Yeah, I've been chewing on that for a day and suspected that there may be a difference in antennas and radios between your iPhone and my iPod Touch. However, looking at the various FCC documents, I find both to be identical and rated at 9 to 11dbm power output into a 1.2dBi gain antenna.
However, looking at the photos of the antenna sections, the iPod Touch
1G has a plastic window for the antenna covering one corner of the back of the unit. The 2G shrank the window into a smaller oval. The iPhone has most of the top back of the unit for antennas. They may all have the same Wi-Fi tx power and antenna gain, but the aperture size through the metal back is radically different.
Indeed they do. But it's only free from a T-Mobile handset. If that handset is dead-in-the-water, as happened to me a few years ago while in Australia, it's very much a NON-free call from a local payphone to get them to restore your roaming profile in the International HLR -- and NO, they didn't offer to call me back.
In England, though, when the same HLR bug had my phone useless, my wife's phone *was* working. And when I called their international toll-free line, they indicated they'd have to be working on my case for 15-20 minutes, so did I want to hold? or should they call me back? I let them call me back.
Little did I know that their call-back *would* appear on my next bill -- and NO, they were NOT about to credit me back the air-time and roaming charges that call-back triggered. Or so said the first two agents I took that matter up with upon my return home. A few days later, a third agent, more sympathetic, perhaps, passed me on to her "supervisor", who initiated a partial credit (in anytime minutes, of course, not cash :-) ).
The data cost SMS reached me while I was abroad in April. Needlessly, as my old grandfathered voice/data combo plan has always included unlimited GPRS WAP data world-wide, and 20-cent outbound SMS messages from outside T-Mobile (USA) territory.
The web-based Flash approach is inherently unsuitable for the living room, though. When watching on a TV rather than a computer, nobody wants to have to visit a particular web site depending on the specific show they want, log in, and interact with a Flash player that's best interacted with via a mouse, not a remote.
As Internet-based living room delivery gets serious, this approach is going to give way to the approach taken by the Apple TV and the Netflix set top devices, where content is all available from within one coherent native interface.
Conceivably this interface could draw on multiple content sources (see Boxee), but it's still going to be playing H.264/WMP video streams via a native interface. If there were a sufficiently well developed standard for content sources, content providers could make it easy for devices developed by others to access their content.
The solution to this is simply for content owners to license content to all serious distributors under reasonable and uniform terms.
Frankly, I think this pattern of media consumption is likely to die off fairly quickly with the ubiquitous availability of on-demand content.
On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:47:05 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :
That's pretty much how it works with GSM as well. If I don't turn off my cell phone to conserve the battery when sailing offshore, the battery is drained much faster than when I'm in a good signal area.
For consumers, but not for businesses -- many business users have second batteries.
Except that laptop batteries can be had for only $35-80, depending on how carefully you shop. ThinkPad T41 non-OEM battery for $36 shipped:
OEM battery:
Lifetime of a frequently used battery is more like two years, much less than the typical lifetime of the computer. My own ThinkPad T41 is going strong, and it's now on its 2nd battery, which is down to 24 Wh versus design capacity of 48 Wh, or only about 50%, after 353 cycles over 26 months. While still usable, it's definitely ready for replacement.
True, but I suspect as IPTV gets more popular, we'll see set-top boxes with browser modes that handle that. The remote has come a long way from the 5 button (power/chan up/down/vol up/down) days. A remote with a trackball, or that doubles as a presentation mouse (moving the remote itself around in the air moves the cursor) solves it nicely.
While menu-driven "on demand" content from particular providers will be the main source of content, users will still want to jump to YouTube, or Google video, etc, so I doubt they'll forgo the browser paradigm so easily. Sure, you could "app" YouTube, like on the iPhone, but that's problematic for web sites that are the flavor of the moment.
Maybe, but it's more likely, IMO, that TV will just adapt. Just as TV didn't kill off the movies, on-demand won't kill TV, but might radically change it just as TV changed radio. Radio repurposed itself as a portable entertainment device when TV replaced it in the family living room, and changed from long-form programming, like drama and comedy radio plays, to short-form information (news, traffic, weather, sports) and music. IPTV will likely kill off broadcast TV as a source of movies (just as pay cable TV movie channels killed off over-the-air broadcast TV as a source for theatrical movies.) But content producers like multiple income streams like the typical movie scenario: theater > second run theater > hotel PPV > DVD > Pay TV PPV > Pay TV movie channel > basic cable channel. In each step of the process, the studio is paid again for the same film.
Similarly, original "exclusive" TV series drama and comedy will likely run over a live "broadcast" (which might be an internet stream, someday, as opposed to over-the-air) but shown "live" as opposed to on-demand, chock full of ads, just as today, before being archived to an on-demand scenario. It's part of our zeitgeist to chat over the watercooler about the latest episode of whatever- the "buzz" is both a social event and a viral promotional tool for the content provider. Sure, we'll talk about the funny "monkey driving a scooter" video on YouTube, but no one plans to block an hour and stay home next Thursday night to catch the next installment like they currenty do with the lastest episode of "Survivor."
Besides, iTunes has given us a glimpse of the future that might be the only reason TV will remained relatively unchanged- paying a buck or two to catch a missed episode of a program we missed is certainly a fair bargain for a "convenience fee" but would bankrupt us if I paid a buck for every show I or any member of my family watched in a month's time! Revenue drives content. Broadcast TV derives revenue from advertisers, IPTV needs similar revenue to incent producers, or it'll be limited to recycling content from other mediums, like television. IPTV is too dependent on "TV" to kill it. It needs to foster a symbiotic relationship rather than a parasitic one.
I don't think there is anything to apologize for. Since only Apple would know what Apple was thinking at the time, and no on from Apple has spilled those beans, all anyone can do is guess.
