iPhone - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
Jeff Kirvin
Bert Latamore
1. It has 8 GIGAbytes, not MEGAbytes of memory. By comparison, my T3 has 64 MEGAbytes (actually 52 available). How much does your PDA or smart phone have? Anyone here have a handheld device with 1 GB of memory (not hard drive)? I don't think there is anything with that much memory available, is there? This huge leap in available memory makes this a new class of handheld device. The other manufacturers (HP, Palm, RIM, etc.) will have to respond with new devices with similar resources.
2. It is one of very few smart phones to include built-in WiFi. Certainly the other smartphone makers can and in some cases want to include WiFi, but the carriers have largely blocked that out. if the iPhone takes off, the other carriers will have to respond by freeing the manufacturers to include WiFi.
3. It is blazingly fast by handheld standards. In the NY Times Q and A article the reviewer says the actual phone operates just as it is shown to on the TV spots. This means you tap an icon and a video starts playing, right then, full speed, no stops and jumps. Again, this means that the other manufacturers will need to provide similar performance.
4. Apple used these physical resources to create a truly visually-oriented device rather than an essentially alpha-numeric device with a thin overlay of icons. This compares to what most of us have on our desktops rather than in our pockets. Again , this is a major leap forward for handheld devices.
5. It provides a full featured browser. This is potentially very important because today the easiest and favorite way for corporations to provide services over the Internet to both remote staff and customers is via the browser. But partly because of physical limitations and partly because of restrictions imposed by the carriers, most smart phones today do not have full featured browsers. This means that delivering services to Treos, Blackberries, etc., requires developers to create custom software for these devices, shoehorning functionality into devices with very small displays and very limited resources.
6. The display is super bright and readable. I would like to know if it is easily readable in bright sunlight. If so it is miles ahead of what we have had until now in a handheld.
Yes certainly the iPod has some problems. You cannot edit Office documents (or even look at PowerPoint documents). You have to use a finger, rather than a pen, to write on it. We do not know what its security is (very important for enterprises considering supporting it for internal use). You cannot change batteries. But these things are all fixable, either in subsequent releases of the software or accessories (a magnetic pen, attachable external battery sleds a la the Power To Go for the Palm). And that also leaves room for the other manufacturers to respond with devices that offer some of these other things.
I would argue that this is a new kind of device, and that it will push the other manufacturers and carriers to move their technologies forward or be left behind.
Bert
Finally, the real details!
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/IPhone
Bert Latamore
Freelance Writer/Photographer
ComputerWorld Online Columnist
Lee Hauser
laugh so hard I cry.
On 6/29/07, Jeff Kirvin <je...@jeffkirvin.net> wrote:
>
Jeff Kirvin
1. I have about 70% free internal memory on my Apache (a Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC Phone) and about 200MB free on the 1GB miniSD card I keep in the card slot. The device, like most Pocket PC Phones, supports SDHC, so I could replace that card with a 2 or 4 GB (or even 6 or 8) but I simply don’t need to. But I will grant you that 4-8GB of internal memory is a good thing. Too bad the iPhone’s OS sucks up over 700MB of it.
2. Bert, welcome to three years ago. Most Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phones come with WiFi, have for years. My Apache has WiFi. I almost never, ever use it. WiFi is largely pointless when you have EVDO for data, which I imagine is why newer, smaller and cheaper phones (like the Q) that have 3G data chose to ditch the WiFi radio that would be necessary if you were, say, stuck with 2.5G EDGE cellular data like the iPhone is.
3. Such performance is possible with a properly configured phone. My Apache, again, a 2 year old design and not a speed demon by any means, is just as responsive as the iPhone. Then again, in the immortal words of ancient Greek philosopher Han Solo, “She may not look like much but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself.”
4. Que? A phone that you can’t dial without looking at it is a step back, not forward, no matter how pretty and shiny it is.
5. The browser is the one thing I like about the iPhone, but it’s hardly new. Google for Microsoft Deepfish to see what I mean.
