a blog about tech stuff and RustyG
Posts tagged Apple
AT&T announces unlimited iPhone Data Plans again (kind of)
01 year ago
Well who didn’t see this one coming? It seems since Verizon officially announced the iPhone data plans, earlier this week, at $30 for ‘unlimited’ access, AT&T couldn’t stand by silently. It was last June (2010) that AT&T announced their new data plans for iPhone users, and it came at a price. If you were any new user of the iPhone or upgrading your plan, you could no longer get the ‘unlimited’ 5GB of data, but that you were paying for at most a 2GB data package for $25 instead of the previous $30. Now with the announcement of the iPhone 4 coming to Verizon, AT&T has to come back, but with a hitch. The only people currently allowed to get the ‘unlimited’ back, are the people who had it previously and lost it. WHO are these people??!! I ask because, if you remember when they started this new pricing plan, if you already had the ‘unlimited’, you got to keep it, and you were grandfathered in. So therefore, as long as you didn’t change your voiceplan or upgrade, there was no need to change your data package. Then if you were a new user who bought the iPhone 4 upon release, you never had the ‘unlimited’ in the first place, so that specific of a demographic is a VERY SMALL number. Wow, everyone else keeps talking about how AT&T sucks (Kevin Rose, Brian Tong & countless others), and I have stood by them because they don’t suck here in the southeast, and they have been a reliable provider since I had the original iPhone, but NOW, WOW! AT&T should just keep their traps shut, or go all out and just drop 2GB cap, and allow for every iPhone user to get that ‘unlimited’ plan for $30!
That’s my two cents..
via [CNET]
Why I still think the Verizon iPhone will be LTE not CDMA
01 year ago
It’s just days past CES 2011 and apparently the only rumor that seemed to hog the floor was the Verizon iPhone. It was apparently confirmed by WSJ and “people that are familiar with the matter” (which was repeated several times in the article) that the phone will be announced on Tuesday Jan. 11th and launch next month on February 3rd. The only problem that I have with this is that EVERYONE is still saying CDMA, based upon reports that Qualcomm has been ramping up inventory and is now selling baseband chips to Apple. Qualcomm is apparently the largest provider of the CDMA based chips, so this is why this seems to be the loudest theory out there.
Well, as much as I want to go with this, something tells me that this is just wrong. No matter what my favorite tech blog Engadget has to say. Just based upon the latest “evidence” that we have.. it doesn’t seem to mesh well. I am thinking that the Qualcomm story is something to throw us off the scent. Let’s look at the picture that Engadget posted with their story:
Do you see what I see? There is still a SIM card slot in that ever so slightly “tweaked” iPhone chassis. Oh you want a little more evidence? Let’s take a look at the video that was pulled down by Apple due to copyright issues (then later reposted with a different title & Engadget re-encoded it for their own player):
Did you see that? There is still a SIM card slot on that phone. Now, anyone with any Verizon CDMA 3G phone, please feel free to email me with a picture of your SIM card that you got from Verizon. It just doesn’t add up. I recently just helped a friend install the VZ Access Manager on their new laptop with the new LGv600 USB modem (or whatever that thing is) that supports 4G. You want to know what was inside that modem? It was a SIM card that said Verizon 4G LTE. You want to know why? It is because Verizon is now a GSM carrier! You can read more about the history on that in my previous post.
I just don’t see Apple choosing to go with a dying technology. Same as with the reasons they chose to keep flash out of the iOS enviroment (i think they are just trying to kill flash all together), they want to be on the forefront of technology, and since Verizon is one of the first to launch LTE stateside, why not? iPhone 4… iPhone 4G… it makes better since, then to stick with old 3G technology that we have all grown to hate when there are no towers… Even At&t is finally announcing 4G, even though they are the last on the bandwagon.
I’m calling this one… right now.. even if I’m wrong, thanks for reading this far.
UPDATE: It seems there are some people that are starting to agree with me, but saying it will be a dual mode phone. I just don’t see CDMA being the technology, especially since CDMA doesn’t allow for simultaneous calling and surfing. That was the big thing that AT&T was touting last year in their ads with that Wilson brother. How Verizon can’t do that with CDMA. So why would iPhone 4 be a multitasking phone, that couldn’t multitask under CDMA???
More Evidence: Back in 2009, the CEO Ivan Seidenberg at Verizon said: “Apple will be more willing to work with Verizon in the future on an LTE-equipped version of the iPhone.” According to Seidenberg, Apple never considered building a CDMA version of the iPhone due to CDMA’s more limited distribution footprint.
