I have been tempted many times by that over-expensive sexy slab of technology called the iPhone, so I don’t need Seed adding to the temptation with a list of science apps for the iPhone.
Fortunately, the strongest argument against the iPhone for me right now is that it’s closed and only supports one carrier…who does not offer good service in the wilderness of western Minnesota. If ever they opened the gadget up, though, or if ATT built a cell phone tower in my neighborhood, I’d have to rely on my wife’s ability to slap and shackle me to prevent wasteful spending.*
*Which is, obviously, a reason to hope for more flexible service plans even if I never buy one.
Get the ipod touch.
It does everything but the phone stuff. It runs all those sciencey apps. It has double the storage of the iPhone. It looks and feels great. It connects to teh interwebs via wi-fi. It’s got the best mobile web browser out there. You don’t have to sell your soul to a long-ass service plan with AT&T.
You can still keep a cell-phone in your other pocket.
We bought iPhones for some of our employees (mostly VPs, so, being a VP, I got one). I can say that it’s nice, but honestly I wouldn’t have spent the money on it. It’s convenient to check my email when away, but I don’t listen to MP3s and rarely use any other feature of it. With the 2.0 update to the OS you can run those fancy apps, so that may breathe some life into it for me. Otherwise, I just wasn’t impressed with the phone when the cool factor wore off.
My argument against the iPhone: people can use it to call me.
Needy bastards.
“I’d have to rely on my wife’s ability to slap and shackle me…”
Damn, PZ, they weren’t kidding. She really IS a Trophy Wife.
Got mine Sunday. I’m really happy with it. Getting fast at typing on the glass too. It’s great in NYC.
There will be TONS of great apps created for it. I’m tempted to get the BeatMaker from Intua.
Weird, isn’t it, how much more user-friendly human design is than God’s “designs” are.
Almost makes you wonder if…
I bring this up because today the DI put up this fine writing, but bad thinking, of Nabokov (their comments on Nabokov’s passage are utterly predictable and uninteresting):
Oh yeah, nonutilitarianism is the mark of design. I guess that’s why we have to make everything that is rational and obviously utilitarian, while God just makes do, with some elegant flourishes. And that’s why simple technology like radio transmission between organisms was right out of God’s demented artistry, so that humans had to come up with that–and iPhones.
Nabokov wanted non-utilitarian art, and found (what a shock!) that butterflies favor beauty like humans do (evolutionary convergence? Not if you don’t want it to be). The IDiots claim that purpose and forethought exist throughout nature, then they latch onto Nabokov’s reveling in nature’s lack of these.
OK, I know it’s a tangent, but the juxtaposition of the iPhone with the evolved beauty of butterflies seemed to call for some comment. The iPhone is a masterpiece of beauty, creativity, and rationality. Nature is a masterpiece of beauty, non-rationality, and of a remarkably hereditarily constrained (yet productive) creativity.
The differences are striking, and reveal the massive differences between design and sheer reproductive competition.
Really, don’t. Dont.
Just don’t. Over priced pile of junk. Get a decent Nokia [http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/17/review_nokia_e71/]and a half decent music player if you must [although the nokia plays just nicely..] and you’ll save a lot of money, time effort and heart break.
Just dont do it.
Weird, isn’t it, how much more user-friendly human design is than God’s “designs” are.
Almost makes you wonder if…
I bring this up because today the DI put up this fine writing, but bad thinking, of Nabokov (their comments on Nabokov’s passage are utterly predictable and uninteresting):
Oh yeah, nonutilitarianism is the mark of design. I guess that’s why we have to make everything that is rational and obviously utilitarian, while God just makes do, with some elegant flourishes. And that’s why simple technology like radio transmission between organisms was right out of God’s demented artistry, so that humans had to come up with that–and iPhones.
Nabokov wanted non-utilitarian art, and found (what a shock!) that butterflies favor beauty like humans do (evolutionary convergence? Not if you don’t want it to be). The IDiots claim that purpose and forethought exist throughout nature, then they latch onto Nabokov’s reveling in nature’s lack of these.
OK, I know it’s a tangent, but the juxtaposition of the iPhone with the evolved beauty of butterflies seemed to call for some comment. The iPhone is a masterpiece of beauty, creativity, and rationality. Nature is a masterpiece of beauty, non-rationality, and of a remarkably hereditarily constrained (yet productive) creativity.
The differences are striking, and reveal the massive differences between design and sheer reproductive competition.
They are apparently very easy to unlock, with instructions all over the interwebs.
It’s better to not buy anything at all, in fact.
Gizmo zombies.
Iphones are cute and all, but HTC products are more versatile and all-around better in my opinion. I have a Touch and it’s been great.
I’m sure you can run the iPhone fine with a 2GB network.
And geez, haven’t you heard microwave towers litteraly melt faces when you’re less than 1000 km away from them?
God I hate Steve Jobs.
He has gotten people who are generally otherwise anti-consumerist types to reflexively buy each new iteration of his consumer toys… and then proudly show off their newest artifact of compulsive consumption as evidence that they are “different” and against compulsive consumption.
That and the fact that Itunes is a bloated buggy annoying piece of shit that tries to tell you how to organize your music, hijacks settings and takes surgery to uninstall. (Sucks on a PC anyway, maybe its a marvelous program on a mac, I dunno.)
Evil bastard.
Oh and plus he stiffed Steve Jobs for like $2k.
ack.. I mean he stiffed Steve Wozniak for $2k.
Stoopid brain.
Personally, I hate talking on the phone. I just can’t stand it. I talk on the phone when I need to. It’s a tool.
At $60/month for the base plan, I really think I can live a normal life without an iPhone.
However, I think within 5 years, iPhone-like devices will be the norm. Think of this as version 0.1. Once they get this up to about 2.0, they will be more useful and cheaper to use.
Weren’t the first-generation plasma TVs around $6,000 or so?
Just asking.
I’ve had my iPhone for just under a year now. I would absolutely never, ever use another phone for any reason. Give in to the temptation. :)
Just get an Openmoko phone. The Neo FreeRunner, for example. :)
Why get an expensive phone when you can get iPod touch instead? Most, if not all, of these new apps work with it.
Then again, you could buy an iPhone from eBay, jailbreak it, and get your own subscription. People are even selling jailbroken iPhones in stores… It’s been on Digg quite a lot.
The new iphone is what the original should have been and they are a nice gadget indeed, and much more reasonably priced than last year’s.
Don’t unlock them, though. They will cease to function. And no one will help you when they do.
And who cares if it’s a lousy phone or the service is poor? It’s an iPhone!
In other words, while the accidents may have lousy coverage, the substance never drops a call.
Gadget lust is an essential driver of the economy. Do it for the children.
Full disclosure: I work for the insane bloated megagiant that provides iPhone Service. Thus, in that service, I insist that you abstain from desecrating them, that my salary remains safe. Otherwise I might have to call you all bigots.
Also, I don’t have one. Because the company won’t give me one for free.
You can unlock it (illegally). Or you can go to Europe to purchase one unlocked (legally).
Hmm, Baracoda still isn’t making a iPhone package for it’s bluetooth based barcode scanners. I still need a phone I can do business with.
I’m working on an antiquated HTC 8125. It still works.
Well, most of the time it works.
iPhones are easy to unlock. There are even places you can go to that will unlock it for you for about 20 bucks.
Don’t settle, PZ. The real ubergeek buys Neo Freerunner, and runs Linux apps on his phone. A biologist especially needs GPS, so that when he spots that rare specimen from his canoe, he can pull up lat-lon, to find the spot again. They even thoughtfully included a lanyard attachment.
;-)
iPhone? Nah.
I wouldn’t want an iTouch. I’d never get a chance to use it.
When I first got my iPhone I tried to connect to public Wifi hotspots. I soon realized there are very few of them, at least in my suburban neighborhood (which is a dense, high tech corridor). Having EDGE connectivity has been a lifesaver.
It’s been sweet to read SciBlogs on the run. Commenting still sucks, and the feature I long for most is a “Alt-Home” like shortcut so that I can navigate to the top of these massive Pharyngula cracker posts. Scrolling takes forever!
I picked one up and am having a great time with it thus far. Already feels indispensible…
Internet – *proper* internet – everywhere is a killer feature for me.
Heh. The last time I actually used one was after the Expelled expulsion — I got to use Richard Dawkins’ iPhone for a bit, and yeah, scrolling through the comments on that one did seem a little tedious.
My experience with my iPod nano has convinced me — and the people who struggled alongside me to make the damn thing function — never to buy an Apple product. And hey, I got the iPod as an X-mas gift, so from one perspective, it was a free lesson.
You shameless name-dropper!
Oh, I definitely want an iPhone 3G. However, I was very disappointed that the first iteration only had a maximum of 16 GB storage space. I need more, which is why I’m not upgrading my old first generation iPhone until Apple releases a version of the iPhone 3G with 32 GB storage (minimum).
Actually, v.2.0 of the iPhone software is what really shines. It’s a marked improvement (particularly the Exchange support, which lets me finally access my work e-mail) and I can download Apps to my old phone just as well as they can be downloaded to the 3G. The vast majority of my web surfing on the iPhone is on wifi networks anyway; so the increased speed of the 3G network alone is not sufficiently compelling in the absence of more storage. Ditto the GPS features.
