And that claim is supported by the existence of a $49 iPod....how?
Ugh. This comment is so ill-thought I almost feel like a response is a waste of time. But I'm at work with nothing to do so here you are: The 1GB shuffle is a neat little mp3 player, but if someone is trying to get the most bang for their buck (because they are broke) why wouldn't they go with a competitor which offers twice the storage space, all with an on screen display? The 1gb shuffle isn't meant for "low income" consumers, it's just the cheapest mp3 player Apple carries.
Think of it this way; Would you say Ferrari made an affordable car for low income consumers if what they offered was half as good as what Ford offers for the same price? Low income doesn't mean low intelligence.
Note as well the rumors Apple is reconsidering background apps on the iPhone. Is this posturing or is Apple actually running scared? (Probably both--the hallmark of competition).
There are some good use cases where background apps is really the only solution. Maybe Palm has a cool demo of such cases, which leads Apple to make noises about it so as to deter Pre sales. But since iPhone is already a multitasking system, it seems the hangup is battery life and CPU power, both of which can be improved on this next iPhone.
Quote:
IMHO, with its webapp model, Palm is going where Apple originally envisioned the iPhone would go. But Apple encountered an unexpected opportunity with native iPhone apps and is now in the position of having to bolster/justify its position.
Here I disagree. Apple has always envisioned native apps - they just couldn't get Leopard and the iPhone SDK done in time, as the iPhone OS was more difficult than they projected. In a Jan 2007 interview, Jobs dropped a hint that Apple was working on OS security to allow for native apps. In May at All Things D conference, he mentioned that Apple found a promising solution using sandboxes. So it was only a matter of time.
So why didn't Apple just say so back in Jan 2007 at MWSF? Because there was no guarantee that they would find a satisfactory solution, and they didn't see any reason to make obvious to its competitors what they were up to. Apple's style is to not overpromise and as much as possible, keep everything a secret. One thing to always remember about Apple, especially at conference calls: Apple only makes things public when they think it gains them an advantage. No throwaway lines.
Added: And by not making native apps obvious, none of Apple's competitors did anything about apps and App Stores. They just continued on their merry way, focused instead on touch-screens and Internet browsing. This clearly gained Apple a several month lead.
And how is that iPod meant for the ghetto and not gym bunnies?
Even if Apple made something priced at a lower cost for poor people, they would never say it was for poor people. They'd have some other reason for why it was the way it was. The closest Apple ever came to saying something was for the less affluent was at the Mac mini intro, but even then, they focused on the concept of allowing PC users to enter the Mac experience by bringing your own displays and keyboards.
That's what branding is all about. Like I wrote earlier, Apple's brand is about elegance, simplicity, high quality, cool, just works. People aspire to have an Apple product, just like with A&F, Movado, BMW, Tiffany, etc.
But all of them make entry-level lower-cost products, so that those with even less discretionary dollars can buy something with the "name" on it. From a features/spec point of view, these lower-cost products are often not "worth" it relative to competitor products, since you're really buying the "name." (In the case of the Mac mini, it does get you Mac OS X, if you don't want to hack it on a PC. For iPod shuffle, it gets you an "iPod" instead of a perceived "loser" like a Zune, Creative, Sandisk, or a true no-name knockoff label.)
Even using the term "poor people" skews the conversation into socioeconomic thickets that no marketer in their right mind would ever willingly invoke.
Suffice to say that Apple looks at the particular market they are competing in and endeavors to achieve the kind of sales they want with a mixture of pricing, quality and innovation.
In the case of the iPod (and by extension mobile handsets), Apple sees an opportunity to have control over the direction the market as a whole (which is enormously advantageous to them) by continuing and extending their dominant position, so they offer hardware priced accordingly. No, they don't offer a super cheap "just a phone", but that's not the market they're interested in.
In the case of computers, Apple knows there is little they can do to ever achieve even parity with the PC world, much less domination, so there is little incentive for them to compete on the low end of the pricing spectrum.
Per my T-Mobile bill: voice $29.99 + unlimited data $19.99 = $49.98
ATT cheapest plan is $69.99 which adds up to $480.24 more than T-Mobile over a 2 year contract.
Right, people always cite their existing T-Mobile or Sprint rates when making this case, but:
1) More often than not these discount rates are for long term subscribers and are not available to new subscribers, and
2) Given the collective market share of Verizon and AT&T, any definition of "prevailing rates" has got to center around what these two are charging, on average, for smart phone plans.
