No I mean if YOU were to be on a SIM-only contract.
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No I mean if YOU were to be on a SIM-only contract.
Excuse my ignorance, but I aint getting what ya mean :( :p :
You go to the phone company and say "Hi it's 555-04Q2, you're bestest ever customer. Listen, I don't want a new phone this time around, let me keep my old phone and give me a cheaper rate".
Certainly with phone companies in the UK you can get a significantly cheaper airtime contract (often half the price) if you don't have a handset with it.
Now why didn't you just say that in the first place :p :
No, I cannot get a cheaper rate, even if I keep the old phone, as I already have the lowest rate possible. They have been threatening to up my rates for the last few years, but I have countered their threats by saying I will cancel the 30 odd company contracts I have with them if they try and pull that sh!t with me :p :
Every success or failure has a "what if" or "if only" somewhere in the story. The very same would be true of Microsoft had Apple chosen a more open strategy in the late 80's and early 90's. At best, Microsoft would probably be nothing more than a bit player in the OEM software market now. But MSFT's OS strategy proved to be the more successful of the two and so it remains the dominant player. Microsoft laughed off the iPhone (more than once) and saw it go on to revolutionize the smartphone market. Now they find themselves years behind iOS and Andorid in smartphones and tablets. The RIM Blackberry had been the dominant smartphone platform here, and now it's hanging on for dear life. "What if" and "if only"...Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
I think that's oversimplifying things a bit. While some people do buy Apple products primarily because of the brand name (successful marketing adds to success), others buy because you tend to know what you're getting with an Apple product. And the engineering and build quality always tends to be quite high. But with that said, there is no such thing as a defect free manufacturing process. It simply does not exist. It's just that certain brands (Apple being one of them, Lexus being another) have reputations for delivering products with very low defect rates.Quote:
Buying an Apple product somehow seems to empower people to be able to hold it up in the air and say "This is the best <whatver> that I could buy!" even if it's missing quite crucial features that other phones have. That is of course the reason why Apple products have been so successful.
I'm really not sure that there are very many people who expect the Mac to provide a "magical" experience. I think that's something that Mac critics tend to impart on Mac owners by way of hyperbole. It's a computer. To someone like me, that just makes it a tool to perform necessary and recreational functions. I'm sure a cheap Taiwanese wrench will do the same thing that my Proto wrench will do... for a LOT less (until it snaps in half). But I buy Protos. My uncle's new brother-in-law is a retired software executive. His former company designed and built software for a great many platforms and applications. He builds his own computers and probably works in Linux more than he does anything else. All of his home built and purchased computers (as far as I know) run Mac OS, as well as Linux and Windows. He offered to build a Hackintosh Mac for me, but I'm opting to go for a company model. I have no idea what your friend uses his computers for. So his needs and uses may be a world away from mine. But if he's happy with whatever it is that he has, then he should keep it. I just don't have the time or desire to tweak and play with settings and components. A comparable Sony model (with Windows 7) to what I'm looking at is right around $4 grand. So I'm going for the MacBook Pro, which will run Windows and Linux, in addition to Linux.Quote:
That said I think there are a lot of owners of Apple products who aren't so easily fooled. A friend on Facebook has an iPod, an iPad and iPhone but he will not buy a Mac because he's intelligent enough to know that it's just a fancy looking PC. He's a web designer too and considering his Apple purchases, you'd think he was a prime candidate for a Mac. He posted a status update on facebook saying his homebuilt PC had died and that he'd fixed it and someone started preaching about how Mac's never crashed :laugh: He's very christian so there was no swearing but for an Apple fan he did slag Mac's off :D
One has to be careful to weigh the facts, and not get caught up in anecdotals and predisposed notions if one is going to make a truly informed purchase.
