Prudential: Apple to release two iPhone models, one with WiFi

[AppleInsider]

Apple Computer plans to introduce two iPod-based cell phone models in the first quarter of 2007 that it will initially manufacture in limited quantities, says one analyst.

In a research note released to clients on Monday, Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora said his checks indicate that one model will be a smart phone, including integrated keyboard, video and music capability, while the other model will be a slimmer phone with just music functionality.

The analyst, who remained mum on his sources, said at least one of the models will include WiFi wireless capabilities.

"Although these phones represent significant upside earnings potential for the company, there are some concerns regarding market acceptance and battery life, given the number of functions included in the phones," he wrote. "Our checks indicate that Apple will produce these phones in limited quantities initially as a market test vehicle."

For Apple's fourth fiscal quarter ended September, Tortora expects the Cupertino, Calif.-based company to post some upside to street estimates, driven primarily by Mac sales strength and favorable component cost declines. He's modeling revenue of $4.8 billion and earnings-per-share of $0.55, ahead of consensus estimates of $4.7 billion and $0.51.

"While we expect Mac momentum to continue in the [December quarter] (forecasting 1.9 million units), we are more cautious on the outlook for iPod sales and on Apple’s overall margin prospects," the analyst wrote.

While Tortora said checks indicate Apple is preparing its ODM partners for production orders of as many as 21 million iPod units during the December holiday quarter, he said other checks suggest that iPod unit shipments will come in closer to 16 million units for the quarter.

"Moreover, while our checks indicate that production of Apple's new wide screen video iPod will begin in the [December quarter], we do not expect the product to be released until early next year," he continued. "All told, we would not be surprised to see Apple scale down ODM production plans as the quarter moves on, and think that iPod sales could fall short of investor expectations."

Tortora, who maintains a Neutral rating and $74 price target on shares of Apple, recommended that investors remain on the sidelines until he gets "better visibility into the competitive dynamics of the media player space" and its new product ramps.[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ] (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2146)

[mbaynham]

well here's one to ponder over...

[gugy]

well another analyst full of BS.
come on, these guys don't know any more than any of us in this forum.

[mbaynham]

well another analyst full of BS.
come on, these guys don't know any more than any of us in this forum.

yer but there getting paid to chat a load of bollocks. man, if i had that job, i would be a millionaire by now..

[McHuman]

Tortora recommended that investors remain on the sidelines until he gets "better visibility into the competitive dynamics of the media player space".[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ] (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2146)

Thats just a fancy way of saying he wants to wait to see how the Zune does. :rolleyes:

[Caribou Killa]

The iPhone I'm a little excited about. Especially the more expensive one, though with my small electronics funds I doubt I'll be getting any phone anytime soon. The widescreen iPod is rediculous. We shouldv'e had it at "It's Showtime!" Just how reliable are these analysts though? Anyone?

[SpamSandwich]

Re: iPhone

The important point was completely glossed over by the analyst... can you squirt a video to another iPhone? :lol: :lol: :lol:

[TenoBell]

Its all coming together. I will be released from the shackles of my cell phone plan January 07. If Apple offers a smartphone they will get $300 from me.

at least one of the models will include WiFi wireless capabilities

Would not be worth it if it kills battery life. Plus if Apple works with T-Mobile they will have 3G capability. WiFi isn't necessary.

The widescreen iPod is rediculous. We shouldv'e had it at "It's Showtime!" Just how reliable are these analysts though? Anyone?

Apple would likely want to keep a wide screen iPod as close as possible the same size, weight, and battery life of the current iPod.

Wide screen devices available right now are either heavier or thicker and have less battery life than the current iPods. Apple is likely waiting for technology and cost of components to come to a place where they feel they can offer a quality wide screen iPod at a reasonable cost.

[SpamSandwich]

If iPhone doesn't work with T-mobile, Steve will never get me on board.

[Caribou Killa]

Excuse my cell phone ignorance but whats so great about T Mobile?

[Bear]

Excuse my cell phone ignorance but whats so great about T Mobile?Nothing at all.

All the cell phone companies in the US suck. How much they suck depends on where you live and what your needs are. In some areas T Mobile may be great for local coverage, elswhere it might be Verizon. And of course voice and data coverage can be different in an area for a carrier.

So people need to check out the cell phone company and plan based on where they need to use it. And not based on someone liking a carrier in a city they never go to.

[bdj21ya]

Nothing at all.

All the cell phone companies in the US suck. How much they suck depends on where you live and what your needs are. In some areas T Mobile may be great for local coverage, elswhere it might be Verizon. And of course voice and data coverage can be different in an area for a carrier.

So people need to check out the cell phone company and plan based on where they need to use it. And not based on someone liking a carrier in a city they never go to.

I definitely agree that coverage in your area is probably the most important. However, I was always impressed with T-Mobile's customer support. I also loved the #min# and #bal# features for checking my minutes/balance.

[monkeyastronaut]

one model will be a smart phone, including integrated keyboard, video and music capability, while the other model will be a slimmer phone with just music functionality.

*spits orange juice all over the table* no, no... this can't be right. which one will be the candy bar shaped one? will there be a brown one??

get me teh WU on the phone now!

[melgross]

Excuse my cell phone ignorance but whats so great about T Mobile?

The Ads. She's hot. The service isn't.

[eji]

The prospect of an integrated keyboard is what's making me drool and want to ditch my Zaurus. Most smartphones and PDAs either lack a keyboard or have one that's barely functional, and it's the main reason I went with my Z a few years ago. But I'd ditch this outdated, jury-rigged Linux brick in a second for a well designed, functional Apple smartphone.

[Clive At Five]

I have yet to see a phone w/ integrated keyboard which pleases me, both functionally and aesthetically. Unless Apple impresses me with something shockingly amazing, no smart phone user will I be.

-Clive

[bikertwin]

I have yet to see a phone w/ integrated keyboard which pleases me, both functionally and aesthetically. Unless Apple impresses me with something shockingly amazing, no smart phone user will I be.

-Clive

Me, too. I'll probably stick to the music-only iPhone. That way I can replace my phone and iPod.

My Palm Tungsten I can carry around separately, when needed... unless the smart iPhone is suprisingly small.

[melgross]

My Treo 700p is pretty good—except for the keyboard.

I perplexes me as to why someone would think that such small keys should be domed rather than dished. The keys are so close that I hit more than one when pressing with my finger. I don't have big fingers. When I try my nail, it slides off. You can't use the stylus for the same reason.

If they were dished then you could use a nail, or the stylus.

I installed "Mobile Write" which is somewhat like "Graffiti" except that the top third of the screen is for numbers, and the rest is for letters, etc.

Don't forget that Apple has "Ink", which has never really been used, or pushed. Perhaps now is the time for it.

[mugwump]

Any touchscreen device requires more device thickness than a regular one. It will be interesting to see if they go for the thinner form instead.

An Apple smartphone running mobile X will be great. I look forward to it.

[melgross]

Any touchscreen device requires more device thickness than a regular one. It will be interesting to see if they go for the thinner form instead.

An Apple smartphone running mobile X will be great. I look forward to it.

But not much of a difference. A sixteenth of an inch is all that is needed with a small screen.

[anantksundaram]

If iPhone doesn't work with T-mobile, Steve will never get me on board.

I've got news for you: Apple's phone will be GSM, and an exclusive with T-Mobile (I am bummed, since I just signed on to a stupid 2-year Verizon agreement).

:mad:

[Kenneth]

yea yea.. yet another iPhone article.

Since, I'm happy with my Nokia S60 smartphone and Sidekick 3, I don't think I will actually buy an Apple-branded iPhone. Too little, too late.

[BRussell]

Apple would likely want to keep a wide screen iPod as close as possible the same size, weight, and battery life of the current iPod. Maybe, but I think it's at least possible that the videoPod will be added to the iPod line-up, rather than replace the current iPod. In fact, I think that's likely, given the price drop on the recent iPod release. If that happens, it could be almost like a small portable TV with a laptop-size VGA screen, rather than a new iPod.

[OfficerDigby]

What I don't get is his models for Macs being sold looks fantastic, fantastic growth etc (1.9M Macs!) - but apparently it means nothing if Microsoft sell a Zune or until Apple releases an iPhone or two.
WTF? What Mac market share growth would this analyst need to see for him to see the point in investing based upon it? I don't get it!

[mrtotes]

Keyboards on mobile devices are crap.

I'm looking forward to seeing Apple's solution.

[SteveGTA]

this doesn't sound Apple-like, this guy is full of shit.

1) I doubt they'll release two different phones right off the batt. maybe two phones with minor differences but two totally different designs.. no..
2) Keyboard? i think not..
3) Apple is not a company that throws out crappy products to "test" the market. They try to do it right the first time. If they wanted to test the market I'm sure theyd already have a phone out.

[aegisdesign]

Too late. My Sony Ericsson p990i arrives on Thursday. It cost £49. http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/handset/sony_ericsson_p990i/detail/pay_monthly

Maybe next year once they've worked out the kinks. I still need a new small phone though for when I don't want to carry a chunky smartphone so maybe if they do an iPhone Nano and it's next to free on pay-as-you-go and easy unlocked I'll try one of those. In the meantime, I'll stick with the excellent UIQ phones which in general work better than any other smartphones with MacOSX and iSync.

[TenoBell]

Maybe, but I think it's at least possible that the videoPod will be added to the iPod line-up, rather than replace the current iPod. In fact, I think that's likely, given the price drop on the recent iPod release.

That's possible. But I think they won't launch until the time is right to do so.

I cannot see them bringing a full screen iPod that is significantly heavier or have significantly less battery life and sell it for more than the current iPod.

[aegisdesign]

The problem I have with the full video iPod is where you're expected to get the content from. Music CDs can be ripped easily because they have no DRM. DVDs do. Plus it takes a lifetime to transcode a DVD to ipod sized video unless you've got the latest top end kit.

That leaves buying videos from the iTunes store. Something you can only do in the USA currently and it's incredibly limited.

So, for all but the geeks who know how to illegally rip DVDs and Americans, there's no content AT ALL for a video iPod. Music is still where it's at.

[freakboy]

uh.. video content: insert DVD, wake up. Video content ready. What's the problem?

[SpamSandwich]

Excuse my cell phone ignorance but whats so great about T Mobile?

If you travel internationally they have far greater coverage.

[SpamSandwich]

The Ads. She's hot. The service isn't.

If you're looking for lousy service and coverage, just get Sprint.