Given that the iPhone data plans are right in line with every other smart phone AT&T and Verizon offer, it's silly to carry on as if iPhone rates are some kind of out of nowhere highway robbery, in that the majority of smart phones being sold in America are being sold with equivalent plans.
There are some good use cases where background apps is really the only solution. Maybe Palm has a cool demo of such cases, which leads Apple to make noises about it so as to deter Pre sales. But since iPhone is already a multitasking system, it seems the hangup is battery life and CPU power, both of which can be improved on this next iPhone.
Memory for the cpu must be lumped into the "CPU power" category. The current 128 MB of the iPhone and iPhone 3G is quite limiting. Even with the current single-app situation, how often do people encounter application failures due to limited memory?
Quote:
Here I disagree. Apple has always envisioned native apps - they just couldn't get Leopard and the iPhone SDK done in time, as the iPhone OS was more difficult than they projected.
It's a matter of when. I believe Squirrelfish was intended to come first, and then native apps with backgrounding as hardware processing power sufficed.
Quote:
In a Jan 2007 interview, Jobs dropped a hint that Apple was working on OS security to allow for native apps. In May at All Things D conference, he mentioned that Apple found a promising solution using sandboxes. So it was only a matter of time.
tmobile is pretty slow though. Something to consider.
Tell that to the shop owner I saw this weekend trying to get a signal on her iPhone and that her battery would seldom last into the afternoon because it was constantly trying acquire a signal.
So i pulled out my phone on T-Mobile's service to test and had no problem calling and did a bandwidth test to verify full data access.
ATT isn't the always available and speed that people have been brainwashed into believing.
Why are you trying to hard to justify that ATT charges too much?
Could you maybe provide a link to where T-Mobile offer unlimited data for $19.99? I'm having trouble finding that. For instance, on their 3G G1 Android plan, which I think we can agree is pretty comparable to the iPhone, what I'm seeing is $39.99 for 600 talk minutes and $34.99 for unlimited data and messaging, which comes out to slightly more than the AT&T iPhone plan, albeit with more talk minutes and more messages-- but not wildly out of line. Here. Hmmm, for some reason linking to the Android page actually goes to the Blackberry plans, but the rates are similar.
More generally, I'm not trying to "justify" AT&T's rates. I'm just pointing out that AT&T and Verizon charge about the same, so you also have a beef with Verizon, which is to say the majority of the US cell industry. Beef on, I would welcome lower rates across the board.
But it's not at all surprising that the smaller carriers offer some deals, they have to do anything they can to attract subscribers.
If AT&T and Verizon are truly charging "too much", you have to wonder why Sprint and T-Mobile aren't the dominate carriers in the US. Why aren't people flocking to T-Mobile (or Sprint) so as to not have to pay those usurious rates that Verizon and AT&T charge?
Again, my point is that singling out AT&T, or worse, the iPhone, as being "too expensive", doesn't actually make any sense, given the realities of the US market at the moment. There's no baseline beyond what the market will bear, and the majority of the market is clearly bearing iPhone level rates.
Of course, those rates might be too expensive for me, or I might wish that they were cheaper, but those are different things.
"Is the iPhone?s platform closed? And if it is, will it be open to developers in the future? Jobs says it?s a security issue, but Apple is working to find a way to allow developers to build applications for it. Jobs says he doesn?t want the iPhone to be ?one of those phones that crashes a few times a day.? He adds: ?We would like to solve this problem and if you could just be a little more patient with us, we?ll do it.? "
I think in the full video, Jobs talks about sandboxes.
?These are devices that need to work, and you can?t do that if you load any software on them,? he said. ?That doesn?t mean there?s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn?t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.?
Here already Jobs says that Apple need not write all software that will be loaded on an iPhone, but that it needs to be a controlled environment.
Tell that to the shop owner I saw this weekend trying to get a signal on her iPhone and that her battery would seldom last into the afternoon because it was constantly trying acquire a signal.
So i pulled out my phone on T-Mobile's service to test and had no problem calling and did a bandwidth test to verify full data access.
ATT isn't the always available and speed that people have been brainwashed into believing.
lol well it's rare where I come from for at&t to not have coverage where tmobile does. I had tmobile for about 4 years, then switched to sprint. My girlfriend for 4 years had at&t. Generally speaking, she had better coverage for making phone calls.
