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Behind the iPhone and Apple/Cingular Deal
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MR is a Mac community discussion forum. And it’s obviously not up to me to decide on and to define what is and what is not included in that.
But if my previous post has no place on MR then for consistencies sake the endless stream of discussion as to whether, for example, Cingular is better than Verizon also has no place. In other words, if users have discussed this at length in the past I don’t see why I shouldn’t have the opportunity to respond.
For what it’s worth to you, I feel that the boundaries of what we’re allowed to discuss should be relatively wide. It’s great that people are directed (i.e., this post belongs in this other thread). But I see no reason that users especially should have narrow views about what’s Mac community and what isn’t. Anyway, all others and myself should be perfectly within Mac community in discussing wireless providers since, as you know, Apple is now a maker of a phone and has a relationship with Cingular.
I agree in part that you read analysis elsewhere then post thoughts/opinions. Although it seems clear that in some cases people have not read analysis elsewhere, which is to say that they have opinions, for example, that run counter to, or are antithetical to analysis, elsewhere, but they carry on as if that analysis never existed, they make no mention of it.
It may be, in cases, interesting to hear people’s opinions on issues such as whether Cingular is better than Verizon. I actually think it is not that interesting because it’s been said many times before, it has a sort of built in redundancy, and applies really only to people with similar conditions and similar priorities.
But regardless of whether these thoughts/opinions are interesting is whether they actually tell us something, whether they’re of any use, or whether they’re, for example, of more use than actual studies on these issues. Would you say, for example, reading every post on MR about whether Cingular is better than Verizon would give you as much certainty and clarity on that issue as if you’d read a handful of articles about it, maybe a few pages of Wikipedia?
You're thinking too high up in the food chain. RIAA is just a single entity in the music industry. They control the media. Cingular is just one amongst many many other carriers. RIAA makes money through the industry because they control all others below them (your country may vary).
OT: I think Apple wanted Cingular all along and to show impartiallity, they went to Verizon with high(er?) demands for carrying the iPhone in which no company would accept. Then they left and went to Cingular and cut a much easier deal to swallow. Or I just might be paranoid
So, according to the component breakdowns, the phone costs $300 to build.
It'll sell for $600.
It'll require a two year contract on top of the $600, a significant proportion of which is going to Apple (hence, the subscription will be more expensive than it needs to be.)
So it's ridiculously over-priced. It perpetuates the two-years-in-handcuffs deal. It's EDGE, not UMTS, and doesn't run anything but a limited amount of Apple-approved software (apparently because the operating system is insecure - that's what Jobs seems to be implying anyway, and the lack of a managed programming environment would seem to confirm that.) And I can buy extremely capable competing phones that do what I want them to (possibly not as elegantly, that remains to be seen, but with more functionality) for less, unlocked, no contractual restrictions, no need to sign up to a specific provider.
Unfortunately, despite it being everything I utterly despise about modern business practices, I think Apple may even succeed with this. That's how bad things are right now.
But I'm not going to be buying one. I just hope whatever's actually good about the Apple phone will make its way into other phones, without what's bad, closed, locked, etc, coming in too. That's the biggest fear about what Apple is doing, that it will legitimize this aspect of the industry, that slowly the adoption of open GSM/UMTS in the Americas had, until now, been undermining.
It'll sell for $600.
It'll require a two year contract on top of the $600, a significant proportion of which is going to Apple (hence, the subscription will be more expensive than it needs to be.)
So it's ridiculously over-priced. It perpetuates the two-years-in-handcuffs deal. It's EDGE, not UMTS, and doesn't run anything but a limited amount of Apple-approved software (apparently because the operating system is insecure - that's what Jobs seems to be implying anyway, and the lack of a managed programming environment would seem to confirm that.) And I can buy extremely capable competing phones that do what I want them to (possibly not as elegantly, that remains to be seen, but with more functionality) for less, unlocked, no contractual restrictions, no need to sign up to a specific provider.
