How Steve Jobs Saved the iPhone

I read a blog a while back about how Steve Jobs failed the iPhone. They spoke about many issues that they felt caused the iPhone to go from an amazing invention to a mediocre one. Personally, I agree with the opinions expressed in that blog. Steve had an opportunity to change the way the mobile companies sell phones within North American by allowing anyone to buy an iPhone “unlocked”. He however followed with the other companies and used the same restrictions everyone else uses on this continent.

However this blog is now about the failures of the first iPhone, but the issues that have been addressed for the new iPhone 3G launch next week. From other sources I’ve read and watched, it would appear Apple has done their homework, and that homework should pay off. I shall explain to you why Apple has chosen “Hero iPhone” for the title of their apple.com splash page.

 

1) Price – Steve Jobs stated at WWDC08 that iPhone 3G is going to be cheaper. He said $199 gets you a 8GB model. Right away people believed it was $199 no matter what, while others said it would be $699 to buy it out, and expensive as a hardware upgrade. This is wrong. Rogers Wireless has shown that the 8GB iPhone will be sold as a hardware upgrade for $249.99. This means new customers and existing customers will pay essentially $199.99 for the iPhone 3G. What remains to be seen, is what we have to pay to buy it out. AT&T says $599.99 gets you an iPhone 3G with no contract, so Canada may have to pay $649.99.

2) Availability – iPhone 3G will be available in 22 countries legitimately at launch on July 11th, and in over 70 countries over the next little while. Yes it did take some time to finally get it in Canada, but look at Research in Motion, their phones are not available in alot of countries. Example: my 8820 only just became available from Rogers this month, and RIM is a Canadian company. Having iPhone available for many countries allows Steve Jobs to put an iPhone 3G in everyone’s home.

3) Upgrades – This ties in a lot with the price. Apple retuned the iPhone to meet the requests of the public. We asked for 3G, Microsoft Exchange, and applications. Yes we asked for video also, but that will come in time. My BlackBerry 8820 has SIMILAR features to iPhone, it makes calls, it plays music and videos, it has a Wi-Fi browser which has a harder time connecting than it does on EDGE, oh and it’s an EDGE phone. iPhone is a UMTS/HSDPA device which has all the same features as the 8820, plus touch screen, and it costs $300 less. Why would anyone pay more money for a phone with less features?

 

What we have from Apple is a re-engineered smartphone which will make other cellular phone companies run for the hills. Now that iPhone has the same industry leading features as other devices, and costs a fraction of the price, we’ll be seeing iPhone’s everywhere. At $249.99 CND, why would you get anything else? Unless you really hate Apple. iPhone 3G is truly a Hero phone, as it is pushing the limits of cellular phones with its innovative design, operating system, and now it’s prices.

It looks like We’re going to be seeing a lot of competition now between Apple and companies like Research in Motion, LG, Samsung and Nokia. All Apple needs to do now, is sell iPhones for cheap without a contract or a carrier lock, and enable video recording. We should be getting the last bit of information about the iPhone 3G on Rogers within the next few days, so keep an eye out for updates.

iPhone Data Plans For Rogers

Rogers Wireless released what would appear to be a final version of their data services for the new iPhone 3G. You can find the page with their rate plans here. I’ve heard different opinions from people who are with Rogers, with other carriers, and even people who have unlocked iPhones. Some people find the rate plans are too expensive, while others agree that they are fairly reasonable considering Canada has very poor data rates.

Right now Rogers is able to play with prices because they currently own the market for iPhones in this country. Being the only GSM provider, they have the ability to price services as they wish, which normally means we as consumers are going to be paying more than customers in places such as the United States. However, I feel Rogers has set some very reasonable prices for the iPhone. Let me explain, however I cannot because Internet Explorer 8 is crashing when I go to Rogers Sales Central.

Let’s break down what I’m paying right now for my Unlocked BlackBerry 8820.

I get 100 weekday minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends starting at 9pm, unlimited calling to family, 4mb of BlackBerry Internet Service, and the Smartphone value pack, which gives me caller ID, 2500 SMS, 1000 MMS, and some other crap. Anyway, I pay around $30 a month, because I’m a Rogers Employee. Normally I would pay $60 for that service. Now for the same price, I get 50 extra weekday minutes, 75 SMS, 100 times the data limit on 3G rather than EDGE, and a few new iPhone features.