[SpamSandwich]

I've got news for you: Apple's phone will be GSM, and an exclusive with T-Mobile (I am bummed, since I just signed on to a stupid 2-year Verizon agreement).

:mad:

How do you "know" this?

[jasong]

I'd go for this if it had Palm or Windows compatibility built in. I have a treo and use numerous medical apps on it, and I am not willing to carry two devices. The likelihood of any company porting their Palm/Windows apps to the iPhone is pretty small (unless they just take over the market). Of course I have two devices to carry around now as it is, iPod and Treo, maybe I'll upgrade to an iPhone and get a cheap Palm for my med apps.

[Skwidspawn]

I might be the only person in this forum with something positive to say about this, but I LOVE the idea. Right now I carry a wallet, Treo, iPod, and keys in my pockets. That means that I carry around 4 pockets-worth of electronics, and only 3 available pockets (I don't use my other back pocket, don't want to crush something or stab myself). I think that an iPod phone "iPhone" is a natural progression. Pretty much everyone with an iPod has a cell-phone these days, making a product that combines the two together is extremely smart on Apple's part. The idea of having two models is also ingenious. A base model for minimalists who just want iPod Nano capability/capacity as well as a simple "does it's job well" cell-phone. A Smartphone for people who want 5G iPod capabilities and also want to be able to take notes, email, play games, surf the web, etc... on their device.

If Apple makes a Smartphone that works seemlessly with a Mac (and Windows) I would be very willing to shell out $500 for it since a plain phone with the same capabilities plus an iPod would run you well over that price!

->Jason: If such a device is in the works from Apple you can be assured that they will have a very simple way to program apps for the device. There would be a ton of early adopters out there who would love to get their hands on the device. You can be sure that it would be beautiful and very appealing to people. I wouldn't be surprised if companies that make Palm apps would be able to port such apps over to the iPhone fairly easily enough.

[Aries 1B]

I might be the only person in this forum with something positive to say about this, but I LOVE the idea. Right now I carry a wallet, Treo, iPod, and keys in my pockets. That means that I carry around 4 pockets-worth of electronics, and only 3 available pockets (I don't use my other back pocket, don't want to crush something or stab myself). I think that an iPod phone "iPhone" is a natural progression. Pretty much everyone with an iPod has a cell-phone these days, making a product that combines the two together is extremely smart on Apple's part. The idea of having two models is also ingenious. A base model for minimalists who just want iPod Nano capability/capacity as well as a simple "does it's job well" cell-phone. A Smartphone for people who want 5G iPod capabilities and also want to be able to take notes, email, play games, surf the web, etc... on their device.

If Apple makes a Smartphone that works seemlessly with a Mac (and Windows) I would be very willing to shell out $500 for it since a plain phone with the same capabilities plus an iPod would run you well over that price!

->Jason: If such a device is in the works from Apple you can be assured that they will have a very simple way to program apps for the device. There would be a ton of early adopters out there who would love to get their hands on the device. You can be sure that it would be beautiful and very appealing to people. I wouldn't be surprised if companies that make Palm apps would be able to port such apps over to the iPhone fairly easily enough.

Look at your Dashboard content. I am convinced that a 'hidden' reason for the development of Widgets was not only to feed Dashboard, but to have a readymade body of software to feed a Video iPod and/or the iPhone and/or the iTablet.

...I hope.

V/R,
Aries 1B

[wirc]

this doesn't sound Apple-like, this guy is full of shit.

1) I doubt they'll release two different phones right off the batt. maybe two phones with minor differences but two totally different designs.. no..
2) Keyboard? i think not..
3) Apple is not a company that throws out crappy products to "test" the market. They try to do it right the first time. If they wanted to test the market I'm sure theyd already have a phone out.

1. Actually doesn't this make perfect sense if you go with Steve's idea of a grid for business and consumer products. Imagine a larger, possibly aluminum smartphone for business and a smaller candy-bar phone for most people. Integrating a phone, pda, and computer under a killer OS would be a huge incentive to some business owners to switch platforms, if only from some variant of the halo effect. Add the media player functionality to it for some smooth jazz and you'll have executives clamoring for it, since they can plug it into their BMWs or take it with them in transit.

A consumer phone would probably be just a good-looking phone with good menus and useful features.

2. Perhaps thinking outside the box is a good idea for this one. I have faith in Mssrs. Ive and Jobs to come up with something more innovative, probably also something very obvious that we are missing. The first thing they teach you in a design school is how to break your preconcieved notions and look at things in a totally different way. It's pretty disturbing how much junk is piled up over more obvious answers by years of thinking in one particular way. Consider, for example, the way people often percieve OS X being too simple or not linear enough, which is a product of hand-holding MS technology.

3. Maybe they already have. Why else would they drop such an ugly, unworkable POS as the ROKR E1. I can't imagine that Steve would let that out without some kind of ulterior motive. The iTunes on Motorola phones deal looks to me like an experimentation phase that is to be merged with iPod and a dash of OS X.

[Skwidspawn]

Look at your Dashboard content. I am convinced that a 'hidden' reason for the development of Widgets was not only to feed Dashboard, but to have a readymade body of software to feed a Video iPod and/or the iPhone and/or the iTablet.

...I hope.
Wow... that's an awesome idea. With the updated widget creation tools in the next release of OSX Leopard we can expect to see some pretty powerful widgets find their way into the Dashboard. If Apple went with this sort of idea for a phone we could expect some very cheap, extremely powerful application appear for the phone quickly. Writing a simple spreadsheet or text editing widgit that communicates with Office or Pages would be easy! Aries... you've gotten me all excited over here!

[MacGregor]

Look at your Dashboard content. I am convinced that a 'hidden' reason for the development of Widgets was not only to feed Dashboard, but to have a readymade body of software to feed a Video iPod and/or the iPhone and/or the iTablet.

...I hope.

V/R,
Aries 1B

EXACTLY MY HOPE TOO!!!!!

[Aries 1B]

Wow... that's an awesome idea. With the updated widget creation tools in the next release of OSX Leopard we can expect to see some pretty powerful widgets find their way into the Dashboard. If Apple went with this sort of idea for a phone we could expect some very cheap, extremely powerful application appear for the phone quickly. Writing a simple spreadsheet or text editing widgit that communicates with Office or Pages would be easy! Aries... you've gotten me all excited over here!

Egad!:lol:

Don't get too excited; I've been waiting for my Newton replacement since 1998. Keep a low pulse rate and enjoy life.

If the proliferation of Widgets to new Apple platforms is part of Steve's Plan, then when/if they launch Apple's Fabled Platforms (Video iPod, iPhone(s), and iTablet) there's already a significant software base AND, as you point out, the updated Widget creation tools which would lead to an unprecedentedly quick ramp-up of applications. Talk about hitting the ground running!

The topic of software that already exists for Apple's Fabled Platforms could well be a significant page in the next keynote!

V/R,
Aries 1B

[Kishan]

I'd go for this if it had Palm or Windows compatibility built in. I have a treo and use numerous medical apps on it, and I am not willing to carry two devices. The likelihood of any company porting their Palm/Windows apps to the iPhone is pretty small (unless they just take over the market). Of course I have two devices to carry around now as it is, iPod and Treo, maybe I'll upgrade to an iPhone and get a cheap Palm for my med apps.

Ditto for me... at work I often have to wear two pagers, my mobile phone, my palm tx in a pocket and usually my iPod if I am on call. I would love to consolidate some of this stuff, but only in an Apple device. Lots of my colleagues have Treos, but they are just not well implemented solutions to the problems. With all the medical software out there for Palms, I would have to have something that can run Palm software.

[McDave]

The analyst, who remained mum on his sources, said at least one of the models will include WiFi wireless capabilities[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ] (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2146)

Is this so we can connect to our machines at 1/10th the speed and chew up loads battery for the 'convenience' of no cables? No, wait we could connect wirelessly with the iPhone plugged into the wall socket charging!

Easy! Do I qualify for the Microsoft Academy of Smart Design ?

[melgross]

If you're looking for lousy service and coverage, just get Sprint.

Not true in NYC anymore. I originally went with them a few years ago because they had the best phones, and the Samsung i300, later the i330. But the service was adequate.

But after the last blackout if got far better. I also like the plan for our three phones.

Now I have the Treo 700p, but other carriers have it as well. The EV-DO works very well and is fairly cheap.

[melgross]

Look at your Dashboard content. I am convinced that a 'hidden' reason for the development of Widgets was not only to feed Dashboard, but to have a readymade body of software to feed a Video iPod and/or the iPhone and/or the iTablet.

...I hope.

V/R,
Aries 1B


Interesting idea.

[melgross]

Is this so we can connect to our machines at 1/10th the speed and chew up loads battery for the 'convenience' of no cables? No, wait we could connect wirelessly with the iPhone plugged into the wall socket charging!

Easy! Do I qualify for the Microsoft Academy of Smart Design ?

The purpose would be to connect to the internet at high speed, and in addition, use it as a WiFi modem for a laptop.

But, you do qualify. :lol:

[mugwump]

mel,

You claim that a touch screen only adds minimal thickness. Please link me to any "thin" device that has one. thx

[melgross]

mel,

You claim that a touch screen only adds minimal thickness. Please link me to any "thin" device that has one. thx

I don't know what you mean by "thin".

Here are some touch screens made by a well known company.

These are larger screens, starting at 12.2", and they are meant for vandal proof applications, as you will read. They are thicker therefore, but notice the thickness's offered. one mm equals about 1/25th".

http://www.touchinternational.com/literature/datasheets/R-plusnew.pdf

The next series is for smaller items. The size we are talking about. PDA's, Mobile Apps, etc.

Look at the thicknesses here. They are very thin. The thickness of the LCD and backlight are far thicker. Again, remember that one mm is about 1/25th".

http://www.touchinternational.com/literature/datasheets/ti4touch.pdf

They have thinner models as well.

http://www.touchinternational.com/literature/datasheets/extremetouch.pdf

[mugwump]

But those are not devices.

I made it clear that touch screen devices are thicker than regular screen devices, and you disagreed saying the film is very thin. So, again, where are these thin devices? For example, the Treo is not a thin device.

I don't know what you mean by "thin".

Here are some touch screens made by a well known company...

[audiopollution]

But those are not devices.

I made it clear that touch screen devices are thicker than regular screen devices, and you disagreed saying the film is very thin. So, again, where are these thin devices? For example, the Treo is not a thin device.

Provide an example of what *you* consider to be a thin device.

