Apple iPhone FAQ

Q: Can the Iphone be used to send MMS?
A: You can't send MMS. A revolutionary phone like this requires no MMS.

Q: Oh? How about copy and pasting text?
A: You can't copy and paste. OS X on phone does not have that feature. Maybe in the next full priced version perhaps? Or perhaps you would be interested in purchasing this $2000 Macbook that would allow you to copy and paste?

Q: Yes please! I have nothing better to do with money but giving more money to Steve Jobs by buying the same laptop again and again. But please sir, what about recording videos?
A: Nah, you can't do that either. YouTube generation don't need video.

Q: Still pictures are blurry. Why is that?
A: To save money and increase their profit margins Apple has neglected to include auto-focus.

Q: No auto-focus? But isn't that an industry standard?
A: Apple customers doesn't share the same high expectations that other customers of other products have. And they know it. So no auto-focus.

Q: I am getting bored with everyone having the same ringtones. How can I install my own MP3s to use as ringtones?
A: You can't. You have to buy ringtones *exclusively* through Apple Itunes.

Q: My old phone has a 640x480 display. Why the downgrade to 480x320?
A: It isn't a downgrade. It is an upgrade. It has a glass surface and touchscreen.

Q: My Palm Pilot from 1996 had touchscreen...
A: You jest!

Q: I know I can't make video calls, but can I receive one via 3G?
A: No way. The $600 plus two year contract Iphone does not support one or two-way video calling. By the way, what is this 3G?

Q: Is there something like Adobe Flash Lite that would allow me to view flash sites or flash applications?
A: Flash is not supported. It isn't clear whether Java is even supported. You bet Quicktime will be supported though.

Q: I am going on a 20 hour flight trip to Australia. Can I buy a spare battery so I can watch videos all day long.
A: You can't. When your battery dies you are required to send it to an Apple authorised store and they will replace it for you. Parts and labour cost required. It's like the car industry.

Q: So they are going to charge me a fee for swapping the battery?
A: Well you have to make money to feed the fat cats...

Q: My free phone allows me to listen to music wireless via A2DP. How can I enable it on my expensive Iphone?
A: No it isn't supported in their 700MB Mac OS X. Apple consumers do not want technical jargon superior technology in their easy to use products.

Q: I drive a lot, so I would like to voice dial. Could you be a kind gentleman and let me know how.
A: Voice dialling isn't supported. But you can buy their expensive $120 bluetooth headset.

Q: Can I voice dial via Apple's bluetooth headset?
A: Nope! You would still need to touch the Iphone before making a phone call.

Q: So, after paying $600 for this and locked into a two year contract you are telling me my Iphone can't do anything that my free phone can?
A: But your free phone isn't by Apple.

Q: I am not sure if the Apple logo is really worth $600.
A: Steve Jobs says that this is the best phone on the market.

Q: You are right! This is an Apple phone and it is feature-packed! Thank you. It is worth it.
A: It is a brilliant product.

Apple lies again

Apple Iphone Vs competitors, according to Apple PR, and as accepted by delusional Apple fanboys:



Apple Iphone Vs Nokia N95, according to facts (updated 26 July 2007):

	Apple Iphone	Nokia N95
Wi-Fi	Yes	Yes
GPS	No	Yes
HSDPA	No	Yes
UMTS (3G)	No	Yes
Camera	2Mp, no autofocus	5Mp Carl Zeiss optics with autofocus
3rd Party Apps	Web applets	Native, Java, Flash, web widgets
Weight	135g	120g
Flash	4GB/8GB	160MB
Expandable Memory	No	1-8GB microSDHC
Bluetooth	2.0 EDR, no OBEX	2.0 EDR with OBEX
Radio	No	Yes
A2DP	No	Yes
Video Call	No	Yes
Replaceable Battery	No*	Yes, Nokia BL-5F
MMS	No	Yes
Ringtones	No**	Yes
Video Recording	No	Yes
Voice Dialling	No	Yes
Keypad	No	Yes
Fingerprints on your screen	Yes	No
OS	OS X !!700MB!!***	Series 60v3 9.1

* You are required to send off your phone to Apple to have the battery replaced, for a fee! Kinda like your car.
** It is possible that you may have to rebuy your music from Itunes to use as ringtones, giving Steve Jobs more booty.
*** For a 700MB OS Apple sure does skim on features. What are those 700MB for? Easter eggs of Steve Jobs for Apple apologists to hunt for?

