Well if you are looking for a sub par smart phone that looks really hip then the iphone is the phone for you. But if you want a phone that lets you do practically anything you want then get the G1. If you don't like the slide keyboard then wait a couple of months for the slimmer version with no keyboard. Sorry apple geeks but as I write this on my more powerful sony vaio laptop with umbutu I can't help think that android is the future of the cell phone and umbutu is the future of the OS.
It makes one wonder when the first post one writes is so blatantly antagonistic.
I would surmise that kevin19713 is a troll, perhaps previously banned and just wants to raise shit. As such, we should distance ourselves from his rhetoric. Ignore him and hopefully his meanderings will just fade away. Hopefully, quickly.
INTERESTING OBSERVATION: Has anybody else noted that a lot of first time visitors have all of a sudden appeared here and other Mac sites. Many, thankfully not all, with the similar written and sounding anti-Mac/APPLE rhetoric. Could it be that they are the same person or persons?
The Vanity Fair of tech. Trouble is there are no techie Tom Wolfes and Robert Benchleys, so they go for the young guns and anyone who can provide flash. Coupled with uber-cool and barely readable experimental page design, they think they're "it". Every so often they hit a home run, and every so often they find a corked bat. There needs to be a brighter line between bloggers and journalists than there is in this case.
i had a giggle when i googled the p905i; yet another clunky brick j-cellphone with no doubt the same lists and lists of confusing and badly organised text menus. as a 6 years japan resident i can also confirm that japanese cellphones might initially impress with their features, but try using them on a day-to-day basis, and have some concept of how much better designed phones could be, and the impression will not last long
I made a related post on my blog about the social media aspect, focusing on how the comments were closed without, ahem, further comment from Brian X. Chen and Wired. I appreciate him taking the time to reply with further details, but as winterspan observed earlier, it hasn't satisfied.
Personal attacks on anyone are wasteful, though — just increases hostility instead of enlightening people to facts. I suggest raising more attention of well-written, accurate articles (like the AppleInsider followup) instead of giving journocrap the attention it doesn't deserve.
Don't you love when the media cover the media that are covering the media? The wired article and this Apple Insider article are both a waste of time.
Fact 1: Softbank sold many iPhones in Japan, but it is no where near as popular as in the US and folks here prefer the feature set in typical Japanese phone.
Fact 2: Softbank is less well-regarded wireless provider compared to AU and Docomo. That may be changing, but there is a lot to over come still.
Fact 3: The iPhone is a great internet device, but as a phone it leaves a lot to be desired, particularly in Japan where needs aren't the same as in the US or otherwise.
Get past your misconceptions and stop wasting electrons on non-stories. If the iPhone is free with subscriptions, that means more opportunities for folks to get one here.
Facts? Easy to spew nonsense without backing it up with documented facts.
The story here is Brien Chen lied. WIRED intentionally distorted the truth. What part of that did you not understand?
Stories like this demonstrate quite convincingly why amateur bloggers and "journalists" should not write the news. Hearsay run rampant: this is the result of wholesale citizen journalism. Freedom of the press is one thing; the freedom to write anything you want without regard to fairness and accuracy is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Methinks there's a serious ethical dilemma brewing here.
Obviously, amateur bloggers and "journalists" should not write the news, instead, it definitely should be left to the credited "Professional" journalists such as former CBS anchor Dan Rather and his obsession with contrived documents to destroy President Bush right before an election?
Yeah, now that's journalism we can all use!
I'll agree with you that accuracy based on facts of the event should be the mainstay of any journalist's report. But fairness?! What the hell does that have to do with anything in reporting the news? An event happens, you see it or get corroborated facts from those who did, you report it. How hard can that truly be??? \
Don't you love when the media cover the media that are covering the media? The wired article and this Apple Insider article are both a waste of time. ... Get past your misconceptions and stop wasting electrons on non-stories. If the iPhone is free with subscriptions, that means more opportunities for folks to get one here.
I don't see it as a waste of time at all. You seem to have strange ideas of what "the media" is if you think it's not their job to cover each other or things that happen in the media. It's also kind of useless to refer to "the media" as if it's some monolithic entity, when you are talking about a story involving multiple media outlets, of different calibre's, in multiple different countries interacting with each other.