I know that Apple will up the storage to 16 GB and 32 GB eventually, and I’d be shocked if it doesn’t happen before Christmas. I can wait a few months for that, and for the bugs to be ironed out.
I’ve never checked up with apple’s phones. Not since they ran flashy commercials advertising common features that I’d been enjoying on other phones for years already.
Be careful – there are places in this country where using the camera in your iphone can get you arrested.
Awesome.
Glad to see you’re on board with open source / open access.
Steve Jobs is a control freak.
The MacBook Air and the iPhone are the epitome of what I dislike about Apple, and Apple is the epitome of what I dislike about gadgets and computers.
But I have had 3 iPods.
Back in the day, the iPod was about the only (barely decent) game in town, and it was already in its 3rd Gen, so at least I’ll give Apple that. I basically just got locked in with the neat accessories. There were no wireless remotes that connected to the dock at the time for other players, and even now there are no radio remotes for other players that I can tell. And the ONLY car accessory that I use, is only made by one brand (Belkin) and only for the iPod. So it’s a shiny, pretty, mediocre-to-good-enough music player, pretty bad video player (which I don’t use it at all for), with a great array of accessories which got me locked in.
I also had the iPod Touch for a while, and when hacked and with homebrew software, it was so-so (there’s a super-cool app that will let you use it as a multitouch pad and keyboard, via WiFi to your PC). But without the aid of said apps, unhacked it was a total piece of crap, so I returned it.
I want one sooo badly. Since i have turned my life over to a higher power, Google, i’d love to have access to it everywhere.
I prefer my Blackberry, and with the 3g version Blackberry Bold coming out, it’s going to be even better. The iPhone is all looks, and the keyboard sucks. Give me tensile buttons any day, not smudgey glass… eeeeeewwwwwwwwwww.
If your wife needs help, I’ll be happy to oblige… :)
If you are going to quote the Bible (KJV) PZ you may as well give the references. The phrase “Get thee behind me, Satan” appears three times in the gospels. You were probably thinking of the temptation of Jesus in Luke but here is the phrase in Mark 8:31-34:
“31And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
32And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.
33But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.
34And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
Biblegateway.com is a great resource for everyone.
I know there are those who despise it, but I can honestly say I have never been more happy with ANY purchase of a technology product in my life. I use my iPhone constantly. I have a long comute to work and listen to audiobooks in the car, watch movies during lunch, surf the web waiting in a clients lobby, use my email and now with so many awesome new apps its like having a brand new phone for free.
That is the biggest selling point of the iPhone, every new update brings more and more unique features ( and some that should have been on it to begin with ).
Its flawed, but I would not trade it for any other device.
I rarely even need to bring my laptop to client meetings anymore as I can just access salesforce through my phone.
Thants one geeks perspective anyway TIFWIW
I can see the PC apologists are suffering from Mac envy again and are lashing out at the iPhone. Running iTunes on a PC seems almost sacrilegious to me… and I’m an atheist. Any bugginess must come from Windows or Vista because it works great on my MacPro, MacBookPro and the iMacs my son and wife use.
PZ… as long as yours or another carrier uses sim chips the phone can be unlocked. Try to buy the first model from someone who gets the new one, I’m sure they will popping up on ebay, then you won’t have to be owned by ATT for 2 years. Most of the new apps will run on it but you’ll be minus the quasi GPS.
If you lean towards an iPod Touch, wait. The price should be coming down because they will probably switch to a new case like the iPhone did.
RE Blake and the iPod Nano: My wife and son use theirs with absolutely no problem to watch videos, listen to music, podcasts, photos, etc. I cannot understand what difficulties you could have had… unless maybe you are on a PC….
“I’d have to rely on my wife’s ability to slap and shackle me to prevent wasteful spending.*”
You make it sound like a bad thing.
#32
That officer is in serious trouble. He’s gonna get his ass sued.
If you’re a photographer, you should at the very least always carry this with you.
http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
5 reasons to avoid the iPhone 3G.
Is iTunes still a bloaty pile of crap? And is there still no way around using on new iPod/iPhone things? I seriously turned against Apple when the started putting those crypto chip things to stop you using AmaroK.
“Most of the new apps will run on it but you’ll be minus the quasi GPS”
It’s real GPS. In fact it’s better than regular GPS because it uses the cellphone towers to speed up locating where you are.
Three computers, three operating systems, three failures.
Oh, and now the headphones are falling apart.
PZ: “I have been tempted many times by that over-expensive sexy slab of technology called the iPhone”
Pope envy?
iTunes works great on my PC. Never had a problem.
It’s possible that with more fiddling I could have gotten GTKPod to work on my Ubuntu box, thereby obviating the need for iTunes, but even if I got files successfully transferred to the iPod in such a manner that it could use them (instead of thinking that music tracks were video games), I couldn’t play the majority of my music archive. This is what you get for having lived with an audiophile and getting all your CDs ripped as Ogg Vorbis.
@42: I approve of the concept, but that Freerunner screen-shot is fugly.
I agree with Jeff Arnold, get an HTC product if you’re looking into one of these types of phones. I’ve messed around with the iPhone enough to know that any current HTC product beats the pants off of the iPhone. They may not be as pretty or have the cool factor, but there is just soooo much more you can do with a Windows Mobile device. Plus, they’re offered on multiple carriers, so no problem finding one that’ll work.
The iPhone is the best designed piece of electronics I have ever used. Apple rocks when it comes to design, and leaves everything else in the dust. The iPhone does everything, check and send email, keep hundreds of phone numbers that are easily added to the directory, it is a great quality phone, the apps are fantastic, and it is only $199. It interfaces without problem and natively with a Mac, and has dozens of other features that blow other phones out of the water. Its reception is better than my previous phones, and I have internet and digital phone service in the boonies of West Virginia.
Uuuuhhhh, thank you, Louise…
Blake:
I suspect operator error.
I’d buy the next Mac mini though, for portability. I generally don’t care for laptops (why pay for the freaking display unless absolutely necessary!) and I have displays available at work. It’s by far the most un-Apple Apple product. But, I probably wouldn’t if I couldn’t install Windows on it (yes, WINDOWS!), and since I already have 3 Windows PCs, I want a Mac OSX one to see what the fuss is all about that OS (have used it, but not had time to tinker with it). Hopefully they do come out with a new one though, now that Montevina is out.
Dude,
Wait for Android to come out. Might be out late this year. It´s gonna kick the iPhone´s ass, and it´s backed up by Google.
It’s real GPS. In fact it’s better than regular GPS because it uses the cellphone towers to speed up locating where you are.
Posted by: Brian W. | July 17, 2008 1:07 PM
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great feature. At this point it does not function as a full GPS giving realtime driving directions. My guess is that is coming.
A GPS locates your position. It doesn’t tell you where to drive. This is an unrelated feature.
So what sorta things can the HTC products do that the iPhone cant? I may have to change my mind.
With the possible exception of the starmap doodad, those “science applications for the iPhone” would be remarkably useless for me, too.
Why am I feeling so let down by the twenty-first century?
Wow. I gather most of you haven’t used the NEW 2.0 software on the iPhone. Or have even used one for more than 10 minutes.
HTC touch? Ouch.
Is it the best thing to view comments on PZ’s blog? Nope.
Is it the best phone browser to do it on? YES.
Here’s an idea… Scienceblogs could create a reader like the NY TIMES app for the iPhone. That would rock.
Wait, you *don’t* want your wife to shackle and slap you?
Different strokes, I guess. . .
What i’ve read on other sites has said that TomTom (and probably other companies as well) are developing software that’ll give turn by turn direction on the iPhone.
E.V.:
“Operator error” is why the iPod can’t parse an Ogg Vorbis file? Carrying headphones in the operator’s laptop bag makes the earbuds break open?
but there is just soooo much more you can do with a Windows Mobile device
?
Im not trying to bait here, really curious as to what that might be? With the new apps, the iPhone can do things no windows mobile platform can duplicate, but I really am not aware of anything WM can do that the iphone now can not. ( ok, except cut and paste, thats annoying )
I have tried the HTC phones and I could not begin to tolerate that interface after gettng used to the user experience of the iPhone.
Again not trying to be a smart ass, serious question, what can windows mobile do that the a 3G iPhone with 700+ apps can not?
But the iPod Touch is a great alternative to the iPhone. It only lacks the camera, gps and phone service. I’m pretty sure it does everything else.
Open source fanatics don’t seem to understatnd that most of don’t want to become programmers and just want our computers to function easily with the lowest learning curve possible. Apple has always understood that basic premise. I use mine as a tool in film production. I have no desire to become a computer geek. And that is not meant to a diss those who are… that’s what they do and we all benefit from it. It’s just not what I want to do.
Oh no.
I have books and tuition to pay for! Rent and food! But … but… ARTIFICIAL DNA IN THE PALM OF MY HAND!?
=( Thanks a lot, PZ! I’m looking forward to eating ramen for the next two years.