Software Impressions: Safari 3 for Windows Beta

Readers of this blog will know how much I dislike Apple, but I was wiling to give it a go today when Steve Jobs announced the availability of the Safari browser for Windows XP and Vista platform. Personally I hate Safari 1.x on its native Mac OS platform. I know of no-one, not even die hard MacBots, who like Safari. It is the worst mainstream browser in existence.

But Steve Jobs reality distortion field does work wonder. A lofty claim of '2x' faster than other browsers would surely catch your eyes. So I did a sinful thing and visited Apple's website to download Safari. The default download actually contained a QuickTime installer, but fortunately I caught that and switched to a QuickTime-less download. Seriously why people bother with QuickTime, the worst media player ever created next to RealPlayer is beyond me (go download VideoLan Macboys). Five minutes later I was surfing. And I hated the experience.

The good stuff first. Safari's renderer works well on most websites I visited including YouTube. That's it. It apparently passed the Acidtest so rendering should not be a problem. Now the bad stuff. The font-smoothing engine passed over from OS X lacked clarity. The cleartype technology displayed is the worst I have seen and it makes pages unreadable. I got a migraine just for looking at the ugly anti-aliased fonts as displayed through Safari. You can change the font smoothing to 'light' under 'preferences', but it is still ugly as hell. It would be great if I could turn it off and use the native cleartype technology, but I guess this is a covert operation from Apple to make PC users hate Windows.

Then there is the GUI which is based on Apple's own Mac OS X, which is an eyesore. It may work well on a Mac OS X machine, but it looks oddly out of place on a Windows environment, especially with that god ugly Aqua theme. It would ignore any skinning request from my Styler program or WindowBlinds (for times when I need reminiscing of BeOS). And it would also ignore my Windows preference of not doing window animations visual effects! Plus it wouldn't scroll when I tried my mouse scroll button.

As far as speed goes it is sometimes slow and sometimes fast, so nothing too special there. But Firefox 2 seems to be much faster. Maybe that is because I optimised it through about:config to speed up the renderer and other stuff, or maybe Steve Jobs is lying. Who knows? It wouldn't be the first time. But right now Safari is sitting as a niche product on my PC as a 'backup' browser in case Firefox, then Opera and finally IE7 fails to render a page properly (eBay UK is a known offender). It is probably useful in the future if I decide to change the layout of this blog to see if Mac OS X/Safari users can enjoy more Apple related rants.

Here is a quick comparison of the memory footprint of each program when opening a single tab loaded with BBC News frontpage:

Safari 3.0 (522.11.3) - 57MB
Opera 9.20 - 17MB
Firefox 2.0.0.4 with tons of extensions- 70MB
Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.11 - 41MB

Here are a couple of comparison screenshots between the various browsers rendering BBC News and this website:

Firefox 2





Internet Explorer 7





Opera 9





Safari 3 Beta

More Apple BS

Man, Apple does seem to love bullshitting, don't they? Already having to put up with them pretending that they hate DRM and that they created 'minimalism', Harddrive based DAP, Operating System GUI, the colour white, the word 'pod' and the alphabet 'I', they now want to take the mickey out of people who buys cheap mobiles.

Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. predicted that 10 million customers will pay at least $499 to buy an iPhone next year because they realize most free mobile phones are worthless.

Typical classic Apple bullshit really. In the UK I can walk into any mobile phone store, sign a one year contract and get pretty much any reasonably new mobile phone for free such as the XDA Exec or Nokia N80, most of which has features the Iphone would not have when it launches six months from now. Let's see. My mobile, which is worthless according to Apple, has a better resolution screen, faster processor, QWERTY keyboard, 3G radio and the ability to use both MemoryMap (for Ordnance Survey maps) and TomTom Navigator route maps. Plus it has a replaceable battery. Hell, we have an Ericsson T28m where the stock battery still works. Even the almost decade old Motorola StarTAC 75+ had replaceable battery too. Which is more worthless now eh Apple?

Frankly I am not surprised. This is the company who charges £99 on a screen-less portable music player, and had the cheek to call it innovation because somehow it came in white and can shuffle music. Consider this the last Apple rant, for now.