6. Miles ahead? Again, Bert, the display on the iPhone is nice, but I bet in real life it’s not much better than the one on your T3 or my Apache or Philippe’s Q. An LCD is an LCD. Don’t get sucked into Jobs’s patented Reality Distortion Field.
In short, this isn’t a new kind of device. It’s a device that takes some of the worst features of the iPod and cell phone and mashes them together into a shiny package. It’s a low-capacity iPod with a headphone port that prevents most standard 3.5mm jacks from seating properly (Pogue) or it’s a cell phone with slow data, no voice dialing an a non-replaceable battery.
Meh.
ignar
Jeff Kirvin
-----Original Message-----
From: "ignar" <ign...@gmail.com>
To: "wo...@googlegroups.com" <wo...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: 6/29/07 6:23 PM
Subject: [woyp] Re: iPhone - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
PhilippeR
I have said it before here, and I will repeat it: storage capacity is
becoming less and less important because so much can now be stored on
the web. Microsoft is experimenting (I believe Google is too) with a
program that will allow you to store many gigs of data on your
personal niche on the web, meaning that you will have access via your
phone to your entire desktop via the web. So who cares about 8 gig or
80 gig? In any case, 8 gig hardly turns a device into something really
groundbreaking.
If you want to carry an ipod and phone around, and want to carry only
one device, then the iPhone is for you. I have two ipods (a 60gig for
my home audio system and an 8gig Nano for the gym). I do not carry my
ipod with me. I do listen to audiobooks while on the go, but I can and
do do that on my Q.
I have been playing with Deepfish but I just don't see what's great
about displaying a full web page on a 2" or 3.5" screen: I read the NY
Times on my Q and the mobile edition is a much better read than the
full page, with its requirements that you scroll around, in Deepfish.
Bert Latamore
I am disappointed that the display is not easily readable in sunlight. I keep hoping for a device that I could take to the beach and read all day. Actually the display in the Psion industrial device I am playing with comes pretty close to that. It is more readable inside but certainly is comfortable to read outside in full sunlight on my deck (my T3, by comparison, is miserable in full sunlight).
I do carry my iPod around all the time in a pocket. Even when I am in the house, I prefer to listen to my music and podcasts via earphones (the poor man's stereo), and while my bluetooth headset lets me wander around some, it doesn't quite cover the entire house from any one spot, so I usually end up putting the iPod in a pocket in the morning and keeping it there. It also makes moving from one album or podcast to the next easier, since I don't have to get up and walk to wherever I left it. And of course I carry it when I go out for my evening walk (a great time to listen to podcasts), and in the car we have a little plug-in cord that does a very short range radio broadcast so we can listen on the car radio. So it goes everywhere with me, and I am now starting to put photos on it. This will become my main device for displaying my photo diary, as its screen, while smaller, is much brighter than my T3s. Maybe when I get my next cell phone it will have a full browser that will let me access my photos on Picassa, and I can show off the photos there, but for now I can't do that. The phone I have really does suck.
Re storage on the Internet. That is already beginning to happen. Look at Picassa for photos and www.xdrive.com for general storage. I am seriously considering backing up the hard drives of my two computers to xdrive. At $10/month for 50 GB of storage it is a pretty attractive solution.
Bert
GRC
If you are considering online backup, take a look at Carbonite and
Mozy - $50 - $60/year for unlimited backup storage. I currently have
about 25 gig on Carbonite. I had to restore some mailbox files that
had become corrupted and that went smoothly. I still do regular
backups to a local external hard drive, but Carbonite serves as one of
my "off site" back ups. I started using Carbonite before Mozy became
available - Mozy actually looks a bit more full featured for about
the same amount of money.
Greg
On Jul 5, 11:27 am, "Bert Latamore" <bert.latam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Phillipe,
>
> Re storage on the Internet. That is already beginning to happen. Look at
> Picassa for photos andwww.xdrive.comfor general storage. I am seriously
Bert Latamore
thanks, I'll do that.
