Microsoft, Samsung Take on Apple With New Smartphone Announcements

[bastbast]

Whats interesting is most geeks, gadget freaks and techheads seem to despise the iphone and tend to lean more towards blackberrys. Wives, Gfs, teenagers, trendies all lean towards the iphone. Iphones success stems assuming their users are idiots (and thus simplifying everything).

I will reserve my judgement on the MS phone till its released, i wont condemn something based on rumour and hearsay

And heres a thought for you, if apple are so flawless can anyone explain why the macbook air tanked??

 

[LagunaSol]

Whats interesting is most geeks, gadget freaks and techheads seem to despise the iphone and tend to lean more towards blackberrys.

Link please?

Iphones success stems assuming their users are idiots (and thus simplifying everything).

I will reserve my judgement on the MS phone till its released, i wont condemn something based on rumour and hearsay

Odd, didn't you just condemn the iPhone above based on hearsay?

And heres a thought for you, if apple are so flawless can anyone explain why the macbook air tanked??

Here's a thought for you - no one here claims Apples are flawless.

Troll Different.

Oh for goodness' sake Jobs is not a saint. He's a salesman.

Good grief, enough with the strawman nonsense already. No one here claims Jobs is a saint nor that Apple is flawless. The man has a vision (which just happens to be better than the visions of his competitors) and Apple products are excellent but flawed (and just happen to be better than the products of their competitors).

Are these opinions so hard to dispute without unfairly exaggerating them?

 

[MorphingDragon]

Whats interesting is most geeks, gadget freaks and techheads seem to despise the iphone and tend to lean more towards blackberrys. Wives, Gfs, teenagers, trendies all lean towards the iphone. Iphones success stems assuming their users are idiots (and thus simplifying everything).

I will reserve my judgement on the MS phone till its released, i wont condemn something based on rumour and hearsay

And heres a thought for you, if apple are so flawless can anyone explain why the macbook air tanked??

The macbook air did create a niche of flunk notebooks.

I reckon the MacBook Air was designed to fail from the start. It was simply to hold a world record.

 

[charliehustle]

In any event, it didn't "work" on me - I have owned every iPhone since 1.0. Each update has been good for me, but I was perfectly happy with the original iphone after the appstore got turned on. The updates didn't "trick me" into buying the next phone.

Your point, in any event, makes no sense. Even supposing nothing that shouldn't have been there in the first place was added, I repeat - each update has represented major changes from the previous version. And 4.0 will represent major changes from the previous version.

That leaves 2 possibilities:

1) your world-view is right, and 4.0 will simply add things that should have been there already. (You'll doubtless say that ANYTHING they add should have been there already, even though the market clearly disagrees with you, but I digress). You probably think that all iPhone owners are weeping in frustration at lack of multitasking, a "today screen" and the ability to skin springboard. Whatever.

2) stuff that shouldn't have been there already is added.

If (2) is the case, iPhone will maintain its lead over the competition.

If (1) is the case, iPhone will still maintain its lead over the competition while simultaneously making enough changes to keep fickle folks feeling that things are fresh and new.

The only way Apple loses is if 4.0 doesn't have big changes, and my repeated point, denied by no one so far, is that each major version number has represented big changes.

I never said it's bad marketing or will reduce sales. If anything, it increases and you can see that with how good apple is doing.

Apple sells cool phones that lack crucial features in order to get people to buy the next version. That was my opinion, and I didn't mean to insult you, sorry for that.

Do you really believe that a $150 billion dollar company did not have the resources to put a video recorder in the iPhone 3G? or did they purposely leave out that key feature to get people to purchase the 3GS?

But I'm not gonna argue against you and say that going from no video camera to camera is not a major upgrade..

I'm happy with my 3GS (jailbroken) because I can multitask and use skype over 3G (which is not allowed yet in Canada). I tether legally (rogers) and that's about it.

I'm not saying that the 4.0 upgrades are going to be minor, just wanted to say that from the first gen iPhone, most the upgrades were features that other phones had a long time ago.. If you compare a unlocked 3G with another phone in the same price field (that was released the same time), I'm sure 99% of those phones will have a video recorder

 

[LagunaSol]

Do you really believe that a $150 billion dollar company did not have the resources to put a video recorder in the iPhone 3G? or did they purposely leave out that key feature to get people to purchase the 3GS?

Does video recording on the jailbroken 3G equal the performance of video recording on the 3GS with Apple's software? No. Lesser quality, reduced performance (15 fps?). Is there a hardware limitation here? Obviously.

Could Apple have included the poorer video recording on the 3G? Sure. Did they omit that because they were unhappy with the performance or because they wanted to sell you a 3GS later? Who knows. But to omit the fact that video recording on the 3G is not great (or to imply that the 3G is just as capable at video recording as the 3GS) is disingenuous to your argument.

