Be Excellent To Each Other

So bezzie mates, a new platform to defeat each other,first game i found that supports online gaming is the great Galcon, try galcon lite for a demo if you want, but basically you conquer planets by sending real time ships to it, rather addictive in one player mode, but ace online

and it looks like fireworks, so it is great by definition!

I'm Romanista on the server..

http://www.galcon.com/iphone/

okely dokely bezzaroony!

Want iPhone

iPhone want

Which server?

mimi: i haz 2 IPHONEZ!

I'm assuming this is on v.2 which I haven't cracked yet so I don't have the app store!!!

You're just showing off now, Kalmar

Ah, they do look like nice things, but I'd certainly never use it to its potential.

That's a really fun game. I might even buy it.

I would like to register having no particular interest in the iphone and if I were given one I would sell it and spend the money on something else.

Then you need your own thread, sir, as this thread is for people who have/like iPhones.

my frenzic name is romanista, for highscores easy to beat, craig's craig grannell, more participants?

I am debating getting an iphone and if anyone else is like me and still undecided, hold off for a wee while before making a decision because apple are announcing something next week, speculation within the industry is it may be a less bespoke model- an iphone nano perhaps?

Although Carphone Warehouse are dropping the price of the iphone in May so it will be free at £35 a month and this suggests they are trying to shift stock. Don't know if that is merely a symptom of the recession or an indicator that they are making room for a newer and better model. I dont know if they will release an updated one unless it has a better camera though since they have now got 3G so it does pretty much everything.

Anyway, all this does is confuse me even further, if only my blackberry had a web browser like safari and then this wouldnt trouble me at all

Less bespoke? I thought iPhones were pretty prêt à porter by default.

My money says the announcement next week is software only, new hardware will be announced in late June/early July for immediate sale. Not getting one just now is a valid plan, but you have to wait 3-4 months.

Also, are Apple an American or UK company? Might be end of year announcement if UK.

Apple are American, I thought.

I dunno, if you can jump all over all the phone threads with ZOMG iPHONE then we can come and sneer at you in this one.

By describing the current model that way I meant to convey the fact that it has all the features the buyer would want whereas the newer model (if it were made as a sort of ipod nano) would have to have some of these removed to keep costs down. Perhaps i would have been clearer if I had described the possible lower model as budget but that would have been deceptive since it would surely retail at £100+ and that isn't really budget.



I thought it would be summer as well, I'm sure that's when they announce the iphone 3G last year. I dont mind waiting though since I havent even decided if I'm getting one yet...I have no will power at all though so I probably will.

Apple doesn't do this. The only time it removes features from major products is when the technology is mothballed (such as FW on the new MacBooks). There's nothing Apple could feasibly remove from the existing iPhone/iPod touch without completely destroying its business model. (Consider the App Store: right now, the only thing you have to figure out is whether something works with both iPhone and iPod touch; add further variants and the store would be a nightmare.) I think anyone hoping for an iPhone nano is going to be plum out of luck.

For people who want iPhone-style stuff but don't want to be tied into a contract, just grab an iPod touch. For anyone else, I also suspect the majority of the announcement will centre around software (and if Apple doesn't put an App manager into iTunes, someone needs a slap), but I'll be very surprised if hardware changes are anything but relatively minimal (possibly thinner/lighter handset, more battery life, better camera, slightly faster chip/lower cost).

I dont think they are going to release a totally different model either I was just commenting on what the rumour mill in the mobile industry is saying. I hadn't really though about the planning/design/features of an iPhone nano. All i was doing was repeating industry speculation about there possibly being an iphone nano. I even went on in my original post to say that CPW are dropping the price of the current iphone and to me that meant they are shifting stock for a replacement(more like for like than iphone nano i would have thought.) The only reason i even mentioned any of this is because i know about the price drop in advance and thought it might be useful for anyone considering buying one as it could save them £90.