[melgross]

But those are not devices.

I made it clear that touch screen devices are thicker than regular screen devices, and you disagreed saying the film is very thin. So, again, where are these thin devices? For example, the Treo is not a thin device.

I think that you are not very adept at understanding posts.

I said in my earlier post that it would require about one sixteenth of an inch extra thickness for the touchscreen. You can reread it if you like. I said that there would "not much" of a fdifference. I did not say that there would be "no" difference.

I then provided several links to a major manufacturer of those screens.

As you will have seen for yourself, those screens are as thin as one seventy fifth of an inch. As those touch screens are bonded to the LCD beneath, it's pretty obvious that they won't add much to the thickness of the device.

If you really expect me, or anyone, to actually do a search for you to find out what the thicknesses of all of the touch screen devices out there are, you are nuts!

I was being very polite in response to your aggressively worded post. The least you can do is to think it out for yourself with the information I provided.

Can you prove that any other manufacturers other than Apple really care about just how thin their products are, unless they are highly styled, but poorly functioning phones, such as the Razor?

You want me to prove a negative, which is impossible.

[mugwump]

The nano is a thin device. Touch screen devices are not thin. It will be interesting what Apple will do with this.

Mel, I'm sorry if you're getting upset with your posts. You quickly refuted my claim yet it's clear you haven't really refuted my claim.

You're posting about some screen coatings, and I'm referring to the iPhone that would need to use the screen, the chip that must process it, and the illumination required to shine through it. But thanks for all of your posts, since I'm "not very adept at understanding posts" and all.

[audiopollution]

The nano is a thin device. Touch screen devices are not thin. It will be interesting what Apple will do with this.

Mel, I'm sorry if you're getting upset with your posts. You quickly refuted my claim yet it's clear you haven't really refuted my claim.

You're posting about some screen coatings, and I'm referring to the iPhone that would need to use the screen, the chip that must process it, and the illumination required to shine through it. But thanks for all of your posts, since I'm "not very adept at understanding posts" and all.

sigh.

[melgross]

The nano is a thin device. Touch screen devices are not thin. It will be interesting what Apple will do with this.

Mel, I'm sorry if you're getting upset with your posts. You quickly refuted my claim yet it's clear you haven't really refuted my claim.

You're posting about some screen coatings, and I'm referring to the iPhone that would need to use the screen, the chip that must process it, and the illumination required to shine through it. But thanks for all of your posts, since I'm "not very adept at understanding posts" and all.

no, I'm annoyed with your posts. mine don't bother me at all.

I'm not referring to screen "coatings. I'm refering to touch screens. A screen coating is an antireflective layer, or an anti scratch surface, or even a screen protecter.

You stated that a touch screen would add thickness. I said that it would add a little.

You did not refer to anything other than a touch screen. The electronics are trivial. One small surface mounted driver chip. There is no light that must shine through it other than the one provided for the LCD. Brightness there is determined by voltage. These screens pass 80 to 90% of the light.

If you misinterpret what I say, then my statement stands.

Otherwise, I have no wish to have a fight. The information is straightforward.

What is put into a phone determines how it will look. the battery is an important factor. The Treo 600 was criticised for not having a replacable battery. The 650 added one, and added a small bit of thickness because of it. That's one reason why Apple doesn't have replacable batteries. If they have them in their phones, they will be thicker, or will possibly have less lifetime (smaller battery). Movable buttons add another 3 to7 mm.

By the time they are through, the phone is big and heavy. Then add a camera, a computer chip, plenty of RAM, a memory card slot, and you add more. then include the antenna, speaker mic and ear piece. The radio transmitter/receiver, Bluetooth, and possibly WiFi, and the battery just got bigger and heavier.

You can keep going.

[mugwump]

Okay.

A quick google found this information of touch screen phones:

HP iPAQ hw6510 / hw6515 .71"
HP iPAQ hw6940 / hw6915 .71"
PPC-6600 / PPC-6601 / XV6600 (HTC Harrier) .74"
Treo 680 .8"
PPC-6700 / XV-6700 (HTC Apache) .9"
HTC TyTN .9"
Hitachi G1000 .9"
Palm Treo 650 / 700p / 700w|wx .9"
HTC Wizard / 8125 / 8100 / MDA (USA) / K-JAM .93"
Motorola MPx .94"
Samsung SCH-i730 .93"
Samsung SCH-i830 / IP-830w .97"
Sony Ericsson P910A 1.02"

The Motorola Q is full featured at 11mm (.4") thick, without a touch screen.

Certainly Apple is dealing with this issue if they plan an iPhone or iPod with this functionality. I'm looking forward to what device they finally launch.

[melgross]

Okay.

A quick google found this information of touch screen phones:

HP iPAQ hw6510 / hw6515 .71"
HP iPAQ hw6940 / hw6915 .71"
PPC-6600 / PPC-6601 / XV6600 (HTC Harrier) .74"
Treo 680 .8"
PPC-6700 / XV-6700 (HTC Apache) .9"
HTC TyTN .9"
Hitachi G1000 .9"
Palm Treo 650 / 700p / 700w|wx .9"
HTC Wizard / 8125 / 8100 / MDA (USA) / K-JAM .93"
Motorola MPx .94"
Samsung SCH-i730 .93"
Samsung SCH-i830 / IP-830w .97"
Sony Ericsson P910A 1.02"

The Motorola Q is full featured at 11mm (.4") thick, without a touch screen.

Certainly Apple is dealing with this issue if they plan an iPhone or iPod with this functionality. I'm looking forward to what device they finally launch.

As far as I know most all, if not all of those models are complex. It's the complexity that makes them big. It's not the touchscreen.

It will be intersting to see, as you say. Just remember that devices without touchscreens are thick as well. Look at the Zune compared to the 5G. Materials matter as well.

[audiopollution]

Okay.

A quick google found this information of touch screen phones:

HP iPAQ hw6510 / hw6515 .71"
HP iPAQ hw6940 / hw6915 .71"
PPC-6600 / PPC-6601 / XV6600 (HTC Harrier) .74"
Treo 680 .8"
PPC-6700 / XV-6700 (HTC Apache) .9"
HTC TyTN .9"
Hitachi G1000 .9"
Palm Treo 650 / 700p / 700w|wx .9"
HTC Wizard / 8125 / 8100 / MDA (USA) / K-JAM .93"
Motorola MPx .94"
Samsung SCH-i730 .93"
Samsung SCH-i830 / IP-830w .97"
Sony Ericsson P910A 1.02"

The Motorola Q is full featured at 11mm (.4") thick, without a touch screen.

Certainly Apple is dealing with this issue if they plan an iPhone or iPod with this functionality. I'm looking forward to what device they finally launch.

Buy yourself a Sony Ericsson M600i, then. It's 15mm (.59") thick ... with a touchscreen.

I've got one. It's barely bigger than my v3i.

[mugwump]

Interesting, at .6" it takes the touchscreen prize! 50% thicker than the Moto Q, but not bad.



It's the complexity that makes them big. It's not the touchscreen...


The touch screen is the most complexity, which is the point of my original post that you refuted with screen thickness. The wireless radio, battery, input knobs are a given.

[audiopollution]

Interesting, at .6" it takes the touchscreen prize! 50% thicker than the Moto Q, but not bad.

36% thicker, to be pedantic, considering the Q is .43 inches thick.

I currently own 3 phones: Moto v3i, SE M600i and an HTC TyTN. Each, successively, provides me with a greater range of abilities with their increased size. Would I like a v3i sized phone with all the technology provided by the TyTN? Sure.

If it were currently possible to squeeze quad-band GSM, tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, b/g wi-fi, a decent sized qwerty keyboard, a 2 MP photo camera, a VGA video-call camera, and bluetooth into a form-factor that matched a closed v3i, don't you think it would be done?

You claim that the touchscreen is what is adding the complexity. Melgross has clearly pointed out that the touchscreen barely increases the thickness of a phone and that it's a reasonably easy endeavour to add one to a phone. I posit that a touchscreen reduces the complexity of a phone with these abilities.

[mugwump]

"Melgross has clearly pointed out that the touchscreen barely increases the thickness of a phone and that it's a reasonably easy endeavour to add one to a phone. I posit that a touchscreen reduces the complexity of a phone with these abilities."

Oh yeah, no problem to slap a film onto the screen. You'd think all smartphones would have 'em. But drawing on a screen, the processor having to listen for touch drawings, and increased luminance required to shine through the scuff marks make the device more complex. How's the battery life on the M600i? Maybe they could've added a few more battery millimeters.

And when you write that it "reduces complexity", we are posting on two opposite ideas. It's easier to use a smart phone with a touch screen, yes. But it makes the internal operation of it more complex, more power, and hence, thicker.

This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.

[aegisdesign]

Wow... that's an awesome idea. With the updated widget creation tools in the next release of OSX Leopard we can expect to see some pretty powerful widgets find their way into the Dashboard. If Apple went with this sort of idea for a phone we could expect some very cheap, extremely powerful application appear for the phone quickly. Writing a simple spreadsheet or text editing widgit that communicates with Office or Pages would be easy! Aries... you've gotten me all excited over here!

The technology behind Safari has already been ported to Symbian and runs on Nokia phones so you could at least run the simpler dashboard widgets easily. Some of the widgets however are full OSX Cocoa apps and those would be an awful lot harder to transfer across.

Apple already has written Symbian apps too. On Nokia S60 and Sony Ericsson UIQ phones iSync copies across a Symbian app to handle syncing.

If these aren't clues enough as to what OS an Apple phone would run then I don't know what is.

[minderbinder]

The problem I have with the full video iPod is where you're expected to get the content from. Music CDs can be ripped easily because they have no DRM. DVDs do. Plus it takes a lifetime to transcode a DVD to ipod sized video unless you've got the latest top end kit.

That leaves buying videos from the iTunes store. Something you can only do in the USA currently and it's incredibly limited.

So, for all but the geeks who know how to illegally rip DVDs and Americans, there's no content AT ALL for a video iPod. Music is still where it's at.

DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.

Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours. If you have a slower machine, just pop in the disc before you go to bed. And you don't have to be a geek to figure it out, just grab an app like Instant Handbrake, you just select the DVD tracks you want and hit the button. Done. It's not illegal either as long as you are ripping content you own a copy of.


Is this so we can connect to our machines at 1/10th the speed and chew up loads battery for the 'convenience' of no cables?