Right there, the Data is a deal, considering BIS costs more per month than it does to run my car. Personally, the $115 plan makes more sense to me. You get 800 minutes, 2GB of 3G data, which would cost about $150 for the same Data ONLY for a BlackBerry, and again more crap for the iPhone. Yes, you still need the iPhone value pack of $15, plus System Access and 911. You’re looking at $140 give or take per month, plus taxes. Yes $140 is alot of money just for a cell phone, but you get a data limit which is pretty hard to go over, you can have a day and a half long phone call, and unlimited Rogers hotspot calling. It’s a decent deal as Canadian consumers, considering AT&T is offering $30 unlimited Data added onto whatever plan you have already.

Yes prices are shitty, but we’re Canadian remember, we have crappy phone rates. Regardless of the price, Rogers knows they are going to sell thousands of iPhones, most of which on Data plans. They will make a killing off them, and we eventually will see lower data prices. Right now though, its a start. Just 12 more days until iPhone!

Review: …Internet Explorer 8… Beta…

Ok…yes I have a PC, and yes, I get access to the MSDN. I received an e-mail from MSDN TechNet and whatnot. It would appear Microsoft has released a “new” version of Internet Explorer. Oh this is going to be a fun review.

So I install IE8 and leave the room for an hour or so, only to come back and see my computer decided it needed to download 3 updates, and restart on me. It’s wonderful considering I don’t allow my computer to do that, because the last thing I need is Vista SP1 and not having a crack for it. Oops did I say crack? No of course I didn’t, why would I download a version of an operating system that has more bugs and flaws than it’s predecessors, and seems like it’s still in beta. Sounds like Star Wars Galaxies, no?

Moving on, IE8 looks just like IE7, in fact, it even has a button for developers to emulate Internet Explorer 7. Why would you need it? There really is no noticable difference between the two. Really it should just be an update for IE7 rather than a new program with a new number. So why did they bring out a new one? There must be something revolutionary that has made Microsoft work on a new web browser, rather than fix the operating system it will be running on.

So here we have something called Activities and WebSlices. My understanding at first was Microsoft was adding “Gadgets” to IE8 to make it slower than before with all the random shit running in the background. No, I was wrong, it’s something even stupider. Let me set the scenario for you. If you go to some websites, theres a fuckload of links at the bottom. These include, but are not limited to, add to FaceBook, add to Digg, add to Flickr, add to MySpace, etc. WebSlices allows you to add anything to any of the programs that support this. So far it’s Facebook. Wow. It doesn’t do anything though when you try to use the facebook “Slice”, as it sits there and looks at me like a cute retarded puppy, and does nothing of any use what-so-ever. This is equally as stupid with the eBay “Slice”, where you can highlight anything, and search it on ebay.

Lets focus on the eBay “Slice” for a second. I tried doing this, because I thought it would be cool if Internet Explorer would automatically have a small list of items I was watching/bidding on that were ending soon, so encase I forgot, and was busy watching YouTube or something, I could be reminded. No, I was wrong. It does shit. Whatever it is supposed to do failed, because when I clicked on the eBay Slice, it opened up a blank tab and did jack shit. When it does work, there’s more IE8 advertisements on the page than eBay auction results. You’d figure since you need IE8 to view that page anyway, it’s useless advertising the product. So the “WebSlices” is a piece of shit, waste of an addition to a new program with doesn’t need a new number. Lazy people will love it, because when they are looking up shit on Google, and want to see it on eBay, they only need to click 2 buttons, rather than manually going to the website.

New graphics have been added to IE8 to make it more appealing to users. Such as this useless New Tab splash screen:

Holy shit no way! I opened a new tab, thanks Internet Explorer! I was wondering where the fuck my porn went when I hit Control + T. You’d think after FireFox 1.2, new tab’s wouldn’t scare off people, and we wouldn’t need messages for it. I was happy with the about:blank page I’d get in IE7 when I opened a new tab. It’s useless crap like this that makes me a sad sad beta tester. I’ll probably find something in IE8 that makes it just a slight bit better than it’s older brother IE7, but my brain will hurt to hard to even try and review it any further. I hope next week’s TechNet Flash Update is better, maybe a new Service Pack for Vista will allow me to actually play SimCity Societies without it crashing ever 20 seconds.