That's cool. But that's hardly the experience of the average phone purchaser, is it? So going back to your point about profit margins, Apple and RIM don't seem to be taking wildly different approaches. It's just that the iPhone's price, as sold by carriers, is higher due to a higher customer demand versus the various Blackberrry phones. One of the reasons that RIM's stock is under pressure now is because they are having problems maintaining their profit margins.Quote:
Originally Posted by 555-04Q2
RIM is hardly holding on for dear life ;) They've still got the business market and they've also got BBM which is hugely popular with the teen market due to the fact that it's free.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior
Of course, but you generally don't see Lexus owners blogging about how freaking great their Lexus is, or telling people "oh my you've got to get a lexus! They're perfect!" when someone mentions that their Honda has broken down. You have to admit that there is a vocal population of Mac users who are almost religious about it all ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior
I'll tell you what, next time you're in the market for a new desktop Mac, give me a yell via PM and I wil spec you up something ridiculously good for quite a significant amount less than a Mac. I won't spec you a Rolls Royce, I'll spec you a freaking Bugatti Veyron and your buddy can build it and do the whole hackintosh thing. It will make a Mac look pedestrian and it'll run OSX like nobody's business :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior
My main problem with Mac's has always been the bang for your buck ratio. If I accept that they're better than PC's (I don't! but for the sake of the argument I will) then you could just build a PC with quicker bits and it'll be quicker :) Or if you really want OSX you could do a hackintosh build and have the best of both worlds.
Actually Apple salvation came with the iPod. They were looking into the abiss before that. The iPhone helped them boom after that. But the marketing is great and relentless. Their failure rate must have jumped a lot since they started using off the shelf components but I still see people saying that apple products dont break down.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
I am in my 3rd year at TAFE for photography and the vast majority of people use macs. From teachers to students and the equipment in the studios. At least 1 or 2 will always have something being fixed or tying to get fixed by apple, but they are all saying how good the product is even though they are getting screwed by Apple tech support.
I am looking at replacing my current PC at home, and this will be with another PC because I can get more for my dollar. I can get what I want in a PC for around $1700 or I could downgrade and get a mac for around $2300.
1700 Will get you something really nice if that doesn't include the monitor. What specs you aiming for?
Just the box. Need a better monitor later on for photo work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
This is most of it. I will probably change the two ATI's for a single GTX580. I might also change the SSD to a Crucial M4.
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
Mobo: Asrock P67 Extreme4 B3
RAM: Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1333
SSD: Corsair Force Series 60GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB
GPU: 2GB AMD Radeon HD6950
GPU: 2GB AMD Radeon HD6950
Case: Silverstone Raven RV02-E
PSU: Silverstone Strider Plus ST75F-P 750W
ODD: LiteOn DVD burner
CPU HSF: Coolermaster Universal Hyper 212+
Whoever puts the deals on the Orange website messed up last week. Two of our friends managed to get 32GB iPhone 4's in white on 18 month contracts paying £21 per month after their friends and family discount was taken from the £25 per month tariff. Price of the iPhone....just the £3.99 delivery charge. The same iPhone 4 in black was left at full price but was ironically out of stock anyway so you automatically would have checked the stock status of the white version on the tarrif. Sadly the website mix up had been rectified by Monday. Jammy gits.
Nice. I've got a Core i5-2500k and it scoots along. No SSD as yet though so that's holding it back massively.Quote:
Originally Posted by rah
Lucky indeed! If they'd noticed the mistake before they'd shipped the phone they wouldn't have been under any obligation to fulfil it.Quote:
Originally Posted by GridGirl
http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-sup...-in-2011-imacs
Apple are not putting hard drives with custom firmware which are HARDWIRED to the motherboard into their iMac's. I think this move is going to cost them a lot of enthusiast sales.
Stolen from elsewhere
Apple's upgrade policyQuote:
No, you don't throw it away. There are supposedly millions of people on places like ebay that are eager to buy used Macs, and they have a great resale value. At least that is we we are told. When you buy a Mac, apparently you buy it to turn around and sell it in a few months.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...42925_6098.jpg
:D
If they're not holding on for dear life, how do you explain the precipitous drop in RIM's marketshare (including the corporate enterprise market) and stock price over the past 18 months? I'm not slagging on RIM, but the company has some very serious issues facing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
I have. But then again, I go to a lot more car boards than I do computer oriented boards. One of the more famous Lexus devotees is one of Charlie Sheen's "goddesses": Rachel Oberlin/Bree Olson. Until she wrecked it, she was making appearances on a Lexus board, going on & on about how great her 250 was. Most car brands have the same: Jags, Ferraris, Mercedes and don't even get me started on Porsche and BMW boards. And here in the States, Honda owners are some of the most obnoxious when it comes to tuner boards. I used to post a lot on a WRX/STI board and we were always at war with the Evo people.Quote:
Of course, but you generally don't see Lexus owners blogging about how freaking great their Lexus is, or telling people "oh my you've got to get a lexus! They're perfect!" when someone mentions that their Honda has broken down. You have to admit that there is a vocal population of Mac users who are almost religious about it all ;)
As we've established, Apple is one of the most prominent brands (the most valuable, by a recent study) on the planet. So of course it has followers. Sony used to... Dell used to. Building a popular brand is why companies sponsor motorsports, TV shows and any number of other things: to build a loyal following.