It's not a smart idea for big audio/video files, but wouldn't you want the option of wireless for playlists, synching contacts and calendars, email, things like that? Transferring stuff like that would take just seconds.

[aegisdesign]

Sony Ericsson P910A 1.02"

The Motorola Q is full featured at 11mm (.4") thick, without a touch screen.



The P910 is actually only 18mm thick at the screen. The bit that adds the thickness on the 910 is the optional keypad flip. It also bulges out at either end a few mm. Mostly though it's because of the huge battery that gives you about 2 days of use on average, or about 6 hours playing music IME. The card slot on the side must take up some space too.

The Moto Q is also about 1cm wider and 1cm taller. They just kind of squashed a P910 flat and put a battery in that doesn't last as long. 212 hours as opposed to 400.

Anyway, the 910 is old hat. The 990 is out and that adds 3G, two cameras, Wifi, accelerated graphics, 2megapixel camera, push email (inc blackberry support) and still is about the same size as the 910.

[Chucker]

DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.

Meep! DMCA violation.

[lfmorrison]

DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.

Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours. If you have a slower machine, just pop in the disc before you go to bed. And you don't have to be a geek to figure it out, just grab an app like Instant Handbrake, you just select the DVD tracks you want and hit the button. Done. It's not illegal either as long as you are ripping content you own a copy of.
I think the concern was that it's perfectly legal to rip CDs for fair use (in most jurisdictions) and transfer them onto your iPod because the CD's data is not encrypted in any way.

The same is true of copyrighted video content, as long as the original video is not encrypted. As soon as the video stream is encrypted in any way (even a simple XOR crypto) it falls under the jurisdiction of the DMCA.

Sure there's still fair use. But before fair use comes into play, you still need to get a version of the video stream that has been adequately massaged so that it can be played. And to do that you have to either convert the whole file into an unencrypted stream, and then send the unencumbered file to the iPod, or somehow modify the iPod's firmware so that it is capable of doing the decryption on-the-fly as you watch the video. The latter option could probably be permissible under the DMCA's reverse-engineering clauses. The former certainly isn't.

The DMCA (or several countries' local equivalents) is what's getting in the way.

Canada has no such equivalent law yet (thankfully) so I can legally circumvent the DVD's DRM. And I think the "fair use" copyright clause would still protect me if I transfer the decrypted movie onto my iPod as long as I take care not to allow the files to be redistributed.

[edit: spelling mistake in last paragraph]

[aegisdesign]

DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.

That doesn't change the legality of bypassing copy protection which is against the law usually, at least in the USA (DMCA) and Europe (EUCD).

Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours. If you have a slower machine, just pop in the disc before you go to bed.

Sure, but it's not like CDs which take up 50-60MB an album. It's 4+GB of data to transcode and store somewhere.

And you don't have to be a geek to figure it out, just grab an app like Instant Handbrake, you just select the DVD tracks you want and hit the button. Done. It's not illegal either as long as you are ripping content you own a copy of.

That's not usually true with copy protected works such as DVDs, the only exception being software where most countries allow a copy for archival purposes and fair use or fair trading which only allows excerpts, unless you're a library.

[aegisdesign]

Oh yeah, no problem to slap a film onto the screen. You'd think all smartphones would have 'em. But drawing on a screen, the processor having to listen for touch drawings, and increased luminance required to shine through the scuff marks make the device more complex. How's the battery life on the M600i? Maybe they could've added a few more battery millimeters.

And when you write that it "reduces complexity", we are posting on two opposite ideas. It's easier to use a smart phone with a touch screen, yes. But it makes the internal operation of it more complex, more power, and hence, thicker.

This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.

The battery life on the M600i is 7.5 hours talk or 2 weeks standby. About twice that of the Q.

It's mostly because (IIRC) it's one of the first Symbian phones to use a single system-on-a-chip setup where the radio stack and the CPU is one chip. In older phones (and the 990 still even which is really an older design) and current Palm, Windows and Linux phones you have a CPU running the OS and a DSP handling the radio stack. Two chips and a hungry OS (Windows or Linux anyway) mean the power requirements are much higher. The Symbian phones use a much lighter OS, lower clocked CPU (~200Mhz) and the M600 and W950 cut out one of the chips. They also cut out a few other things the 990 has such as graphics acceleration and WiFi which the 990 has to make up for with a bigger battery. Swings and roundabouts.

[minderbinder]

Meep! DMCA violation.

Fair use. Not to mention unenforcable to a ridiculous degree.

And like I care whether it is or not? The DMCA certainly hasn't stopped tons of apps from being distributed, all of which are perfectly clear that they are for ripping DVD's - why aren't they shut down if they are illegal? As an end user who rips dvd's I've bought, what does the DMCA matter to me?

Sure, but it's not like CDs which take up 50-60MB an album. It's 4+GB of data to transcode and store somewhere.

Which ends up as 1-1.5 gigs after the rip. Hard drives go up to 300/500/750 gigs these days, that's hundreds of movies. And I was responding to your comment about ripping speed, not sure why you're trying to change the subject.

[Johnny Mozzarella]

I'd go for this if it had Palm or Windows compatibility built in. I have a treo and use numerous medical apps on it, and I am not willing to carry two devices. The likelihood of any company porting their Palm/Windows apps to the iPhone is pretty small (unless they just take over the market). Of course I have two devices to carry around now as it is, iPod and Treo, maybe I'll upgrade to an iPhone and get a cheap Palm for my med apps.

Well, it will will launch with 2,500 Dashboard Widgets available.
I'm sure all the popular medical apps will follow in due time.

[aegisdesign]

Fair use. Not to mention unenforcable to a ridiculous degree.

Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD.

And like I care whether it is or not? The DMCA certainly hasn't stopped tons of apps from being distributed, all of which are perfectly clear that they are for ripping DVD's - why aren't they shut down if they are illegal? As an end user who rips dvd's I've bought, what does the DMCA matter to me?

Not a lot. Not a lot to me either as it happens although it's more EUCD here. I rip them too.

However, the salient issue is what does it matter to Apple. They can't add DVD ripping code in to iTunes like they can with music CDs. That means there's only a tiny legal market for a video iPod - Digital Downloads.



Which ends up as 1-1.5 gigs after the rip. Hard drives go up to 300/500/750 gigs these days, that's hundreds of movies. And I was responding to your comment about ripping speed, not sure why you're trying to change the subject.

So you're now also expecting people who want to illegally rip DVDs to go out and buy large hard drives and faster computers than the average most people have too?

Can you see yet why Apple is still saying video is some way off?

[aegisdesign]

Well, it will will launch with 2,500 Dashboard Widgets available.
I'm sure all the popular medical apps will follow in due time.

Not all of those can possibly run or be of any use. Many are larger than the usual QVGA screen available on most smartphones (and the iPod), require a live net connection and/or are written in Perl/Ruby/Python/Objective-C which any iPhone is unlikely to support.

[lfmorrison]

Fair use.
Irrelavent. Fair use only comes into play after you've obtained an unencrypted data stream to work with. And your options for doing that without breaking DCMA are quite limited. Consider the two general possibilities:

1) You have an unencrypted file which is ready for the iPod to look at. It's impossible to obtain such a file from a commercial DVD without breaking the DCMA because commercial DVDs all contain DRM encryption which the DVD rippers break. In this case, it's possible that your government's definition of fair use isn't being violated. But certainly the DCMA is.

2) You maintain the encrypted file, and your iPod is performing just-in-time decryption as it plays the movie. Possibly no DCMA violation here depending on how the courts choose to interpret the reverse-engineering clauses, since arguably no additional rights are being granted than were previously available in the original encrypted form. Also, it's possible that there's no fair use violation here (the same conditions for that test would apply as one would use in the previous example). However, no iPod is equipped with firmware to do this currently. It's debatable whether portable, battery-supplied iPods could have the computational power to do such a job in real time in the first place.

[JustBrady]

Of course we have no official facts, but I have to believe that the iPhone will be realeased by T-Mobile.

- T-Mobile's CEO recently talks favorably about Apple, "comparing visions."

- T-Mobile's release of 3G is scheduled for Q1 of '07, and Apple's iPhone release is Q1 of '07.

- 3G is suspected to have technology in which the phone can switch from cell towers, and transition to Wi-Fi signals to get better signals indoors. Apple's iPhone supposedly has Wi-Fi.

It's a shame because isn't CDMA suppose to be faster, and able to handle the computer side of a cell phone. And GSM was invented for voice quality, making it flourish only with voice? Someone correct me if I am wrong. (Don't correct me if you simply favor GSM)

[eduo]

This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.

And this, children, is how you use a logical fallacy of the informal type "ignorantio elenchi". Peppered with a healthy dose of ignorance, generalization becomes a nice package-deal fallacy, or possibly a hasty generalization.

No, mugwump. Adding a touchscreen doesn't increase significantly the power drain on the battery, nor does it require a lot of extra chips and controllers.

No, the fact that there aren't thinner touchscreen devices doesn't demonstrate that they can't exist, it's just a statement of fact, not a cause-effect. And it's almost impossible you're seriously pretending to prove that all touch-screen devices must be at least 36% thicker than non-touch-screen by using two devices provided, almost at random, in a forum post.

Really. It's almost too much obvious bait to take it (I'm weak, I'll admit it).

The reason touchscreens haven't found their way into thinner phones has nothing to do with them making the devices much thicker (as has been repeated and is adequately documented if you care to search for it, touchscreen capabilities don't add more than a 1mm to thickness for the screen overlay itself and there's enough space for a touchscreen controller chip in most modern phones, even thinner ones).

Touchscreens haven't appeared in thinner phones yet because of several reasons, not all of them technical:

-The thinnest phones are still marketed as luxury items. Usually with a minimalistic look and preferrably with a gimmicky way of opening them. They are NOT PDAs, nor are they smartphones, as a general rule. PDAs are only used to brag among geeks, whereas thin phones are marketed as fashion statements. Marketing an ultra-thin phone right now as a PDA would stain (to the marketers' eyes) both markets.

-Touchscreen phones are, usually, smartphones and this, as a market, still has to take off. So far it's been a shoddy market, with shoddy offerings, that doesn't appeal to the masses (as PDAs really didn't). In the same way that ultrathin wristwatches originally were luxury items and weren't expected to have many features. Actually they revelled in their lack of features. Minimalism always goes well with fashion design.