If you’re a brave soul and want to check it out for yourself, you can download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1. I wouldn’t recommend it, because it makes my brain hurt. I think I’m going to go to sleep so my eyes don’t pop out of my head because of the headache I have.

Review: FireFox 3 for Macintosh

I heard about FireFox 3 off G4 Tech TV the other day. Mozilla tried to set a world record for most downloads of a new release software in one day. Regardless if they broke the record or not, I will be reviewing what I feel is the worst FireFox release so far. Keep in mind, this is the Macintosh version, so for you Windows lovers, maybe your release is better, quite frankly I don’t care, because I will be reviewing Internet Explorer 8 next.

Let me begin with the first reactions I had when I started up FF3. When I opened it, i checked to make sure it was FireFox, and not Safari 4, because the layout and colour scheme is exactly like Safari. They dropped the colour from the browser, and made it all grey and black. Once I got past the cloned theme, I tried to work with eBay.ca and list some items. FireFox doesn’t seem to update the pages when you access a drop down menu. For example, I needed to select the shipping information in ebay, but every time I did that, the page would not refresh to show the new options. This meant I had to force the page to show that information, by continuing, and getting an error from eBay saying I didn’t fill everything out.

This issue is not an eBay issue, as some of you may have assumed. I was able to do the same operation on Safari 3 with the proper page updates that were required to list items properly. This is definately an issue either with eBay not supporting FF3, or FF3 not working as intended. At the moment, it is impossible to list items properly with FF3 in eBay, and I would assume it will give the same issue in similar situations. 

 

Issue 2 is again a design flaw. Besides the shitty theme design, Mozilla has added some stupid sort of finder code to the address bar. When I type in an address, I want it to autofill the address with whatever is in it’s history, I do not however want every single page I’ve been to in the past 3 years to show up instead. FF3 will show you pages, websites, bookmarks, and probably even google maps locations for anything you type in. If I start to type in www.facebook.com, I want to push the down key and hit enter, and end up at www.facebook.com, not the last 25 million pages on facebook I went to last. I understand the reason for having such a feature, but if I want to search for facebook in my history, I will do so by going into my history.

So far, FireFox 3 has some flaws, but then again, what doesn’t these days. I won’t be using it unless I need to double-log my facebook accounts, and I choose to keep my PC in standby. I’m hoping Mozilla just released it quickly so they could get it out before Safar 4 or IE8. I’d like to see some things get fixed, and maybe I’ll use it at some point. Safari is still my choice at the moment.

RE: Time Capsule Review

I didn’t think I would have had a chance to try out the Time Machine portion of my Time Capsule so soon, but unfortunately fake naked pictures of Hannah Montana sped up that process. It would appear I accidentally installed some sort of program that disabled access to the internet from my macbook. Whatever happened to it, forced me to reset my computer.

Now this used to happen almost on a monthly basis with my PC’s running windows XP, however I never had any sort of backup system for them. I never thought I’d have to format my Macbook, but thankfully I invested in a Time Capsule. Probably the easiest system restore I’ve ever done, even though it took 4 hours. Just pop in my Leopard DVD, and select restore from Time Machine backup when installing, and it literally has copied everything from 4 am this morning. It’s really like I never had to format my computer, minus the 4 hour downtime.

Keep in mind though, had I reformatted my computer without Time Machine, you’d have to factor in the process of installing the OS, applications, and documents and whatnot, assuming you had them stored somewhere else. 4 hours is not much time considering Photoshop, Office 2008, Final Cut Studio 2, and other applications I have are working exactly as they did before I had a desire for 15 year old pussy. Once again, I recommend getting a Time Capsule if you don’t already have an AirPort for your Macintosh.

Review: Time Capsule 500GB

I bought my Time Capsule a couple weeks ago now, and I’m pleased with it’s performance so far. It took a little bit of time to get everything to work with my network. The Time Capsule is basically an AirPort Extreme base station with a built in 500 gb HDD, which can be used for Apple’s Time Machine program, available in OS X Leopard. 

So far, I haven’t had any issues with my Time Capsule, aside from the few problems in the beginning. Time Capsule boasts a gigabit ethernet wired connection, with 802.11N wireless. The 500 gb HDD can be used by a number of Macintosh computers as an automatic backup system for their machines. You can also connect an external USB printer or HDD to the back of Time Capsule. I have had issues connecting to the external HDD, sometimes my Mac isn’t able to see the Time Capsule drive, eventhough it’s connect to the internet.