Anyways, how fast can tmobile's data line get? Out in the middle of nowhere, with 2 bars, I can tether my phone (sprint) and get 1.4mbps.
Also, I miss tmobile. They had the best customer service I ever delt with. One time I called in after 2 years to leave, and they offered me 1500 anytime minutes for 50 bucks a month. I was like HELL YEAH I'LL STAY lol
Per my T-Mobile bill: voice $29.99 + unlimited data $19.99 = $49.98
ATT cheapest plan is $69.99 which adds up to $480.24 more than T-Mobile over a 2 year contract.
wrong... unlimited data on your razr isn't unlimited data on a smart phone. go to tmobile, add a blackberry to your cart and try to add that data plan for 19.99... I'll wait.
oh, it's not offered. it's $29.98... even the windows mobile phones and sidekicks need a $25 plan, cheaper than at&t but still more than the $19.99 you state. and also keep in mind you are getting data on a 90% edge network with t-mobile... when at&t was mostly edge, the data plans were cheaper too.
at&t also has a 19.99 data plan for people who don't have smart phones. it's not offered if you have a smart phone because at&t and tmobile know you are going to use a lot more data with your smart phone than you will with your flip phone.
Comments
And that claim is supported by the existence of a $49 iPod....how?
Ugh. This comment is so ill-thought I almost feel like a response is a waste of time. But I'm at work with nothing to do so here you are: The 1GB shuffle is a neat little mp3 player, but if someone is trying to get the most bang for their buck (because they are broke) why wouldn't they go with a competitor which offers twice the storage space, all with an on screen display? The 1gb shuffle isn't meant for "low income" consumers, it's just the cheapest mp3 player Apple carries.
Think of it this way; Would you say Ferrari made an affordable car for low income consumers if what they offered was half as good as what Ford offers for the same price? Low income doesn't mean low intelligence.
Recent articles about the move of subscribers to prepaids because of the economy might push AT&T into offering prepaid, prepaid plus.
the same
5 guys
come here and bitch
every day
mow your lawn
feed your parking meters
o
o boy
to wander this world
with mac on your side
to come here and have 1000's of posts
bitching about a company that makes metal boxes
fan boys love apple for the freedom it has given us
for all we care the rest of you can go fuck yourselves on a msft site where you belong
15inunibodymacbookproisthefinestmostportablelaptop evermadetodate
9
Seriousy- who taught you how to rap? Vanilla or Bondi Ice?
And that claim is supported by the existence of a $49 iPod....how?
And how is that iPod meant for the ghetto and not gym bunnies?
Note as well the rumors Apple is reconsidering background apps on the iPhone. Is this posturing or is Apple actually running scared? (Probably both--the hallmark of competition).
There are some good use cases where background apps is really the only solution. Maybe Palm has a cool demo of such cases, which leads Apple to make noises about it so as to deter Pre sales. But since iPhone is already a multitasking system, it seems the hangup is battery life and CPU power, both of which can be improved on this next iPhone.
IMHO, with its webapp model, Palm is going where Apple originally envisioned the iPhone would go. But Apple encountered an unexpected opportunity with native iPhone apps and is now in the position of having to bolster/justify its position.
Here I disagree. Apple has always envisioned native apps - they just couldn't get Leopard and the iPhone SDK done in time, as the iPhone OS was more difficult than they projected. In a Jan 2007 interview, Jobs dropped a hint that Apple was working on OS security to allow for native apps. In May at All Things D conference, he mentioned that Apple found a promising solution using sandboxes. So it was only a matter of time.
So why didn't Apple just say so back in Jan 2007 at MWSF? Because there was no guarantee that they would find a satisfactory solution, and they didn't see any reason to make obvious to its competitors what they were up to. Apple's style is to not overpromise and as much as possible, keep everything a secret. One thing to always remember about Apple, especially at conference calls: Apple only makes things public when they think it gains them an advantage. No throwaway lines.
Added: And by not making native apps obvious, none of Apple's competitors did anything about apps and App Stores. They just continued on their merry way, focused instead on touch-screens and Internet browsing. This clearly gained Apple a several month lead.
And how is that iPod meant for the ghetto and not gym bunnies?
That's...... an odd way to look at it.
And how is that iPod meant for the ghetto and not gym bunnies?
Even if Apple made something priced at a lower cost for poor people, they would never say it was for poor people. They'd have some other reason for why it was the way it was. The closest Apple ever came to saying something was for the less affluent was at the Mac mini intro, but even then, they focused on the concept of allowing PC users to enter the Mac experience by bringing your own displays and keyboards.
