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More iPad Complaints
by Michael S. Hart 28 Jan '10

28 Jan '10

>From Ohio: No camera was a killer non-app No outboard flash was a killer non-app No outboard drives was a killer non-app No DRM free options was a killer. . . . Lots of reasons this person won't buy one.

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Re: Holst's Planets
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 28 Jan '10

28 Jan '10

oh well, might as well continue this little thread... i hope everyone realizes that michael and i don't really disagree as much as all this rhetoric seems. *** michael said: > However, if you buy one like that AFTER doing homework, > that's between you and your psychiatrist. i never bought one of the steaming pile of crap phones... not to do web-browsing, anyway. i just went without web. > Don't forget I said don't get one without wifi. how could i forget it when you repeat it so frequently? :+) but, as i said, i just went without the web on my phone. and so did tens of millions of other people. my point... > The phone in question here has an unlimited data plan > for some $35 a month, seems reasonable to me. > Then again, I'm not sure that plan is still available, > other than grandfathered in. well, your ability to sniff out bargains is well-documented. but others of us are not blessed with that particular gift... (i was kissed by the queen angel of parking spaces myself.) > Only the millions you left out of your research samples. i granted you _one_ million, and even that was stretching it. > Don't you ever listen??? > I've said for ages, "Don't buy a cellphone without wifi!" even if i only listened 10% of the time (and i listen a lot more), i would have heard you say that, since you've said it for ages... > Still, even as a phone, if you use wifi for data, no charges. the experience wasn't worth it! even if the bandwidth was free! > Wake up!!! i'm as awake as i'm gonna be at this time of night... :+) > Sites? > Were we talking about sites? > I thot we were talking about phones! oh, ok, i see where we had our disconnect. i was talking about "cell-phone optimized websites", yes, since for many phones, that was the only way they could adequately access the web, via sites that had been dumbed down to the point where they were simple text-menus only. those dumbed-down sites were light on bandwidth and didn't need any processing power. of course, they weren't the "real" web, but they were the best those phones could do. let me ask a question. for your current phone, the one you are talking about with the $35/month unlimited data plan, and wifi, can you access the front page of the n.y. times site? do you see all of the pictures? can you click on all the links? and if you can, how long does it take that front page to load? can you get wikipedia? or are you shunted to an "alternative" version which has been dumbed-down for cell-phone access? > An interesting POV. > I'm not sure it's got any factual backing, but interesting. > What about AT&T? Or are you counting them? it's not a "p.o.v.". it's how the history went down, michael. steve wanted verizon, because they were acknowledged as "best". but verizon turned him down flat, flat as a pancake. then he tried sprint, but they wouldn't give him a deal either. so at&t was his only other option. they were so desperate, for any business, that they basically couldn't turn him down. of course, all of us users have been totally dissatisfied with at&t, because they haven't been able to get their act together, despite the huge influx of business (and respect) from iphone. steve hung with them for quite a while, longer than he should, but the word on the street is that their exclusivity is now gone. > Actually, all The Billionaire Boys Club are betting against you. > As you may recall, I starting predicting years and years ago, > when cellphones first reached 50% saturation levels, that the > new wave of cellphones would be more wild new features. . . . i'm still waiting. but i'm afraid that day is still off in the future. these carrier companies are so used to having captive "customers" that they don't really even _know_ how to engage in competition, and they all understand that as long as their collusion remains impossible to prove directly, they can milk all of their cash cows. for years and years, they played the "minutes" game with us, and even now, they think it's a big deal to knock $30 off their $99 plan for unlimited _voice_ for a month. but that's still a whopping $69. > So who else is going to be allowed to provide for iPhones??? the rumor-mill says verizon will get the iphone in addition to at&t. i'm guessing half (or more) of the people who have suffered through the at&t exclusivity period will switch to verizon as soon as they can. > Didn't I use the plural? no, you said "million", for that phone you own. > Are iPhones up to 5% of cellphones yet? > I think not [and vanished in a puff of greasy black smoke!] > Actually, I would be surprised if even much over half that! another big disconnect between us here... because certainly the percentage of _cellphones_ doesn't matter, not if we're throwing dumb-phones into the mix. i'm sure we'll get the updated figures during apple's press conference wednesday, but i think the iphone has about 40% of the smart-phone market today in the countries where it has been available for a while... even more important, the trend-lines show that it's still surging, while all the other smart-phones are holding steady or dropping. but the really startling statistic is that 80% of smart-phone bandwidth is being generated by iphone users, meaning they use their phones to navigate the web _twice_ as much as owners of other smart-phones... > It's cute. . .no one says not. oh please. spare yourself the indignity of backhanded "compliments". the iphone is a lot more than "cute". it has revolutionized the future. > It's just not even 5% of the market, maybe half that. . . . only if you define "market" in a completely nonsensical way. the iphone isn't competing against giveaway dumb-phones. > Seems to be following the Mac statistics. maybe you need to brush up on those statistics as well. mac has 90% of the market for machines costing $1000+. the only people buying p.c. hardware these days are the people who have very little use for a _real_ computer... they just want to check their e-mail and surf the web, and maybe watch t.v. or a movie... and guess what? that's exactly what apple's itablet is gonna let them do. (jobs owns pixar, of course, and is the biggest shareholder in disney, so that's the movie angle. but disney also owns a.b.c., so jobs has a direct interest in the future of t.v. too, and that's why movie/t.v. will be the big thrust of the itablet. in addition to bridging the gap between iphone and mac air.) > Now iPods, that a different thing. . .heaven knows why, > since there are SO many MP3 players working so well. "heaven knows why"? you really think it's a big mystery? it's no mystery at all. but i explained all of that in my _original_reply_ to walter, which i will send tomorrow. in a nutshell here now, though, what is interesting is how apple cannibalized its own ipod line with the touch, which is essentially the iphone without the phone part (so it boils down to the same form-factor as your phone, michael, with wifi access but with no phone capability.) that ipod touch -- with its dependence on wifi -- broke free from the tyranny of the 2-year carrier-contract, and basically puts the web in your pocket without access costs. now i would've thought this would be a non-starter, since i'm not willing to carry around a touch _and_ a phone, but lots of people apparently _are_ willing to do exactly that, and apple hooked in those people, and that's pretty cool. > You just haven't see all the Euro-phones on the streets. . . . it's not hard for me to imagine a world where _everyone_ is carrying around the web in their pocket all of the time... i've had that idea for about 30 years now, which i concede doesn't match the 50 years that you've got under your belt, but i think it's still a long-enough time to nurture a dream. -bowerbird

