markhealey.org » mobile

Candybar Question

Mark Healey — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:14:47 +0000

Question: Why can’t I find a good quality candybar-style GSM mobile phone in this country?

I just tried the 2-year old model Sony Ericsson K700i, but it doesn’t receive a network signal at my office or my home. And it’s going back.

Answer cannot include the iPhone, Blackberry or any wise-cracks.

They heard the whining all the way out in Cupertino

Mark Healey — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:39:31 +0000

No, I didn’t purchase an iPhone in the pre-yesterday era of the high-priced device. If I had, I’d certainly realize that Apple’s $200 price-cut — however unfortunate for early iPhone adopters — is, as Steve Jobs says, “life in the technology fast lane”. You cannot begin to tell me each person who bought one of these phones at the former $599 price point wasn’t expecting an eventual newer version or lower price. It doesn’t matter if it was 10 hours, 10 weeks or 10 months after the initial launch — a newer, cheaper version was imminent. It’s clinically systematic and can almost be clocked with an egg-timer; newer products with lower prices have been christening the technology market since the fricken’ cotton gin was invented in 1793.

I’ve heard nothing but whining from some early iPhone purchasers since yesterday’s announcement. John Gruber, of DaringFireball and an early iPhone adopter himself, said yesterday:

[Apple] set the debut price ridiculously high because demand was ridiculously high. I suspect that for the first few weeks, they were selling iPhones as fast as they could make them.

…

And for those of you who’ve already bought one and are pissed about the price cut, if you didn’t think the iPhone was worth $599, you shouldn’t have bought it. That’s how supply and demand works.

It seems folks who bought an iPhone back in July have whined loud enough. Apple is giving them each a $100 store credit.

iPhone + AT&T = Dead Trees

Mark Healey — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:20:43 +0000

Not surprising from AT&T. Dumbasses.

My iPhone bill from AT&T was 51 pages long. It listed every single time it automatically checked for new email messages, the amount of data transferred, the exact time of the connection, etc… Only the nerdiest of the nerds would find this information important and necessary. This type of report should only be available online or by the request of the customer. Especially since the argument of “what if they don’t have a computer and Internet access?�? is moot with iPhone owners — all of which must own a computer with Internet access just to activate the phone.

No iPhone? No problem.

Mark Healey — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:12:24 +0000

I regularly read BlueFlavor’s blog and today they launched a wonderful little app called Leaflets. Designed specifically for the iPhone and Safari 3, it’s supposed to make using web apps on AT&T’s EDGE network “enjoyable”.

I don’t have an iPhone nor do I need one — although I would like to “use the future right now” — I’m just not letting that stop me from using Leaflets. It’s a small window on my desktop, it gives me only the content I want to see (no flashing banner ads), and it’s super fast.

Get Leaflets.