” for legal purposes, the fact is that we’re a Third World country when it comes to 21st century communications, and that’s a disgrace.
Incidentally, upon further review, if I were to upgrade it would actually cost me $680 on top of what I already pay – I forgot to factor in my FAN discount from the last job and the additional text message costs. No bloody way am I paying that kind of coin just to add 3G and GPS – that’s 2/3 of a sweet big-screen TV.
Downsides
One other note about the new iPhone: it looks like it’s really just another phone now vis-a-vis AT&T. The data plans are the same (i.e. the extra $10 a month, or $25 a month for business plans – WTF?) and you can’t even order the phone online from Apple – it’s retail purchase and in-store activation only.
Sadly, Apple was not able to permanently shift the way cellular works in this country. But AT&T should be kissing their ass, because I can’t count how many people I know who only have AT&T because of the iPhone. And if I could shift it, I’d switch to T-Mob in a second, but I need the visual voicemail…
Well there it is.
No surprises at all in the new iPhone. Yes, the much-vaunted 3G is there, but the early specs seem to indicate that actual 3G connectivity will be twice as thirsty as ordinary GSM talk time, and I expect there’ll be a similar dropoff for data. GPS is interesting, but I don’t know how much better it will be than the existing semi-triangulation locator.
See, here’s the thing: I’m on the wrong side of 30, married, fairly socially inert, and living in Silicon Valley. I’ve got free Wi-Fi coming out my ears on all sides, and for the most part don’t really get THAT much out of having 3G speed – there are not a lot of times when I need that kind of speed and don’t have access to it. In addition, I’m not wild about the fact that the base 3G data plan is $10 a month higher – which means, when you add it all up, that the most basic upgrade to the new unit will end up costing me $440.
There’s not $440 worth of delta between my iPhone and the new one. Which is actually a good thing, because that’s money that could more usefully be put into, say, a new TV in time for football season. However, for all the people who held off because they wanted 3G or GPS, now you get a nice cheap option relative to what was available at launch. (Although if you buy an 8GB model now for $200, then add in the $240 from the delta in plan price, you’re still paying only $60 less over 2 years than you would have at the start, and lining AT&T’s pockets besides.)
Two things people wanted that I don’t think will show up:
1) Video capture, to which I say – yeah, but the problem is, all but the best cameraphones still capture video at a crappy 160×120, or at best 320×240 (QVGA). One thing I’ve learned pretty quickly is that Apple is reluctant to include a feature that they think sucks, unless they can make it *not* suck. And I think anything less than VGA-quality video will, in Apple’s collective mind, suck.
2) MMS. I would still like a better way of receiving MMS. As it stands now, though, AT&T’s default method for informing non-MMS subscribers of a multimedia message is what shows up on the iPhone, complete with URL and incomprehensible ID and password. Ultimately I think the Cupertino powers that be will still say “why do you want to send crappy little pictures for a quarter a pop when you can send much better stuff in email for free with your unlimited data?” And I can see the logic there, but it would still be nice to get pix of my niece right to the phone without going through hoops.
Oh, and to whoever it was I saw on a web forum saying that the iPhone ought to have 160GB of storage the same as an iPod can: grow up.
New rule
Stagger Lee’s Eighth Rule of Political Discourse:
Anyone invoking George McGovern as a signifying comparison for Presidential elections after 1984 is automatically not worth taking seriously. A similar comparison holds for Barry Goldwater (with the exception of discussions of John McCain solely related to the angle of candidates from Arizona; any other correlation will not be taken under advisement as intelligent commentary).
Any election that took place before the current candidates were able to vote is not germane to this one, and the caliber of intellectual laziness that relies on such comparisons will not be indulged by this publication. So if you seriously think we’re experiencing a repeat of 1972 this year, well…
Why the Wall Street Journal is full of shit
Apple has said that Adobe’s flash media player, which is on hundreds of other phones, doesn’t perform up to Apple’s standards for the iPhone.
Listen, jackass, “flash memory” != Adobe Flash.
I always thought CNN went downhill after deciding that OJ was worth wall-to-wall coverage, but if you need more proof than this that they are butt-worthless, I can’t help you.
Armageddon Eve
So Monday at 10 AM is the keynote for Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. Also known as “Apple Mardi Gras.” This is the only show of the year that is actually operated by Apple – MacWorld is actually an IDG event, and the other stuff like NAB or EDUCAUSE or PRINT ‘0n are their own things – and it’s the only one with no exhibitors, no third-party vendors, nothing but Apple seminars and sessions all week. It also comes with a ridonkulous party Thursday night awash in free food and booze and a live musical act. (The last three years they were the Wallflowers, BT and Ozomatli, in increasing order of energy and entertainment.)