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The REAL Question About the iPad. . . .
by Michael S. Hart 28 Jan '10

28 Jan '10

I guess the real question about the iPad is whether it will change tablets, eReaders, etc., in the same manner as iPods changed MP3 players and iPhones changed cellphones. While I do have some MP3 players, and one is even an iPod-- the Third Generation one--I haven't found that iPod changed MP3ness for me at all, other than that the eBook reader app came out only a week after the iPod, which was very cool!!! I'm also not sure the iPhone changed cellphones for me much though I am considering getting one if the new announcement includes iPhones for Verizon, which it appears to be. I am sure the cost will be high to start with, so even if I will get an iPhone it won't be rush right down today. Personally, I thought Blackberry changed cellphones, Nokia, too, and a few others. iPhones and iPods just added "COOL" to the mix, which is fine with me, but I don't know if this really counts as a technological breakthrough, and I do not know if iPhones really were the CAUSE or the EFFECT of this new saturation level of cellphones. Well. . .yes. . .I do know. . . . If you will recall I have been watching cellphone levels as much as I watched disc drive growth, and I predicted that a new kind of cellphone competition would start to take place as soon as the world realized we had passed 50% saturation, and it is all too obvious that the iPhone was the result. Still, I can't fault Steve Jobs for really being the "ONLY" big one who really realized this tipping point was coming!