"I own a Mac, I am better than you"

What is it with companies today that love to insult potential future customers? Microsoft is doing that with the WHATSWRONGWITHU.com website, regarding the low sales of Xbox 360 in Asia (somehow it is our fault for the low sales). Look it is great that the 360 is doing so well in the UK and North America, but not everyone likes shooter or another racer. I personally love shooters but I can't stand them on consoles (nope, not even Goldeneye 007 which is easily the single more overrated game of all time). Give us a reason to own one, not by insulting us - but by developing games to suit everyone.

Then there is Apple, whose current 'Get a Mac' ad campaign just started here a few weeks ago. Like the American ads, PC users are shown as ugly, tie-wearing, nerdy, hopeless people and Mac users are shown as young, hip, and dressed in expensive casual designers garbs, who spends the majority of more time preaching on how good their Macs are, than actually using it. Owning a Mac (or Ipod) automatically change your lifestyle, if Steve Jobs would have you believe. It is fine by me if you want to worship your Mac but please stop acting like the typical evangelical Christians.

In Apple's defence they did hire Robert Webb to play as the Mac guy. Webb, for those who doesn't live in the UK, is famous for playing a smug, unlikeable and pretentious tosser in my favourite telly comedy Peep Show. I guess Apple is implying that Mac users are smug, unlikeable and pretentious poseurs. How fitting.

Steve Jobs says DRM is wrong...

I say fix your bloody software first. Christ, isn't Itunes one of the largest music based stores that sells DRM'ed low quality audio files? Get your house in order first before lecturing others with your reality distortion spin.

Didn't France proposed a law last year that companies like Apple must allow interoperability within different players? Did anyone remember what Apple replied? I did. Apple effectively accused France's proposal to allow people to break DRM as 'state-sponsored piracy'. I seem to also remember RealNetwork's attempt to break Apple's Fairplay protection, which was greeted with scornful faces by Apple, Inc. and their fanboys who wanted to protect the Itunes-Ipod monopoly.

Not that I care though (since I do not use either), but imagine consumers being told that their legally purchased music cannot be used on another player. DRM is bad as far as music distribution goes. People will either continue purchasing CDs (which are dirt cheap now, even cheaper than buying lower quality audio date through Itunes) or pirating them.

via BBC

Technorati tags: Apple Itunes DRM

$600 is the same price as a PS3

People are weird. You know that Apple just announced a new multimedia phone right? It costs US$600, which is expensive for something that already exists on the market, for years now. The reaction from tech blogs has been pretty much the same, it's a bloody great innovation. This despite being a product coming from a company that has zero mobile phone experience.

And what were the reactions when Kaz Hirai announced the price for Sony's mismanaged PS3 during the E306 conference? Total armageddon. I can't remember reading a single positive post by a tech blog that actually praised the price, and yet we are seeing the exact opposite in relations to Apple.

Sony are the hatred (deservedly too) in the entertainment industry right now, and the £425 UK price, battery recalls, unsporting behaviours and lying press departments aren't exactly helping them. But quite why the same standard isn't applied to Apple, I would never understand.

They being the media darling, for this long too, is pretty puzzling. My guess would be great marketing and PR. Get your PR right and Stevie can pass off anything as innovative.

If someone can convince me that $600 is good enough to part for an Apple branded multimedia phone (most likely made by an OEM manufacturer in Taiwan), then I would have no problem throwing away the same amount for a PS3.

Technorati tags: Apple Iphone Sony PS3 PlayStation 3 PR Fanboyism

New Apple phone not a reinvention

Nor is it revolutionary or magical or whatever the BBC calls it.

-

I like how Stevie claims that the new Apple mobile phone is a reinvention.

Let's see, touchscreen? Tons of devices has been using that like since forever. Tilting sensor? I believe one company did that on a PDA phone (it's somewhere in T3 from 2-3 years ago), and Sony did implement it on one of their HDD based DAP player, so nothing big here as well. Built-in 2Mp camera? Uhm, isn't 5Mp mobile phone cameras the next big thing? WiFi? Done that. The only thing decent with this, is the 8GB flash memory and IMO that is not enough. And where is the built-in GPS?

Technically it seems to be a marginally better mobile (though no buttons really does mark it down a lot) than most of those currently on the market, not the 'breakthrough' that they seem to imply it is. Still should at least finally kick PalmOne and HTC to finally wake up and start offering real technical updates rather than the usual annual cosmetic redesigns.