This year, we see the results of a yearlong experiment in which the entire community of MacMacs and Apple fanboys attempts to will a product into existence, i.e. the mythical “3G iPhone.” I admit that the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming – the supply chain empty worldwide, AT&T denying its retail staff leave in July even as they ramp up HSDPA (HSPDA? HPSDA? WTF?) deployment, tons of mysterious boxes being unloaded in Long Beach–
OK, this is where I have to take a detour. God knows I owe my life to Apple – when I crapped out at grad school, the thing that saved me was that in three years of monkeying around with a Power Mac 6100, I had taught myself enough to be taken on as a junior support tech. Literally every penny that has come into my pocket since September 1997 has been due to or as an indirect result of something to do with Apple. So I have a certain amount of gratitude to the Monster of Cupertino for keeping me out of the produce cooler at the Piggly Wiggly.
However, the worst part about being an Apple supporter is…the other Apple supporters. You know – the recalcitrant more-Apple-than-Apple types, the ones who literally cried when they realized there was a command line in OS X and that you couldn’t customize the Apple menu – the ones who would willingly throw out protected memory and preemptive multitasking because they thought the System 6 Multifinder was the pinnacle of UI achievement. The MacMacs (hat tip to the genius of John C. Welch, who is what every Mac administrator should be), who are like the seagulls in Finding Nemo, only with “Mac” instead of “Mine.” You can usually tell them because they look like normal geek fanboy types, only with a rainbow-Apple sticker on the can of paste they’ve been eating.
These are the people who have basically said that there is an iPhone coming that will do foo, bar, and X. Either that or complaining that the iPhone is worthless without foo, bar, and X, and it should have the Newton interface. Foo, bar, and X are usually some combination of 3G, GPS, CDMA and EVDO support, voice recognition with text dictation, full-on text editing, a user-accessible command line, 1080p HD video recording, full VTOL launch capability and the power to transform into Trinity from The Matrix and Princess Leia in the metal bikini, with three-way recreation on their minds.
Now, there is probably something coming out. We know at a minimum that we’re going to get either an announcement or an outright launch of the new 2.0 version of the existing iPhone firmware, incorporating support for 3rd party applications and ActiveSync/Exchange in an enterprise environment (basically throwing down the gauntlet to the Blackberry monolith). Any features beyond that, or new hardware to run them on? Purely speculation at this point. However, I am prepared to bet, and bet big, that at the end of the day Monday, whatever has been announced will still lack foo, bar, or X, and that there will be hot tears and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Here’s the thing. It may sound absurd and contradictory, but it’s the truth: Apple’s output is not and cannot be directed towards satisfying the fanboy market.
Remember 1997? The stock was down around $15. Since then it’s split 8 ways and is bumping around the mid-$180 mark. Every dollar you sunk into AAPL back in the day has jumped by close on two orders of magnitude in the ensuing decade-plus. It didn’t happen because they turned their efforts toward what the geek masses desired, or stuck with satisfying the dead-ender loyalists, because that’s not where the money is.
I’ve had about two dozen phones in the last 5 years. I had a couple of smartphones back when they were new and preposterously expensive, and I tried to do stuff with them, and in a pinch I could have done about 90% of what the iPhone does. Because I was a geek and willing to screw around with that kind of stuff.
But when a friend of mine takes her iPhone up to Canada and shows it to her parents, and they are overcome with amazement and want one almost immediately? That’s where the money is. When you can go outside the expected market and captivate people, that’s when stuff happens. Apple didn’t make the first smartphone, they didn’t make the first MP3 player either – but they made them captivating. And having had my share of MP3 players and phones, I can say with confidence that it’s not all down to trendy design and an aura of hip – it’s because they worked better than what was out there. Everybody remembers the famous Slashdot riff on the first iPod – “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” – but the rest of the world doesn’t care about that shit. They want something that they can use easily without too much effort.
So don’t get too bothered Tuesday morning when the Intarweb tubes are clogged with ranting and raving. Apple, like God or the Cylons, has a plan, and they’re sticking with it. And based on ten years of paper in my pocket, I’m willing to let them play it out.
(As God is my witness, I actually do some work during the day. Honest.)