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Re: on your planet
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

ok, here's that reply a wrote over the weekend. i didn't send it then, because i was hoping this thread would end. but i probably should have, because it might have prevented some of the unnecessary and unproductive drift on this thread. anyway, here it is, unedited, so sorry if it hits some points that were later repeated in the thread as it developed. -bowerbird ************************************************************************* walter said: > Even a broken clock is right twice a day. interesting, because i use that same expression about someone else. except i note that he is a _hyperactive_ clock, and is therefore correct about 10 times per day. except he never knows if he's right or wrong. > The bird is right when he says that > the iPhone put the the web in our pockets > in the sense that it, just like the iPod before it, > had almost next to nothing that was > new in terms of technical capabalities, > but through extremely clever packaging made those > techincal capabilities interesting to the masses. well... except that's not what i said, not what i said at all, not even close to what i said, not even on the same planet. (perhaps walter is on the same planet as david, i dunno.) there were indeed mp3 players before the ipod came about. so if you think of the ipod as an mp3 player, then you might just come to the conclusion that the ipod was "nothing new". but that would be a stupid conclusion. what the ipod did was it married the hardware to software, in the form of the itunes store, which made the _purchase_ of digital songs slick and easy, transforming the industry... the software also made it easy to rip your entire collection from the physical c.d. form to the digital ipod form, which was another vitally important piece of the puzzle that most of the other hardware companies had overlooked entirely... (and don't bother telling me that it was _possible_ to do it with other brands; the whole point is apple made it _easy_. other people aren't masochists like you, so they don't like to power through the pure pain of technology like you do.) and let us not forget that apple creates beautiful products. sure, they're overpriced. but apple is smart enough to know that overpricing can help you as much as it hurts you, _if_ you are capable of delivering the highest-quality experience, and apple is, because they actually work on that experience... apple cares about the interaction of a person with a product, and their attention to detail in this matter makes 'em special. and yes, it certainly helps that apple has a lot of money to spend on advertising. heck, they kept billboard companies alive during the first half of the last decade, they sure did... in a nutshell, apple made the mp3 player people wanted to buy. and then they did the same thing when it came to the iphone... they reworked the smart-phone _entirely_, from top to bottom. they realized that display-size was all-important, so they made the display the full phone face, relegating buttons to software... they made that display a touch-screen, and then programmed an operating system that enabled an interface based on finger touch. and once we saw how it _should_ have been done from the start, we knew it instinctively and immediately, and everything changed. to call this "clever packaging" _could_ be considered an insult, except that it's just so brain-dead _stupid_ that it becomes an indication that the person using the phrase might just be insane. or be suffering from a very high fever. (do you feel ok, walter?) it took a lot of hard work and some very intelligent engineering to make a touch interface for a smart-phone, but apple did it... and people stood in line to buy it, stood in line for _months_... and apple packed plenty of other goodies into that little package, enough so app developers could build hundreds of thousands of useful and entertaining tools, and a whole bunch of fart apps too. moreover, apple negotiated a deal with a greedy-assed carrier to get unlimited bandwidth, precisely because they knew that their offer of "the internet in your pocket" was a _sincere_ one, one that people would actually _use_, and they were looking to protect their customers from the customary carrier rape charges. yeah, sure, some phones had "internet" checked on a feature-list before the iphone came along, but none of those phones had the kind of browser that the iphone has, or gave the same experience. they were confined to this mickey-mouse "mobile web" that had mickey-mouse text menus that were reminiscent of the 1970s... meanwhile, apple invented an interface that was so intuitive that people learned it by watching 30-second television commercials. and yes, it was a good thing that apple had lots of money so they could run lots of those commercials, and run them lots of times... but believe me, if you don't have the goods to back up your ads, you'd just be throwing away your money by running those ads... apple had the goods to back up their ads. apple is often first, but being first is not important to apple... what is important to apple is that they be the one that _lasts_. -bowerbird