Although IF they were to create an iPhone nano, I would have thought it would have been easy to remove features...the ipod nano doesnt have all the features of the ipod touch and yet it manages fine without harming their business model. so surely they could design a mobile without a touchscreen(which adds cost,especially a touch screen as well done as Apples) or a camera? As for the app store (keeping in mind I never use it and so have very little knowledge of it or how it works) couldn't an iPhone nano user just access it from itunes, buy an app and then transfer it to their phone like they would with songs? From what I know about business (and my knowledge is limited let me assure you) a company likes to have market presence in more than one area (I'm probably not phrasing any of this right and should just get out whilst i still can but oh well). For example, Sony don't just make an all singing all dancing Bravia with incredible contrast ratios etc etc priced at 20 gazillion pounds, they also make a lower spec model with a lower spec price. So as they get maximum market share.

Och never mind i'm going to go and watch the Celtic game and get pished.

Top marks to Apple for making a new iPod shuffle that has no buttons, so you're forced into buying their shitty headphones that have a remote on the cable.

iPod Shuffle: £59.00
Apple In-ear Headphones with remote: £54.00

The thing is, an iPhone is really not going to work without a touchscreen (remember the iPhone is a computer primarily, with a phone application in it). The whole OS, development system and all the applications rely on that user interface.

The could just do "a normal phone" that has the apple brand, but there's a reason they didn't do this in the first place - it'd be competing with many other very experienced and advanced phone manufacturers like Nokia, in a cut-throat marketplace. They're clearly not interested in that, for the same reason that they don't bother trying to compete with Dell for "normal desktop computers".



True, but Apple is more like Bang and Olafsen who do only make (supposedly) high end, designer products with a high end price tag. They couldn't mass-market a cheap TV without diluting their high profit margin stuff.

I predict it'll get slimmer, faster, more memory and the occasional new feature. Not much cheaper though.

It's a PDA. That's it.

A valid point now - six months hindsight is 20/20.

Can the iPhone do Bluetooth yet?

It's always done bluetooth, just a weird variant of it I think. My first gen iPhone has it, at least.

Fortunately very little discussion of bezzies mating so far.

Sure. Always be very wary of analysts, though. When it comes to Apple, the vast majority of them are so far off the mark it's shocking.


Like others have said, this is because they're two entirely different things. In some ways, the 'iPod' bit in 'iPod touch' really doesn't help Apple, since there are a lot of people equating it to being an MP3 player; similarly, for reasons I really don't understand, people criticise iPhone and iPhone apps (without actually having used either, natch) of being expensive and rubbish compared to, say, a bog-standard Nokia, when they should be being compared with Blackberry devices.

Ultimately, iPod nano is an MP3 player that can be coerced into playing a bit of video and a couple of games. iPod touch is a miniature touch-screen computer with a massively honed-down interface. iPhone is a miniature touch-screen computer with a massively honed-down interface that you can also use to make phone calls. (Kind of amusing in iPhone how both the phone and iPod components are merely apps, with no more presence than any other app. In fact, on mine, the phone one isn't even in the mini-dock, given that I hardly use my iPhone for making phone calls.)


That would suggest Apple would do the two things that almost killed it in the 1990s: aim for the lower market, and destroy the simplicity of the product line. In the former case, Apple should never go down that route again. There is a fundamental misunderstanding when it comes to business (and this is something that, annoyingly, many, many analysts rattle on about) that marketshare is somehow important. Ultimately, it's mostly irrelevant—profits are what's important.

In the desktop space, Apple has a marketshare of under 10 per cent. Even the most absurdly optimistic and positive projections out there—and this is prior to the current financial shitstorm—had Apple taking around 20 per cent within a decade. However, out of every PC manufacturer, only Apple and Dell are consistently profitable. Others, at best, break even. In Apple's case, that's because the company concentrates on high-end, (mostly) high-quality items with strong UI and attention to detail. iPhone is exactly the same. The price-point is such that Apple probably makes more on a single unit than most manufacturers towards the low-end make on 20. To that end, Apple simply doesn't need the low-end, especially when you consider how interested people are in OS X-based devices, despite the price.

As for the store, the issue of complexity comes up. This is one area where Apple's currently screwing up when it comes to the shuffle, which it just can't help fiddling around with (more adaptors, more kit that's been mothballed...). However, the iPhone's App Store is a different kettle of fish in that it's massively profitable and great to develop for. The reason for this, according to devs I've spoken to, is because the hardware is a known quantity. You know when you make an app what the end user is going to have. When purchasing as a consumer, the only thing you need to know is whether an app works with an iPod touch if you've one of those. If Apple added more hardware into the mix—a _sans_ touchscreen phone, a phone with a different resolution screen, a phone without Wi-Fi—the App Store goes to hell in a handbasket.