I found iTunes obnoxious. It wanted to run my life. Or at least my music collection. Sure, it was put together just fine. It could be seductive, even. But it had some real control issues, it seemed to me. We broke up. It clearly wasn’t going to work out.
And re Vorbis: Vorbis is a good thing. Apps that don’t support it are the bad thing. So sayeth this Vorbophile. The frickin’ libs are free, compile on just about anything with a half-assed effort. There’s even an integer-only version of the lib for wimpy embedded processors that don’t do floating point. Not supporting it… why, it’s bigotry, I tells ya! Halp! I’m bein’ bigoted.
Re the iPhone, I dunno. I’m actually not that tempted. But then, I’ve got a PSP for on-plane video (purty, purty video). And I *do* also want an HSDPA card for my X41. So I guess we’re all in a state of sin.
I have a Nokia N80ie. It does everything the iPhone does, and some things the iPhone can’t do*. It’s also unlocked, so I can use it on any GSM carrier.
I don’t see what the big deal about iPhones is… the phone doesn’t do anything new or innovative. There’s nothing special about it at all, except, perhaps, the touch-screen interface but that’s well into the realm of “whoop-de-do”.
* it has an FM radio built in, and can do VoIP on my home network.
I’m with #54. Android is not only going to rock the smartphone world, it’s also going to be the hip, user-friendly recruiting tool that the open-source community has needed for years. And it’ll run on the HTC Diamond.
Blake Stacey #62
I agree the earbuds are flimsy. My sister’s also broke.
But why are you using such crappy earphones if you are picky about Vorbis files? I’m sure there are plenty of apps that can convert those to mp3’s.
I even doubt the iPod can output such good quality sound with any headphones that one could be able to hear the difference between a high-quality mp3 and a lossless file. But I am on the skeptic’s side of the lossless and “high definition” hoopla of “audiophile” culture anyway.
I do put my music in Apple Lossless into my iPod whenever I can, but that’s just because of storing issues.
phhhht. Yeah the Nokie App store is AWESOME! ha.
Here’s the deal, kids: Touch screens work better than buttons, and allow phones to be smaller than otherwise would be possible. All the companies that the hatas here are saying make better products: Y’all realize that they’re all hopping onto the touch-screen bandwagon too, right? Buttons are on the way out, buckaroos.
The big problem, and part of the reason for the cost of the iPhone and the touch, is that the screens Apple uses make up $20 of the cost of each device. They had a choice between that screen and an inferior one that would have cost $5 per unit, but they went with the better model.
As for the Air: Just you wait. Within five years’ time the solid-state drive will have made the first true hand-held computers possible and affordable. Within a decade’s time it will rule the entire laptop field. All because Apple pushed the boundaries of what is currently possible.
The reason I’d like to play Ogg files is because that’s how most of my music is stored. Why should I have to convert the music I’ve already got into a different format just to be able to hear it while I’m walking around? Hey, even with the best headphones, Cambridge streets ain’t exactly quiet places, so high-fidelity sound isn’t really the issue.
If only they would team up with Sprint…
Currently, the 2G’s are ridiculously easy to unlock. The 3G’s are not unlockable yet, but the predominate iPhone hacking group has reported that they are making progress and expect to have something in the near future. They have already figured out how to jailbreak the 3G (to run unsigned software) and we should be getting release on that very soon.
For people who are scared about the prospect of any of this, it’s stupidly easy to revert the phone back to a 100% clean factory state because of a special recovery mode Apple built into the hardware.
Two words: U. Buntu.
Seriously, open-source fanatics do understand the value of accessibility, or at least enough of them do that real progress has been made (installing and using Linux ain’t like it was in 2003). It’s hard, but it ain’t impossible.
Others may have suggested this already, but you could get an iPod Touch instead. No phone bills, you can use WiFi hotspots and there is likely to be an iP phone client on it soon, if there’s not one already. I’m thinking I’ll get the v2 Touch as soon as it comes out. I don’t want the damned phone. My time is little enough free of intrusions as it is.
@59
The best mobile web browser will be Fennic aka FireFox Mobile (available now in kludgy prototype form), and will likely come standard with Android installs.
@65
Not everybody in the open-source community is expected to be a programmer. The beauty of open-source is that there are thousands of creative people out there building free(!) tools for you all the time, and all the active participation they require from you is your assistance with distributing and/or constructive feedback on how to make the next version better.
The antecedent of “it” in that last sentence should have been “making progress”.
I knew that, but come on, it’s pretty easy to convert those, even if it takes an hour, you can just let the program run converting them and go grab a bite, can’t you? And you already have the iPod, so nothing to lose.
Well, I should amend my comment by saying any HTC product…except the Touch. Didn’t really care for that one myself. Most of the HTC products have a full QWERTY keyboard, which really comes in handy. I hate putting my fingers on the screen. A stylus and a keyboard are much better, I think. And Windows Mobile already has loads of apps for it, a considerable number of which are free. The mobile version IE isn’t that great, but there are other browsers which offer basically a full desktop browsing experience. NetFront is the best by far, even though it’s still in beta, but there are others that are great, also. So, with the QWERTY keyboard and NetFront, you actually can pretty much do anything that you can on a desktop.
Canuck: Yeah, I have a touch — got it so my spouse could check his e-mail when he was on a bidness trip. Works wonderfully. We don’t even bother with styluses — fingertips work fine. My next purchase might be a Solio charger so I can power the thing with light power.
Well, my background cycles are being used up by simulations and stuff, so not really. :-/ The hardware itself has turned flaky in the past couple weeks (ever since I got back from TAM 6), and I don’t know why, so it may all become a moot point soon enough.
Really, if I found an appropriately cool way to destroy it, I’d get more entertainment than I did during the entire period it was functioning. Suggestions welcome.
Blake:
I keeed, I keeeed, my friend.
Gotta go. I’m taking the kids to see Hellboy II.
@72
Wait, wait, waitaminute . . . APPLE pushed the boundaries? MacBook Air released this Jan. 29, almost five months after the first EEE PC. Sure, it’s a smaller drive, but the point was affordable portability, not Apple-riffic gee-whiz factor.
Oh, I forgot to add not being an Apple product as the best feature of HTC phones. Indeed, if Satan were real, he would be Steve Jobs. :)
Have it put in your mouth by a priest and swallow it?
Whoops!!! We’re talking about the iPod nano here, I swear that was unintentional.
As for the Air: Just you wait. Within five years’ time the solid-state drive will have made the first true hand-held computers possible and affordable.
“True” handheld computers are already here. Who needs a behemoth like an Air? :)
I can’t pass this one up. There’s people here accusing other people who don’t think the ipod/iphone products are useful as apple haters.
I have trouble accepting that argument as anything other then the believers argument that I hate his god and therefore do not believe in him(or her).
I guess it’s hard to accept that someone might find other products more useful then whatever Apple makes.
Blake,
I’m pretty sure it’ll blend.
Completely off topic, but since the furor erupted and your email has been jammed, our emails for the upcoming Carnival may have been lost. Forwarded them again today to both your email and the Carnival email per Dana’s suggestion.
I should go out and buy an eee today. The internet says you can tex and kile running easily enough. I could write up papers on the train. It would be like living in the not too distant future.
I haven’t read the other comments but have little doubt there’s been some choice language exchanged between apple lovers/critics.
Personally I’m on the side of the critics. I can’t believe how rational people fall for the hype. Nokia have been selling cheaper, better phones with more features throughout the IPhone’s lifetime.
There is a young programmer sitting near to me at work who’s been getting into a fine frenzy over the new IPhone. Today I got his attention with a “—, I’ve been reading about the new IPhone and guess what?!!” … then … “Its 3G enabled!” (OMG face). I mean for heaven’s sake. There are hundreds of phones out there that have been 3G enabled forever. WTF?
installing and using Linux ain’t like it was in 2003). It’s hard, but it ain’t impossible.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 17, 2008 1:46 PM
I rest my case…
Aren’t you the one who couldn’t get iTunes and the Nano to work?
I can’t pass this one up. There’s people here accusing other people who don’t think the ipod/iphone products are useful as apple haters.
Posted by: Dutch Delight | July 17, 2008 2:06 PM
Funny.. it seems just the opposite to me.
I’m pretty sure it’ll blend.
If you do that, there’s so gotta be video…
(…Sent out as a Theora stream, natch.)
Yes, the iPhone is very sexy, and as much of an Apple fan that I am…I’m kind of on the fence about the iPhone.
See, they won’t allow you to play your music on it. You have to buy everything from Apple. And they are big pushers in the whole DRM thing.
Anyways, so the cost doesn’t end with the high sticker price of the phone, but it continues with using it. I mean, if you aren’t going to have music, videos, etc on it…what is the point of getting one? So, they know they have you cornered with the whole DRM thing. You are sentenced to spend, spend, and spend.
I love my iPod though! ;) I can upload whatever the hell I want no matter how the hell I obtained it! hehe
my wife’s ability to slap and shackle me
– Ha, we KNEW you were kinky!
– Pics or it didn’t happen
– Bonus points for including a cracker!