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Re: Holst's Planets
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

michael said: > Noting bird did not reply to my last reply to him. not so fast there, mister... i'll get around to it... :+) and to the one you just posted, too. but i've got a girlfriend at this end, and poetry events which must be attended, and dinner, and even twitter, and digitizing a book, in a friendly feud with rfrank, so you have to wait your turn... or... go out of turn... -bowerbird

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!@! CORRECTION. . .RESEND
by Michael S. Hart 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

My previous try didn't seem to make it, so. . . . CORRECTION: The finally mentioned 3G, but not 4G At $499 a lot of people can afford an iPad. 16GB is our base model. For 32GB its $100 more, and for $100 more than that you get $64GB. The 3G models cost another $130. Prices seem to be from $500 to $830 at the moment. The only eBook mentioned was $15, 50% higher than the $10 price tag on most commercial releases. iTunes should work the same. All models are unlocked. No contract, prepaid, cancel any time. $15 a month for 1/4 gigabyte of total bandwidth. [You won't be downloading any movies!!!!!!!] [You might not even want too many iTunes. . . .]

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Taste & ethics with old e-books at Kindle
by Greg M. Johnson 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

Using an Ipod Touch, I downloaded some public domain books from the Kindle application. I was officially charged a transaction fee of "$0.00" for each one. 1) The Kindle version of the book, "Tom Swift and his Submarine" appears to have been hit by the TXT-80 virus. The lines of text wrap around in an illegible fashion just as they do with the TXT-80 format ones from PG. Fascinatingly, I just downloaded the epub format directly from PG, and it looks great! 2) I also took time to examine an ebook I'd downloaded **months ago* called, "Tales of the Fish Patrol". Knowing Chinese people and being a fan of the sea, I was really into the book by the end of Chapter One. Then I was hit with: ____________ End of this sample Kindle book. Enjoyed the sample Buy now or See details for this book in the Kindle Store ____________ The violations of taste of this project hit me like a brick. If Amazon were to have charged me $0.10 for the cost of bandwidth, I would not have blinked. But to take a public domain book, and set it up as something you're supposed to pay to see the second half, and not making it exhaustively clear to the downloader what you are getting, is major uncool. After you've got through the teaser, they provide a link telling you they want $0.85 for the full version. BUT WAIT-- The free prelude to this ebook that I had on my Kindle, AFAICS, isn't on Amazon anymore! It doesn't show up in the first 25 listings. A new attempt to download "Tales of the Fish Patrol" has all the chapters. So, the system worked! Either the marketplace or the Amazon administrators appear to have taken action to make this work less prominent. So, the "true" ebook has an *ASIN:* B000JQV2WU. The $0.85 target you're supposed to buy has an *ASIN:* B002N0V0XG and is by * Publisher:* Bunny Books, Ink. (August 26, 2009) Any insights here? -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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Kindle user problem with PG's The Touchstone
by Al Haines (shaw) 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

A message to the Errata system (see below) reports a problem with Edith Wharton's "The Touchstone", PG #267. Do other Kindle (II) users experience the reported problem with this particular book? Any advice I can forward to the writer? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I used The Magic Catalog of Project Gutenberg E-Books (MOBI Edition) running on my Kindle II To download by wireless The Touchstone. The download seemed to be successful (ie.The Touchstone was now listed on my Home list). When I opened the book it opened to the Title page. After that I lost control of all normal Kindle functions (Next Page, Prev Page, Home, Back). I then had to reset the Kindle. I tried a second time with the same exact results. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Al