Compared to my old Linksys router, Time Capsule kicks it’s ass. There are many features available, such as global broadcast of devices, network security, and proper status updates. What I mean by status updates, is the Time Capsule will actually let you know the internet is down, by notifying you on screen, rather than finding out on your own when you’re trying to send that really important email.

My BlackBerry, which isn’t an Wireless N device gets much better service than it did with the Linksys. All in all it’s a good device if you want a secure, stable network, with backups for you Mac. The 500 gb model starts at $319.99 CND, or $299.99 if you get an open box unit. Good value for money, unless you have an AirPort Extreme already, in which case I would suggest getting an HDD and connecting it to your existing network, and save some money.

Driving at night.

Driving is normally dangerous for most people, mainly because the drive cars made out of plastic and pop cans. I however drive a vehicle that the US Department of Defense built in response to whatever reason they started the first gulf war. This is why I enjoy driving by car accidents, because I’m able to picture how it would have happened had i plowed through that small Honda Civic.

Anyway, as Nevil and I were driving home from Square One tonight at 11pm we passed by a “large” accident in the middle of the 403. It looked like a chinese girl crashed her car, or something. It must have been serious since they had 2 lanes closed, and more firetrucks than I’ve seen at warehouse fires. Now I bet you’re wondering why I’d mention a car accident. Normally I wouldn’t, but when we drove by Thomas Street on Winston Churchill, and noticed once more police cars on the road, I felt the need to blog.

This time, there was an ambulance and 2 police cars, and what used to be a traffic light smashed up and grounded up into the road. I can’t understand how people are able to crash their cars so much. I’ve been hit by an SUV with my car, and almost killed dozens of times by stupid drivers. People think they are good drivers when they really aren’t. I may seem like a bad driver, but since I haven’t crashed into anyone, and I haven’t had to replace my bumpers, I have the right to call myself a good driver, and the right to drive 50% faster than everyone else.

Retail Woes

When you work in retail, you get special kinds of people who require special kinds of help. No, I’m not talking about Andrew, I’m talking about people who thrive off capitalism. We normally get people who need a discount on everything, including brand new items that were delivered 10 minutes beforehand from Purolator. The special kind of person I’m talking about now are the people who want to play the retail game.

I received a call from someone saying they bought a Sirius Satellite Radio Starmate 4 off Andrew sunday, and only found out thursday the box only came with the receiver, and no mounting kit, antenna or dock. I can understand if something is missing if Andrew sold it, but our Sirius receivers are locked up, and dont normally get parts missing, considering the radio itself is the expensive part of the kit.

So, Matthew and I decide that this is a bullshit attempt to get a second car kit for the Sirius they bought. We had gotten everything ready to trap this customer, however they never ended up coming in. Sometimes I wonder how people think they can get away with crap like that in retail. Wal-Mart employees don’t know/care, but in our store, 75% of our staff check items that we sell before we sell them.

We also had someone call and ask to be transfered to our gaming department. Not even Milton would be big enough to have a gaming section!

Website

Well I’ve finally paid for my website once more. You probably noticed since you’re visiting it. Our Proxy server is back up, http://www.joshblackart.com/networkbypass/. This site had more hits in a day than most small companies did. My personal website is also up, which I’m currently working on. We’re adding space for other personal sites, if you’re interested in hosting let me know.

We hope to be up now on a more permanent basis.

Windows Vista

Where to begin? I purchased Command and Conquer Saga last night from EB Games, excited to play Generals once again. Mike and I get to our Store and install it on a HP computer so we can begin gaming right away.

I got home that night and put in the First Decade DVD into my computer to start installing it. Unfortunately it got frozen after a few minutes and crashed my PC. This happened with CNC3 also, which took up about 12 hours of my time. In the end, I wasn’t able to install my game.

Basically I had to reinstall my illegal version of Windows Vista. I lost all my programs, because my PC crashed everytime I plugged in my external HDD. Luckily for Microsoft, Windows creates a backup folder for the old version of windows. I was able to keep all my documents, and maybe even my Call of Duty 4 profile.

In the end, when people ask me why I hate Windows so much, these are the problems I encounter. No, I don’t download viruses or crap like that, I use my computer for games, but Windows Vista just breaks down over time regardless of use.

Mac4Life.