I'm not saying it won't happen. However, if it does, Jobs must be sicker and more out of the picture than everyone thought (although I'm beginning to think that while he will make a return, it won't be as CEO), and rather than being a sensible, intelligent chap, Tim Cook must instead be channelling Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio.


You mean the ones that come with the shuffle, in the box? Or the almost certain flood of cheap replacements from third-parties that'll be on the market within weeks?

It has to be said, my initial excitement about the new shuffle has dropped somewhat, especially when I considered the complexity of the controls and also how much I like the design of the second-gen one. However, I don't think the earbud thing is going to be a massive issue per se, not least when you consider that most people don't change anything about the kit they buy. What could be an issue is that the device simply isn't intuitive enough—very anti-Apple—although the VoiceOver component is a wonderfully useful idea that could set all iPods above other similar hardware if Apple rolls it out quickly enough.

Yeah, I had a first generation iPhone, and got rid. I meant proper Bluetooth, rather than "we'll only let you connect to about three brands of headphones" Bluetooth.

Mentioning the touch screen was a fatal error on my part i fear. i was using that as a random example of a feature that apple could remove to produce a lower spec phone. In reality I think they would keep the touch screen but as I said i havent considered how a lower spec handset would be designed nor do i have the knowledge or inclanation to make a guess.

If Apple don't aim for the lower market, then what is the ipod shuffle? that is an obvious example of apple producing a product in order to get market share in an area where they currently don't have anything-in that case, a low end mp3 player. Despite my self confessed limited knowledge of business, I didn't mean to suggest that i thought that market share was the be all and end all,however if a company like apple can produce something to gain market penetration where they currently dont have anything and it only makes them a small profit then this is viewed as positive since it gets them customers, profit and most importantly it takes customers away from the competitors.

I don't think it's daft to expect apple to update the current iphone but to also bring a new model at a lower price point. Apple have already been disappointed by sales figures for the iphone which led to a price drop not long after release and so production of a more accessible model is a sensible conclusion.

Anyway, I'm sleepy now and commenting on this thread has made me feel like I have to be more careful with my words than a high profile politician.

The shuffle is 60 quid. Even the previous one was pretty expensive. It's at the low-end for Apple, but it's a long way from the low-end of the market. Last time I was in Tesco, I saw an MP3 player for under a tenner.

I always thought of the shuffle as the iPod equivalent to the mini in terms of price-point (lowish, but not low-end) and the device itself as a super-durable flash-based MP3 player with decent design (well, at least the previous iteration). It's a very 'Apple' version of low-end, that's for sure.


The problem is if such a thing could be profitable enough, and if the Apple board wouldn't go apeshit at the time. After all, Apple only has finite resources, and so aiming for a market with the potential for low profits but high marketshare would be less desirable from a shareholder standpoint than continuing to yank people into Apple's happy halo.

Personally, I think Apple's probably got it right in the mobile space. A really cheap iPhone would have too many compromises and simply wouldn't be an iPhone anymore. The device's USPs make it what it is—remove them and you've just got, well, another phone. And Apple's never really been about that market. Also, when there are literally hundreds of phones at those price-points, all being sold at a loss or the tiniest of profits, what's the point in getting lost in the crowd when you can shout from the rooftops and make more money by doing so, even if you get only a tiny fraction of the sales? Like I said, Apple's marketshare on the desktop is in single figures, and yet it's making huge profits. Compare that to PC manufacturers with much higher marketshare than Apple, who are nonetheless just shifting boxes and making a loss.


But with a device where practically everything relies on a single bit of hardware, it's going to be a very brave or stupid Apple that upsets the balance. You'd end up with a two-tier App Store, developers thinking "bollocks to this, then", or, worse, lowest common denominator output that's scuppered almost every other mobile platform.