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Re: Holst's Planets
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

joey said: > you'd have us all believe that there is > some massive influx of browsing > that was never happening before > simply because Apple released the iPhone. that's exactly what i'm saying, you're right. (which is a huge improvement, in the sense that now you're not trying to put words in my mouth.) there are some 60 million people out there with itouch/iphone hardware who now visit the web -- at least occasionally -- who did not before... don't get me wrong. the opera mini-browser was a huge accomplishment, once upon a time. it was just placed in the wrong hardware is all. (and, on the flip side, nokia had some very cool hardware, but it was plagued by uncool software, and a user-base that never attained critical mass. that's the important concept here folks, critical mass.) > Your assertions hold no water. i'm _astounded_ anyone questions this observation, since those 60 million people are darn hard to miss! indeed, joey, didn't you say your wife was one of us? > if you're AT&T, and you managed to find > a massive scapegoat for your systemic failure, > you'd jump all over that too. i see. now you admit that 60 million users constitutes a "massive" phenomenon. so we have some progress. > Even assuming that AT&T is being honest > (which is not a given by any means) at&t conceded they can't handle the traffic in n.y. city. i'm sure plenty of people in manhattan can vouch for that. > and that this isn't some marketing ploy > Apple and AT&T cooked up oh yeah, sure, it's a great "marketing ploy" to admit that you can't handle the traffic in the country's biggest city. it's the kind of thing that does wonders for a reputation. > an especially uncomfortable thought since > I'm a daily victim of that horrid monstrosity > and can personally attest that it has not gotten > any worse in the 2+ years since the introduction > of the iPhone. it hasn't gotten any better, either, which is terribly sad. especially when the reports came out that said that even though at&t is making more money than before, they haven't plowed much of it back into building up their capacity for the future. it seems that they would rather just take the money and run. fake steve jobs had a great column on this about 2-4 weeks back... > you led me to believe you were developing your ZML app > on the only computer you could afford, and it was > several years old at the time your reading comprehension skills have never impressed me. > Where's the download link for this editor/viewer? join the zml_talk group at yahoogroups, and you can find the programs in the "files" section, dated june 9, 2005... write up a thoughtful review and post it to this listserve, and then i'll send you a more recent copy if you want one. but i get the feeling you're not interested. you just wanted to hurl an insult, and you didn't know that the one you threw ("vaporware"!) had its viability demolished over 5 years ago... -bowerbird

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Re: Holst's Planets
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

c'mon joey. time after time i try to have a decent conversation with you, and time after time you end up making me regret it... *** joey said: > So, your evidence that "no one" was using Opera > is that some handful of blogs which you've personally polled > indicated that Opera was less than 0.01% of their traffic? > Exactly which sites did you include in your survey? > What was the standard deviation? dude. don't be stupid. there are organizations that track browser statistics on a world-wide basis, and they post their results for everyone to see. this ain't rocket-science. it's easy enough to google the results. > Perhaps you mean that, in general, Opera is considered > to only hold ~2% of the overall browser market? > But that's a meaningless comparison in this context > - the mobile browser market, even with > your beloved iPhones out there in the wild for 2+ years, > the best numbers I can find indicate that iPhone browsing > is estimated a only 0.08 percent of all browsing activity worldwide. > What a sea-change indeed! at&t has come out and said that iphone browsing is bursting the seams of their network. what more evidence do we need? do you guys live in a box? > Or is it perhaps simply that YOUR social group > (assuming anyone willing socializes with you) i see. now we start the direct ad hominem process. > has finally joined the rest of the world and > started using a computer more modern > than your ancient Macintosh my ancient macintosh? i'm running a nice macbook, mac os 10.5, with a 24-inch cinema screen, dude... i'm not sure who's feeding you your information, but you might want to do some fact-checking before you embarrass yourself... > that you're using to build the vaporware ZML viewer/editor? oops... too late... you already embarrassed yourself... that "vaporware" you're talking about was up years ago. nobody seemed to care. do you think i should push it? whatever the case, you're on notice. make the conversation worthwhile, joey, or i'm gonna stop talking to you... again... -bowerbird

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