Unfortunately, despite it being everything I utterly despise about modern business practices, I think Apple may even succeed with this. That's how bad things are right now.
But I'm not going to be buying one. I just hope whatever's actually good about the Apple phone will make its way into other phones, without what's bad, closed, locked, etc, coming in too. That's the biggest fear about what Apple is doing, that it will legitimize this aspect of the industry, that slowly the adoption of open GSM/UMTS in the Americas had, until now, been undermining.
EDGE, as an air interface, is accepted as part of the ITU-2000 3G standards, but no, it has nothing to do with HSDPA. HSDPA is an enhancement to the W-CDMA air interface. W-CDMA is also a 3G air interface, and is used by UMTS (next generation GSM) and FOMA.
EDGE is ok, but it's essentially a higher-bandwidth version of GPRS. It has lousy latency and isn't much higher in bandwidth than ISDN. Indeed, people who use it could be forgiven for thinking it's slower than dial-up.
Apologies, I think you've missing the point of my previous post. I simply don't understand why you decided to write such a long and detailed post on the basis that you don't appear to like reading the biased opinions of others...
If everyone posted the way you appear to want people to post, then there would be one post per subject - and it would be like your first, incredibly long post!
My point is this... what's the point of this forum if people can't give their opinions. And, and answer your question above, I know that if I want facts and figures on which is better - Cingular or Verizon - I should go elsewhere. I'm here to read what people think on the subject, and about their personal experiences of Cingular and Verizon.
THANK YOU!
You just proved what I already suspect. Cingular is "most" of the time sucks.
I was their customer few years back. I switch to Verizon. My service now is OK but I know Cingular is worse.
Once again, this is my case.
I love the iPhone but using Cingular just to brag to people I have one iPhone is ridiculous. Sorry Apple, I'll pass the this time. Hopefully someday other carriers will be able to have the iPhone.
Yawwwwnnnn
Ditto,
All carriers in the USA suck.
I wish it could change and we get the European and Asian carriers quality and infra structure.
Hey even in south america the quality and services of their carriers are better than USA.
Very sad our atate of union!
Cingular and T-Mobile utilize GSM, not Verizon's CDMA. HSDPA is a 3G mobile telephony protocol from the HSPA family. HSDPA utilizes a new W-CDMA channel as HS-DSCH (high speed download shared channel), much different than UTMS CDMA. UTMS is already used, however HSDPA is quickly being snapped up by service providers world wide. In fact, many countries such as Australia and South Korea have cut their CDMA-EVDO networks in favor of adopting HSDPA.
Ditto,
All carriers in the USA suck.
I wish it could change and we get the European and Asian carriers quality and infra structure.
Hey even in south america the quality and services of their carriers are better than USA.
Very sad our atate of union!
What's interesting is the US's control of new technology. While most countries are eager in getting new and better systems out to the public, US companies have a sort of "agreement" in holding technology back in order to slowly release it as a commercialized "latest and greatest" in order to charge more. As an example, high definition broadcasting has been around since the late 80's in Japan. However, companies didn't adopt it as a "new" standard until almost 20 years later, allowing them to market it and make big bucks. Same with the mobile phone industry. Features and services that are included free of charge in most other countries are labelled as "extra" and/or luxury items in order to bump up mobile bills. In the end, everyone buys into it and the companies make their bloated wallets that much bigger. If anything, America has proven that an unchecked, free market does NOT benefit the consumer as much as it should. Pretty sad state of affairs, and yet we claim we're the "leader of the free world". HA.
