iPhone share of U.S. traffic hits 69%

But of course one central server operated by the content owner isn't the model that's being proposed. Rather, the content would be made available to Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, Sony, Hulu, Amazon, and whoever else wants to get into the online distribution market. They would package it up in the appropriate formats for theirs services, and make it available to their users.

Hulu alone is already serving up more than 10 million on-demand streams a day.

(And don't believe any of the nonsense from ISPs about Internet infrastructure being unable to handle this sort of thing. It's just a flimsy pretext to get rid of net neutrality so they can charge twice for every bit they deliver.)

I wouldn't say that moving to an all on-demand world (except live events) would constitute killing TV.

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:54:11 -0400, ZnU wrote in :

Color me unimpressed. But then I haven't drunk the Apple Kool-Aid. ;) And I have real world data from state-of-the-art batteries, versus marketing claims.

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:22:00 -0400, nospam wrote in :

Yep, which is why it will soon be replaced with a fresh battery, for the second time within the life of the computer.

Suggesting it actually makes sense for the consumer to have a non-removable battery is just plain silly.

Sorry. There is no guidance on cell phone design in the Old Testament, New Testament, Koran, etc. Devine intervention is still prossible, but has not been reliable for about 2000 years.

We can't win. 3 pin (connections) and 2.5mm is the cell phone standard for a mono headset and mic. If I'm going to use the iPhone as a cell phone, and the iPod Touch as a Skype phone, then they should use fairly standard accessories. The iPod Touch does not have BlueGoof, so a wired headset and mic are necessary. I can buy 2.5mm headsets for a zillion vendors. I couldn't find an "iPhone compatible" headset.

Some of my 2-way radios (i.e. Yaesu) also use a 3.5mm jack, and like the iPhone have 4 contacts instead of 3 for the Mic+PTT, left and right audio. However, the 4th contact is not used for left or right audio. It's a data connection for programming the radio. Mix almost identical headsets between a 2-way radio and an iPhone and nothing works.

I haven't done any extensive digging, but it appears that the iPhone is the only cell phone with a 3.5mm connector. Even my Verizon XV6700 has a 3 ping 2.5mm connector (and will play MP3's in stereo).

Actually, it probably doesn't really matter which one is selected as long as it's compatible with everything manufactured since the stone age and that adapters are available. Pick one (2.5 versus 3.5 with 3 or 4 connections) and blunder toward harmonized nervana.

Incidentally, the selection of jack size has some bearing on my previous question of whether the iPhone is a PDA computah with a cell phone attached, or a cell phone with a computah hung on. Since computers only use 3.5mm jacks, the answer is now obvious. It's a computah with a cell phone added.

Hmmm.... I wonder if the MEMS accelerometer has a high enough frequency response to be used as a microphone?

$90 including shipping. Looks like prices have dropped and I failed to notice. Thanks.

It depends on how it's used and how it's charged. What I find digusting is that the lifetime of a laptop where the battery gets run down and recharged is about the same as a laptop that spends its entire life connected to a battery charger. My guess is that there's a timer built into the battery that destroys it after a set time.

Nice. I've noticed an interesting phenomenon among some laptop users. They will run the laptop on battery as long as the battery lasts. However, when the battery stops taking a charge, instead of replacing the battery, they just keep running it on the charger until the battery is totally dead. I have a box of used semi-dead batteries I've saved just so I can test some of these laptops dragged in by customers. I can see the logic (defrayed expenses). With a cell phone, the battery seems to be replaced long before it's totally dead. My guess(tm) is at 50% capacity or higher.

Also note that there's a big difference between battery function in an iPhone and a laptop. Remove the iPhone battery and the phone/PDA loses all its memory and settings. Well, maybe some of the phone settings are saved somewhere or on the SIM card, but in general, the phone is cleared. Not so with a laptop, where the setting are in NVRAM and the data is on a hard disk or solid state disk. So, it's much easier to make a removable battery system on a laptop, than on a cell phone. The phone would require TWO batteries. One large battery to run everything, and one small battery to prevent total amnesia. Sealing the battery inside the case combines the function of these two batteries into the main battery, thus simplifying matters.

Waiting for a fuel cell battery for my cell phone, PDA, laptop, etc.

The cells inside a notebook battery pack are pretty standard. You can change the cells and keep the controller. There are lots of instructions on-line for the popular battery packs.

in other words, no real world data from the new batteries.

it's removable, just takes a screwdriver. even if it is replaced once every 2-3 years, it's a minor issue. apple states that it should last much longer than that.

they do, and there are countless ipod/iphone accessories.

the 2nd gen ipod touch has bluetooth.

you didn't look too hard. there's plenty.

the 4th pin is non-standard. the ipod video uses it for video output while the iphone uses it for voice and play/pause.

it's also the only cellphone that's also an ipod.

the contents of the iphone is automatically backed up during a sync and can be easily restored when a new battery is installed, or to an entirely new device.

I lied. The Blackberry Curve 83xx series of PDAphones also use a

3.5mm connector with identical pinout as the iPhone. Two wrongs don't make a right, but can make a defacto industry standard. 2.5 to 3.5mm adapter for the iPhone:

Out of service for a while:

Check Revelations again- I'm pretty sure HTC's extended USB connector is referred to as the "Jack of the Beast..."

To a point, yes. However, when features leapfrog the status quo, that needs to reconsidered. I'm all for standardization, but a monaural headset on an "iPod phone" would be kind of silly.

A new combo mic/headphone combo standard that's "backwards compatible" with standard headphones was long overdue.

I find something like this: , preferable, since it allows you to use the headphones of your choice.

