New shuffle, cheaper iPhone and MacBooks seen in 2009 - Page 2

Don't expect the white MacBooks to be available much longer. When they're gone, I think we'll see a price drop in the unibody MacBooks. There could be three standard builds rather than two.

I can't believe how simple this is..............
and how complicated everyone is making it!

Look, an "iPhone Nano" would serve one and only one purpose, because there are three kinds of people in the world:

1. People with an iPhone
2. People with an iPod Touch
3. People with neither

People with an iPod Touch already have a 3.5" screen and access to every available App........... and they have a non-Apple phone! An iPhone Nano would replace that non-Apple phone. It would be smaller and have talk, text, and be an iPod. Period.

People could choose any carrier they like and they wouldn't be tied to a data plan. The two biggest barriers to buying an iPhone. Apple will sell MILLIONS and MILLIONS of these!

You don't have bluetooth sync on the iPhone either and have to pay Apple .99 cents for the right to use a song as a ringtone (if it is one of the chosen songs for ringtone).

You can only synch the iPhone to 1 Mac/PC and it has to be done with a USB connection to the computer.

Apparently you don't own an iPhone.

Ah, yes. "Built in obsolescence".

Explain why GPS was not allowed on some BB's last year when it was in the phone; not even a paid option at the time. They cripple whatever phone they want. They use to cripple them all.

in case you don't seem to already know... you can easily create your own FREE ringtones for the iphone too without paying Apple a cent... just google it.

Yep, I will be the first in line. I'm stuck on Verizon in a shared business account anyways, but they have a MUCH more extensive 3G network (and 2G network) than AT&T. In fact, AT&T literally doesn't have even basic coverage between two major cities in my state along the biggest highway. It's pathetic. And their 3G network is only available in a tiny fraction of the area, is very spotty even within the coverage area, and is always overloaded.

I've used ALL the carriers over the last 5-7 years, and Verizon has consistently had the best service in the areas and states I have lived in. And until AT&T has HSPA rolled-out everywhere and then LTE, Verizon's CDMA is FAR superior to AT&T's GSM when talking about signal strength, ability to penetrate buildings, tower handovers, etc.


Oh man, we can only hope Apple's next phone uses a Qualcomm Gobi chipset or whatever that can support both GSM/HSPA and CDMA/EVDO. That is totally an Apple type of move if they end their exclusivity. While they are at it, it would be awesome if they used Qualcomm's ARM cortex-A8 based SnapDragon platform.



Verizon doesn't usually mess with Smartphone's software, although they have blocked WiFi or bluetooth on certain models. Obviously this would never happen on the iPhone -- Apple wouldn't allow it and it would cause an enormous backlash from users....



Nope! not officially... Hopefully it's over in 2009!



That doesn't matter. There are blackberrys among others that use chipsets supporting both technologies...



Apple wouldn't let them mess with the iPhone, and they would have no interest in doing so given the iPhone would surely require an "unlimited" data plan anyways...



Perhaps that is for regular phones using shitty WAP browsers or something.. No way it would be for a smartphone...



Yes, Verizon screws their customers on phones, particularly on non-smartphones. It is very easy however to get around the ringtone and bluetooth file transfer with software readily available online.. Google "BitPim".

Anyways, They wouldn't dare try to mess with the iPhone. Apple would never allow it, and customers would revolt..

Verizon was given the chance to be in ATT's position. they lost it because they refuse to let someone else have final design control over the devices they service exclusively. Apple made exclusive design control a non-negotiable issue. and I am thankful. I don't want to think about what improvements Verizon would have demanded.

and if you go and actually look at Verizon's smartphone plans, they are not that much different than ATT's plans

for a smart phone it would be $34.99, plus $29.99 for 300 minutes (compared to the 450 minutes you get from ATT with rollover for the unused ones) and then another 6.99 to get the unlimited mobile to mobile ATT includes.

so lets do some math:

ATT: 450 anytime, unlimited nights and weekends and unlimited mobile to mobile + unlimited data/email + unlimited SMS=$39.99+$30.00+$20.00=89.99 + taxes

to get the same from t-mobile: 300 anytime, unlimited nights and weekends + unlimited mobile to mobile + 150 extra used minutes + unlimited data and text = $29.99 + $6.99 + 150 x $0.40 + $34.99 = $131.97 + taxes.

I wouldn't count on that. Apple pointedly choose GSM over CDMA because they only want to have to make one device they can ship anywhere.

it might seem that way to you but ATT provided a huge chunk of the R&D money for the iPhone. the contract is to pay them back for that. be glad it is only five years.

OK fine- it still sucks.

Except that the connection works.

not exactly true.

you have to pay .99 cents to use a song from the store as a ringtone, but if you ripped a song off a CD and have something to cut down the track, you can use whatever you want.

or if you are a fanboy with some geek knowledge and creativity you can take a slow as crap g3 with one gb of ram, a copy of imovie hd, garbageband '08 and a copy of Coldplay's Viva la Vida bought off the itunes store and in about 5 minutes create your own ringtone without playing an extra penny. with a newer computer you could probably cut that time in half.

I owned a verizon pay as you go phone for years. It wasn't a bad deal but it was a crap phone. When I started looking for a smart phone I did look at the smart phone market in general. Verizon was and I suspect still is, a very bad deal if you are looking for full functionality.