In Europe, the governments specify the exact details of the standards to be used by the cell phone companies when selling wireless spectrum, whereas in the US the government sets the basic rules only. That's what allowed CDMA to prove its worth on a large scale. Otherwise, who knows how long it would take for it to go from a promising research project into a commercially viable product. All of the 3G standards use derivatives of this technology. You are speaking about the merits of WCDMA or HSDPA on these forums thanks to the free market rules in the US. It even benefits the Europeans.What's interesting is the US's control of new technology. While most countries are eager in getting new and better systems out to the public, US companies have a sort of "agreement" in holding technology back in order to slowly release it as a commercialized "latest and greatest" in order to charge more. As an example, high definition broadcasting has been around since the late 80's in Japan. However, companies didn't adopt it as a "new" standard until almost 20 years later, allowing them to market it and make big bucks. Same with the mobile phone industry. Features and services that are included free of charge in most other countries are labelled as "extra" and/or luxury items in order to bump up mobile bills. In the end, everyone buys into it and the companies make their bloated wallets that much bigger. If anything, America has proven that an unchecked, free market does NOT benefit the consumer as much as it should. Pretty sad state of affairs, and yet we claim we're the "leader of the free world". HA.
What about technologies that AREN'T developed in the US (which is just about everything)? As per my example of high definition broadcasting that was developed and utilized in Japan in the 80's. High definition broadcasting has been available for a long time, but American companies have just started making this available in a broad scale over the past few years. For example, Time Warner Cable has been pushing high definition very steadily over the past two years, offering it in most if not all areas of the country. It does not require Time Warner to lay new cable or new equipment, but simply broadcasting the high definition signals to televisions that have NTSC/QAM and/or high definition tuners and cable boxes. In NY, digital cable signals are broadcast directly through already existing cable lines allowing any television with basic cable to tap directly into a cable line and receive high definition channels. Yet Time Warner charges customers extra for high definition and cable boxes/cards without any sound financial reason (except for voodoo economics). In Japan and other countries, high definition broadcasting is standard service and not labeled as an “extra".
Similar with mobile companies in EU and Asia, incoming calls and text messages are not charged to the receiver, just to the SENDER. US companies charge the sender and recipient for everything. How would people feel if the post office charged for every piece of mail that someone receives? It's ludicrous. Let's look at VOIP, internet phone was free for people with online high speed home access and the right equipment. Now Time Warner came along and decided to charge a monthly fee for the service that was already available (and no, increased bandwidth use and service does not warranty a monthly charge as it is not any where near the bandwidth already utilized by heavy internet and television traffic on cable lines, it's illogical). Other countries have been using 3G and HSDPA for a while now; most mobile companies include it in their service. Yet US companies acquire the technology, slowly "develop" it, market it to the public as a great, new technology and sell it for ridiculous amounts of money.
The same could be said of pharmaceutical companies. I have friends who work in research for companies such as Merck and Novartis who state that companies will NEVER cure a disease as treating illnesses brings in more money long-term. As a diabetic since 12, I can assure you that companies are making money HAND OVER FIST in glucose test strips, insulin, syringes, med's - you name it, and many individuals say that a cure is just around the corner but funding from these companies is strictly limited to improving the lifestyle not the cure. It's b.s., money talks and everything else walks. The idea that the free market works for the better of humanity is a load of crap...
The point I was arguing with you about was your contention that EDGE uses HSDPA. It doesn't. EDGE has barely anything to do with HSDPA. The only way they're related is in that they're both enhanced air interfaces for a GSM derived mobile phone standard.
EDGE is (usually implemented as) an enhancement to GSM (2.x) (though supposedly an IS-136 version exists too, though everyone I'm aware of got off the D-AMPS train before it had a chance to take off.)
HSDPA is an enhancement to W-CDMA, and thus to UMTS (GSM 3.x) which uses W-CDMA as an air interface.
I'm not sure where you read into my comment that T-Mobile used "Verizon's" CDMA, because nothing to that effect was in my comment at all.
It doesn’t really matter (I mean in a way it’s silly to carry on about this). But it’s not clear to me how I can miss your point if you haven’t made it before. To save you the trouble of looking for your initial response to my ‘long and detailed post’:
You said nothing about length before. You just said you didn’t think the subject of my post was appropriate since MR is a Mac community discussion forum.