OK reading the comments here, as elsewhere, I get the impression that most people who love iPhones don’t do a lot of comparative shopping. Unique features? What unique features? The iPhone doesn’t even do things some other phones do, nor does it do all the things it does do as well as some other phones.
These are the kinds of consumer attitudes that propelled MS to the forefront of many niches in the software market with crappier products. Word was originally substantially worse than Wordperfect, Excel didn’t come close to Lotus 1-2-3 and IE was crappy compared to Netscape. But millions of people gravitated to brand alone out of ignorance.
Consumers who flock to Apple’s competent but far from extraordinary products like the iPhone then carry on like its the best thing on the market are much the same.
Seems to me like you’d want to keep the Prince of Darkness in front of you where you can keep an eye on him.
Unless you have specific plans for what you want him to do while behind you.
“See, they won’t allow you to play your music on it.”
Huh?
I am sure the fundies will now have hope for you in that you mentioned SATAN!
Of course, the church lady on SNL told us that santa is actually a misspelling of satan! So, maybe satan or santa will bring you a new iPhone on the birthday of someone whom everyone is going crackers over!
Please tell me, PZ, that you don’t get sucked in by iPhones, sunroofs and power windows on cars, voltage sensitive dyes for electrophysiology, and MD simulations?
If so, this is my resignation from your cult, effective immediately. I’m ajoinin’ the Mormons!
See, they won’t allow you to play your music on it. You have to buy everything from Apple.
Posted by: Goldfishflakes | July 17, 2008 2:34 PM
Don’t know where you got that idea from. The iPhone is also an iPod and plays any music you put into iTunes… mp3s, aiffs, ripped, whatever. You don’t have to buy a single song from Apple.
Best not to comment if you don’t know what you are talking about.
Please tell me, PZ, that you don’t get sucked in by iPhones, sunroofs and power windows on cars, voltage sensitive dyes for electrophysiology, and MD simulations?
If so, this is my resignation from your cult, effective immediately. I’m ajoinin’ the Mormons!
Well, I’m not a complete Apple hater. I’ll admit that they know how to put a computer together and they can make a pretty piece of technology. And they have some top-notch marketing going on. They stay way ahead on style, but, like someone above said, they generate a lot of hype for releasing features that other maufacturers have had on the market for years. Good luck convincing an Apple fanboy of that, though. Like talking to a brick wall, lol. No offence to any who may be here. :)
Seems like some people are really going out of their way to try and miss the point. Believe it or not there are people that care about more than just how many features something has. Some people care about things like the ease of use.
I particularly like the accusing people of not being skeptical enough over things that are completely subjective. So what’s the proper favorite color for a skeptic?
Number one reason to buy an iPhone: It runs on Darwin!
http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/GS_Darwin/index.html
(No, I don’t have one – looking for an unlocked 2G version for cheep.)
Trying to use a device to play a file it was never designed to play does strike as operator error, I’m afraid. Assuming you still have the CDs, why not just re-rip them (assuming you actually want to use the iPod, and aren’t just being gratuitously curmudgeonly)? You could still use the Vorbis files at home.
I had to look up Ogg Vorbis, and I must say I don’t see the appeal: Stipulating for the sake of argument that it sounds better than MP3, so what? Portable music players are the 21st century equivalent of the transistor radio; expecting to get concert-hall sound through those earbuds is silly (to be fair, I’m mostly listening to talk-radio podcasts, rather than chamber music, but still…).
As for the open-source aspect… all I can say is that for many of us, the ability to tweak, modify, and otherwise get behind the interface of a consumer product looks like a Bug, Not a Feature™. I don’t want to modify or tweak or develop my music player, anymore than I want to rebuild the engine of my car; I just want it to work.
That’s always been the genius of Apple: It’s not about being on the bleeding edge of geekdom; it’s about making (relatively) simple, great looking machines that regular people can use pretty much without thinking about them. If that’s not your thing, I get it… but the fact that the Apple ethos might not meet your personal needs doesn’t mean they’re bad products.
Anecdote. My own anecdote is that the original earbuds from my 2+-year-old iPod nano are still going strong, despite the fact that I wear them working out and mowing the lawn and in other unfriendly environments, and rather rudely chucking them in my gym bag when I’m not using them. YMMV.
So, PZ, now that you’ve mentioned Richard, we all know he’s on O2 here in the UK.
And no, iPhone isn’t sold unlocked in the UK or France (AFAIK) so I wouldn’t really recommend. Besides, wait for a few months, maybe Apple is going to “upgrade” its collection like it did with the MacBook.
I haven’t read all the comments (tired and busy), but I just have to say that the new iPhone is by far both the best phone and the best gadget I’ve ever owned. I had the original iPhone and the new one is far faster on the 3G network than the original was on the Edge network.
I find myself often using the iPhone in preference to my laptop or iMac. I’ve loaded it up with calculator and converter apps, interactive to do managers, voice recorders (that auto transcribe on the app company’s server then email to you), on and on. I’ve got something like 4 full screens of apps on it now. Had a complex (for me anyway) emergency calculation to do yesterday for an environmental issue and used the iPhone to do it quickly, making use of the converters. The iPhone is way cool and way useful.
Posted by: Brian W. | July 17, 2008 2:54 PM
Agreed.
“they generate a lot of hype for releasing features that other maufacturers have had on the market for years. Good luck convincing an Apple fanboy of that, though. Like talking to a brick wall, lol. No offence to any who may be here. :)”
Posted by: Steven Mooney | July 17, 2008 2:53 PM
You completely miss the point. As Brian pointed out, it’s not when the app came out as much as how you use and access it. It’s all in the GUI. Drill down keyboard driven menus suck. I find it funny that non Apple users are so defensive and feel like they always have to lash out at Apple… reminds of those who always dissing the genital size of others out of insecurity. No offense to any who may be here. ;^ )
Mayhempix-
first of all calm down…do you have f*ck’n stock in apple or something? I got my info from here:
http://lifehacker.com/398658/why-youre-better-off-avoiding-the-iphone
I got the new iphone and so far like it. I wanted it for the syncing factor with my Mac computer. So far it does what i want it to.
Why does the world have to be divided into “apple users” and supposed insecure secretly jealous non-apple user?? What, are we in second grade still?
I’m not (as many aren’t i’m sure) against APPLE. I simply critique a product independently of their brand. I love the iPod…and perhaps some day when Apple wises up and offers a more open iPhone (in all aspects) I will own a iPhone too.
I would own a Mac, but as a college student I can’t afford one.
Still no jetpacks.
first of all calm down…do you have f*ck’n stock in apple or something? I got my info from here:
http://lifehacker.com/398658/why-youre-better-off-avoiding-the-iphone
Posted by: Goldfishflakes | July 17, 2008 3:12 PM
Trying to spin what I am to run from you own embarrassment only serves to dig you in deeper. You bought the conspiracy kooks line hook, line and sinker without finding out if it was true. Better luck next time.
1. Why wasn’t it designed to play those files?
2. Actually, the vast majority of my CDs are boxed up in storage a couple thousand kilometers away, so re-ripping isn’t an option.
Yeah, different strokes, etc. Setting aside the issue that a corporate juggernaut employing restrictive DRM technology might be bad for lots of people — that’s honestly something I don’t really care about arguing — I suppose my problem is that I’m not on the cutting edge of geekdom. I’m a late adopter of everything from Linux to camera phones. I kept using the same laptop, with substantially the same software, for almost three years, only having to buy a new one when a sudden downpour damaged its power supply. I did what a “regular person” would do — plugged my shiny new iPod into a computer — and it didn’t work. On three different computers. Oh, eventually it did, a few reformats and upgrades later, and I got a device with which to play Freezepop’s “Shark Attack” whenever I wanted, but that shiny new-toy smell sure wore off fast.
Hail Mr. T.
I pity the fool who has a Facebook account and is paranoid about people following them using GPS on his iPhone.
Just sayin’.
p.s.: When you live in London though, the last of your worries is the GPS on your iPhone. See why.
first of all calm down
You’re the one who seems to be hyperventilating.
do you have f*ck’n stock in apple or something?
For saying that a GUI is nicer than a keypad? Seriously?
From the quoted site:
“But even as I affixed duct tape over the Apple logo on my iPhone and Mac in a minor fit of rebellion…”
Yeah, I don’t see a problem getting useful information from someone so childish. Did he stick his tongue out at a picture of Steve Jobs while he was at it?
Lol, I’m not being defensive or insecure. Sure, I don’t buy into all the hype, but I’m not saying they’re bad products or anything. Apple products are good if that is what you need/want and if you prefer their GUI. They just don’t have the particular features that I want and I happen to prefer a windows GUI. It’s all about personal preference. If, in the future, an Apple product better suits my needs, then I’ll be all over it. At the moment, desktop-wise, I’m into building and overclocking my own systems, which is impossible with Apple products. Phone-wise, I’m more comfortable with the Windows Mobile interface and love the customizability and wealth of programs that it offers. The size of genitals has nothing to do with it, lol.
Number one reason to buy an iPhone: It runs on Darwin!
I’ve read mail for years now with Evolution.
Ahem. As I tried to clarify, the thing about open-source software development is that it has made substantially more user-friendly products over the past several years. What was a laborious installation in 2003 was mildly irksome in 2005 and smooth as silk two weeks ago. Making user-friendly software is what is difficult, but possible.
