Yeah, a bunch of ancient MP3 players, some of them were out before the original iPod!
Allowing manual drag and drop to a USB mounted filesystem isn't really support in my opinion. Support is allowing all the clever playlist syncing stuff that iTunes can do to work with the other player, even to the point of having an icon for that player show up.
Apple can do the right thing - allow and encourage third party devices to plug into iTunes as a digital media library, or the wrong thing (lock down, anti-competitive, Microsoftian, etc).
expect apple to disable this feature.
Looks like a pretty strong competitor to the iPhone except for the SDK they give developers, which lacks any kind of good gaming support. The max you can build with it is essentially a dashboard widget.
Before you make the decision to get that Pre, consider the following:
1. Cant surf net or email while on phone.
2. No visual voicemail.
3. Cant download from Amazon store over 3G. Sprint will only allow over wifi.
4. No onscreen typing ability. If you want to type a web address, for example, in landscape mode, you have to rotate the phone to type on the keyboard. I know- somebody will say a developer will develop an app- but it does not exist yet.
5. Smaller screen than iPhone.
6. Only 8 gig memory, which, after system software, leaves just over 7 gigs. Heck, a modest music collection will consume most of that. Pitiful in the current smartphone era when new iPhone rumored to go to 16 and 32.
7. Small, cramped keyboard.
8. Cant use internationally.
There are some positives for the Pre:
1. Multitasking.
2. Hard keyboard (albeit with problems noted above).
3. Sprint 3G network larger than AT&T (but could change).
I'm sorry, but I just can't get excited about the Pre AT ALL until someone explains to me how you type on the damned thing without it wobbling all around and falling out of your hands!! The keyboard is at the very bottom, and unless it's dramatically lighter than other current smartphones, has to be really top-heavy when typing.
Do you have any information to support this claim?
You are completely and utterly wrong entirely. Please do some research before you start spouting FUD.
Probably the best description would be.
"Any data access stops during voice calls." or "Cannot use data and voice concurrently"
The hardware design is also clunky and breaks any type of one piece smooth slab look that Apple has pioneered. Giving us that futuristic look of scifi movies today with real devices. The sliding mechanism eventually gets clunky and loose after a few months. Thats why I love how there is no mechanical gimmicky pieces on the iPhone/Touch.
The one crucial thing the article fails to mention: it will not work with VIDEO, as all TV shows and movies are DRMed. So, Pre, not so awesome.if this is true, the pre will truly be awesome.
It's been weight balanced. It feels great when typing on it.
You are completely and utterly wrong entirely. Please do some research before you start spouting FUD.
I think there is a lot of empirical evidence to support, but I'll just go with a couple of main points:
There are a lot of mp3 players out there, but only a few are listed on that link. The players listed on that link were primarily developed pre-iPod era, when Apple had an interest in having iTunes operate with such devices.
Now that iTunes is the market leader, you would think that everyone and their mother would want their mp3 player to work with iTunes, but yet only a handful are. Blackberries have to rely on a helper program to sync with iTunes, for instance.
The keyboard portion is very thin. To be weight balanced, it would be twice as heavy as iPhone since the top portion looks pretty close to iPhone's dimensions.
In what way? It's common knowledge that the Pre does not the same level of 3D graphics support as the iPhone, so he's not completely wrong.
It's not FUD. It's true that the Pre/WebOS is not capable of playing games like Need For Speed Undercover or similar games at that level.
I've used the phone. It's balanced and not heavy. I don't know how they did it and I don't care to - all I know is that it sits very comfortably in your hand when you type.
Actually, the webOS SDK apps are nothing but web apps running on a local server. Its ability is essentially the same as web apps on iPhone, except that they run on the phone instead of on the net.
There is no 3D, not even access to 2D graphics. So, we won't see any action games, or even photo apps.
We won't see any interesting realtime audio apps either (like Ocarina).
Basically, whatever people's complaints were about iPhone 1.0, you will have the same complaints about Pre.
The one crucial thing the article fails to mention: it will not work with VIDEO, as all TV shows and movies are DRMed.
Do you use both hands to type, or one hand holding the phone and use the single hand to type?