Netflix killed the DVD today
01 year ago
Ok, So I am totally stealing the title idea from TechCrunch, but it looks like physical media is on it’s way out the door with the news that Netflix is testing Streaming Only plans in certain areas.. It seems that Hollywood no longer wants us to hold on to their movies, and for everything to be in the cloud, so that there is no hard copies in the wild to be copied and passed around. Now this seems a little ahead of it’s time, but this idea is completely plausible. With the announcement of the MacBook Air, and there be no physical CD in the package, it seems Apple wants to get rid of the physical media as well. They don’t want to get rid of the software, as it was also announced the Mac App Store would soon be online as well. The idea there is that we will all be able to keep up with the latest via the updates there, and never have to insert another CD or DVD again. Even Windows is looking to update to a disc-less software store in the future.
The idea seems a little far fetched, but not completely crazy at this point. I was reading the newsletter that GDGT puts out and Ryan Block made a really good point, on the fact that will there be enough of the big companies to join forces with Apple and t he 70/30 split (read the story here). I agree with him and say that big companies like Adobe won’t want to join forces and take such a large chunk away from the business that they already generate on their own. The other issue is that these big companies are being ousted by smaller companies that offer open and free solutions that many consumers will easily choose over paying money for something that can be done for free.
I see the idea that Apple is trying to do and the idea that Netflix is trying to do, and somehow will gain majority rule in the near future. As the majority is usually stupid, they will follow what Apple will tell them to do. If Apple (Steve Jobs) tells you having CDs is bad, then we will all believe. We see this evident now in the fact that Steve (whoops, Apple) tells us that Flash is bad, even though a LOT of web out there is flash based, but it isn’t supported on their most popular devices. We now see evidence of this with the new Mac Book Airs shipping. Now the caveat is that we can go and install the software after we do it manually, but they aren’t going to help the cause.
I just think the major players fighting against piracy are having a secret party somewhere and are celebrating that we soon won’t be able to own a disc of any kind..
RustyG
GVmobile+ in, now waiting on Google Voice
01 year ago
Ok so the general public is now a little more aware of Google Voice, now that you can make a free call anywhere inside of the United States, from just inside of Gmail; as long as you install the plug-in. So we all have to be wondering, what is the plan here??
Well it seems that Apple didn’t originally fall in love with Google, as the apps for the iPhone that were put in the App store were all taken down and forced to go to the jailbroken side of things and move into the Cydia App Store. One of the major players was Sean Kovacs and his app GVmobile. Well for most us, that was great, because he had the app for free in that store, or you could pay for a premium version.
What is GVmobile you ask? GVmobile allows access to your Google Voice account so that you can use it as a phone interface on your smartphone instead of only using Google Voice in your browser. Basically just using all of your services that you get with your Google Voice account, put on your phone natively in app format. It’s great!
Well as of September of this year, GVmobile+ was released back into the Apple App Store and it looks like we also should be looking forward to an official Google app as well. If your willing to fork over the $2.99 for the GVmobile+, go check it out! But in the mean time, feel free to call me or text me on my Google Voice Number ( 615-873-0051) while I continue to test out GVmobile+
via [TechCrunch] & [TechCrunch]
AppleTV vs BoxeeBox vs Popbox (Infograph)
01 year ago
Click for Larger Image
Now I know I missed the Roku Box, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but this was my first shot at an info graphic, if you like it, Digg it!
You can see my sources:
http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html
http://ces.cnet.com/8301-31045_1-10429585-269.html
http://www.popbox.com/features.php
and other comparison sites:
http://newteevee.com/2010/09/01/comparison-apple-tv-vs-roku-vs-boxee-box/
http://ipod.about.com/od/decidingwhichipodtobuy/a/appletv_chart.htm
Monday 4/19 – Apple wants its iPhone back
0
Ok, so this whole day has turned into a crazy iPhone news day. In case you haven’t heard, the iPhone (4G – 4th gen, not 4g internet) was publicly released today as a leak. Apparently this guy Gray Powell who is working on the baseband software for the iPhone went out for a few drinks the day after St. Paddy’s day and got a little too drunk. In his drunkenness, he completely left the prototype phone at the bar. The guy who found it tried calling Apple, because it was remotely wiped and he had never seen one like it. A few weeks later it ended up in the hands of Gizmodo and the media hayday ensued.
There is now physical proof that this is the true thing, since Gizmodo was contacted and politely requested to turn the phone in by Apple.
The fun part is, they had it for quite a while and was able to give us some major details. There is a front facing camera, there is a flash. There is larger resolution screen; they don’t know the resolution, but it was obviously better. It uses a micro-SIM instead of the regular. The power button and the volume up and down buttons are all metallic and the phone is flat. There seems to be a mic next to the headphone jack (maybe noise cancellation). They also tore this thing apart and found a bigger battery. The backing also seems to be a clear plastic or glass (allowing cell signals to pass through).
NOW, the thing is, to see how Apple does damage control. Will this be the final phone that we see announced in June? Or will they scrap the whole thing and start over? Will thy change a few things?? What is to come???
Oh wait.. Here is Steve’s RE:
via [Gizmodo]