Good luck convincing an Apple fanboy of that, though. Like talking to a brick wall, lol. No offence to any who may be here. :)”
Posted by: Steven Mooney | July 17, 2008 2:53 PM
reminds of those who always dissing the genital size of others out of insecurity. No offense to any who may be here. ;^ )
Posted by: mayhempix | July 17, 2008 3:09 PM
Lol, I’m not being defensive or insecure… The size of genitals has nothing to do with it, lol.
Posted by: Steven Mooney | July 17, 2008 3:24 PM
Mooney “lol” can dish it out but he sure can’t take it “lol”. No sense of humor I guess “lol”.
Aren’t we always talking about how biology has progressed beyond Darwin? I mean, I’m not sure I want to use software which is stuck in 1859.
Why wasn’t it designed to play those files?
Because Apple is about doing a few things well. iPods don’t play Ogg Vorbis because they don’t really need to. I don’t actually expect a consumer device to support every niche audio format out there.
I like my MacBook Pro, it does the things I use it for well, but I spend a good chunk of my time on that laptop running VNC to my Linux machine because I want to go outside the box Apple made for me.
Naked Bunny–
Hmm, being I wasn’t addressing you…
Lifehacker.com — are you seriously questioning that site? And it’s not a “he” that runs it…dumbass.
Mayhempix- you are obviously stupid.
What was a laborious installation in 2003 was mildly irksome in 2005 and smooth as silk two weeks ago.
Also… do they even make iTunes for *nix? Or do you have to run WINE or somethin’? Kinda makes comparisions of the user experience a bit off to begin with, I’d think.
(Apologies, don’t know, not real current. As I said: me ‘n iTunes parted ways a ways back.)
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | July 17, 2008 3:23 PM
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | July 17, 2008 3:32 PM
Well stated in both posts.
Do you like jack rabbits with fur-lined cuffs?
;^ )
“Mayhempix- you are obviously stupid.”
Well, Goldfishflakes, I wasn’t going to go that far. You know, in case I might have to take what I dish out. My ability to do so seems to be in question.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 17, 2008 3:27 PM
Fair enough. I did go back and see that you cut and pasted from another comment that I had atrributed to you… it wasn’t clear on the first reading because the source wasn’t included.
Peace.
To clarify my comments for people who may have taken them to mean “don’t by an iPhone”, they didn’t mean that. I would advise people not to by an iPhone simply because you haven’t looked at other, similar products and believe that it delivers unique features.
Obviously there are people for whom the interface, styling and functionality of the iPhone is exactly what they want. But, having recently convinced an Apple fanboy that another phone had far more of what he was looking for, I know for a fact there are people out there who’s pre-purchase decision-making process goes something like this “It looks nice! Everyone’s talking about it! It must be the best thing I can get!”
Yes, even tech-savvy people.
Gah – somehow I typed “by” twice when I meant “buy” above.
And a format stays “niche” when a popular device doesn’t support it. Neat trick, that. Of course, I could upload new firmware, etc., but that would take me to the bleeding edge of geekdom and obviate that trademark Apple convenience.
Hey, use whatever devices you want for the lifestyle you enjoy. For the most part, it’s no skin off my teeth (maybe there’s some indirect effect where DRM puts a chokehold on artists, etc., etc., leading eventually to a restricted choice of music for me to enjoy, but that’s several stages too nebulous for me to care about today). By the same token, I insist on my right to be underwhelmed.
Now, off to make a nano into a thousand picos.
Another vote for iPod touch (I don’t need more devices that let people find me).
Genuinely Doug — you can effectively do an Alt-Home by tapping the bar at the top of the page. Zooms you right back to the top. Scrolling to the bottom, on the other hand…
#125: “I’m not sure I want to use software which is stuck in 1859.”
Actually, it’s worse than that. The damn thing resets to 1970 in another 30 years:
http://www.unix2038.com/
And OK, if Darwin doesn’t stir your coffee, there’s always the BSD mascot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon
I’m curious how many fundies have bought Apple products.
Lifehacker.com — are you seriously questioning that site? And it’s not a “he” that runs it…dumbass.
Mayhempix- you are obviously stupid.
Posted by: Goldfishflakes | July 17, 2008 3:36 PM
If what you quoted from the site about the iPhone is true, I am questioning it because it is completely wrong. Secondly I never said “he”, I used the plural “kooks”. Not good at details are you?
The open source community is full of conspiracy kooks who also believe the government took down the WTC and the One World Order is out to get us. I’m not saying that is the majority, but as “bunny with a whip” pointed out:
” From the quoted site:
“But even as I affixed duct tape over the Apple logo on my iPhone and Mac in a minor fit of rebellion…”
Yeah, I don’t see a problem getting useful information from someone so childish. Did he stick his tongue out at a picture of Steve Jobs while he was at it?”
Now you are up to your ankles head first… enjoying it? More “dumbass” and “stupid” remarks aren’t going to help.
To Mooney: “lol”
Yeah, that rollover in 2038 might really put a crimp in the Technological Singularity.
I do wish Apple would support more video formats. Most of my porn isn’t in Quicktime :(
BillDauphin: As for the open-source aspect… all I can say is that for many of us, the ability to tweak, modify, and otherwise get behind the interface of a consumer product looks like a Bug, Not a Feature™. I don’t want to modify or tweak or develop my music player, anymore than I want to rebuild the engine of my car; I just want it to work.
So you’re one of the folks destroying the world!
Sorry, anything that I don’t even have the option to break into, whether computer, car, TV, or plumbing system is not for me. I own it, dammit — not the vendor but me; even if I never take the option, I still want it available.
And besides, nothing ever Just Works! for me — it seems my uses are never exactly in line with what I’m supposed to want to use a product for. I’ve had to hack so many OSX boxes to get them to work right (for me), and it’s always so much more time intensive because I’m not supposed to use them for anything other than what Apple, in their awe-inspiring foresight, thought I should use them for.
Turns out your Apple laptop can out-live it’s warranty by many years if you know how to use a soldering iron, and an old G4 can act as a mighty backup if you can get around OSX’s automounting (Just Works, my ass) system.
frog:
What’s wrong with MD simulations? You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced a faceful of virtual atoms hitting you at 100c because you misplaced a sign in your simulation code.
FYI, I discovered last night on my ipod touch that you can jump to the top of a webpage by tapping the status bar at the top of the screen (where the clock is).
That might be a 2.0 thing, I never tried it before the upgrade.
Blake – one thing to do with your Nano would be to give it to someone who plans to buy a new iPod. I think Apple will take it in for recycling, and might give a small discount on the new one.
iPhone… yawn()
#139: “Yeah, that rollover in 2038 might really put a crimp in the Technological Singularity.”
I’m planning to capitalize on it by selling Nixon memorabilia and Jackson 5 posters.
BlakeStacy: Seriously, open-source fanatics do understand the value of accessibility, or at least enough of them do that real progress has been made (installing and using Linux ain’t like it was in 2003). It’s hard, but it ain’t impossible.
Ah, you can do it nowadays with all three eyes closed.
In my day, we had to do it uphill both ways — 40 floppies on a Sun laptop! And burn your own firmware for a DEC Alpha!
Those were the days, when men were men, women were women, and fuzzy little animals were fuzzy (and little, sometimes even green)!
But don’t try to get suspend to work on your Ubuntu laptop — even the Giants of the ancient days can’t make that trick happen.
Epikt: What’s wrong with MD simulations? You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced a faceful of virtual atoms hitting you at 100c because you misplaced a sign in your simulation code.
Well, there you have it. If you’re not simulating ion channels for some archaea living in a deep sea vent (off the Japanese coast, per chance?), what business do you have challenging boiling water, or 500V transmembrane voltages?
And you had better not have missed a single Ca! Or used an electric field cut-off…
I do wish Apple would support more video formats. Most of my porn isn’t in Quicktime :(
Posted by: Brian W. | July 17, 2008 4:00 PM
There are plugins for every video format including wav and avi. There is a reason most professional film and TV post production is done on Macs running Avid or Final Cut.
Here is the link to the MS approved wav ap for QT:
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm
The basic player is free per a contract with MS.
Just be sure and clean up your mess after you are through “watching”.
And burn your own firmware for a DEC Alpha!
A DEC-ade ago, I used to run a site for Linux/Alpha users – with stuff like the latest semi-usable Mozilla build for Red Hat on the Alpha.
Been waiting a while to use that pun …
But don’t try to get suspend to work on your Ubuntu laptop — even the Giants of the ancient days can’t make that trick happen.
Shh! Do not say such things around my Thinkpad X41 Tablet. It might hear you and stop suspending!
I always love these Apple/PC pissing contests. Very funny, almost as bad as the protestant/catholic or suni/shia fights. :-)
I am admittedly an apple fan boy, but to each his own
I did once have a Monte Carlo simulation wherein if I cranked the electric field too high, the computer would crash. Turned out to be virtual electrons being driven so hard they’d scatter right out of the simulation and into the rest of memory.
mayhempix: AVI is just a container. And to be precise, so is WAV.