Apple fanboys will most likely lap it up anyway and label it an innovation (like they did with the Ipod) and try to justify the reasons in which we no longer need keypads. At least the days of iClones carrying Ipods and Blackberries are over.

Technorati tags: Apple Iphone

Apple launches new iPod (yet again)

Oops. Wrong picture.

I am sorry but I just had to.

Seriously, why bother? Still I am expecting this to sell like hotcakes to hip Londoners who should know better.

Technorati tags: DAP MP3 Apple iPod

Opinion: The MP3 format

A couple of months ago I was travelling on the Jubilee Line to East London to visit a friend when a lady stood in front of me. Dangling from her ears was this white coloured earphones connected to a 3rd generation white iPod.

Just a few minutes before, I was explaining to my girlfriend on the culture of iPod users especially on the tube and how most of them are caught up in the whole iPod hype and trend thing. Anyway, this lady who is in her late 20s had her iPod in her tote. Now there is nothing wrong with that – except what she did later.

For no apparent reason, she removed her iPod from her beige tote. Most people would do that to check the music title, or change a track or increase the volume. But she did not. She held the piece of gadgetry on her hand, in full view of any potential London pod-snatchers.

Amazingly, just opposite her was a Daily Telegraph reader in black suit listening to his iPod. The gentlement probably sensing a need to show his techie side, started showing off his iPod as well. By constantly fidgeting and readjusting his white ear buds he had an excellent excuse to flaunt his expensive toy. Now, the sight really amused me because he was using a fairly feminine iPod Mini.

It got me thinking. Evidently these people seems to be enjoying their music – because why suffer bad music just to show of a piece of kit? Wouldn’t it be cool if we were able to swap tracks? Of course not because the iPod has no means of communicating with other iPods let alone other portable devices.

Back then I had an iPAQ and my girlfriend uses a palmOne Tungsten T3. Both of us would store our tracks on 512Mb SD cards (we both have 1 GB cards now). This would be no problem if the iPod had a memory card slot like some Archos digital music players.

The problem lies with the fact that my music collections are stored in a slightly geeky format called OggVorbis. I could play his tracks (if there is a way to extract them) but he wouldn’t be able to open mine. Similarly if his tracks were bought from Apple iTunes websites, my player couldn’t cope with protected AAC files. Oh, I am sure he has some vanilla MP3s. My device is capable of playing those. But do I really want to?

MP3 was originally developed in 1988. It was adopted as a standard by the Motion Picture Experts Group (Mpeg) as ISO-Mpeg Audio Layer-3. Mpeg is the sort of group that determines the future of mankind and how often we empty our wallets for a new video standard (currently it’s the future of High Definition formats). Back then MP3 was mainly used by spotty nerds who looking for ways to accumulate large quantities of music on their computers. Frequencies that can not be heard by the human ear are dispensed with. That was why MP3 files were small. It was a revolutionary file format.

The mainstream finally caught up with MP3 during the late 1990s when 33k modems made the internet fast enough for file sharing. Most celebrated was a service called Napster which was the most popular file-sharing software. You may remember them being mentioned in certain music presses being sued by a certain aging 'metal' band.

Even when Napster was shut down, MP3 continue to be the digital music format favoured by internet users. A quick search on KaZaa would reveal that the majority of albums traded are encoded in MP3 format. And I blame my fellow ‘techies’ at pretend magazines like T3 and Stuff for this.

Why? Because MP3 was the preferred journalistic term during the rise and fall of the old’ Napster. The term was embedded into the public’s consciousness then. MP3 was ideally technical sounding, yet still easy enough to be understood by the press. MP3 is digital music. And for the past two years, the iPod is its only player.

Of course you and I know that there are far better formats out there that are able to produce tracks at a much higher quality than MP3. And most of them are free. The only saving grace for MP3 is it does not contain any form of digital rights management (DRM).

You see, the way DRM is supposed to work is that a protective copyright layer is inserted into music files. This wrapper contains restrictions that the music labels apply on protected tracks. iPod owners who purchase their music from iTunes will receive their files in AAC format. And hear this – the AAC files, wrapped with Apple’s FairPlay proprietary DRM, can only be played on Apple’s iPod products. Even the number of times a playlist can be burned to a CD is limited to seven. But it is easy to avoid both DRM and MP3.