That's what branding is all about. Like I wrote earlier, Apple's brand is about elegance, simplicity, high quality, cool, just works. People aspire to have an Apple product, just like with A&F, Movado, BMW, Tiffany, etc.
But all of them make entry-level lower-cost products, so that those with even less discretionary dollars can buy something with the "name" on it. From a features/spec point of view, these lower-cost products are often not "worth" it relative to competitor products, since you're really buying the "name." (In the case of the Mac mini, it does get you Mac OS X, if you don't want to hack it on a PC. For iPod shuffle, it gets you an "iPod" instead of a perceived "loser" like a Zune, Creative, Sandisk, or a true no-name knockoff label.)
Suffice to say that Apple looks at the particular market they are competing in and endeavors to achieve the kind of sales they want with a mixture of pricing, quality and innovation.
In the case of the iPod (and by extension mobile handsets), Apple sees an opportunity to have control over the direction the market as a whole (which is enormously advantageous to them) by continuing and extending their dominant position, so they offer hardware priced accordingly. No, they don't offer a super cheap "just a phone", but that's not the market they're interested in.
In the case of computers, Apple knows there is little they can do to ever achieve even parity with the PC world, much less domination, so there is little incentive for them to compete on the low end of the pricing spectrum.
Seriousy- who taught you how to rap? Vanilla or Bondi Ice?
rap ??? i was a love song
When in fact the rates for an iPhone plan are exactly in line with (American) industry norms. Somehow that fact never seems to sink in.
Maybe because your "fact" is wrong.
Per my T-Mobile bill: voice $29.99 + unlimited data $19.99 = $49.98
ATT cheapest plan is $69.99 which adds up to $480.24 more than T-Mobile over a 2 year contract.
Maybe because your "fact" is wrong.
Per my T-Mobile bill: voice $29.99 + unlimited data $19.99 = $49.98
ATT cheapest plan is $69.99 which adds up to $480.24 more than T-Mobile over a 2 year contract.
Right, people always cite their existing T-Mobile or Sprint rates when making this case, but:
1) More often than not these discount rates are for long term subscribers and are not available to new subscribers, and
2) Given the collective market share of Verizon and AT&T, any definition of "prevailing rates" has got to center around what these two are charging, on average, for smart phone plans.
Given that the iPhone data plans are right in line with every other smart phone AT&T and Verizon offer, it's silly to carry on as if iPhone rates are some kind of out of nowhere highway robbery, in that the majority of smart phones being sold in America are being sold with equivalent plans.
Maybe because your "fact" is wrong.
Per my T-Mobile bill: voice $29.99 + unlimited data $19.99 = $49.98
ATT cheapest plan is $69.99 which adds up to $480.24 more than T-Mobile over a 2 year contract.
tmobile is pretty slow though. Something to consider.
There are some good use cases where background apps is really the only solution. Maybe Palm has a cool demo of such cases, which leads Apple to make noises about it so as to deter Pre sales. But since iPhone is already a multitasking system, it seems the hangup is battery life and CPU power, both of which can be improved on this next iPhone.
Memory for the cpu must be lumped into the "CPU power" category. The current 128 MB of the iPhone and iPhone 3G is quite limiting. Even with the current single-app situation, how often do people encounter application failures due to limited memory?
Here I disagree. Apple has always envisioned native apps - they just couldn't get Leopard and the iPhone SDK done in time, as the iPhone OS was more difficult than they projected.
It's a matter of when. I believe Squirrelfish was intended to come first, and then native apps with backgrounding as hardware processing power sufficed.
In a Jan 2007 interview, Jobs dropped a hint that Apple was working on OS security to allow for native apps. In May at All Things D conference, he mentioned that Apple found a promising solution using sandboxes. So it was only a matter of time.
You got a link to that?
More often than not these discount rates are for long term subscribers and are not available to new subscribers
It's not a discount. Standard rates.
Why are you trying to hard to justify that ATT charges too much?
tmobile is pretty slow though. Something to consider.
Tell that to the shop owner I saw this weekend trying to get a signal on her iPhone and that her battery would seldom last into the afternoon because it was constantly trying acquire a signal.
So i pulled out my phone on T-Mobile's service to test and had no problem calling and did a bandwidth test to verify full data access.
