Comments on: iPhone iPhud

By: James

James — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 04:05:20 +0000

Thank god someone isn’t afraid of singing praises to that fat fucktard named Scoble. I bet the big bloated M still pays him to talk shit. I wish he’d just stop blogging, eat too many beefy burgers so he can clog his arteries, and then get sued for knowingly stating false information to mislead the public.

By: hodger

hodger — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 01:54:28 +0000

Apple really blew it with the Cingular deal. It is normal in international markets for contractually subsidized phones to still be unlocked so long as the contract guarantees the carrier their money. Sure, make me use Cingular. I already do. But I use unlocked phones and have several other SIMS I need to use throughout my business year and travels. Apple could have swung this but probably had to get in bed with the evil carrier to get the product to market. Sad. I want one but Apple slammed the door in my face. Perhaps some of Apple’s subsequent phone products can once again favor the user instead of the shareholders.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 01:05:55 +0000

Perhaps the location-awareness isn’t GPS which we all know and love, but something much simpler.

Over here in the UK, GSM mobiles can query the cell transmitter for the area’s postcode. For example, my decade-and-a-bit old Nokia displays the four characters of the current area’s postal code below the network operator name. This seems to be a standard GSM feature.

At least here, the first 4 characters of the postcode are certainly enough for a service such as Google Maps to get a decent idea of the locality.

By: Emily

Emily — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:05:00 +0000

Oh, you know what the Treo can’t do? RUN TWO PROGRAMS AT ONCE.

I fucking love my Treo and that makes me crazy on a pretty regular basis. Accidentally hit the phone button, oh, all my search results are gone. Gah.

By: Bill Woody

Bill Woody — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:01:05 +0000

On the other hand, if Microsoft had shipped this you’d be deriding it as the worst cell phone ever shipped. So, I guess, we’re even.

Oh, puhhhlease…

We deride Microsoft for shipping crappy user interfaces because Microsoft has a history of… (drum roll, please…) shipping crappy user interfaces. If Microsoft were to suddenly start shipping quality products with consistent user interfaces that were well thought out and easy to use, most of us who deride Microsoft would suddenly have a heart attack.

Then start buying Microsoft product.

By: Neo

Neo — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:55:34 +0000

Since 9/11 all US cell phones are mandated to have GPS support for 9-1-1 call locating.

Only recently has any cell phone used GPS for anything other than emergency locator functions, e.g. finding nearby diners or movie houses or your “homies” according to the BOOST mobile ads.

Where you at, dawg?!

By: vanni

vanni — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:40:20 +0000

Ok. There is a slew of job positions being posted on apple’s site for iphone engineers. There is still six months to ship date. Apple is listening in on all the comments. There will probably be a number of other models coming soon. They are going to go for europe and asia markets. that area will be 3G and maybe CDMA. jeez they have to start somewhere! This thing is way more revolutionary that just a a cell phone…it’s a new way of looking at communication in a very portable platform with a unique multi-touch interface and has OS X. give them some credit folks!

Like Domenico Bettinelli said: This is going to be HUGE. We are forging into new territory. When i bought an ipod in 2001 lots of folks didn’t see what a cool and great device it was. it was am music player and a hard drive and it had other cool things. Then iTunes came in and changed everything…. i wonder what else Apple has planned for the iPhone landscape

By: Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 18:33:31 +0000

Those who said that cellphones have to have GPS — that’s right, sort of. They have to be able to provide their location for E911 services. My understanding from researching this a few months ago was that Verizon and Sprint opted for super-cheap GPS chips that work ok; Verizon is now selling a service based on GPS location. Cingular opted for building cell-tower triangulation, which works relatively well in the most populated areas; I’m not sure if it meets E911 terms in remote places, however.

In any case, the iPhone will absolutely have to have a location-aware component and tech, because it has to be able to send that information to an E911 operator automatically. Whether Apple and Cingul—AT&T, sorry…will rely on it is a different question.

By: KG

KG — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:32:10 +0000

I like Scoble, but wow! That was funny, not to mention spot on. Macalope does it again. Nice work.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:42:52 +0000

Re: GPS

In the Starbucks demo, Jobs had Moscone West pre-entered as a favorite location. So that doesn’t really provide evidence that the phone is location aware. Still, if it exists in some form in the hardware, perhaps the software will let it free at some point (even if it’s only based on triangulation rather than GPS…but it seems like that would require Cingular to send info back to the phone…).