Category: apple

My wife’s recent experience in moving to an iPhone and to T-Mobile’s $30 rate plan surfaced an interesting issue with iMessage that took a little bit of “troubleshooting” to resolve.

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Ok, so I recorded this one before I went to RSA. Because I found a clever way to hook up a Snowflake from Blue Microphones to my iPad. I reviewed the Snowflake back in October 2008. Still works pretty good.

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I don’t hate Apple, but I hate the obsession. Over every little thing.

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First we hear that T-Mobile USA is getting the iPhone in 2013. Then we hear a cheaper iPhone may be coming in 2013 for emerging markets. I wonder if one of those emerging markets is T-Mobile USA and all the prepaid operators.

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One of the things I like about No Agenda, aside from it being The Best Podcast in the Universe, is that the community of fellow producers is quite awesome! Aside from donating to the No Agenda, several people maintain various No Agenda related resources that other listeners utilize.

I got a request from a fellow producer via No Agenda Nation to convert some of the various No Agenda jingles and Soundboard items into iPhone ringtones. Rather than just do the couple she asked me to do, I decided to do a few more and make them available on a blog posting for all the human resources out there that might want some No Agenda sounds for their iPhone.

These files are in m4r format, ready for copying into your iTunes library and syncing with your iPhone after you right-click each link and choose safe-as. I suppose you can also use them with Android or other Smartphones–I am told renaming the file extension from m4r to m4a or mp3 will make it work correctly, I don’t have these devices to test with. You have to right-click and save each link.

Note that I don’t claim any ownership over these clips and are provided merely as a service to fellow No Agenda fans!

• Atlas Shrugged
• Bullshit
• Buzzer
• Die Walkure
• Ding!
• Don’t Eat Me, Hilary Clinton!
• Don’t Look Over Here!
• Douchebag
• Gitmo Nation National Anthem
• Hey, Citizen!
• Hot Pockets
• If you See Something, Say Something!
• In The Morning in English, Spanish, Chinese, French
• Lone Wolf
• No Service For You!
• Shut Up, Already, It’s Science!
• Shut Up, Slave! (Lizzy)
• Squirrel!
• WTC 7 Won’t Go Away
• Yay! (little kid)
• You Will Obey!
• You’ve Got Karma
• Two to the Head

This isn’t a comprehensive review. Read The Verge, GigaOm, or some other site if you want that. These are just my impressions as I listened to the keynote event today.

Mac Refresh

Seems to be inline with what we’d expect from Apple. 13 inch MacBook Pro with Retina, a new iMac–with an insanely thin screen–and a new Mac Mini. All drool-worthy hardware.

The Fusion Drive sounds interesting–combining SSD and traditional hard drives. Obviously we’ll have to wait for some real benchmarks to come out.

iBooks

Seems like an evolutionary update. Clearly Apple is trying to push more into digital textbooks with these updates as they spent a lot of time talking about it. I am curious what has more environmental impact, though: the iPad or all the trees that have to be killed to print textbooks?

iPad 4th Generation

This one was actually a surprise as “the new iPad” only came out 6 months or so ago. Faster processor, better LTE support, better camera, updated WiFi, uses Lightning connector, etc. Same pricepoints as before (starts at $499 for 16GB WiFi only up to $829 for 64GB WiFi + LTE). Two different models for LTE depending on which carriers you plan to use. The Verizon/Sprint one seems to be the one to get if you want to use LTE outside of the US/Canada, though.

Interestingly, the 16GB iPad 2 is still being sold for $399, whereas the 3rd generation iPad is no longer being sold

iPad Mini

This thing everyone’s been clamoring for. Rather than a 9.7 inch screen, it has a 7.9 inch screen. Theoretically, you can hold it in one hand, though I assume you have to have reasonably large hands to do that. It has the same Dual-Core A5 the iPad 2 has and the same screen resolution (1024×768). It has a better camera than the iPad 2 (5mp back, 1.2mp front). It is also available in LTE variants.

Obviously, this offering will do nothing to sway the Apple haters–and there are plenty of them out there.  That said, those that were on the fence due to price now have a far lower entry point–$329 for a 16gb WiFi-only model. That is more expensive than the $250 16gb Nexus 7, still, but Apple is betting it doesn’t need to drop its price that low. But unlike the Nexus 7, Apple has models with both more storage (up to 64gb) and LTE.

In short, Apple will sell metric ass-tons of both the iPad 4th gen and the iPad mini. They’ve already sold 100 million iPads to date. None of the other tablet manufacturers are anywhere close to that.

What Will PhoneBoy Buy?

I have no huge desire–or excess cash–to buy any of these devices right now. Not that I can, since pre-ordering on the new iPads begin on Friday.

That said, I’m feeling pretty good with my iPhone 4s that I bought earlier in the year–which I guess I can now call an iPad Nano–and the iPad 2 I bought more than a year ago. They’re all running the latest iOS and meet my needs. Given that Apple is still selling the iPad 2, I suspect my iOS devices will remain useful for at least a couple more years.

And quite honestly, given what this stuff costs, thats important to me.

From AT&T: Data-only plans coming for phones in 2 years:

The CEO of AT&T Inc. said Friday that cellphone plans that count only data usage are likely to come in the next two years. In such a scenario, phone calls and texts would be considered as just another form of data.

AT&T already offers this–on the iPad. So does Verizon.  Even though it isn’t marketed that way, T-Mobile offers an “unlimited” prepaid monthly plan that could be easily used that way. It includes a perfunctory 100 minutes of voice calling, but it is includes unlimited text and data (unthrottled up to first 5GfB) for $30/mo.

Clearly Randall Stephenson doesn’t know his own company’s offerings, let alone the offerings of his competition. My question is: why doesn’t AT&T offer a similar plan for other devices? Why doesn’t Verizon?

Oh yeah, they want to maximize the amount of money they are able to get customers to pay. Offering a data-only service would seem to go against that.