Also, would everyone _please_ stop equating “PC” with “Windows”? There’s GNU/Linux, the BSDs, ReactOS, …. Many of which also run on Apple hardware.
One of the things that a lot of the naysayers don’t get about the iPhone is that it truly is revolutionary, but not for the reason they may have been told in the marketing. The iPhone is a fully decked out OS X computer in your hand, as is the iPod Touch. It’s not a phone that added some other applications. It’s a mature computer platform that just happens to have a phone. This is the difference. Lots of journalists have said “it’s the platform, stupid”, but nobody is paying attention. This is the real big deal behind the iPhone.
One of my colleagues (we teach in engineering and computer science) bought a Touch and he now has a web site served off of it (it’s running Apache) and he can log in to his desktop machine via terminal from the handheld. As long as he’s in the building during the work day, his web site is available in WiFi. And it’s in his pocket. Try that on your other smart phones.
The ecosystem for this phone is in its infancy. When the phone store reaches 2.0 and the applications reach 2000 in number it will be game over. The user interface is only one part of what makes this “phone” so dangerous. But the big thing is that it’s not a phone. It’s a computer that just happens to have a phone. This is what most people fail to understand. It’s only going to get more and more powerful. Just watch.
Meanwhile I watch my Apple shares, purchased at $8.75 (split adjusted) grow to pay for my kids’ university education. What’s not to like about that.
ThePetey: #150
I always love these Apple/PC pissing contests. Very funny, almost as bad as the protestant/catholic or suni/shia fights. :-)
Nah, Apple/PC pissing contests are just sad — like putting an NFL team logo on your body as a tatoo. NetBSD/Gentoo pissing contests can get bloody, not to even speak about the intergenerational vendettas between VMS and that OS you write by hand in assembly for the CDC 6600!
Now, those look like the millenium old battle between the Armenians and the Copts over who gets to put their lawn chair in the afternoon sun at the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
My cell phone makes and recieves phone calls. That’s all. That’s all I want.
Sorta related to the above: Blake, there are smallish, flash-based players that do Vorbis, if you do want the format on a device you can carry around. I have a little MPIO one that does (it also does MP3, coupla other things, I think). And Rockbox will do it on a first-gen Nano (first-gen only; later generations have a firmware encryption scheme that prevents installation).
re: Glen Davidson’s completely off-topic atheist tirade about Nabovok’s pondering the mysteries of mimicry
Methinks the atheist doth protest too much. Could he be a theist in the making? “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail…” (Rom. 8:22).
… not to even speak about the intergenerational vendettas between VMS and that OS you write by hand in assembly for the CDC 6600!
I dunno… I like my squabbles intimate, familial, and bitterly personal…
Like Debian vs. Ubuntu. That one’s awesome.
(Shakes fist…) You UBastards!
Oh come on PZ, Apple is for zombies – fuck apple, fuck iphone, fuck at&t – don’t be a sheep!
Is there a single piece of functionality that the iPhone does that is revolutionary? No. It is not the first camera phone. It is not the first smartphone. It is not the first phone with a touchscreen. What is revolutionary about it is that it is the first device that put these together in a way that makes me actually want to use the device. I’ve used smartphones before and hated every second of it (don’t get me started on the atrocious BlackBerry interface), but everything about the iPhone is geared to the user experience and it shows. So, on paper, there is nothing the iPhone does that is revolutionary, but the way it does it sells the device.
mayhempix: AVI is just a container. And to be precise, so is WAV.
Posted by: AnonCoward23 | July 17, 2008 5:00 PM
Also, would everyone _please_ stop equating “PC” with “Windows”? There’s GNU/Linux, the BSDs, ReactOS, …. Many of which also run on Apple hardware.
Posted by: AnonCoward23 | July 17, 2008 5:02 PM
These are typical comments by computer geeks with nothing better to do than demand people understand inconsequential technicalities that have no bearing on what they do.
Most of the general public thinks “PC” and “Windows” are synonymous, with some understanding that Linux also runs on a PC. For their needs they are.
As a film and video professional that works with all image formats almost everyday, I can promise you that no one in our field refers to wav or avi as “containers”. They are referred to as wav files, avi files, etc. The fact that the terms refer technically to the container that carry the encoded info has absolutely no bearing on how we use or talk about them. We convert wav files to a pro QT format for Final Cut and to Avid OMFs for the Avid when working on Mac stations. QT is the default Standard and High Def video formats.
Robot. Fuck you. :D
I’m an art director and my Macs have always helped me get my job done. It’s a dependable tool I’ve used for over 20 years in its various forms.
Now I have a mac in my pocket.
Zombies rule by the way.
“If you are going to quote the Bible (KJV) PZ you may as well give the references.”
Don’t be silly, he was obviously quoting the White Stripes.
Robot. Fuck you. :D
I’m an art director and my Macs have always helped me get my job done. It’s a dependable tool I’ve used for over 20 years in its various forms.
Now I have a mac in my pocket.
Zombies rule by the way.
Posted by: Steve_C | July 17, 2008 5:28 PM
I can remember in the 80s I was a broadcast producer at an ad agency and the “creatives” took over running the shop from the “suits”. Literally overnight the 10 meg PCs were replaced with Macs and the writers and art directors were dancing in the isles.
mayhempix: That AVI is a container _is_ important. Whether you can actually watch/convert/whatever an AVI depends on whether the actual streams that are in the AVI are of a format known to your programs. If the streams are, for example, Theora and DTS, and your programs don’t understand these codecs, well, your SOL, even though it’s still a valid AVI.
Most of the general public thinks “PC” and “Windows” are synonymous
Argumentum ad populum. It still doesn’t make it true.
I mean, how could you possibly compare PCs and Macs when you only have such a narrow tunnel view?!?
That like comparing and board games, when all you consider is the overly reliance on chance in 5 cards stud poker and the meaness of hotels on Park Place in Monopoly.
As a film and video professional
A film and video professional that doesn’t know the different between the codec and the actual stream formats. Great.
We convert wav files to a pro QT format for Final Cut
With quality decrease when the WAVs already had lossy encoded streams. Super.
QT is the default Standard and High Def video formats
I’ll rather have a more open standard than H.264, thank you very much.
When I read the post, I thought “this is going to bring the Apple haters out of the woodwork”. I was right. Myself, I just want something that does the job and I don’t have to spend much time learning. Linux and Windows users love to fiddle with their systems, but I don’t see the point. It’s the difference between hot rod builders and the folk that go out and buy a new Prius. I know I know. Apple users are pussies and over pay for their devices. We think we are paying for design elegance and genius far above any displayed by any other consumer electronics company.
BTW AT&T sucks big.
Just say no.
Either that, or you are! ;^)
I confess I don’t understand this idea that you have to be able to diddle around with the innards of something in order to feel like you own it. I have this theory that because personal computers were originally exclusively the province of hobbyists and tinkers, a certain segment of our culture doesn’t think a computer is any good unless it allows you to tinker with it. Now that nearly everything is a computer, folks seem to think they need to be able to tinker with everything.
The problem is, things that are designed with tinkerers in mind don’t just allow tinkering, they demand it. But I buy phones and audio players to make phonecalls and play audio, not so I’ll have more stuff to tinker with. I need results, not more projects!
I’m not some sort of neo-Luddite, either. I was the “first kid on my block” to have a computer, and I’ve been an early adopter all my life. It’s just that I want my technology to work for me, not give me work to do.
Imagine the unmitigated gall of someone designing a tool thinking it would be used to do what it’s designed to do!! I mean… seriously, dude….
As it happens, my iPod nano plays audio very well, with an absolute minimum of unnecessary effort on my part… which is precisely what it was designed to do, and precisely what I expected when I bought it.
Those apps are cool and all, but the really slick one is the oscilloscope by Faber Acoustical.
-jcr
When will primates ever stop arguing over who has the fanciest technology. I just came from Congo, and all you see are hairy idiots arguing over their fancy gizmos. There’s my brother for instance, using the forked twig to reach for termites, and my cousin, that stupid bastard uses the frayed twig. I keep telling him to upgrade to the forked twig, but he doesn’t listen. You would think he lives in the simple twig age. Hasn’t he heard of the frayed twig revolution? Well, if you can accept a frayed twig, why not just jump on the bandwagon and get yourself the forked one. Or better yet, I hear rumors that next year, they’re coming out with the Forked twig with the frayed ends.
Does anyone have a banana by the way? These termites can be annoying sometimes.
he stiffed Steve Wozniak for $2k.
Considering the fact that SJ convinced Woz to start a business that made him hundreds of millions of dollars, I doubt that Woz has any issue with $2K one way or the other.
-jcr
If you’re thinking of desecrating an iPhone, it’s already been done and documented on video (courtesy of Blendtec blenders):
http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=iphone
BD: I confess I don’t understand this idea that you have to be able to diddle around with the innards of something in order to feel like you own it. I have this theory that because personal computers were originally exclusively the province of hobbyists and tinkers, a certain segment of our culture doesn’t think a computer is any good unless it allows you to tinker with it. Now that nearly everything is a computer, folks seem to think they need to be able to tinker with everything.