Pretty much all audio files we purchase in the future will be protected by some form of DRM. Currently the DRM initiatives in place are a complete mess with competing audio formats fighting to be the new MP3. If you purchased your music from MSN SonicSelector, you will need a portable music player that is capable of playing protected WMA files. Worryingly some players that are capable of playing proper WMA won’t play protected WMA files. Other services like Sony’s Connect are even more perplexing. Tracks downloaded from Connect contain fairly liberal DRM restrictions allowing users to copy them up to seven CDs and 15 portable (only Sony or Aiwa) players. It is possible to transfer songs to two other computers but you will lose their portable device transfer and CD burning privilege.

Which is ridiculous! Music labels should be persuaded to change their whole business model of making money (they earn 75 cents for every 99 cent iTunes download). If they don’t, only a second Napster might do the trick.

Personally I would avoid purchasing music from any online download store – for now. iTunes might offer cheaper albums (usually between £7.99 to £9.99) compared to physical albums, you will still be receiving compressed audio files that have already lost some of its quality, contain restrictions and incompatibility with other players. For the extra few quid I believe one should invest in CDs that at least guarantee the highest compatibility with existing and future digital music players. Do not get me wrong, I think the concept of music download store is excellent – but only if they drive down the price and liberated them of DRM.

For archiving, I always advise people to encode their files in the Windows Media Audio 9 lossless format. This format provides the highest fidelity of any digital music format. Of course you are going to need to invest in a pretty large hard drive (200-400Mb per album) but with prices of hard drives as cheap as chips these days it is a none issue.

You can then simply convert your files to smaller files in any format (minus the DRM) using freeware utilities such as dbPowerAMP or the classic AudioGrabber. If you feel that by using WMA you are giving support to the malevolent Microsoft empire then archiving in other formats such as MP4 or OggVorbis is fine. Just make sure you encode them at the highest bitrates as some lost of quality is expected.

The issue of DRM is in the people’s hand now. Consumers must vote with their wallet to make sure music bought today can continue to be played in the future. Personally I feel the issue of Apple locking its iTunes tracks from playing on competitor’s products is to protect its iPod monopoly. This is illegal and must be dealt with to protect consumer rights.

As for MP3, it will stay with us for some time even if it is just the term. I know MP3 has come a long way with LAME MP3 encoder pretty much giving satisfactory results. I do hope that we will not be using this old and cryptic audio format for much longer. I just wish companies like Apple and Creative will sit down and decide to adopt or at least give us the option to the best formats available - or better yet just give us the option to use any formats out there.

More iPod rant

More anti iPod rants but this time not by me...

http://www.kantor.com/blog/2004/12/index.shtml#000423

Andrew Kantor compares the iPod to a Toyota Camry. I fully agree with Andrew and am still perplex with the so called iPod phenomenon. Andrew has been at the receiving end of childlike behaviour from iPod owners.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/127025/1/.html

Creative, who by the way, created the market for harddrive based digital audio player a few years ago, has accused Apple of creating a product (iPod Shuffle) that uses four year old technology. Exactly my sentiment! When I first heard that Apple was going to release a flash based iPod, my thoughts were they were just going to rehash the iPod Mini, make is smaller and use cheap flash memory. I was wrong. It was worst. I still have to ask - no screen! Apple fans has been touting the shuffle function of the iPod Shuffle. Er, excuse me - that is not a new function. And what about that one elusive track that you wanted to share with someone? Without a screen you won't be able to find it!

I have been ranting about Apple for a couple of weeks now, so I will rant about their rival - Microsoft now.

http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/200501_windows.mspx

That's right. More security patches coming our way. And these are patches for critical flaws found on Windows 98 all the way up to Windows Server 2003. When will Microsoft learn? Having said that I find Windows XP far more stable than Mac OS X.

Apple forces users to upgrade

In move usually associated with Microsoft, Apple has surprised many of its early adopter customers by forcing users of old versions of iTunes to upgrade to its latest version if they want to continue purchasing music online. It also means users of third party add-ins on their old iTunes would find most of the plug-ins unable to operate on the new version.

Why would anyone still want to purchase an iPod is beyond me. It only supports the old MP3 format as well as AAC (MP4). Where is the WMA support? What about the open source and free of royalty OggVorbis? And its not even pretty!

There are way better digital audio portable players out there than the Apple iPod. At a cheaper price too. And longer battery life.

Source: CNet