 

[charliehustle]

Does video recording on the jailbroken 3G equal the performance of video recording on the 3GS with Apple's software? No. Lesser quality, reduced performance (15 fps?). Is there a hardware limitation here? Obviously.

Could Apple have included the poorer video recording on the 3G? Sure. Did they omit that because they were unhappy with the performance or because they wanted to sell you a 3GS later? Who knows. But to omit the fact that video recording on the 3G is not great (or to imply that the 3G is just as capable at video recording as the 3GS) is disingenuous to your argument.

no one is talking about jailbreaking.

Simply, at the time the 3G was released, do you think apple had the technology to implement a good video recorder? Most people would argue a $150 billion company that is one of the top tech companies in the world would be able to put a video recorder on the second generation of their phone.

Of course jailbreaking your phone to do something it's not designed to do will not be optimal. But that is not what I was asking.



it's a no brainer.

 

[cmaier]

no one is talking about jailbreaking.

Simply, at the time the 3G was released, do you think apple had the technology to implement a good video recorder? Most people would argue a $150 billion company that is one of the top tech companies in the world would be able to put a video recorder on the second generation of their phone.

Of course jailbreaking your phone to do something it's not designed to do will not be optimal. But that is not what I was asking.



it's a no brainer.

What's the point of your question? Of course they could have. They also could have gold-plated it and spray painted it pink. They left it out because they had other priorities (both from an engineering perspective and from a software stack perspective) and they felt that focussing on these other priorities would enable them to make the most cash (i.e.: sell the most phones at the highest price). Hard to argue, based on results, that they chose wrongly.

 

[charliehustle]

What's the point of your question? Of course they could have. They also could have gold-plated it and spray painted it pink. They left it out because they had other priorities (both from an engineering perspective and from a software stack perspective) and they felt that focussing on these other priorities would enable them to make the most cash (i.e.: sell the most phones at the highest price). Hard to argue, based on results, that they chose wrongly.

Some people, not sure about you, argue that the reason some features such as video recorders, and copy and past was left out was because apple did not have the resources and ability to implement it to their high standards, thus you hear the "did you want the features now, or did you want them to work properly" argument a lot on this forum.

The difference in our point of views is simple.

I guess we have difference expectations when it comes to technology.
Personally, purchasing a $700 phone that does not have a video recorder is not acceptable for me, especially when cheaper phones have had video recorders for years.

Then when the next version is released, my reaction is "wow, finally I got what should have been there"

and your reaction is "wow, I get an extra feature I didn't really care for to begin with, but now my phone is better than ever"

It is what it is.

 

[cmaier]

I guess we have difference expectations when it comes to technology.
Personally, purchasing a $700 phone that does not have a video recorder is not acceptable for me, especially when cheaper phones have had video recorders for years.

People tend to assume everyone has the same viewpoint as themselves. Given iPhone's success, clearly there are tens of millions of people who thought purchasing a $700 phone (I'll let that ride) without video recorder was fine. What it comes down to is there is no reason for Apple to add a feature to attract the next 1% of buyers when it can focus on features to add the next 5% of buyers. When they got done with those they moved on to the higher-hanging fruit.

 

[megadon]

People tend to assume everyone has the same viewpoint as themselves. Given iPhone's success, clearly there are tens of millions of people who thought purchasing a $700 phone (I'll let that ride) without video recorder was fine. What it comes down to is there is no reason for Apple to add a feature to attract the next 1% of buyers when it can focus on features to add the next 5% of buyers. When they got done with those they moved on to the higher-hanging fruit.

we all love apple stuff.

 

[JGowan]

Let's not forget, though, that Steve said the iPad will be "the most important thing I've ever done". That, honestly, didn't pan out the way I and apparently many others would've liked.

If Jobs said tomorrow that the iPOD was the greatest music player of all time, would he be talking about the iPOD of TODAY, of 2001's introduction or the iPod in GENERAL, inclusive of all past, present and future iterations? I think the third.

You have to wonder what the motivation is for Steve saying this. I believe it is not with what the thing is PHYSICALLY and INTIALLY, but rather how it is embraced and whom. I think the device will break the barrier finally between those that just don't GET computers and technology. I think there will be a lot of older people who get one as well as younger kids (as the device gets cheaper and cheaper).

WILL BE... you quoted it yourself. I don't think that Steve was talking about the unit introduced in late January 2010. But the device as it matures into the machine that it will become -- not only as a device that does a lot of stuff, but rather what it finally becomes in the history of computing devices. You know, the stuff that Jobs likes to be known for.

 

[JGowan]

Can't leave this here. It was a little mean.