Bert
Lee Hauser
Disk as the front end. My charge last month (for the actual amount of
storage plus the bandwidth to upload) was 1 cent. Yes, one cent.
Obviously you pay more the more you store, and you pay for bandwidth
up and down, but you only pay for what you use. S3 costs $.015 per
gigabyte per month of storage and $.02 per gigabyte per month of
bandwidth for transfer.
Ian Barton
> I have said it before here, and I will repeat it: storage capacity is
> becoming less and less important because so much can now be stored on
> the web. Microsoft is experimenting (I believe Google is too) with a
> program that will allow you to store many gigs of data on your
> personal niche on the web, meaning that you will have access via your
> phone to your entire desktop via the web. So who cares about 8 gig or
> 80 gig? In any case, 8 gig hardly turns a device into something really
> groundbreaking.
>
data is unlikely to happen where I live or work in the forseeable
future. When my broadband connection goes down, it always happens on a
Friday evening just before a bank holiday, which means that it can take
anything up to 5 days to be fixed.
I keep my data in the cellar and it's staying there:) I do use on line
backup services, but I wouldn't want to rely on always being to access
them instantly.
Ian.
Bert Latamore
What's the URL for that? I want to take a look at it. I will be uploading several Gbytes since I will be backing up two hard drives, but that sounds like quite a deal.
Bert
Ian Barton
> uploading several Gbytes since I will be backing up two hard drives, but
> that sounds like quite a deal.
>
The company that manages my domain registrations (Pipex) is currently
offering unlimited free storage.
Have a look at http://www.123-reg.co.uk/online-storage-drive/ for more
details.
I haven't read the small print carefully, so there may be "hidden"
limitations.
Ian.
Man Ching Cheung
Cringely wrote a column suggesting that the iPhone was released crippled
and is essentially still undergoing beta testing. He suspects a rollout
on a firmware update come fall with a push towards a mega-spectacular
Christmas. The question is whether the phone already is 3G enabled, with
users possibly getting a 5x boost in download speeds come update time. I
don't know about the 3G question, but the timing sounds about right
(with the further assumption that even Jobs won't be greedy enough to
release an iPhone 2.0 in 6 months...) Another piece of evidence is that
apparently Apple employees (part-timers too!) were all given the phones.
That sounds ridiculous, but if true, then it absolutely smacks of a
evangelist-ad-campaign coupled with beta-testing and troubleshooting. I
wonder if the platform will be opened with a firmware update? In this
crippleware context, it makes sense to prevent users from installing 3rd
party software to muck up their error logs until the platform is stable
enough? Who knows...
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070705_002421.html
mcc
--
Man Ching Cheung, Ph.D.
Wachowiak Lab
http://people.bu.edu/dmattw/
Boston University
5 Cummington St.
Boston, MA 02215
lab: 617 358 0694
cel: 857 928 2648
Lee Hauser
Storage is 15 cents a gigabyte, not one and a half cents, and the
transfer rate is 20 cents a gigabyte. Still pretty darn cheap. I did
state my June bill correctly... 1 cent.
Amazon S3 is just a back end that others build upon. You can learn
more about it at
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261
Jungle Disk is one of several front ends for accessing S3 storage:
www.jungledisk.com
I use it on Mac; Jungle Disk software is available for Windows and
Linux as well. No mobile storage clients I'm aware of.
Lee Hauser
giveaway last week (all employees with at least a year of service get
a free iPhone, though apparently they have to pay their own AT&T
contract).
It was an interesting article, and some of the comments were
enlightening as well. I understand that the current 3G chipsets are
battery hogs and would make battery life even worse than it is.
One thing I keep hearing about is how badly AT&T's coverage sucks, but
the combination of Cingular and AT&T Wireless's networks is supposed
to give the best coverage in the US. Which perhaps tells us how badly
everyone else's coverage sucks?
Kerry Lannert
Lee Hauser wrote:
> One thing I keep hearing about is how badly AT&T's coverage sucks, but
> the combination of Cingular and AT&T Wireless's networks is supposed
> to give the best coverage in the US. Which perhaps tells us how badly
> everyone else's coverage sucks?
