Apple July 16 Press Conference video [telecom]

Is it just me, or is it a bit bizarre that all this hoo-haa over a little piece of technology is happening?

I'm almost surprised that people use these things for voice calls any more, I thought that they were basically sold on all the other things apart from such old-fashioned use?

-- Regards, David.

David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.

***** Moderator's Note *****

"Old fashioned"? "OLD FASHIONED"??

David, you just made my day. Cell calls are now "old fashioned".

I can tell you how an SD 96251 works! Given a spark coil and a doorbell buzzer, I can make a transmitter that will blank out AM radios for hundreds of feet! I listened to "Pancho and Lefty" when Eric von Schmidt was singing it!

I know the MORSE CODE, Dave!

Bill "Moldy Oldy" Horne Moderator

On Sun, 18 Jul 2010 10:30:41 +1000, David Clayton wrote: .........

.........

Yeah, but I'm just waiting for the time when the "phone" function of these things is an additional add-on feature that costs a bit more - let's see how much of Apple's target market take that up in a few years.....

Isn't it the reality that Apple market these things on everything *but* the phone function?

-- Regards, David.

David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.

While in elementary school, I made a spark gap transmitter out of a buzzer out of a toy battleship. One side of the interrupter went to a water pipe. The other to a long wire in a tree. On the low end of AM, it could be heard for at least a mile.

Now, I use this

for ringtones on my cellphone. When my wife calls, I hear LH. When by brother calls, I hear DH etc.

Harold WA6FDN

***** Moderator's Note *****

Well, yeah, when you use an antenna the signal travels further. I meant just a spark-gap without anything else.

Come to think of it, why are ham operators so competitive about their signal strength?

Bill Horne, W1AC Moderator

When you spend $200 on a device that's claimed to do what it claims to do i.e. use as a phone, use as a web browser, use as a media player etc. and the company markets it as such you have an expectation that it will do the functions as promised. Voice calling may be "old fashioned" but it's expected that functionality will work when it's marketed as such. Voice calling is far from dead.

The point is that the voice function is not a "headline" feature of the device, it seems to be just a basic underlying function that is not marketed as anything special.

I believe there are other choices out there for people who want the best voice calling performance from their mobile comms device.

The current hoo-haa seems to be about the voice function not working so well in certain circumstances - my response is basically "Big deal", the phone function seems to work ok and that should be good enough for geek-o-sauruses who essentially buy these things for all the other "cool" things that they do.

-- Regards, David.

David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.

It's an inherent trait of those who choose to become hams.

When I'm in a parking lot walking toward my vehicle, I keep clicking the "open" button on my remote key, just to see how far away I can communicate with my vehicle. Normal people (i.e., non-hams) wait until they arrive at their vehicles.

Actually, doing it my way has one advantage: When my vehicle receives my signal, it acknowledges by flashing its lights. That helps me to locate it in a mass of nearly identical-looking vehicles.

Dick Grady, AC7EL

I wrote the email below, and Bill asked me for the whole story behind it, so here it is!

As an undergrad in Physics lab, I was doing some experiments with an oscilloscope (actually, I was testing a capacitor that I had made from a gum wrapper...) and the TA encouraged me to grab the test input lead for the oscilloscope and wave my other arm around. The oscilloscope trace reacted, and as a young student, I was fascinated with this. The TA told me the human body can act as an antenna, absorbing whatever ambient radio-frequency is available.

Many years later, I was purchasing a Honda and the car salesperson could not find it in the lot, and his clicker was not communicating with the car. He put the clicker to his chin, winked at me, and clicked. The car responded. He laughed and said he didn't know why that worked but it did. I might not have paid as much attention to the incident if not for Physics lab...

I bought the car (not because of the clicker), and one weekend, brought it to a big parking lot, and walked away to test the range of the clicker. When the clicker stopped signaling my car, I walked further away and put it to my chin. Voila! It worked. I am an antenna. I repeated this several times, finding my chin extended the range of my clicker by about 50 feet.

Try it and you can be an antenna too.

--Regina