You got it backwards, timeways. Back in the good ‘ol days, before the Second Great War, everyone assumed that everything was to be tinkered with. They didn’t just buy new stuff and dispose of the old — they fixed and extended their stuff. Everyone was their own mechanic and engineer — if it was beyond them, they found a buddy, or hired someone to work with them. Things were tools to be used and reused, not one shot single use appliances. Folks weren’t consumers of products, they were users of tools — genus Homo and all that. Ninety year old women usually have a better idea of how everything works than the most macho 20 year old guy.
Imagine the unmitigated gall of someone designing a tool thinking it would be used to do what it’s designed to do!! I mean… seriously, dude….
Nah, what you want is an appliance. A tool isn’t designed to do One Thing. I can change the blades on my table-saw, futz with the motor, add attachments, rearrange it’s spatial orientation, and repair it when it gets damaged. What you’re describing is more like a toaster — you put in bread, and out comes toast. Simple object, for a singular use — if it breaks, you dump it and buy a new one. Even by putting in waffles you’ve overextended the product.
You young’uns want your food masticated for you — I’d rather break a tooth on dry gravel-filled bread than that! Computers are universal computation machines — treating them like appliances is Just Plain Evil (I’ve registered the trademark!).
Oh, so much worse than mistreating crackers.
they won’t allow you to play your music on it. You have to buy everything from Apple
What’s your next guess?
Not only can you rip your own CDs with iTunes and put them on the iPhone, you can also buy tracks through the iTunes music store that don’t have DRM. Look for the little plus signs in the list of songs when you search.
-jcr
A film and video professional that doesn’t know the different between the codec and the actual stream formats. Great.
With quality decrease when the WAVs already had lossy encoded streams. Super.
I’ll rather have a more open standard than H.264, thank you very much.
Posted by: AnonCoward23 | July 17, 2008 6:13 PM
Listen up dickhead… of course I know the difference between the stream formats and the codecs. Like I clearly stated we don’t refer to them as “containers.” I have every codec you could possibly think of. Plus we never use wav files if we can help it except for rough cuts for preview or documentaries when ther is no ther source.
We use full res Pro QTs with no loss. H.264 otherwise known as mpeg4 is used for small screen compression and is the best compression I have seen for that use. Much of my work is in 1040i Hi-Def formats and 35mm film scans up to 16k… and you?
When you have the Clios, Cannes Lions, Emmy nominations and film festival awards to show for your work we can talk.
Otherwise fuck off poseur.
Not that the comment was addressed to me, but I do own Apple stock, and I thank the Teapot every day for the legion of fashion victims driving its value up. What’s the point of being an elitist if the herd is on the same page with you?
#176 should read:
…documentaries when there is no other source.
Posted by: Chimpy
My ad-hoc hypothesis is that this behavior is very beneficial to survival and reproduction of your social group and probably encoded somewhere in our genes.
Although you probably implied that already, I thought it was an interesting enough concept to point out. It never crossed my mind before in all those technology holy wars I’ve witnessed in forums, blogs and meetings.
#174 Posted by: frog | July 17, 2008 6:43 PM
Poor frog is having a hard time catching up with 21st century I see. For most people a computer is an email, word processing and media appliance and that is just fine for them. They want it to work they use it and not think about when they don’t.
For me it is my tool. I want it to work right everytime and not keep having to fix it with paper clips and rubber bands. The real analogy to changing blades is changing and upgrading software, not tinkering around with the saw to hope still works. I want to work on the projects at hand, not my tools.
AJ Milne: I dunno… I like my squabbles intimate, familial, and bitterly personal…
Like Debian vs. Ubuntu. That one’s awesome.
(Shakes fist…) You UBastards!
You use a binary distribution? (Patronizing chuckles waft in the background…)
Hope you remembered to update openssl & all your keys!
WoW PZ You’ve uncovered a totally novel use for the iPhone, perhaps without even realizing it:
Reading through these comments it is clear beyond a doubt that the iPhone is world’s best Douchebag detector. It apparently attracts *and* encourages fervent and public displays of Douchebaggery unlike any device to come before.
;-)
BTW – I have one. Love it. Best phone/thingamajiggy EVER!
Absolutely right. My iPod is an audio appliance, and that is exactly what I want it to be.
I dispute your contention…
…that the definition of “tool” necessarily includes multifunctionality or futzability. Certainly there are multifunctional, highly reconfigurable tools, but… is a box-end wrench not also a “tool”?
That said, this…
… hits (you should pardon the expression) the nail on the head. The purpose of a toaster is toast; any attention or labor it requires behone putting bread in and taking toast out is wast, the residue of poor design. In precisely the same way, my nano is an audio toaster: Any effort or attention it requires of me that’s not directly related to listening to audio content is waste. The genius of Apple is that they know the iPod is an appliance; it is one by design.
My iMac, too, is designed to be an appliance, albeit a multifunctional one (not everything that’s multifunctional is a “tool” in your sense of the word). There’s a broader variety of things it will do, but in each case, it’s designed to do that thing as efficiently as possible, without requiring me to waste any attention or effort on how it’s doing that thing it does. If futzing around with how it works is what you want to do, I can see where it might disappoint you… but that doesn’t mean it disappoints me.
Almost everything is a computer these days, but not everything needs to be a Universal Computing Machine$trade;. I’m not saying everything needs to be an appliance, but I am saying that sneering at appliances per se sometimes misses the point.
mayhempix: Poor frog is having a hard time catching up with 21st century I see. For most people a computer is an email, word processing and media appliance and that is just fine for them. They want it to work they use it and not think about when they don’t.
Damn kids keep getting on my lawn… mumble, mumble, mumble.
Abe Simpson: One trick is to tell em stories that don’t go anywhere – like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now where were we? Oh yeah – the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…
Damn cathode ray tubes — if Jacquard Looms were good enough for Babbage, they’re good enough for me.
mayhempix: For me it is my tool. I want it to work right everytime and not keep having to fix it with paper clips and rubber bands. The real analogy to changing blades is changing and upgrading software, not tinkering around with the saw to hope still works. I want to work on the projects at hand, not my tools.
Nah, the proper analogy is between changing the saw blades yourself, and taking it to Home Depot so that one of the high-school drop-outs changes it for you. Yes, the latter is less time consuming — but really, are you going to put your hands near blades worked on by any one else?
My computational devices are important parts of my career. Ain’t nobody touching them but me — I get nervous even using other people’s libraries (that was my MD comment) — if it’s reasonable, I write the software from scratch. If what you need are appliances (and that’s perfectly reasonable) — then OSX is for you. If what you need are tools, then you’re going to work a little harder. If what you need is a box to kick when you’re angry, my suggestion would be to buy from MS.
You appear to be having conversations with those you don’t believe exist. This could be a problem.
Yet another vote for the iPod Touch. I’ve used my cell phone about 10 times in the past few years, so I really couldn’t justify the extra expense for the data plan at this time. It does help that there are a lot of wifi hotspots around here.
I just love the touchpad and the accelerometer — whenever I have a long wait for something, out comes the Touch, and I’m easily amused for the duration!
Try the Touch for a while — if you decide you really can’t live without the iPhone features after 6 months, get one and give the Touch to your wife or one of the kids. (I think my spousal unit will get mine one of these days.)
Dang, now you’ve got me thinking: I wish my table saw could download the latest, sharpest blade (for free!) the way my iMac downloads the latest version of iTunes.
-Tater:
Reading through these comments it is clear beyond a doubt that the iPhone is world’s best Douchebag detector.
I disagree, sir or madam. The Hummer is the world’s best douchebag detector.
“I disagree, sir or madam. The Hummer is the world’s best douchebag detector.”
Though there’s still some argument over whether the ranking is:
1. Original Hummer
2. H2
3. H3
or
1. H3
2. H2
3. Original Hummer
Because the original civilian Hummer can at least do the offroad stuff. The H2 and H3 can’t, so they’re just for poseurs. But the H3 is for the poseur who aspired to the H2 but couldn’t hack it, and it serves no useful purpose at all.
“Some people care about things like the ease of use.”
That’s exactly why I DON’T use the Ipod I was given.
Sure, it may be easier for Grandmad to figure out the interface on an Ipod… but it only takes a few seconds more to figure out the interface on my Creative Muvo.
And once you have and are used to the interface, the Muvos is better. The Ipod interface is fracking TEDIOUS. Scrolling through menus is tedious.
Same with Itunes… its a huge bloated beast, would make it easier for Grandma to play these newfangled MPCD whoseawhatsits…
But for someone who already knows how to look through a simple directory of nested folders containing music files, it’s a tedious, aggressive, limiting beast.
mayhempix,
The container may not be important in your business, but for watching videos and movies, the term “AVI” is pretty much useless without knowing the actual format. I tell you from experience.
By the way, the lifehacker (and one of its partners Gizmodo) are pretty good sites. For the other guy who questioned the maturity of the “reviewer”, these guys are very tongue-in-cheek most of the time. You don’t really think he did put tape over the Apple logos do you (maybe, if he took pictures, as a joke)?