You make it sound like "the media is the media is the media." Not true at all.
Here we have Brian Chen who has a history of writing stories about the level of a high school newspaper and is basically an opinion blogger more than a serious journalist, but working for a magazine that supposedly has some cred as an actual journalistic endeavour. He is caught fabricating stories by a real journalist from Japan, who he has smeared in a very mean and casual way because he has no idea what he is doing journalistically, and has no journalistic ethics. This is a classic "emperor has no clothes" kind of story that is way more interesting that a lot of other junk that gets posted here IMO.
It's also relevant because there is a huge debate going on right now about where the line is between bloggers and journalists and whether or not bloggers should be held to some minimal level of journalistic competency. Here we have someone who is supposed to be an actual old-school journalist, who is acting like the worst basement blogger you ever heard of.
Brian Chen has done this kind of stuff before and he needs to be exposed and fired. The more coverage stories like this get the better.
Thanks for finally providing a balanced article on the iPhone in Japan, and addressing the mis-representation in the Wired artcile. Nobi is a great guy and it's a shame he was mis-quoted in such a way. Ironically the resulting coverage correcting the article will probably overall be good for his reputation though.
The Vanity Fair of tech. Trouble is there are no techie Tom Wolfes and Robert Benchleys, so they go for the young guns and anyone who can provide flash. Coupled with uber-cool and barely readable experimental page design, they think they're "it". Every so often they hit a home run, and every so often they find a corked bat. There needs to be a brighter line between bloggers and journalists than there is in this case.
Agreed.
Hilariously, Chen seems to be pulling the race card in his defence:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian X. Chen
4. A few words about transparency. I announced my edits of the story on Twitter. And yet people were calling me out to be even more transparent. To that I have to say ? put yourselves in my shoes for a second. Racists were posting photos of me in forums, accompanied with hate speech and my e-mail address. Could you really imagine yourself embracing transparency if you were in my situation?
That's from a long "reply" blog post to Torley's blog describing the whole scenario where he still fails to mention, or acknowledge the basic fact that he made sh*t up and put those words in the mouth of someone else (or that the entire article is slanted.)
Transparency has something to do with how vehemently you are being attacked somehow? WTF? The truth is impossible to relate because people are really angry at you? A-holes are using racial epithets, so that means he's not wrong? I'm really not sure what he's trying to say with this defence. Racism sucks but this sounds weak to me. It's almost like he is saying people are just "against him" because he's (presumably) Chinese.
Yes, because Umbutu is an excellent OS.... Perhaps you mean Ubuntu? you weren't even close..
In addition, though I doubt he's aware, both Mac OS X and Linux share a common pedigree...UNIX at core....but that's where it ends. One is a delight to use and very well packaged. The other is still, to put it politely, a work in progress maybe?
Were what TV showed about how japs used cellphones true, they would be in real need of IR/bluetooth/wifi/etc. connectivity on their phones. And yes, alas, carrying iPhone does lame person, having got used to such a lifestyle.
Yes, iPhone radio isn't the best in the world either.
Yes, iPod seems to be the only thing one might want in Japan. iPod Touch may then be good enough, and, maybe, iPods Touch were actually seen to be carried by folks there, you can't tell them from iPhones, having seen them from a distance.
The rest of the article isn't technical though and says little to me...
"4. A few words about transparency. I announced my edits of the story on Twitter. And yet people were calling me out to be even more transparent. To that I have to say — put yourselves in my shoes for a second. Racists were posting photos of me in forums, accompanied with hate speech and my e-mail address. Could you really imagine yourself embracing transparency if you were in my situation?"
How does announcing edits on Twitter have anything to do with someone reading the article on Wired? Am I supposed to be reading Twitter while I read an article on Wired? What does transparency have to do with showing pictures of yourself or telling others your email address? Transparency is simply stating in the article that words or sentences were edited or corrected since the original post.
This Brian X. Chen character is certainly not the brightest bulb. He's a total embarassment not only to America, but also to people of Chinese heritage. Ick!
