On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 03:40:53AM -0500, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
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.
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michael said:
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?
Bird: You appear to ignoring the approximately 700 million devices which, since sometime in 2005, have been able to run the Opera Mini browser, which is a full-scale browser like Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari, or its own big brother, Opera. They even mention in the blog/press release that it renders the NY Times just fine! (see http://my.opera.com/eskils/blog/show.dml/26187) I have personally been using Opera Mini on a myriad of devices for almost 4 years now, and I haven't ended up "shunted" to alternative sites. Admittedly, I haven't been paying $35/month for that entire period (usually closer to $70/month), but I also have a "voice plan" attached to my devices. Maybe next time, you can actually hire a professional to do your research for you, as you so clearly dropped the ball here. Admittedly, the small screens makes using websites on these a decidedly sub-optimal experience, but that's only marginally less true of the iPhone or iPod touch that you seem so very fond of.