-Ultra-thin and fully-featured are still two completely different market segments and until they start to merge thinness won't be a priority. There are even old Palms that are incredibly thin compared to current smartphones and they fell into disuse because they didn't feel sturdy. The thickest components are already there (speakers, microphones, backlight, BATTERY) but phone companies are (smartly) pacing their own releases. By keeping these as two different market segments they ensure lots of models until they are forced to make a first luxury smartphone that is ultrathin, followed some time after by more and more commoditized (cheaper) versions, initially uglier.

The reason there aren't ultrathin touchscreen phones is pure marketing. Nothing else. As is traditional until a single company decides to plunge forward the others will continue to market this as different segments. Thinking that there is even one really leading-edge product, technologically speaking, in the market is delluding yourself. Technologies are squeezed until the majority demands improvements and I don't really see the masses demanding ultrathin PDAs (call them smartphones if you want, they see PDAs, which most are already biased against). Relatedly, using older technology that is not focused on size but on features makes devices cheaper on the whole (touchscreens may not be thick, but they're not free either, and adding them adds to the price of the product)

And please, try to not make this gross generalizations. If you had a solid argument it was completely destroyed by it.

[Johnny Mozzarella]

The technology behind Safari has already been ported to Symbian and runs on Nokia phones so you could at least run the simpler dashboard widgets easily. Some of the widgets however are full OSX Cocoa apps and those would be an awful lot harder to transfer across.

Apple already has written Symbian apps too. On Nokia S60 and Sony Ericsson UIQ phones iSync copies across a Symbian app to handle syncing.

If these aren't clues enough as to what OS an Apple phone would run then I don't know what is.
Interesting
http://www.symbian.com/images/rx/imgmap/imgmap1003.jpg
The Wikipedia entry for Symbian says that Symbian is the base OS on top of which various vendors create their user interface layer.
Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita (Panasonic), Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
I wonder if Apple will try to buy into Symbian?

These user interface platforms include Nokia's S60, which is also used by Lenovo, LG and Samsung.
UIQ Technology's UIQ user interface platform is used in more advanced pen based devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and BenQ.

I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?

Webkit has already been ported to Nokia's S60 platform.
However S60 also includes support for Real's Helix multimedia platform and Nokia has it's own plans for getting into the music business.

[eduo]

36% thicker, to be pedantic, considering the Q is .43 inches thick.

I currently own 3 phones: Moto v3i, SE M600i and an HTC TyTN. Each, successively, provides me with a greater range of abilities with their increased size. Would I like a v3i sized phone with all the technology provided by the TyTN? Sure.

If it were currently possible to squeeze quad-band GSM, tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, b/g wi-fi, a decent sized qwerty keyboard, a 2 MP photo camera, a VGA video-call camera, and bluetooth into a form-factor that matched a closed v3i, don't you think it would be done?

You claim that the touchscreen is what is adding the complexity. Melgross has clearly pointed out that the touchscreen barely increases the thickness of a phone and that it's a reasonably easy endeavour to add one to a phone. I posit that a touchscreen reduces the complexity of a phone with these abilities.

http://www.dynamism.com/n908/main.shtml

0.5" (12.8mm), MP3, touchscreen, 1.3MP cam., Bluetooth

I personally don't like it, and as I mentioned in another post, it belongs to a wholly different category and market segment and is thus more expensive by extension. Still, it's pretty thin by any standard.

[aegisdesign]

Of course we have no official facts, but I have to believe that the iPhone will be realeased by T-Mobile.

- T-Mobile's CEO recently talks favorably about Apple, "comparing visions."

- T-Mobile's release of 3G is scheduled for Q1 of '07, and Apple's iPhone release is Q1 of '07.

- 3G is suspected to have technology in which the phone can switch from cell towers, and transition to Wi-Fi signals to get better signals indoors. Apple's iPhone supposedly has Wi-Fi.

I think you're thinking of UMA. Some phones already support handoff between 3G, GSM and 802.11 networks without interruption for data at least (Nokia's N series and SE's phones mentioned in this thread for instance have that ability) and it's being added for voice calls too. Nokia were trialling UMA earlier in the year in Finland which allows you to walk between networks and it'll pick the best solution.

It's a shame because isn't CDMA suppose to be faster, and able to handle the computer side of a cell phone. And GSM was invented for voice quality, making it flourish only with voice? Someone correct me if I am wrong. (Don't correct me if you simply favor GSM)

The 3G version of GSM uses W-CDMA. W-CDMA is almost identical to CDMA, using the same technology. W-CDMA HSDPA is slightly faster than CDMA EVD0 although there's supposed to be room to grow HSDPA so it's about twice as fast as EVD0.

The idea was that W-CDMA was similar enough to CDMA that the US carriers could get on board with the rest of the world fairly easily and migrate their CDMA systems to W-CDMA, but that hasn't happened. I haven't followed exactly why but the US has a long history of not following what the rest of the world is doing.

[minderbinder]

Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD.

Fair use covers copying content in its entirety if it is for backup or media shifting (as long as I paid for the content).

If ripping DVD's is illegal, why don't the movie studios just shut down all the apps that rip DVD's and copy them?

However, the salient issue is what does it matter to Apple. They can't add DVD ripping code in to iTunes like they can with music CDs. That means there's only a tiny legal market for a video iPod - Digital Downloads.

Apple can't put in ripping software I assume because the movie studios wouldn't allow it in their iTunes store contracts. But there are plenty of third party ripping apps that work great, so it's not much of an issue. And people don't care about "legal" if it's unenforcable.

Also, people can put home movies on iPod, video podcasts, as well as content they've recorded from the airwaves. And I wouldn't call digital downloads "tiny".

So you're now also expecting people who want to illegally rip DVDs to go out and buy large hard drives and faster computers than the average most people have too?

Faster computers? Where did that come from? You don't need faster computers.

And people will buy hard drives depending on what they need. Same as with mp3's. And same as before that with other files. Drives get cheaper and bigger all the time (and that includes internal drives that ship with computers).

Can you see yet why Apple is still saying video is some way off?

Where are they still saying that? With iPod and iTunes, video is here now and iTV will be here early next year.

Fair use only comes into play after you've obtained an unencrypted data stream to work with.

Fair use is still being debated. I agree with those who feel that the DMCA violates consumers' fair use rights. And it's a moot point anyway since cracking down on consumers ripping their own media is completely unenforcable.

Tell me, has anyone ever been prosecuted for ripping DVDs they've purchased and transferring them to an ipod? And why doesn't the DMCA shut down all the ripping apps?

I think it's only a matter of time before the DMCA is revised if not thrown out. In the meantime, the law seems unenforcable to the point of being practically worthless.

[aegisdesign]

Interesting
[IMG]I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?


I think it's possible. Creating a phone OS from scratch or downsizing OSX to a phone is a mammoth task. Symbian on the other hand lets you run a user interface layer on top so Apple may use Symbian underneath and it's own interface library on top. OSX on a phone would be almost as lame an idea as Windows on a phone.

UIQ and S60 are reasonably similar that programmers have little trouble hopping between them. An Apple UI layer might not be though. S60 and UIQ aren't pretty and could certainly be improved upon by someone more fastidiously inclined to good UI and device design. I wonder if Apple did do this, that enough of the existing UIQ/S60 developers would be able to also pick up the Apple UI? All the developers tools are Windows based btw.

In the last iPod rev, they moved to Samsung sourced ARM chips instead of the Portal Player chips. I wonder if Apple couldn't be on the way to using Symbian on the iPod too and having one development platform?

[Johnny Mozzarella]

I think it's possible. Creating a phone OS from scratch or downsizing OSX to a phone is a mammoth task. Symbian on the other hand lets you run a user interface layer on top so Apple may use Symbian underneath and it's own interface library on top. OSX on a phone would be almost as lame an idea as Windows on a phone.
Symbian is currently very popular in Europe.
Windows and Palm dominate the smartphone market in the US.
Microsoft doesn't get mobile design, they are stuck in a desktop metaphor.
Palm has one foot in the grave and it's of their own doing.

UIQ and S60 are reasonably similar that programmers have little trouble hopping between them. An Apple UI layer might not be though. S60 and UIQ aren't pretty and could certainly be improved upon by someone more fastidiously inclined to good UI and device design. I wonder if Apple did do this, that enough of the existing UIQ/S60 developers would be able to also pick up the Apple UI? All the developers tools are Windows based btw.
It would be very nice if existing Symbian apps would run on Apple's iPhone.

In the last iPod rev, they moved to Samsung sourced ARM chips instead of the Portal Player chips. I wonder if Apple couldn't be on the way to using Symbian on the iPod too and having one development platform?
Interesting idea!
Symbian would be a better platform for Apple to tie it's long-term ambitions to.
Apple could also achieve more consistency in it's user experience by using the same OS across the board for it's mobile devices.

[aegisdesign]

Fair use covers copying content in its entirety if it is for backup or media shifting (as long as I paid for the content).

It does not.

Apart from that you are not copying it in it's entirety because you're also transcoding and stripping copy protection. Fair use aside, you're breaking DMCA or EUCD.

If ripping DVD's is illegal, why don't the movie studios just shut down all the apps that rip DVD's and copy them?

They regularly try it. See http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2002/04/fair_use_vs_dmca_321_studios_t.html for one example.

It's like whack-a-mole though. The industry knows it's an impossible battle.



Apple can't put in ripping software I assume because the movie studios wouldn't allow it in their iTunes store contracts. But there are plenty of third party ripping apps that work great, so it's not much of an issue. And people don't care about "legal" if it's unenforcable.

As I said, it's irrelevant what you or I think, it's Apple that has to flaunt the law. Technically, in the UK at least even the current version of iTunes and the iPod were breaking the law up until recently. So was home taping though so nobody batted an eyelid.


Also, people can put home movies on iPod, video podcasts, as well as content they've recorded from the airwaves. And I wouldn't call digital downloads "tiny".


Yes, that's tiny. Compare it to DVD sales or TV viewing figures. In the UK, recording from the airwaves is illegal too. IIRC recording TV onto VHS still is.



Faster computers? Where did that come from? You don't need faster computers.


You said 'Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours'.

Most people don't have computers even as fast as that never mind a computer fast enough to also transcode it to 320x240 for an iPod or phone.


And people will buy hard drives depending on what they need. Same as with mp3's. And same as before that with other files. Drives get cheaper and bigger all the time (and that includes internal drives that ship with computers).


They do. But it's still not quite there yet. Laptop drives are still much smaller and people aren't going to spend another couple of hundred on extra drives. Most people just aren't that tech savvy. They'll buy a new computer perhaps.