In bouncing around the net, one can easily see that the Mac vs. PC thing is no different than the Chevy vs. Ford or whatever brand vs. some other brand in the car market: one set of fanboys talking smack to another set of fanboys. I just tell people to buy what they need/want and try to be happy with their purchase.
I appreciate that, Daniel. But as I've mentioned before, I'll customize cars to my liking. But my interest in computers does not extend to me getting (another) custom built machine that I have to take in for repairs and tweak every few months. Been there, done that. If they don't work then they're either costing me money or preventing me from making money. I'm moving away from desktops (when the ones I have die, they won't be replaced with other desktops), so no hybrid Hackintoshes here. I'm getting the MacBook Pro, and other than maybe dropping some extra RAM in it, it'll be a BTO that'll have all that I want/need. :)Quote:
I'll tell you what, next time you're in the market for a new desktop Mac, give me a yell via PM and I wil spec you up something ridiculously good for quite a significant amount less than a Mac. I won't spec you a Rolls Royce, I'll spec you a freaking Bugatti Veyron and your buddy can build it and do the whole hackintosh thing. It will make a Mac look pedestrian and it'll run OSX like nobody's business :)
My main problem with Mac's has always been the bang for your buck ratio. If I accept that they're better than PC's (I don't! but for the sake of the argument I will) then you could just build a PC with quicker bits and it'll be quicker :) Or if you really want OSX you could do a hackintosh build and have the best of both worlds.
It is starting to look like Blackberry is the one being left behind in the smartphone wars. With iOS, Android and Windows being app development priorities in that order.
Blackberry had the advantage due to their handling of email but other phones do that too now, so they've lost their USP.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/06/i...ar-samsung-sh/
RIM's sales are up 30% from Q1 2010 to q1 2011. Sure their marketshare is dowm, but it's not such a bad thing when you're selling 30% more product than you were a year ago.
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUK22816311 Marketshare and sales in europe are up for RIM.
RIM has a fairly captive audience with BBM, teens love BBM as they can message each other to their hearts content for free.
http://us.blackberry.com/apps-softwa...errymessenger/
The integration of other phones with exchange still isn't as good as blackberry so they still have that same advantage, the only difference is that more people are buying smartphones for personal use and exchange integration usually isn't a buying consideration.
By that link, I'd say that RIM's problem (one of them) is that the smartphone market is growing at around 80% year over year, but RIM's sales were only up 30%. On April 28, after an earnings guidance call, the stock fell 11% to around $50/share - a six month low. On May 13, the stock was trading down another 13%, at $43.14 (just above its 52 week low). The issue there is that the management came out and lowered earnings expectations just a month after providing higher guidance. It looks like more of the phones that were sold were at lower average selling prices than had been the case previously... so analysts are getting the feeling that the management of RIM either isn't being honest about their situation or they don't truly know what their situation is. Because management is doing such a bad job of guiding earnings expectations and giving press releases, it's contributing to the stock being discounted vs. earnings. So it's been marked down to a 6.8 P/E ratio, which is EXTREMELY low for a tech company.
There's also some kind of story on Google News about a recall that's been issued by RIM for the new Playbook. I haven't had time to read that yet, so I don't know what it's about. But I do know that analysts are anxious to know what the true sales numbers are for the new tablet. The Playbook, and its associated OS, is a very important product in RIM's future. If the sales don't meet expectations, or they try to use fuzzy math to express sales (as Samsung did with its tablet and Microsoft appears to be doing with the Windows Phone 7), then I expect RIM to take another hit after the May 28 earnings announcement - probably down to the mid $30's. If they exceed expectations, then the stock should recover. But we'll have to wait and see.