I don’t actually feel that my initial post was unnecessarily long. About 300 out of 2400 words of what I wrote were my own. Another 1100 or so was quotes on the quality of different wireless providers. The remaining 1000, quotes of users and their impressions and judgments of the quality of one provider verses another.
Why 1100 on somewhat redundant partial summaries of the quality of different providers? Well, for one thing, to get people to halfway believe it. To attempt to dispel the reflexive response that the finding that Verizon rates better than Cingular is an outlier (if you only have one or two data points how can you be sure that you don’t just have a funny result). In the same way, the summaries show consistency. And these summaries seem relatively frank. They say things like no provider is perfect, but some are better than others. Here’s how they rate.
In any case, if the most you can do is criticize that post for being long or for not being Mac related enough I’m fine with it. It seems as if you’d rather not address why a collection of individual impressions of wireless service are useful, why they’re interesting, and why they’re better positioned to actually address the question of whether one provider is better than another. If you’ve already agreed that they don’t, even in total, tell us very much about whether, for example, Cingular is better or worse than Verizon then why do you find it interesting to read posts that address exactly that?
I never said that people shouldn’t give their opinions. They can and should, just as I’m giving mine. I only challenged whether those opinions can actually provide more insight on something that has been addressed more robustly and more succinctly and more comprehensively elsewhere.
jhedges3, I have to agree with you here, but you have made your point clearly, and I will make mine...
Firstly, you obviously have some experience in analysis, fair play. But, my point is, if someone want facts, figures and analysis on a given subject, they should visit the relevant websites (by all means, provide the readers of MacRumors links if you wish: most do; you have; and I have no problem with this). But the first paragraph, from your initial post was (and here it is to save you the trouble of looking it up):
jhedges3 said:
It appears the main reason you posted a detailed analysis was because you don't understand why people 'continue to summarise [their] opinions of - and personal experiences with - one or a few wireless carriers'. Hence my comment about this being a mac rumours and discussion forum.
I don't want to stop you posting whatever you want - if you want to post more analysis, go ahead - I'm sure it'll be an interesting read. But please don't do it on the basis that you don't like reading the experiences and opinions of others on a discussion forum.
"Best phone ever" is subjective!
Thank God other phone manufacturers don't try tricks like this - we'd be paying much higher prices than we do now!
From all those conditions, Cingular took it from Apple, begging!
I'm wondering what Apple will do in other countries where locking of phones is illegal?
*An apology in advance if someone commented already on this*(I made it to #30 and had to comment)*
Really interesting that you state other countries not allowing locked phones. Europe is definitely going to get this phone as they have always and will always be ahead of the world in cell phone technology (besides japan, but even that is a crap shoot).
I personally feel that there will be a version in the UK or France, etc, that will allow you to use the phone unlocked. Then its a matter of spending another $100 to get the phone from a local importer. Is it work a whopping $700? I dont know.
Personally I hate cingular service. I really do. Ever since they sold the ORIGINAL INFRASTRUCTURE to tmobile back in 2005 (and adopted AT&T's 850mhz)... its just been down hill. Furthermore, what in world is cingular thinking by changing their name to "The New AT&T". The AT&T brand name has suffered so much negative publicity over the past 5 years that this is the worst marketing move in my opinion. AT&T wireless lives in the minds of angry customers as the worst: retail outlet, customer service, and cell phone coverage (however they did have great plan rates).
Its a tough call. I know I am personally waiting for a 2 year upgrade to get the iphone, but I really do not like the AT&T name, the cell service sucks (unless you are using cingular UMTS! That network interoperability is amazing!!!), and the price tag is pretty steep. Alas, Im still a sucker for the love of apple.
Any thoughts on the above?
P.S. I would love to debate about the AT&T brand name thing with anyone, but keep in mind I have a BA in marketing.