Where are they still saying that? With iPod and iTunes, video is here now and iTV will be here early next year.


To quote Steve Jobs a few days back...

"it's hard to imagine that music is not the epicenter of the iPod, for a long, long, long, long, long time."

And video isn't 'here' it's only 'there' in the USA and extremely limited. Early days yet.


Fair use is still being debated. I agree with those who feel that the DMCA violates consumers' fair use rights. And it's a moot point anyway since cracking down on consumers ripping their own media is completely unenforcable.

Tell me, has anyone ever been prosecuted for ripping DVDs they've purchased and transferring them to an ipod? And why doesn't the DMCA shut down all the ripping apps?

I think it's only a matter of time before the DMCA is revised if not thrown out. In the meantime, the law seems unenforcable to the point of being practically worthless.

I agree. I'm sure Apple agrees too to a point though not to the point they'll state that publicly or introduce software that circumvents it. The former would piss off the studios and the latter would see them in court.

[minderbinder]

It does not.

Apart from that you are not copying it in it's entirety because you're also transcoding and stripping copy protection. Fair use aside, you're breaking DMCA or EUCD.

So which is it? Before you said "Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD." Now you're saying ripping isn't copying a whole dvd?

Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media. Problem is, the DMCA and fair use seem to contradict each other, which is why it's being debated in the courts right now.

They regularly try it. See http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2002/04/fair_use_vs_dmca_321_studios_t.html for one example.

It's like whack-a-mole though. The industry knows it's an impossible battle.

That article is from 2002. And the outcome seems to be the company going bankrupt from the lawsuits, not the studios winning. Has a studio won one of these cases? And if the law supports the studios, why is it an impossible battle? If they are truly breaking the law, shouldn't they be able to win fairly easily and shut down all companies doing this?

As I said, it's irrelevant what you or I think, it's Apple that has to flaunt the law.

What are you talking about? Third parties are making the ripping software, so how would Apple be flaunting the law??

Yes, that's tiny. Compare it to DVD sales or TV viewing figures. In the UK, recording from the airwaves is illegal too. IIRC recording TV onto VHS still is.

The entire portable video is tiny compared with those. We were talking about ways to get video onto an iPod, and in that context, digital downloading is hardly tiny.

Are you in the UK? Might explain some of the discrepancies in this conversation about copyright laws. I'm talking about the USA, where it's completely legal to record broadcast TV. It was established a couple decades ago in the famous case against Sony in regard to vcr's (yep, fair use rears its pesky head again).

You said 'Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours'.
Most people don't have computers even as fast as that never mind a computer fast enough to also transcode it to 320x240 for an iPod or phone.

Yep. But they can still convert the video, it just takes longer. As pointed out before, just pop in the DVD before you go to bed. Problem solved. Nothing is stopping someone with a slow computer and small hard drives from putting video on an iPod.

They do. But it's still not quite there yet.

Technology is never "quite there yet". Portable video is an emerging technology. It will get cheaper and smaller as time goes on, just like any other technology. The same was true with mp3's and with other files in the past, the scale keeps getting bigger. In the meantime, there are plenty of early adopters already digging in with their iPods and big hard drives.

"it's hard to imagine that music is not the epicenter of the iPod, for a long, long, long, long, long time.".

Which means that music is bigger. It doesn't say they're not going to get into video, just that it won't surpass music for a long time. Not to mention that Jobs also said there wouldn't be an ipod just months before releasing one. When it comes to future plans, the man is a liar.

And video isn't 'here' it's only 'there' in the USA and extremely limited. Early days yet.

You mean that the iTunes store is limited and not there. Nothing is stopping you from buying an iPod and ripping all your DVD's to it. I have an iPod with video today, and I'm putting anything I want onto it. Sure looks like "here" to me.

[melgross]

Interesting, at .6" it takes the touchscreen prize! 50% thicker than the Moto Q, but not bad.

The touch screen is the most complexity, which is the point of my original post that you refuted with screen thickness. The wireless radio, battery, input knobs are a given.

What you are doing is exaggerating everything in your favor.

The touchscreen is not the most complex item in the phone. That's your totally unsupported assertion.

Now, it's up to you to prove that, with some links.

[MacGregor]

Interesting
http://www.symbian.com/images/rx/imgmap/imgmap1003.jpg
The Wikipedia entry for Symbian says that Symbian is the base OS on top of which various vendors create their user interface layer.
Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita (Panasonic), Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
I wonder if Apple will try to buy into Symbian?

These user interface platforms include Nokia's S60, which is also used by Lenovo, LG and Samsung.
UIQ Technology's UIQ user interface platform is used in more advanced pen based devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and BenQ.

I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?

Webkit has already been ported to Nokia's S60 platform.
However S60 also includes support for Real's Helix multimedia platform and Nokia has it's own plans for getting into the music business.
Apple buying Symbian would certainly shake things up, but why would Nokia and friends EVER let that happen? That would be like Apple Records selling Apple Computer the rights to all of the Beatles' songs.

This all points to the fact that Apple probably needs more partnerships than just with Cingular and Moto to give the iPhone the real jump start it would need.

[melgross]

Oh yeah, no problem to slap a film onto the screen. You'd think all smartphones would have 'em. But drawing on a screen, the processor having to listen for touch drawings, and increased luminance required to shine through the scuff marks make the device more complex. How's the battery life on the M600i? Maybe they could've added a few more battery millimeters.

And when you write that it "reduces complexity", we are posting on two opposite ideas. It's easier to use a smart phone with a touch screen, yes. But it makes the internal operation of it more complex, more power, and hence, thicker.

This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.

You are, again, making unsupported assertions.

It's up to you now, to show they are true ofr not. These are technical matters that can be proven. Go to the maunfacturers site and find the power draw required for various size and types of screens, resistive, and capacitive. Then get back to us.

Also remember than once a cpu is in the device, programs controll it functions. This adds no more complexity in the sense that you are claiming.

The tangent, as you call it, does not demonstrate that touch screen devices must be at least 36% thicker, though it is nice that you are using the correct figure for the units mentioned now. It simply shows that the devices that have been found, have those thicknesses. Not that the companies have tried to get them to be thinner. Most companies won't bother putting a touchscreen on a model that is too simple to make proper use of the screen. That is why they tend to be that much thicker. The thinnest one found is also thinner than a number of models without the screen. I'm not sure how you would like to explain that.

[MacGregor]

What you are doing is exaggerating everything in your favor.

The touchscreen is not the most complex item in the phone. That's your totally unsupported assertion.

Now, it's up to you to prove that, with some links.
This all sounds like a really great debate .... in its own thread ... somewhere else.

[melgross]

The technology behind Safari has already been ported to Symbian and runs on Nokia phones so you could at least run the simpler dashboard widgets easily. Some of the widgets however are full OSX Cocoa apps and those would be an awful lot harder to transfer across.

Apple already has written Symbian apps too. On Nokia S60 and Sony Ericsson UIQ phones iSync copies across a Symbian app to handle syncing.

If these aren't clues enough as to what OS an Apple phone would run then I don't know what is.

So, you think that an Apple phone would run Symbian?

Straight Symbian, or do you think they would "Applise" it further to make it feel more comfortable to Mac users, as well as iPod users?

[melgross]

Apple buying Symbian would certainly shake things up, but why would Nokia and friends EVER let that happen? That would be like Apple Records selling Apple Computer the rights to all of the Beatles' songs.

This all points to the fact that Apple probably needs more partnerships than just with Cingular and Moto to give the iPhone the real jump start it would need.

He said buy INTO it. Meaning becoming one of the partners.

[melgross]

This all sounds like a really great debate .... in its own thread ... somewhere else.

No, this debate is as relevant as any other going on here.

[MacGregor]

He said buy INTO it. Meaning becoming one of the partners.
Ooops, my bad.

[MacGregor]

No, this debate is as relevant as any other going on here.
Relevant, yes, but also confusing. :)

[aegisdesign]

So which is it? Before you said "Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD." Now you're saying ripping isn't copying a whole dvd?

No. You misunderstood. There's two falsehoods you've conflated.

1) 'Fair use' does not mean you can copy a whole DVD. That is not what 'Fair use' allows. Fair use allows you to copy non-substantial parts. 'Fair use' gets dropped in to these conversations all the time and it's totally irrelevant. Please look up the law before using it again.

2) When you're 'ripping a DVD' you aren't copying the DVD in it's entirety, ie. you're not creating an exact bit-by-bit copy. You're de-crypting the CSS and creating 'copy' in name alone. The process of doing so is against the law, not that you'll ever get pulled up on it.

Conflating a misunderstanding of what 'Fair use' allows you and a law that is unenforceable at the consumer level (DMCA/EUCD) does not mean that Apple has a viable business model. Far from it.


Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media.

It does not.


That article is from 2002. And the outcome seems to be the company going bankrupt from the lawsuits, not the studios winning. Has a studio won one of these cases? And if the law supports the studios, why is it an impossible battle? If they are truly breaking the law, shouldn't they be able to win fairly easily and shut down all companies doing this?

I just picked one battle. There are many.



What are you talking about? Third parties are making the ripping software, so how would Apple be flaunting the law??

Come on, think it through.

Do you think Apple could rely on 3rd parties and illegal practices as a business model?

No. They'd want ripping direct in iTunes and for it to be legal.



The entire portable video is tiny compared with those. We were talking about ways to get video onto an iPod, and in that context, digital downloading is hardly tiny.


Digital downloads is currently the only legal way to get copyrighted material onto an iPod.
It's tiny. Compare the music download market to ripping from a CD. How many ripped songs have you on your iPod compared with those bought on iTMS?



Are you in the UK? Might explain some of the discrepancies in this conversation about copyright laws. I'm talking about the USA, where it's completely legal to record broadcast TV. It was established a couple decades ago in the famous case against Sony in regard to vcr's (yep, fair use rears its pesky head again).


I am in the UK. The Fair Dealing law in the UK dates back to 1709. The US Fair Use law is essentially derivative of that.

The Sony VCR case in the US established a legal precedent for vcrs and TV. It did not establish a legal precedent for DVD ripping. That is the argument the studios are now having. DVD ripping software has only one purpose, that of infringement of copyright material. VCRs have other purposes.

Technology moves faster than the laws and that's why some things are still illegal an the law is an ass.



Yep. But they can still convert the video, it just takes longer. As pointed out before, just pop in the DVD before you go to bed. Problem solved. Nothing is stopping someone with a slow computer and small hard drives from putting video on an iPod.