ATT isn't the always available and speed that people have been brainwashed into believing.
It's not a discount. Standard rates.
Why are you trying to hard to justify that ATT charges too much?
Could you maybe provide a link to where T-Mobile offer unlimited data for $19.99? I'm having trouble finding that. For instance, on their 3G G1 Android plan, which I think we can agree is pretty comparable to the iPhone, what I'm seeing is $39.99 for 600 talk minutes and $34.99 for unlimited data and messaging, which comes out to slightly more than the AT&T iPhone plan, albeit with more talk minutes and more messages-- but not wildly out of line. Here. Hmmm, for some reason linking to the Android page actually goes to the Blackberry plans, but the rates are similar.
More generally, I'm not trying to "justify" AT&T's rates. I'm just pointing out that AT&T and Verizon charge about the same, so you also have a beef with Verizon, which is to say the majority of the US cell industry. Beef on, I would welcome lower rates across the board.
But it's not at all surprising that the smaller carriers offer some deals, they have to do anything they can to attract subscribers.
If AT&T and Verizon are truly charging "too much", you have to wonder why Sprint and T-Mobile aren't the dominate carriers in the US. Why aren't people flocking to T-Mobile (or Sprint) so as to not have to pay those usurious rates that Verizon and AT&T charge?
Again, my point is that singling out AT&T, or worse, the iPhone, as being "too expensive", doesn't actually make any sense, given the realities of the US market at the moment. There's no baseline beyond what the market will bear, and the majority of the market is clearly bearing iPhone level rates.
Of course, those rates might be too expensive for me, or I might wish that they were cheaper, but those are different things.
I guess not many people in this thread would be wanting to run their slingboxes over 3G then...
...it's a toss up as to which group of whiners is worse.
You got a link to that?
At one time, Allthingsd.com had the video up. Now they have notes of Steve's talk at: http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/st...-ceo-of-apple/
"Is the iPhone?s platform closed? And if it is, will it be open to developers in the future? Jobs says it?s a security issue, but Apple is working to find a way to allow developers to build applications for it. Jobs says he doesn?t want the iPhone to be ?one of those phones that crashes a few times a day.? He adds: ?We would like to solve this problem and if you could just be a little more patient with us, we?ll do it.? "
I think in the full video, Jobs talks about sandboxes.
One version of the Jan 2007 NYTimes article by John Markoff is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/te...pple.html?_r=1
?These are devices that need to work, and you can?t do that if you load any software on them,? he said. ?That doesn?t mean there?s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn?t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.?
Here already Jobs says that Apple need not write all software that will be loaded on an iPhone, but that it needs to be a controlled environment.
Tell that to the shop owner I saw this weekend trying to get a signal on her iPhone and that her battery would seldom last into the afternoon because it was constantly trying acquire a signal.
So i pulled out my phone on T-Mobile's service to test and had no problem calling and did a bandwidth test to verify full data access.
ATT isn't the always available and speed that people have been brainwashed into believing.
lol well it's rare where I come from for at&t to not have coverage where tmobile does. I had tmobile for about 4 years, then switched to sprint. My girlfriend for 4 years had at&t. Generally speaking, she had better coverage for making phone calls.
Anyways, how fast can tmobile's data line get? Out in the middle of nowhere, with 2 bars, I can tether my phone (sprint) and get 1.4mbps.
Also, I miss tmobile. They had the best customer service I ever delt with. One time I called in after 2 years to leave, and they offered me 1500 anytime minutes for 50 bucks a month. I was like HELL YEAH I'LL STAY lol
Maybe because your "fact" is wrong.
Per my T-Mobile bill: voice $29.99 + unlimited data $19.99 = $49.98
ATT cheapest plan is $69.99 which adds up to $480.24 more than T-Mobile over a 2 year contract.
wrong... unlimited data on your razr isn't unlimited data on a smart phone. go to tmobile, add a blackberry to your cart and try to add that data plan for 19.99... I'll wait.
oh, it's not offered. it's $29.98... even the windows mobile phones and sidekicks need a $25 plan, cheaper than at&t but still more than the $19.99 you state. and also keep in mind you are getting data on a 90% edge network with t-mobile... when at&t was mostly edge, the data plans were cheaper too.
at&t also has a 19.99 data plan for people who don't have smart phones. it's not offered if you have a smart phone because at&t and tmobile know you are going to use a lot more data with your smart phone than you will with your flip phone.