I've had Cingular/AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, and Cingular had the most
towers, but the weakest signal overall. I live in a dense urban area
with a great deal of cell phone towers. My old apartment was straddled
between two towers. My phone calls on Cingular would drop if I walked
from the living room to the bedroom, since the signals were weak enough
for the call to switch towers. If I moved too fast, the call wouldn't
switch properly and it'd drop. When I had T-mobile, however, there was
just one tower near my home and it was much stronger. The same has been
true with Sprint. I've heard a lot of people with Cingular/AT&T make
similar complaints, and I suspect the reason is that because they have
so many towers they keep the power relatively low, to save money. If
they, like T-Mobile, blasted their tower signals they'd have truly the
greatest coverage.
Also, it should be noted that CDMA call quality is superior to GSM, so
even though my Helio phone on Sprint's network either gets a great
signal or not much of a signal (very little in-between), the calls
always sound great. Not true when I was on T-Mobile or Cingular.
- Kerry
Lee Hauser
Seattle/Tacoma metro area (except in some grocery stores, where it's
like you're in a Faraday cage). My wife's cell phone is Verizon and
until recently she had intermittent problems at home. Verizon has been
upgrading towers in our area over the last couple years and dropped
calls are very rare now.
Bert Latamore
My wife was so anxious to get us on Sprint 18 months ago that she ended our AT&T contract a month early and went off to come back with everything signed and a new phone for me (not what I would have chosen, but she was trying to get me something fancy and went for style rather than function). Now ironically she wants to go back to AT&T, which is fine with me.
Bert
Jeff Kirvin
-----Original Message-----
From: wo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
Man Ching Cheung
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 7:54 AM
To: wo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [woyp] Re: iPhone
PhilippeR
iPhone and started waiting in line for the new Harry Potter book."
Andy Borowitz, in his column today
On Jun 29, 5:53 pm, "Lee Hauser" <l...@ohnosecond.com> wrote:
> This is why I don't spend much time browsing Uncylcopedia. It makes me
> laugh so hard I cry.
>
Kristin Pilotte
GO TERPS!
My journey back to my old self: http://gimpygal.blogspot.com
Nav Space: http://kristin.seidelmann-owners.com/
"Well-behaved women rarely make history." -Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Lee Hauser
release day (guaranteed, or the book is free). Our 12 year old is
already salivating...
Bert Latamore
Bert
Donald E. Stidwell
On Jul 10, 2007, at 4:05 PM, Bert Latamore wrote:
> We are doing the same thing, although we do not have a 12 year old
> (unless you count the dog, who is 11). I have read the whole
> series, however, and am looking forward to this last book.
>
> Bert
>
Hey - dogs are people too! I've got a 7 year old and an 11 year old.
You can't tell them they're not people. :)
Bert Latamore
She is one of our children, but she doesn't read novels. Her one ambition in life is to be "good dog".
What do you have?
Bert
Donald E. Stidwell
the sweetest dog you can image. She's 60 pounds and still acts like a
puppy. The 11 year old is a Pomeranian/Chijuahua mix that weighs 12
pounds and thinks he's as big as a Rottweiler!
Yeah - they're our children...
Lee Hauser
seen a small dog that didn't think it was very, very big.
Bert Latamore
You should try a Scotty. They are a big dog, and have the jaws to prove it. Fortunately you can pick one up and carry it off, because sometimes that is the only way to end a dog argument.
Don,
Try Resveratrol on your puppies. This is a life extender (you can order from iHerb.com) that has the doctors very excited. Everyone in our house -- the humans, dog, cat and birds -- take it. It is an extract of grape skins with no known side ffects that can extend the lives of creatures by approximately 20% (no human trials yet, but the researchers are all taking it and giving it to their families, so that is good enough for me). We hope to keep everyone alive and healthy/active for extra years.
Bert
--
Bert Latamore