Like I said, I don't think what you're saying is outside the realm of possibility, but I will be very surprised if Apple releases iPhone 2, and then relegates iPhone 1 to a cheapo device. I suspect we'll see iPhone OS 3.0 being the biggest change (hopefully a springboard, copy and paste, etc.), and then an upgraded iPhone (more storage, maybe more RAM, lighter, twice the battery charge) that's almost identical to the current model in a fundamental sense.


Heh. I really don't think there was any disappointment in sales from Apple. I think those price drops were largely planned from day one. It's a 'test the water' tactic Apple's done on more than one ocassion, and the huge price drop was fantastic PR. (Another argument would be that the sales were much higher than Apple thought, meaning volume versus cost suddenly enabled the company to dramatically and rapidly drop the price.)

In the UK, sales have been relatively low, granted, but that's largely down to expectation in our mobile market and people fundamentally misunderstanding what the iPhone was. Expectations are that the deals won't be rubbish, which they initially were with O2 (which subsequently massively increased the minutes/texts allowance). And misunderstandings—people were angry that you didn't get a free iPhone when, say, spending ten quid per month on calls. But it's not a 'typical' phone, and those same people wouldn't have been surprised to see chunky contracts with a Blackberry, which is more or less what iPhone is. iPDA doesn't have the same ring to it, though.


Sleep well!

Same here. I've got Email, SMS, Safari and Tweetie on mine.

Makc

so no other frenzic friends?



and the iphone really is that expensive anymore, io had a 2y contrect with my sony ericsson k810i, paid 36 euros a month with extra for internet; the k810 was damaged by a rainstorm, while itn was in my inner jacket, you can't believe how wet i was after just 5 mins cycling, extended my contract to be an iphone contract, paid 50 euro's, but paid 30 euro's including internet since.. i mean it isn't more expensive than the new SE's and the n96 etc here, just more their simple models, but isn't competing with them


mmm, that's an idea, got rid of the ipod one, because i really was surprised din't include sms in there (even though sms is a more european thing), but never though of removing the call one..

I'm on there as Trousers - can't see how to add other friends though.

edit : Well apart from the really obvious bit about adding friends I can't find anything about adding friends. I've added you by the way.

I might move to that. Mine's currently SMS, Mail, Safari, iPod, but I barely use iPod, and Twitter's becoming more important for my work.


After the recent price-drop, it's a very good value smartphone. But, like I said, the UK's been used to an utterly ruthless mobile phone market for years now, and the expectation is that if you've a contract you will always get a free phone. The problem is people thought they could dump their RAZR and get an iPhone for the same money, not realising an iPhone is nothing like a RAZR.

The PAG price could do with coming down some, although the bundled year of data is a nice touch (and effectively 'reduces' the price by 120 quid.

Without wanting to create arguments, how come you can get a G1 for free with a £25/pcm contract, then?

Presumably, it's a loss-leader, which, given the current climate, isn't something that's going to last long unless Google or someone else is absorbing the costs.

I don't think they are going to make a phone which is really cheap, just cheaper than the current iphone. I would think that it would keep the features but have a condensed version of them so it could retail at a cheaper price. I called it the iphone nano to get across the idea that it would be a cheaper model but as i said in one of my first posts, i could have said budget and didnt because that would suggest the low end of the market and i have never once said that that is what apple would aim for, simply saying it would be lower than their current proposition.

Exactly! I didnt say that low end for apple was bargain basement, just low end compared to their current models. so the shuffle is apples "low end" mp3 player.
A lower iphone than the current one wouldn't be "really cheap", it would just be a bit more affordable.

And the tariffs available with the iphone on release weren't rubbish they were o2s standard tariffs, they just seemed more expensive because you were paying £10 for the data bundle as well. The only reason they got cheaper is because o2 were forced to put the data bundle on for free because they weren't getting anywhere near the sales figures they had anticipated. The queues outside Apple stores were expected at Carphone Warehouses and O2 stores nationwide on launch day and that didnt happen, with sales not really setting the world alight after that. don't get me wrong, they made money, but not as many customers as they thought bought the iphone for the simple reason it was too expensive.

All of this points to the fact that apple might release a new model to target the mid range market where they currently have people who would like to have an iphone but dont want to pay the money for it.