But share prices are in some ways a bad judgement of how well a company is doing :) It may just be that RIM aren't as overvalued as their competition :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior
Yeah, I agree that you can't JUST look at the stock price in judging how a company is doing. But when a company's fundamentals are in question (losing marketshare, shrinking profit margins, new products not being as well received as they should be, etc.), and that's what is affecting the stock price, that suggests that there are some deeper issues at play.
That's one thing that I find fascinating about the tech sector: the landscape is littered with companies that at one time were the cat's meow. But then they took their eye off the ball (just for a bit) and they soon found themselves on a slippery slope. In tech, it seems like that can happen faster than in most other industries. Look how fast Nokia has fallen on hard times. I'm not saying that RIM can't/won't recover. But for the past 2-3 years, they've been a day late and a dollar short more than a few times. If the Playbook proves to be a flop or can't break out of its lukewarm reception, and their new OS doesn't catch on, I think RIM is going to have some major problems going forward. The pressure from Android, iOS and even WP7 is going to put more pressure on the company.
Is it only me or does anyone else think this looks like a small laptop without a cover?
I've posted it before but it bears repeating. That now it's all about the apps. Ease of use and features are still important but mobile OS's just as with desktop ones now live and die by the available software.
i.e. The reason Windows dominates the desktop market is that it's got all the software written for it.
At the moment app developers are targeting iOS and Android, and a bit of WP7. Blackberry, not so much, it leads very quickly to a downward spiral. Less apps = less market share = less apps being made = less market share etc..
Is it though? I suspect a good portion of users will either never install apps, or will only use a few. Blackberry's mainly being for business use will probably have users who are not allowed to install Apps anyway. If you're aware of government standards for security, currently only blackberry meet those security standards for mobile devices.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
Sure, there will be those like Blackberry users who have a specific task and that's it. And of course those who just want a phone and nothing else - but they don't form part of the smartphone market anyway.
Would you buy a smartphone if you didn't care about installing apps? I guess people do, but they are a bit odd if you ask me :p
I think you're ignoring the fact that smartphones are inherently good for web access. 99% of the use of my phone is texting, making calls or web access. No apps required! You're blind if you think that everyone who buys a smartphone does so because of apps or needs apps.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/16/e...-to-buy-nokias
I somehow doubt this is true tbh, but it's interesting nonetheless.
BBM is free to use though, those messaging apps aren't if you're using them on 3g or am I wrong?Quote:
Originally Posted by henners88
The other thing is BBM is an integrated part of the Blackberry OS, add on apps are never as good as something which is inbuilt.
Also as pointed out, Blackberry's are secure, hence why Obama has a Blackberry and not an iPhone, Android handset or a WP7 handset. It's the only sane choice for business.
Part of your 3G data package, non?
As for security, yes, the Blackberry is one of the most secure platforms available. But from another site:
And this:Quote:
Moving onto security and remote management, big brother stuff and sweet encryption (except in the Middle East) that owning a Blackberry Enterprise Server affords your company’s IT department and management, that’s being chipped away dramatically by Apple, Microsoft and Google. Their recent phones and complementary back-ends of various forms now have impressive company-friendly security, noteworthy near-1984-level management, not quite at parity with a BES rig but for many companies, close enough.
Here’s what you can do with the latest Androids, iPhones, iPads and Microsoft phones (including Windows Mobile):
Encrypt data remotely. Password policy management including strength, password changing frequency, prompt a change on a whim etc. Lock down the device. Lock down the camera, no syncing when roaming, reset passwords and remotely wipe. Actually I believe you get that with an Exchange server too.
And of course, the recent news that the U.S. Army chose the Android OS for its Joint Battle Command Platform, which will go in the hands of soldiers in the field.Quote:
Pending completion of the acquisition, Ubitexx’s ubi-Suite software for device management will be integrated with the management and security controls of BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express. This will support Android and iOS devices and tablets. This is in response to demand from enterprise customers for multi-platform support for BES.
Just from where I sit in the Peanut gallery, it looks like RIM is relying on past successes and customer loyalty to keep it moving. But customers aren't all that loyal to begin with, and even when they are, if your products are having problems matching the capabilities of other products, they'll leave you. Even in enterprise, that appears to be what's happening to RIM - especially as an increasing number of companies allow employees to choose which phone they WANT to use (not which ones they HAVE to use). And increasingly, those employees are choosing iPhones and Android powered phones.