Comments
That's it I boycott wired.com and will take pleasure in no longer reading their biased articles.
Also a serious journalist does not conduct interviews by email. Ever heard of Skype?
Well if you are looking for a sub par smart phone that looks really hip then the iphone is the phone for you. But if you want a phone that lets you do practically anything you want then get the G1. If you don't like the slide keyboard then wait a couple of months for the slimmer version with no keyboard. Sorry apple geeks but as I write this on my more powerful sony vaio laptop with umbutu I can't help think that android is the future of the cell phone and umbutu is the future of the OS.
It makes one wonder when the first post one writes is so blatantly antagonistic.
I would surmise that kevin19713 is a troll, perhaps previously banned and just wants to raise shit. As such, we should distance ourselves from his rhetoric. Ignore him and hopefully his meanderings will just fade away. Hopefully, quickly.
INTERESTING OBSERVATION: Has anybody else noted that a lot of first time visitors have all of a sudden appeared here and other Mac sites. Many, thankfully not all, with the similar written and sounding anti-Mac/APPLE rhetoric. Could it be that they are the same person or persons?
I would surmise that kevin19713 is a troll, perhaps previously banned and just wants to raise shit.
He could also be Brian Chen in disguise.
Wired should let the man go so he can express his true nature more freely at the National Inquirer.
He could also be Brian Chen in disguise.
I thought exactly the same thing!
Personal attacks on anyone are wasteful, though — just increases hostility instead of enlightening people to facts. I suggest raising more attention of well-written, accurate articles (like the AppleInsider followup) instead of giving journocrap the attention it doesn't deserve.
Don't you love when the media cover the media that are covering the media? The wired article and this Apple Insider article are both a waste of time.
Fact 1: Softbank sold many iPhones in Japan, but it is no where near as popular as in the US and folks here prefer the feature set in typical Japanese phone.
Fact 2: Softbank is less well-regarded wireless provider compared to AU and Docomo. That may be changing, but there is a lot to over come still.
Fact 3: The iPhone is a great internet device, but as a phone it leaves a lot to be desired, particularly in Japan where needs aren't the same as in the US or otherwise.
Get past your misconceptions and stop wasting electrons on non-stories. If the iPhone is free with subscriptions, that means more opportunities for folks to get one here.
Facts? Easy to spew nonsense without backing it up with documented facts.
The story here is Brien Chen lied. WIRED intentionally distorted the truth. What part of that did you not understand?
Take old info, out of context, re-edit quote to a new source, they complain, re-edit... lather, rinse, repeat " journalism"!
iPhone, welcome to Sarah Palin's world!
Stories like this demonstrate quite convincingly why amateur bloggers and "journalists" should not write the news. Hearsay run rampant: this is the result of wholesale citizen journalism. Freedom of the press is one thing; the freedom to write anything you want without regard to fairness and accuracy is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Methinks there's a serious ethical dilemma brewing here.
Obviously, amateur bloggers and "journalists" should not write the news, instead, it definitely should be left to the credited "Professional" journalists such as former CBS anchor Dan Rather and his obsession with contrived documents to destroy President Bush right before an election?
Yeah, now that's journalism we can all use!
I'll agree with you that accuracy based on facts of the event should be the mainstay of any journalist's report. But fairness?! What the hell does that have to do with anything in reporting the news? An event happens, you see it or get corroborated facts from those who did, you report it. How hard can that truly be???
Don't you love when the media cover the media that are covering the media? The wired article and this Apple Insider article are both a waste of time. ... Get past your misconceptions and stop wasting electrons on non-stories. If the iPhone is free with subscriptions, that means more opportunities for folks to get one here.
I don't see it as a waste of time at all. You seem to have strange ideas of what "the media" is if you think it's not their job to cover each other or things that happen in the media. It's also kind of useless to refer to "the media" as if it's some monolithic entity, when you are talking about a story involving multiple media outlets, of different calibre's, in multiple different countries interacting with each other.
You make it sound like "the media is the media is the media." Not true at all.