The other poster who said you can’t put your own music on it I think got confused with you not being able to put your own programs into it (for which you need to hack it, as I did with the Touch, only thing that made it semi-worthwhile, though I haven’t tried the new firmware).
I like that my iPhone can play this.
http://toucharcade.com/2008/07/15/vector-pong-3d-pong-from-gyrocade/#comments
I-phones ARE kind of cool, but you couldn’t pay me to have one since I discovered awhile back that AT&T really stands for All Trials and Tribulations.
They have some nerve referring to those people who answer the phone as customer service reps, hah, should be more like customer frustration technician. Out of frustration I asked one of them if he had to take an “illiteracy test” to get his job. He said yes.
This is also quite fun.
http://www.intua.net/products.html
Hope you remembered to update openssl & all your keys!
Har har.
(And yeah, I did. Actually, I scratched my main box, redid the whole thing, tho’ not entirely for that reason. And I’ve built openssl from source a few times myself, for various reasons, so that part, at least, of mine isn’t exactly binary. Tools that built it, in fairness, mostly were, tho’.)
“The container may not be important in your business, but for watching videos and movies, the term “AVI” is pretty much useless without knowing the actual format. I tell you from experience.”
Not if you use the free VLC Media Player. It will play ANYTHING you throw at it, and no need to worry about and install codecs. Codecs can be buggy and hose your system… but VLC has its own decoders, so it doesn’t need you to have installed codecs.
XVID? DIVX? Matroska? MP4? Quicktime? WAV? You don’t have to know what any of those mean if you use the FREE, open-source VLC Media Player…
Which is also the lightest, least bloated player out there.
And then there’s the PopCorn Hour Digital Media Tank, which attaches to your network and lets you play ANY media files on your home entertainment system. Music in any format, videos of any format, subtitles, etc… all in a nice menu on your HDTV and stereo… streamed right off the hard drives in on the networked PCs in the other rooms… PLUS it lets you stream online media to your TV.
Shoutcast streams and other online radio streams, Youtube videos, all streaming media.
All for under $200, and available right now.
Apple recently hinted that in a few years they’ll have a similar product available – but with far fewer features, DRM, won’t play all the various formats… and of course will cost a hell of a lot more.
I have used VLC, but I like Media Player Classic Home Cinema better, it’s more tweakable. I did have codec problems with VLC, especially with subs if I remember correctly, but anyway, I wasn’t talking about the difficulty of playing the files on your computer (besides, VLC is pretty much still an obscure, geeky player), but how to know if your “AVIs” are compatible with your device.
For instance, my Epson P-3000 is Divx-compatible, but it has some trouble playing some Xvid files (it is not advertised as xvid-compatible anyway, but can play most of them).
#183:
“behone”? At first I thought that was a strange typo but then I checked the old web and it seems that a few people actually use it. What does it mean, and where does it come from?
That’s always been the genius of Apple: It’s not about being on the bleeding edge of geekdom; it’s about making (relatively) simple, great looking machines that regular people can use pretty much without thinking about them.
Yes, that’s true, but with the change to OS X you have the best of both worlds. You have the simple, easy to use stuff that just works (the Aqua GUI layer). But if you open a Terminal window, you have the übergeek crunchy goodness of UNIX with the 1200 odd command line tools. The power that lurks in there is formidable. Windows doesn’t have any equivalent (at least not out of the box). It’s geek paradise in there. More scripting languages than you could ever want are pre-installed; PHP, Perl, AppleScript, Ruby, Python, and of course shell scripts. The X-Code tools are free and they have matured very nicely making it possible for casual programmers like me to make super useful tools in less than an hour.
For all of those who think that the Mac is just an “artsy type’s” computer, you’re so far off base you’ve left the ball park. Since I took my current faculty position 7 years ago, more than half of the department (electrical engineers) have switched from Widows to Mac (two left Sun to go to Mac) and this year about 60% of the senior class gave their final project presentations on Macs (first year they have been in the majority). Our campus list of Mac users is triple what it was 4 years ago. Things are changing quickly, and the numbers are big.
Sure, Steve Jobs doesn’t seem like a very nice guy. I wouldn’t want to hang out with him. But all of those valley CEOs are megalomaniacs. How many of you would really like to dine with Larry Ellison. I thought so. But if you think Jobs is bad, look at Steve Ballmer. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a freak. A disgusting monkeyboy freak. And under his leadership MS has had flat stock for 8 years. And he’s shipped a dog of an OS in Vista. And failed to buy his way into a favourable compete situation with Google. Compared to the vulpine Gates, Ballmer is a loser. He’s presiding over the gradual decline of MS because he’s got the foresight of a fruit fly.
Hmmm, I got off track there. This is an atheist blog. What’s with the Apple bashing anyway? If there’s an antichrist, it’s Dick Cheney, and he doesn’t have shit to do with computers. Or phones.
I have the 8Gig iPod Touch and I really enjoy it. I don’t listen to music much but my iPod is full of podcasts (mostly NPR and atheist stuff), movies (currently Dogma), and I can check my email and surf the web anywhere I can get wifi access which means just about anywhere I usually haunt. I don’t even own a cell phone a the moment–I’m happier without one.
:::shrug::: I use an old Motorola brick. it works.
The original cell phones were the size of a real brick, and had maybe 2 hours of battery life. Aside from a small handful of people who could claim to need the things, they were a status symbol. Now they’re small enough to be built into a wristwatch, and many of them are still status symbols.
Except broke tightfisted types like me can buy one and use a pay as you go plan, and be able to annoy people while shopping! Isn’t technology wonderful?
Andy, I used to have problems with subs on VLC, but that’s since been fixed. I used to have to use BSplayer when watching things with subs, but now VLC handles them ok.
Its funny, yeah VLC is kind of a “geeky” player, but it doesn’t need to be. I had some videos I wanted my brother to play on his mac, and he was trying with Itunes, it wasn’t working and I kept trying to convince him to download VLC. He kept balking, didn’t want to use anything but itunes…
Finally he downloaded the mac version of VLC and he liked it.
Just a nice, light program. I’ve used media player classic for some stuff, but I still prefer VLC over it… has the right mix between features and bloat. Media Player Classic seems a little too bare bones.
Plus I don’t want to have to install codecs, thats the other reason I stick with VLC.
I’m afraid you give me too much credit: It comes from the fact that h is adjacent to y on the keyboard and e is adjacent to d (i.e., it should’ve been beyond… and it means I’ve been at work for ~14 hr with only a few short Pharyngulation breaks. That’s pretty much what the several other typos in that otherwise brilliant comment mean, as well… [sigh]
I was watching a movie on cable the other night(some random thing I stumbled across while channel surfing), and the main character was using one of those brick phones. Not only that, the damsel-in-distress had a car phone with a wired handset! And this movie wasn’t that old (mid-90s. IIRC).
Sometimes it’s shocking to recall how recent the things we take for granted — cell phones, cable TV, desktop computing, teh intertoobs, home video — really are. I recall my father bringing home a 4-function desktop calculator… with a memory!… that was the talk of the neighborhood for days (put my friend’s mom’s adding machine to shame!).
FSM only knows what the world will look like when my teenage daughter is the age I am now!
Maybe I’m the wrong person to bring this up, since I’m such a rabid phone-hater that after giving in and buying a cheap Virgin Mobile cell phone, I’ve been nagged at least twice by VM for failure to use the phone even once over a period of 90 days.
But what I can’t understand about either the iPhone or the iPod Touch is this: How do you wrap your hand around one of these things? Both of them look incredibly uncomfortable to hold.
(I like my 3rd-gen iPod nano, BTW. Working out in the gym is MUCH more fun with Stan Ridgway, Dethklok, and Gang of Four blasting in my ears to keep me motivated.)
Holding the iPhone will make you sexier, no need to go to the gym.
It brings up the possibility of selling a quick location-aware “cracker tracker” app to fund development of other science-based apps. Or would that be too cruel?
Just cause nobody mentioned it yet: Xcode. I just love the way they integrated an iPhone simulator and the real iPhone into the development forkflow.
I also second Canuck’s post (#154): “it’s the platform, stupid”.
Nevertheless, competition is good, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Openmoko and Andoid are doing.
Why don’t you try this one out for size? Instead of cursing at Satan, why not command Stan to move behind you? Much more satisfying and ironic, if you ask me.
I haven’t had time to trawl through all the comments, but has anyone mentioned that the iPhone is often referred to as “The Jesus Phone” reason enough by itself to NOT want one, but when you throw in the lack of features (compared to just about every Nokia phone) and Apples ability to Brick it if you do something THEY don’t like to YOUR phone makes it a “Not even on my long list of maybe haves”
All you techno-weenies are being too short sighted and timid. I want a Featherstone-Kite Openwork Basket-weave Mk.2 Gentleman’s Flying Machine.
2 weeks with my iPhone 3G. I’m quite happy with it. I have over 50 apps on it. Some useful, many just for fun. I can run my iTunes from my phone. Post to a wordpress blog and the sound with good headphones is great. I’ve used the maps, google search, bloomberg news, mophoto, weatherbug(weather radar!), sportstap, netnewswire(super buggy though) all quite alot.
I highly recommend it. It’s only going to get better.