The law, convenience, space, time, lack of legal software to do it....



Technology is never "quite there yet". Portable video is an emerging technology. It will get cheaper and smaller as time goes on, just like any other technology. The same was true with mp3's and with other files in the past, the scale keeps getting bigger. In the meantime, there are plenty of early adopters already digging in with their iPods and big hard drives.

The same wasn't true with MP3s as music has an established fair use and the ripping thereof is not against the law. It's also a whole order of magnitude smaller than video. Video is perhaps there for the early adopters and technologically savvy but it's not there for the mainstream. It's only just scratching the surface.



Which means that music is bigger. It doesn't say they're not going to get into video, just that it won't surpass music for a long time. Not to mention that Jobs also said there wouldn't be an ipod just months before releasing one. When it comes to future plans, the man is a liar.

Sure, but he's not stupid and he's not bigger than Hollywood or beyond the law. He knows he can't ship DVD ripping software and he knows it's going to be a long time before it's anywhere near as viable as music is hence the quote.



You mean that the iTunes store is limited and not there. Nothing is stopping you from buying an iPod and ripping all your DVD's to it. I have an iPod with video today, and I'm putting anything I want onto it. Sure looks like "here" to me.

'here' in an illegal sense, yes.

[melgross]

Relevant, yes, but also confusing. :)

Of course, would we have it any other way? Most arguments here are confusing.

[aegisdesign]

So, you think that an Apple phone would run Symbian?

Straight Symbian, or do you think they would "Applise" it further to make it feel more comfortable to Mac users, as well as iPod users?

Symbian is kind of like 'Linux' or 'Darwin' - the core OS. On top of it you run either Nokia's Series 60 UI (which doesn't support touch screens btw) or Sony Ericsson's UIQ UI like you'd run Aqua, KDE or Gnome on top of Linux or Darwin.

UIQ is probably the more Apple-like but still a bit inconsistent. UIQ 3.0 added lots of eye candy but they could do with Apple or Palm to look at usability. I'll see more Thursday when I get my p990. :-)

Symbian OS 9 was quite a change from previous versions with a completely new security layer, and dropping some things like the old ability to execute programs directly in place in the ROM like the old Psion OS it was based on.

I can't see Apple using ANY of the current phone UIs as they all suck but there's a lot to be said for them adopting an existing OS underneath. Symbian runs on lower end hardware as well as requiring less power at the high end. There's also a lot of software already written for Symbian and a lot of developers. It's not a dying platform like Palm or an immature one (in the mobile space) like Linux/QT or Access' PalmOS replacement. It would be my bet.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by minderbinder
Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media.


It does not.

Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.

So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.

Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your argument.

[melgross]

Symbian is kind of like 'Linux' or 'Darwin' - the core OS. On top of it you run either Nokia's Series 60 UI (which doesn't support touch screens btw) or Sony Ericsson's UIQ UI like you'd run Aqua, KDE or Gnome on top of Linux or Darwin.

UIQ is probably the more Apple-like but still a bit inconsistent. UIQ 3.0 added lots of eye candy but they could do with Apple or Palm to look at usability. I'll see more Thursday when I get my p990. :-)

Symbian OS 9 was quite a change from previous versions with a completely new security layer, and dropping some things like the old ability to execute programs directly in place in the ROM like the old Psion OS it was based on.

I can't see Apple using ANY of the current phone UIs as they all suck but there's a lot to be said for them adopting an existing OS underneath. Symbian runs on lower end hardware as well as requiring less power at the high end. There's also a lot of software already written for Symbian and a lot of developers. It's not a dying platform like Palm or an immature one (in the mobile space) like Linux/QT or Access' PalmOS replacement. It would be my bet.

That's what I found when comparing various Symbian phones with the Palm phones. It's why I have been so down on it.

If Apple could improve not only the interface, but somehow have it run programs as well as Palm, that would be great.

I'm still hoping that Apple has has a phone OS based on X lurking somewhere in their labs that we will see. How likely that is, I don't know, but it does seem to me that if they do adopt the touchscreen some of us have been discussing, then Ink will finally have a real use.

I use Mobile Write on my 700p, and it's far better than an almost useless keyboard that's been poorly designed, though other manufacturers seems to be copying the type of keys they use.

[minderbinder]

Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.

So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.

Problem is, the DMCA is in conflict with the copyright laws that spell out fair use. Many feel that the DMCA is a violation of their fair use rights, and it doesn't look like there's a solid legal precedent ruling in favor of the DMCA over preceding fair use rights.

I side with fair use.

[Chucker]

The DMCA certainly hasn't stopped tons of apps from being distributed, all of which are perfectly clear that they are for ripping DVD's

:err:

I guess you should look up why apps like CloneDVD are made by fake off-shore companies, or why MacTheRipper's website goes down every now and then.

[melgross]

Problem is, the DMCA is in conflict with the copyright laws that spell out fair use. Many feel that the DMCA is a violation of their fair use rights, and it doesn't look like there's a solid legal precedent ruling in favor of the DMCA over preceding fair use rights.

I side with fair use.

Yes, it trumps fair use. Congress is allowed to write laws that modify copyright, trademark, and patent law almost any way they see fit. That's a good thing, and a bad thing.

The problem is that electronic, and computer technologies have gotten way ahead of the original concept of what copyright, trademark, and fair use originally meant.

It was never meant that people could make and distribute copies of works as they wanted to.

that was why the library system was established. To allow people who couldn't afford, or didn't want to spend money to see, and read, works that were under copyright. Libraries would aquire, or sometimes be given, a few copies of a work that they would then lend out, in a serial fashion, to these people.

But, even in libraries, most of the works were older, and out of copyright.

today's P2P distribution of copyrighted works would never have been dreamed of as being possible, so a strict sense of copyright protection as companies have developed would never have been understood, possible, or needed.

You can see the problem with people who don't understand that it is the underlying work that is copyrighted, and not the work as a whole, as in the actual physical expression of it in the media itself.

In talking to people I know in the industries, I have always found that they don't care much about people making a backup copy, though they would rather sell another different copy on different media, if people want that. It's their concern that people will make several copies for their friends and thus cut their sales that they worry about.

This is in addition to the vast P2P movement of files, that they understand DRM won't stop.

[aegisdesign]

Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.

So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.

Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your argument.

No, wrong. Your Fair Use rights are enshrined in the the 'Fair Use Act' in the USA. In the UK, it's in our Copyright Act which dates back to 1709 and was brought in with the invention of the printing press or something daft like that. That's the kind of stupidness we're up against in the UK.

The EUCD was meant to homogenise various member states' copyright acts, except if you're French. They took it to mean 'do their own thing'.

[aegisdesign]

That's what I found when comparing various Symbian phones with the Palm phones. It's why I have been so down on it.

If Apple could improve not only the interface, but somehow have it run programs as well as Palm, that would be great.

But PalmOS is one of the worst OS's going for running multiple apps on and has severe limitations. That's why Palm took to rewriting it and bought BeOS.

Symbian evolved from Psion EPOC OS, which got a complete rewrite back in the days of the Series 5 and a really terrible UI. They've been gradually bodging it since. The apps though were pretty good. Symbian OS9 and UIQ 3 is another rewrite and it's taking them ages. The 990 was announce almost 2 years ago.


I'm still hoping that Apple has has a phone OS based on X lurking somewhere in their labs that we will see. How likely that is, I don't know, but it does seem to me that if they do adopt the touchscreen some of us have been discussing, then Ink will finally have a real use.

I use Mobile Write on my 700p, and it's far better than an almost useless keyboard that's been poorly designed, though other manufacturers seems to be copying the type of keys they use.

They're all pretty useless IME which is why I use a ThinkOutside bluetooth keyboard. I use QuickOffice. http://www.quickoffice.com/

Apple's phone OS would have to be fantastic for it to lure developers away from other mobile platforms and for them to port apps like QuickOffice or Route66. I think that's one reason why they will use someone else's OS with their own UI.

[SpamSandwich]

Meep! DMCA violation.

Better call the Dpt of Hmlnd Scrty. (certain vowels removed in the interest of national security) :lol:

[melgross]

No, wrong. Your Fair Use rights are enshrined in the the 'Fair Use Act' in the USA. In the UK, it's in our Copyright Act which dates back to 1709 and was brought in with the invention of the printing press or something daft like that. That's the kind of stupidness we're up against in the UK.

The EUCD was meant to homogenise various member states' copyright acts, except if you're French. They took it to mean 'do their own thing'.

Except that, here, as I said, Congress can change these laws. Even the Constitution can, and has been amended, though the barrier for that is deliberately set high, as it should be.

From the Constitution;

"Section 8

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

...

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."

That is just a small part of Article 1, Section 8. But it is ALL that is said about it in the Constitution, all laws refering to it derive from those two statements.

All of those laws are subject to change, or even to be expunged. The fair use doctrine comes from the wording above, in that one sentence. It is not a part of the Constitution in any way. It is an expression of what was thought to be part of the INTENT of the statement.

But, the Constitution is infinitely malleable. The founding fathers (lovely term, isn't it?) saw, as you would see in their writings, that the future held possibilities that they could not see.

The intent, therefore, was to leave the Constitution deliberately vague in many spots so as to allow easy modification.

In those areas in which they believed modification would be much more serious, they made it possible, but difficult.

There is nothing about copyright that can't be changed, other than to grant a simple infinite length to it.

For further reference:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.table.html#articlei

[aegisdesign]

Oh, just to tie phones and video together...

http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/17/sony-ericsson-p990-gets-locationfree-support/

[minderbinder]

I guess you should look up why apps like CloneDVD are made by fake off-shore companies, or why MacTheRipper's website goes down every now and then.

CloneDVD's website lists a mailing address in utah, and the only offshore reference I found was one saying they couldn't be based in europe.
MTR seems to have been threatened a couple times by macrovision, but it seems like nothing ever came of it.
What about Roxio? They are a legit US corporation, aren't they? Why aren't they sued by the studios?

If anything, these examples seem to show that the studios don't really have a case. I just don't get how this law can be taken seriously when it's impossible to find a case of it actually being enforced.

Yes, it trumps fair use. Congress is allowed to write laws that modify copyright, trademark, and patent law almost any way they see fit.

But in actual, real life use, it doesn't appear that it has trumped fair use. If making a backup of media that you've purchased is made illegal, if that fair use right has been taken away, has a single case been prosecuted successfully for this?