But security is the sort of thing where people will always want the best. There's a reason why Obama has a Blackberry and not an iPhone or anything else. Honestly, I'm not a fan of blackberry's as I think they're very poorly built, but there's a reason they're so popular with businesses and whilst the competitors are better than before, they're still nowhere near being close.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior
Obama has had a Blackberry for years, since well before he became President. While the platform is secure, his device(s) had to have an extra layer of security built in before he was allowed to use it on official calls. The NSA has built very advanced encryption and code changing into the existing RIM features. And Obama doesn't use one Blackberry, but several (randomly). So it's not as if the Blackberry, off the shelf, was sufficient for the job.
Interestingly enough, the PM of Norway used an iPad to run his government after the volcanic eruptions last year.
You're right that security is important. But as was detailed above, back office support can and does add extra security to the company's liking. An aerospace company and military contractor that I had an affiliation with is now allowing iPhones on its network (as well as Blackberrys), and a slew of iPads showed up in the engineering dept. late last year. This is the same operation that forces people from other company divisions to give up their cell phones at the security office if those phones are equipped with cameras. But those employees who agree to have their iPhones on the network have some sort of software/app installed so that the phone can be remotely wiped clean if it is lost or stolen. When I was there, a laptop was stolen and you'd have thought the world was about to end. So given how RIMM is now losing enterprise marketshare, it seems that some companies are balancing security concerns with how capable the device in question is.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13409318 Nokia to drop Ovi brand.
Good. It was a silly idea in the first place, when it should have been called Nokia Store or similar. Why bring an entirely new brand into it when you've already got a perfectly good one!
Of course, Smartphones are going to use Windows marketplace, but Nokia is still going to make a massive number of phones running symbian - just not top end stuff, and they will continue to use the Nokia/Ovi store.
Now how sensible it is to be producing and supporting phones running on two entirely different operating systems is another question entirely!
I think the Ovi brand itself was fine, but the integration into Symbian was poor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
Well, WP7 only has 1 screen resolution and all apps for one phone work on all others (other than of course HTC apps working on a Samsung phone) so the experience will be much better :) The problem with the Ovi store is that there were so many different phones and different screen resolutions and aspect ratio's.Quote:
Originally Posted by henners88
My Nokia is basic as but I find the Nokia software to sync it with the PC to be very annoying. It's hard to find exactly what you're after and just clogs itself up, even iTunes is easier to use.
Yep, that was certainly an issue, for Symbian in general trying to get one OS to work with a vast array of different hardware. When you read the reviews of applications on the Ovi store they nearly always said e.g. "Doesn't work on N97".
OUCH :DQuote:
Originally Posted by barryfullalove
As above, thankfully the software to sync the phone will all be the same, so if you bought a Nokia WP7 and I came to your house and wanted to sync my Samsung Omnia 7 then I could :) I don't know the software for Android but suspect it's possibly much the same?
:D It's true though. The old Nokia PC Suite was a doddle but for some reason I had to 'upgrade' to the Ovi Suite which is rubbish. I love Nokia as a basic phone brand, the 6303 that I use for work does exactly what a mobile should and is solid, but I'm tired of syncing to my PC and not being able to find the option where it doesn't delete new numbers that I've put on the phone (sometimes it does this, sometimes it doesn't).Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
I know what you mean :) I didn't use Ovi Suite much tbh as my last phone (an e71) was quite good and didn't need a huge amount of updating, I never really plugged it in much. My Omnia 7 has required 3 or 4 updates and the software is a doddle to use :)Quote:
Originally Posted by barryfullalove
Well the thing is Nokia's sell well regardless of OS. People are still buying Nokia's these days despite the lack of a proper OS compared to the rest. Nokia customers want consistency (remember how long the original Nokia charger was around for?!?!??!?) and IMHO WP7 offers that. If you walk into a store and there are 2 Nokia's side by side they HAVE to be very similar in terms of software or else people will just get confused. Microsoft are so strict that they didn't allow HTC to put HTC Sense on top of the OS as they do with their Android handsets and made it something that is just an app.Quote:
Originally Posted by henners88
You can't make everyone happy and I think allying themselves with WP7 is more sensible for Nokia than hedging their bets with WP7 and Android.