Here we have Brian Chen who has a history of writing stories about the level of a high school newspaper and is basically an opinion blogger more than a serious journalist, but working for a magazine that supposedly has some cred as an actual journalistic endeavour. He is caught fabricating stories by a real journalist from Japan, who he has smeared in a very mean and casual way because he has no idea what he is doing journalistically, and has no journalistic ethics. This is a classic "emperor has no clothes" kind of story that is way more interesting that a lot of other junk that gets posted here IMO.
It's also relevant because there is a huge debate going on right now about where the line is between bloggers and journalists and whether or not bloggers should be held to some minimal level of journalistic competency. Here we have someone who is supposed to be an actual old-school journalist, who is acting like the worst basement blogger you ever heard of.
Brian Chen has done this kind of stuff before and he needs to be exposed and fired. The more coverage stories like this get the better.
Andrew
--
www.mobileinjapan.com
hq.andrewshuttleworth.com
The Vanity Fair of tech. Trouble is there are no techie Tom Wolfes and Robert Benchleys, so they go for the young guns and anyone who can provide flash. Coupled with uber-cool and barely readable experimental page design, they think they're "it". Every so often they hit a home run, and every so often they find a corked bat. There needs to be a brighter line between bloggers and journalists than there is in this case.
Agreed.
Hilariously, Chen seems to be pulling the race card in his defence:
4. A few words about transparency. I announced my edits of the story on Twitter. And yet people were calling me out to be even more transparent. To that I have to say ? put yourselves in my shoes for a second. Racists were posting photos of me in forums, accompanied with hate speech and my e-mail address. Could you really imagine yourself embracing transparency if you were in my situation?
That's from a long "reply" blog post to Torley's blog describing the whole scenario where he still fails to mention, or acknowledge the basic fact that he made sh*t up and put those words in the mouth of someone else (or that the entire article is slanted.)
Transparency has something to do with how vehemently you are being attacked somehow? WTF? The truth is impossible to relate because people are really angry at you? A-holes are using racial epithets, so that means he's not wrong? I'm really not sure what he's trying to say with this defence. Racism sucks but this sounds weak to me. It's almost like he is saying people are just "against him" because he's (presumably) Chinese.
Lame-o-rama.
Yes, because Umbutu is an excellent OS.... Perhaps you mean Ubuntu? you weren't even close..
In addition, though I doubt he's aware, both Mac OS X and Linux share a common pedigree...UNIX at core....but that's where it ends. One is a delight to use and very well packaged. The other is still, to put it politely, a work in progress maybe?
the key point of the whole story:
Were what TV showed about how japs used cellphones true, they would be in real need of IR/bluetooth/wifi/etc. connectivity on their phones. And yes, alas, carrying iPhone does lame person, having got used to such a lifestyle.
Yes, iPhone radio isn't the best in the world either.
Yes, iPod seems to be the only thing one might want in Japan. iPod Touch may then be good enough, and, maybe, iPods Touch were actually seen to be carried by folks there, you can't tell them from iPhones, having seen them from a distance.
The rest of the article isn't technical though and says little to me...
I have NO idea what you just said...
I have NO idea what you just said...
Don't get so worked up. You didn't miss anything important
1) Softbank makes AT&T look wonderful...it's that bad in comparison. In the U.S., I use an iPhone, in Japan something else.
2) The "wallet" feature is very important here.
Change carriers and add a wallet - over 1/3 penetration easy.
"4. A few words about transparency. I announced my edits of the story on Twitter. And yet people were calling me out to be even more transparent. To that I have to say — put yourselves in my shoes for a second. Racists were posting photos of me in forums, accompanied with hate speech and my e-mail address. Could you really imagine yourself embracing transparency if you were in my situation?"
How does announcing edits on Twitter have anything to do with someone reading the article on Wired? Am I supposed to be reading Twitter while I read an article on Wired? What does transparency have to do with showing pictures of yourself or telling others your email address? Transparency is simply stating in the article that words or sentences were edited or corrected since the original post.
This Brian X. Chen character is certainly not the brightest bulb. He's a total embarassment not only to America, but also to people of Chinese heritage. Ick!