Sony's Xperia X1 does as well. It's a GSM WM6 phone witha WVGA screen and slide-out keyboard.

As did my Wizard. Newer HTCs use the Jack of the Beast- an 11-pin mini-USB plug also compatible with standard mini-USB plugs for charge/sync. The extra pins handle stereo audio, mic, video (on compatible models), and remote control functions.

I think 3-pin/2.5 for mono phones and 4-pin/3.5 for stereo would be ideal.

I choose "neither." From jack "evidence" alone, the iPhone is obviously an iPod first, and computer/phone second/third. Even "computer/PDA-first" phones like your 6700 don't use 3.5mm jacks!

That's exactly what I do for my older laptops. Finding new battery packs for old 386 thru PIII laptops is often tough. (Note: Old slow laptops are required to run speed sensitive Motorola radio programming software and DOS apps that scribble directly to the i/o ports). When the battery dies, I rip it apart, replace the cells, and charge happily after. However, I do this only for myself and maybe some friends. It's too risky for paying and sometimes clueless customers. It's also not cost effective. The process takes about an hour per battery pack. If I can't save the equivalent of my hourly billing rate, it's not worth doing. Therefore, I only do battery transplants if I can't obtain a suitable replacement.

Some charge controllers in the battery keep a record of charge cycles and offer a capacity estimate. When replacing cells, these counters should be reset. I haven't figured out how to do this resulting in some rather insane battery statistics.

Other systems include a method of detecting aftermarket (counterfeit and not approved) batteries, which sometimes includes a feature that detects replacement cells. I haven't run into this myself, but have read account of others that have. It's the result of the few exploding LiPo cell phone and laptop batteries and the subsequent litigation. For example, Sony laptops have a Windoze program called ISBMgr.exe which will disable charging and do strange things if it detects a non-Sony battery. Unlike the Sony music CD copy protection, it's not a root kit. However, it is buggy and sometimes burns 99% of CPU resources, making it equally disgusting.

Incidentally, I use an ultrasonic dental descaler to crack the glued or solvent welded plastic case seams. Works fairly well, but if I touch the electronics, they're instantly destroyed from broken wire bonds.

The headset is something you usually carry around with the device, whereas external audio devices you'll commonly encounter "in the wild". So it makes more sense to use something compatible with the latter rather than the former, since the user actually has control over the former and can just pick something that works.

One thing that will also work in a pinch is that if you plug headphones that don't have a mic into an iPhone, it will feed voice out to them but pick up audio through the speakerphone mic on the handset. This lets you go hands free with any handy pair of headphones.

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:16:29 -0400, nospam wrote in :

Sorry, but I haven't drunk the Apple Kool-Aid like you have, and find that quite unconvincing.

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:16:28 -0400, nospam wrote in :

Yep. Vaporware.

Nah, it's the Black Helicopter people. They don't do it on purpose, but their mind control rays damage lithium ion batteries.

Sure. Cell phones are almost exclusively used while running from the battery, because even at home or in the office, you still don't want an object to hold to your head and move around with to be tethered to anything.

In contrast, many people use their laptops probably 80 or 90% in places where they can plug in and there's no substantial disadvantage to doing so. As long as the battery has enough life in it that you can still sleep the machine when moving it from one desk to another rather than shutting it down, that's it's more than enough battery life for many users. (Technically with suspend-to-disk you don't need any battery for this at all, actually, but it takes longer for the machine to wake up.)

This is not true on the iPhone. Everything is stored in the phone's flash memory, which is nonvolatile.

In fact, I seriously doubt it's true on any modern phone. Why should it be? Small quantities of flash memory are hilariously cheap these days.

[snip]

I think it's also a case of usage scenarios. Other than perhaps on a flight, I don't really have a need for a completely battery powered computer, since anywhere I'm likely to use a computer has AC power nearby- if not, (say a weekend camping trip) no laptop has a long enough battery life to be very useful for very long without a recharge anyway. Many of us simply use our laptops as portable AC-powered computers, so flat batteries are at best, a minor inconvenience, particularly since, when they finally die (3 or so years later), they're outdated enough to no longer be a "primary" computer. My Dell Inspiron 1100, for exampe, is now 4 years old and the battery lasts about 20-30 minutes. It's mostly used by my 5 year-old to play Shockwave and Flash games on the Disney and NickJr. websites. I use a newer laptop.

With a cell

The difference is that the typical cell phone is rarely used in fixed position, and needs to be free of an AC cord for its primary usage scenario. Consider a wristwatch and an alarm clock. The former is useless without a battery, the latter isn't.

Are you sure about the iPhone? That isn't true of most modern flash-memory based phones. Your Verizon XV-6700 has a permant flash memory for storage (older PDA-phones did not- they used shared, volatile battery-backed RAM for both storage as well as RAM.) I presume the iPhone storage is flash, not RAM.

As did some older PDAs. My old Audiovox used "reserve capacity" in the main non-removeable battery for backup. (The device shut down at 10% to try to keep the RAM alive.) My Dell had a user-replaceable batery and used a lithium "coin" cell to keep the RAM alive when the main battery was dea or removed.

Pshaw! Such stone age tech! I'm waiting to harness the electomagnetic waves in the air all around us!

i have not drunk the kool aid and your insistence shows just how weak your argument is. i'm very critical of apple where it's deserved. this ain't one of them.

swapping a laptop battery is something that happens once, perhaps even twice, in the product's lifetime and needing a screwdriver is not a big deal. the dell adamo does the same thing, so why no bashing for them?

it's very clear where your bias is.