That should not lead to applause for Apple though. Let's face it Apple hasn't exactly leveraged the hardware in iPhone fully. Where is our BlueTooth stack for example. I want to see a complete set of BluTooth profiles but I'm sure many would settle for stereo head phone support and data transfer. So while Verizon sucks with respect to not supporting built in hardware Apple isn't much better. It's a shame too.

Dave

but consider how long Apple has been in this market. not long at all. they are babies in this game. and personally I would rather that they add new and fancy features slowly so they take the time to make sure what is there works as well as it can rather than toss in tons of stuff and end up with a cock up not unlike this past summer when they released the 3g phone with the new activation at purchase protocol (at ATT's behest i'm sure but still), the app store and the new MobileMe at the same time and gummed up all 3 of them for days if not weeks in some cases.

while I hear that some folks have had issues, i have not and neither have any of my friends. although several of them had issues when they were on tmobile or verizon before getting the iphone. and I won't even bring up my prior experiences with Sprint Customer Disservice.

Surely the price of the iPhone contract will be the same no matter which carrier you are with?

Seen as AT&T are subsidising a chunk of the cost of the iPhone as part of the contract then so too will any other carrier. They need to add something like $4-500 per phone per contract. In countries where networks are selling the iphone contract free it is being sold for over $700 - that then is the true price you are paying for you iPhone.

So when Apple talk about a cheaper iPhone they mean exactly that, a cheaper iphone that might only cost you $300.

My understanding is that Apple initially wanted a % of the monthly revenues, carrier subsidies, and control over the content distribution. VZ, being the leader declined. ATT accepted because they needed a competitive advantage. Since them those terms have been revised by Apple to become more competitive.

Another issue was that Apple wanted initially to come out with a phone that had global coverage... one phone to work all over the world. GSM was it. VZ uses CDMA that has less than 20% global coverage... no coverage is most of Europe. WCDMA is immature and was even more so a couple of years ago... this asynch wide band tech uses a lot of power, needs higher tower density.

QCOM had developed multimode chips. They have GSM/CDMA/WCDMA reasonably priced chipsets... much better than the junk that Infineon is selling.

Meanwhile, Apple is stuck to a dumb 5 year contract with ATT. With the economy slowing down, I am hoping Apple will wake up and do an end run around ATT. They can come up with a multi band GSM+CDMA+WCDMA phone and sell it unlocked in the open markets in Hong Kong, etc at reasonable prices... then we can buy it over the internet or even Amazon.

Actually I am ready for WiMax networks. Have an iPod Touch with this tech, and used it world wide without the hi fees, etc.

You do NOT have to buy ringtones from Apple.
You can make them yourself using Apple provided software - GarageBand, it even transfers them automatically to iTunes for you. You can make ringtones out of any unprotected music files that you have on your computer, even from your own CDs.

What a load of BS. If Verizon had the iPhone they would make Apple disable all the features so they can charge you extra to use them. Just like how they disabled Bluetooth and charged customers to unlock the feature that was already part of the phone. Verizon can suck it.

Garageband is part of the iLife software pack and retails on Apple for $79.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB...mco=MjE0NTM2OQ

You can buy a lot of ringtones for $79.

I'm not paying $79 to convert music to ringtones I've already purchased on iTunes.
It's a complete rip off. You've already purchased the song and then you have to purchase it again if you want to use it as a ringtone.

Sounds like a racket to me. But then again I've always found ringtones from songs to be sophomoric. Maybe if I was in my teens it would be a different story.

Apples stock ringtones are terrible and the only one I've personally found to be professional is the standard old fashion telephone.

if you have to buy it... but most mac users who have an iPhone have an updated mac enugh they already have a version of garage band that works fine...

actualy if you know what your doing.... I can easily make ring tones for my iPhone of even DRMed music without paying a penny, and it takes hardly any time at all... all you need is Soundflower (free) and Garageband (most mac users have) .... play it in itunes, out to soundflower, as garageband record from soundflower, then edit how you want... make it an m4p, then change the name to m4r and drag and drop into itunes... if you want all free with less cool options and effects, you can use something like audacity to record, then you just have to convert the file type over right... might sound kinda complicated, but only takes a couple mins to make one after you see how.

You know that you can drag music (even protected ones) from GarageBand 08 media browser to create new track, do you? This is all what you need to do. Click the Loop button next to the fast forward button and using the cycle region at the top to select the part of the song you want to create a ringtone from. When you are done go to Share -> Send Ringtone to iTunes. That's all. No need for third party software.

not totally sure what that means... Soundflower just lets you change inputs and outputs where they are directed at... so you can play something in one program (iTunes) and record whats playing in another program, cuz one output is going to the others input. I don't have Garageband 08, so if it does DRMed stuff, that's cool... the version I have media browser wont show or use any DRMed songs, the only way i can get DRMed music over is to stream it over from iTunes to get rid of the DRM... or could possibly use other hacks to strip the DRM, but i only do it for ring tones, so not worth messing with that type of junk.

Improve the sound quality on the shuffle back to what it was on the 1st Gen.
That is all that is needed.

I'm glad someone did this. I get very tired of people who complain about the cost of the iphone plan and compare it to the data plan they got with their RAZR phone 4 years ago.