And i have to disagree when you say that people wouldnt be surprised to see a chunky contract with a blackberry. When the Curve in it's first design was out, you could it for free on an 18 month contract at £25 per month. The reason a lot of blackberry users had chunky contracts is because they used them for business and so had loads of minutes or a big data bundle before all the networks started making simple unlimited(or near enough) data packs. But this was by no means necessary to get a high spec, high end phone for free.

It would appear that we are getting MMS, C&P and background apps tomorrow when the 3.0 firmware is released. Of course, this has been widely suggested in every lead up to a firmware update since the phone launched, so I'll take it with a large pinch of salt.

While the first Curve (8300) was certainly high spec and high end, I still think it fell short of 'phone', and that's probably the clincher. It's a data device first and foremost, and that holds true for every model except the Pearl (8100) and the godawful clamshell Pearl (8220).

ye i didnt really mean to start talking about blackberry it was just in response to something said in an earlier post. although I have the curve and think for a phone it is excellent, so easy for texting plus i can be on msn/twitter/facebook etc whenever i want. plus it has blackberry messenger so i can message my friends with blackberrys for free. Before i got it i was going to get an iphone but now im 50/50. I want a good web browser but dont want a touchscreen. I want a few of the apps you can get on iphone, but would miss having episodes of family guy on my mobile(I dont know if thats possible with the iphone?).

But that's the thing—what could you 'condense'? I don't see anything in the current iPhone that could be removed without utterly compromising the device and making it something entirely different. Kill the touchscreen and the apps won't work. It becomes iPod nano. Kill the Wi-Fi and GPS and it becomes a seriously shoddy device for connectivity, which is one of its strengths. The camera's already pretty bad, so that can't be made more cheaply. And so on.


If they were the standard tariffs, they were pretty shocking. The number of minutes and texts were very low compared to equivalent tariffs on other phones. Not sure what you mean regarding data, though—that was part of the iPhone proposition from day one. Even with PAG (which came later), data's bundled for a year.

As for sales, I think they weren't quite what was hoped for in the UK, but there were serious shortages for some time. Now, I think Apple seems perfectly happy to just let the market settle. I suspect that if there's a price change in the air, they'll just drop the current 8 GB model byt £50+, rather than muck about with a new model. A 32 GB could then joint the line-up at the top end (with a 64 GB touch joining the iPod party).


Having now seen and used website nav on alternate devices, there's no way in hell I'd go back to something without a touchscreen. Horses for courses, perhaps, but the Windows Mobile way in particular just makes be shudder.


Well, the iPhone happily plays video, so I don't see why you wouldn't be able to cart round Family Guy.

GPS could have gone - before todays news. Without turn-by-turn it was less than very useful, and the apps that made use of it were a bit gimmicky, to be honest - do I really need to tag my flickr pictures with where I am when I take them?

I dunno, the GPS function could be fairly useful. I've used it on mine with Google maps to see how bad the traffic is a few junctions ahead on the M25 before on my way to and from work, I've used it once in London when I was trying to get somewhere and was getting a bit lost and occasionally when I've eated one too many Creme Eggs at work and want to walk it off, I have a little app on there which can tell me how far I've walked, etc.

Edit: Turn By Turn does change everything though - I'm seriously hoping TomTom knock out an iPhone app now.

I've added yous twos. I'm on there as 'Zio'.

I could be wrong, but I think they had it running on the iPhone before Apple killed it stone dead due to some legal nonsense with Google maps.

TomTom have had an iPhone app in the works for a long time, I understood the reason it hadn't come out wasn't anything to do with the lack of turn-by-turn APIs (as they would have their own) but some other licensing - perhaps the same reason that you have to "Bring Your Own Maps" with the newly announced turn-by-turn stuff.

I use it a lot when I'm walking around places I don't know very well and don't want to get lost. We've also used it when driving around some places, with my wife navigating using Google Maps.

As for TomTom, I suspect part of the problem is the AT&T deal that massively restricts scope for turn-by-turn in an iPhone app. I'll be amazed if this isn't overturned soon.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articl ... pod-touch/

everyrthing you wanted to know..

Hmm. That article suggests that bluetooth will only communicate with other iPhones (or iPods), not (say) an N95. Odd.