Just curious, does the DMCA specifically say that the fair use principles in previous laws are null and void? That those laws are no longer valid? What specifically does it contain that means that it trumps fair use? Because if it doesn't, it's just a law that contradicts another law, and that's a situation for the judicial branch to sort out.

In talking to people I know in the industries, I have always found that they don't care much about people making a backup copy, though they would rather sell another different copy on different media, if people want that. It's their concern that people will make several copies for their friends and thus cut their sales that they worry about.

And that's where the DMCA goes overboard. It certainly could have spelled out restrictions on distribution and file sharing without taking away fair use. But I guess without fair use, it's hard to force people to keep buying the same content over and over.

I'd have more sympathy for the guys trying to enforce copy protection if they hadn't got greedy and tried to take away fair use rights.

[melgross]

But PalmOS is one of the worst OS's going for running multiple apps on and has severe limitations. That's why Palm took to rewriting it and bought BeOS.

Believe it or not, most people, including myself, have absolutely no interest in running multiple apps on their phone.


Symbian evolved from Psion EPOC OS, which got a complete rewrite back in the days of the Series 5 and a really terrible UI. They've been gradually bodging it since. The apps though were pretty good. Symbian OS9 and UIQ 3 is another rewrite and it's taking them ages. The 990 was announce almost 2 years ago.

Er, bodging? Is that good, or bad?

I can't tell from what you are saying whether you think it really good now or not. Or behind its goals. What do you think?

9quote]
They're all pretty useless IME which is why I use a ThinkOutside bluetooth keyboard. I use QuickOffice. http://www.quickoffice.com/[/quote]

I bought a fold-up keyboard as well which works well. But I'm not about to carry it around with me.


Apple's phone OS would have to be fantastic for it to lure developers away from other mobile platforms and for them to port apps like QuickOffice or Route66. I think that's one reason why they will use someone else's OS with their own UI.

It would have to be. My thoughts are that if, with the capabilities of new phones, that a phone X would allow Mac developers to possibly have cut down versions of their own software.

[melgross]

But in actual, real life use, it doesn't appear that it has trumped fair use. If making a backup of media that you've purchased is made illegal, if that fair use right has been taken away, has a single case been prosecuted successfully for this?

We are talking about two things. The first is the law, and the second is enforcement.

There are actually people who obey laws, even when they know they won't get caught. That's what makes a civil society.

I don't know if it has been prosecuted, as you're hinting, it would have to be discovered first.

Just curious, does the DMCA specifically say that the fair use principles in previous laws are null and void? That those laws are no longer valid? What specifically does it contain that means that it trumps fair use? Because if it doesn't, it's just a law that contradicts another law, and that's a situation for the judicial branch to sort out.

Actually it doesn't. In fact, it acknowledges those laws, EXCEPT where DRM is concerned. Then it says that DRM may not be contravened.


And that's where the DMCA goes overboard. It certainly could have spelled out restrictions on distribution and file sharing without taking away fair use. But I guess without fair use, it's hard to force people to keep buying the same content over and over.

It does mention much of this.

You can read the Executive Summery. It explaines this.

http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/dmca_executive.html


I'd have more sympathy for the guys trying to enforce copy protection if they hadn't got greedy and tried to take away fair use rights.

Greed is everywhere. The pirates are greedy, even though they will never admit it.

I have much more material on this but it entails a good deal of reading sometimes dense verbiage.

If you are interested, I will give the links later.

[minderbinder]

We are talking about two things. The first is the law, and the second is enforcement.

And in this case, the law looks to be unenforcable, contradictory, or both.

There are actually people who obey laws, even when they know they won't get caught. That's what makes a civil society.

And there are people who disobey laws because they know those laws are unjust. Laws don't go away until you challenge them successfully.

I don't know if it has been prosecuted, as you're hinting, it would have to be discovered first.

They certainly know about companies like Roxio who seem to be obviously violating the DMCA and are based in the USA. Why hasn't a company creating DVD copy software been successfully prosecuted?

Greed is everywhere. The pirates are greedy, even though they will never admit it.

So two wrongs make a right?

[Chucker]

CloneDVD's website lists a mailing address in utah, and the only offshore reference I found was one saying they couldn't be based in europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slysoft
SlySoft Inc. is a software company located in the capital city St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda in Antigua and Barbuda. Its products consist of software to copy CDs and DVDs. A few of these products disable the copy lock and so they aren't allowed in every country. CSS decrypting software AnyDVD and DVD Shrink) allows a region-specific DVD to be copied as an all-region DVD. It also removes Macrovision, Content Scramble System (CSS), region codes, and disabled user operations (UOPs).

What about Roxio? They are a legit US corporation, aren't they? Why aren't they sued by the studios?

Because Roxio offers no software that can decrypt DVDs?

You're likely talking about Popcorn.

http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/popcorn/standard/features.html
Copy non-encrypted DVDs,*

Emphasis "non-encrypted".

http://kb.roxio.com/content/kb/DVDit/000022CR
Roxio or Sonic will not copy a commercial film DVD such as movies which you rent/purchase. This is because these movies are CSS (Content Scrambling System) encrypted and our software does not bypass any level of encryption.

[Skwidspawn]

Emphasis "non-encrypted".
Exactly. You can use Popcorn to copy DVDs but you have to use MacTheRipper to remove the copy-protection on the DVD first. It is legal to make a copy of a DVD for archival/personal use, but illegal to distribute that copy. In other words it is legal to rip a DVD to your computer as long as it is used for personal purposes only. I have all of my legally purchased movie files copied onto my computer for viewing on my iPod and future iTV.

However I would like to say that this entire line of debate doesn't really belong in a topic about a possible Apple phone, even if that phone plays videos. Perhaps y'all could have started a different thread for this?

I want an iPhone. I don't care if it runs PalmOS apps, I don't care if it is a proprietary OS. If Apple makes one it is garaunteed to work better with my Mac and the content on it than any other phone/smartphone out there. There is nothing that pisses me off more than having a product that refuses to do what it is supposed to, and that is the experience I have had with all of my spartphones. Shoddy Mac support, poor application integration, lack of styling, all of these plague the smartphone market. Apple could easily break into the market by offering a product that solves all three of these issues. Remember that there was an MP3 player market before the iPod, but the products were overpriced, had poor integration, and looked like crap. I remember that the only hard drive MP3 players around when the iPod came out were the same size as CD players! The market responded to the beautiful and extremely functional iPod, that made carrying your music around easy. They could do the same thing for the phone market, combining the MP3 player and phone is a wonderful idea. We can expect that if Apple does it, they will get it right.

[melgross]

And in this case, the law looks to be unenforcable, contradictory, or both.

Unenforcable, not contradictory.


And there are people who disobey laws because they know those laws are unjust. Laws don't go away until you challenge them successfully.

Not unjust, necessarily. A heavy-handed approach to a real problem.


They certainly know about companies like Roxio who seem to be obviously violating the DMCA and are based in the USA. Why hasn't a company creating DVD copy software been successfully prosecuted?

I haven't used that software, so I don't know exactly what it does. If it allows copying of DRM'd DVD's then it is illegal, I would think, but perhaps not. None of us here know enough about the situation. Just assumptions.

After reading the links posted by Chucker, it would seem that Roxio is doing nothing illegal after all. No DRM cracking.


So two wrongs make a right?

Of course not. But that's assuming that what you think is right.

[melgross]

Exactly. You can use Popcorn to copy DVDs but you have to use MacTheRipper to remove the copy-protection on the DVD first. It is legal to make a copy of a DVD for archival/personal use, but illegal to distribute that copy. In other words it is legal to rip a DVD to your computer as long as it is used for personal purposes only. I have all of my legally purchased movie files copied onto my computer for viewing on my iPod and future iTV.

No. Illegal to crack DRM in order to make that copy, no matter what use it is put to.

[lfmorrison]

But in actual, real life use, it doesn't appear that it has trumped fair use. If making a backup of media that you've purchased is made illegal, if that fair use right has been taken away, has a single case been prosecuted successfully for this?

I'd have more sympathy for the guys trying to enforce copy protection if they hadn't got greedy and tried to take away fair use rights.
The thing is, fair use is still a distinct issue.

Note that DCMA comes into force when you're trying to break a DRM scheme in order to grant yourself more rights than the original DRM license would have allowed you.

When you break the DVD's encryption to create an unencumbered video file, you're giving yourself additional rights: For example, the right to make infinite copies and send them to all your friends.

Say, instead, that you chose to make a bit-for-bit copy of the raw contents of the DVD. In that situation you are not breaking the DRM scheme, so DCMA doesn't come into play. Now, you're left with a file that is totally useless for most people: Typically, your only choice would be to burn that bit-for-bit image onto a blank DVD in order to make any practical use of it. Depending on your nation's definition of Fair Use, that may or may not be a legal thing to do.

But practically speaking, you cannot send that bit-for-bit copy of the DVD onto an iPod, for example, because iPods don't know how to decrypt the data.

There exists a possibility that you may come up with a new firmware patch for the iPod which would make it capable of decoding the CSS encryption in real-time as it plays back the file. (Assume for the moment that the iPod has enough computational power to do the job. That point is debatable.) Suppose further that you design the firmware so that it's impossible for the iPod to output that decoded video stream through any means except for the on-unit display (or possibly a digitally watermarked version on the S-Video output).

Alternatively, suppose that Apple comes up with a system whereby users can rip a DVD, the file is internally decrypted and transcoded, and then automatically re-encrypted with a FairPlay type of DRM encryption that an iPod can natively decode. Assume that the license terms of the re-encrypted file are rather rigid, eg. movies can only be played on the actual computer where the transcoding took place or on iPod; they cannot be burnt etc.

There is a section in the DCMA that allows the vendors of a product to reverse-engineer a competitor's technique of DRM for the sole purpose of providing product interoperability. The clauses make it quite clear that such reverse engineering must not result in giving the end user any additional rights that had not been possible under the original DRM license. A case could be made that either of those solutions we hypothetically designed for the iPod might possibly be in compliance with this part of the DCMA.

But these laws are untested so far, and it's uncertain how far either of those proposed solutions could actually get if litigation started. And again, it is now a separate issue to determine whether or not we're proposing a scheme that fits within the confines of your country's definition of Fair Use.

[Chucker]

It is legal to make a copy of a DVD for archival/personal use

Not if, in doing so, you are cracking copy protection.

In other words it is legal to rip a DVD to your computer as long as it is used for personal purposes only.

Not if, in doing so, you are cracking copy protection.

[aegisdesign]

Believe it or not, most people, includin