My guess would be no, however, for a couple of reasons. First, the radio chipsets in phones now do a whole lot more than just "radio", and if you include useful functionality in a hardware-limited platform it tends to get used because it is there for free. Since different manufacturers implement different "extra" functionality in different ways this means that there can be a significant cost involved if you need to change to a different manufacturer's products. Because vendor lock-in is hard to avoid I think that if Apple thought they would be doing a CDMA model at any point in the forseeable future they would have simply picked a radio vendor with a product line which includes CDMA, along with GSM, products (like TI or Qualcomm) at the outset. That they instead picked Infineon, which has no CDMA products and shows no interest in CDMA, as their radio chipset vendor, suggests to me that CDMA was never a priority (Infineon's advantage, that their 2G implementation is quite power-efficient, doesn't strike me as important enough to change this consideration, especially since 2G is only a sideline on current phones and Infineon's 3G isn't much better than anyone else's).
Second, Apple is kind of unique among phone manufacturers in that, so far, they've only manufactured one model of phone at a time with only very minor variations, a memory stuff option and 2 case colors (well, they're now selling two models, but only by retaining one of last year's variations; I wouldn't be surprised if they cut that out once they've used up the parts on hand, though). I believe that the purchasing and manufacturing efficiency they get by building just one thing is a contributor to the fact that Apple gets rather stellar margins from the iPhone at the same time RIM has been complaining about the effect the competition has had on their margins, and a manufacturing powerhouse like Nokia has explicitly declined to compete with Apple on price. I hence think that building just one thing is probably a conscious strategy, but if this is the strategy then they couldn't have built a CDMA thing; over 50% of Apple's iPhone sales in the most recent quarter were outside the USA and Canada, and most of that business couldn't have been done if the one thing was a CDMA phone. If you want to manufacture just one phone and sell it everywhere it needs to be GSM/UMTS.
Finally, there have been lots of published guesses about what Apple thought early on, but the most compelling one to me has been what Verizon's CEO told the WSJ, quoted here
formatting link
and, in particular,
He said Apple never seriously considered making a CDMA version of the phone because of its limited global reach as compared with GSM.
Note that you'll find different people from Verizon spinning this differently, and I wouldn't necessarily expect people at Verizon to know exactly what Apple was thinking in any event, but the above quote shows enough self-disinterest for me to believe it is honestly what he thinks, and he is in a position to know as much as anyone else at Verizon (and it matches my own biases!).
In any case, my guess would be that Apple never considered doing a CDMA phone, but that's only a guess and not necessarily better than anyone else's guess. Only Apple knows for sure.
This still basically sucks. And it doesn't solve the problems inherent to having to visit different web sites to get different content. If I watch five shows regularly, and they're spread out across three different sites, I have to go check all of those sites for new content, instead of everything just flowing into a single unified interface. I can't queue things up across multiple sites, I have to set playback preferences multiple times.... The whole thing is basically a mess.
If there were actually some sort of "content source" standard, anyone could directly send content to these sorts of devices. Content wouldn't be tied to specific web-based interfaces and native interfaces wouldn't be tied to specific providers. That's where we want want the market to end up. Of course, device makers, distributors, and content providers are currently all playing games, rather than establishing standards, to try to maintain as much control as they can.
[snip]
For popular shows that people actively follow, many people will start streaming them seconds or minutes after new episode streams become available, creating the same "social event" effect. There's no additional benefit to sending such shows out with a broadcast model, where you *have* to start watching at a specific time and can't pause. The next-day water cooler discussions aren't going to be substantially impacted by the fact that some people saw the show a few minuets (or even a few hours) earlier than others. In point of fact, DVRs have already created this flexibility, and it doesn't seem to have robbed us of anything valuable.
What I might expect to see is that recently posted first-tier on-demand content has a quantity of ads similar to broadcast TV, while older on-demand content has fewer ads, the way most programming on Hulu currently does. But a lot of that will depend on how the ad market works out.
On-demand content still allows for ads, and subscription based models are certainly possible as well. Typical rates for a prime time ad are $20 per thousand viewers. This works out to $0.02/viewer per 30 second spot, and there are perhaps 30 such spots in an hour long TV program, which means $0.60/viewer. This is not an amount of revenue that is terribly difficult to generate from subscription fees. Or, of course, from advertising, which can be targeted more precisely, and thus probably command *higher* fees, on the Internet.
On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:20:21 -0400, ZnU wrote in :
Rating is one thing; battery life another. With every cycle battery life decreases, and will be dramatically lower than when new long before the rated cycles. You may be willing to live with the difference, but I'm not. "There is no magic."(c)
"The built-in battery in the new 13-, 15-, and 17-inch MacBook Pro is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at up to 1000 full charge and discharge cycles."
Considering initial battery life is 6-8 hours, that's still pretty good.
And yes, I do see the "up to" weasel words there, but given how much people enjoy suing Apple for things like this, I doubt they'd risk being too weaselly.
No, but any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from it.
The SWF file is just the front end, it's being fed with a FLV file, Obviously anyone using this format would adapt the front end to the consumers device.
Well, for all intents and purposes, that native interface could very well be written entirely in Flash.
I still don't see how you arrive at "it's still going to be playing h.264/WMP" for the future when that is far off from how the landscape is today.
I totally agree with you that the Apple approach (native interface, streamed with open standards) is the best way to go, end by far the prettiest. But we both know that best and pretty isn't usually how these things get determined. Money buys the cream and the best deals gets the content, regardless of the streaming technique. Just look how deeply entrenched Real still is with live radio on the net. It's scary, and that's practially the worst case of technology you could use for streaming.
Agreed that that would be the solution, but I don't see it happening, if history is any guide. :P
Maybe I'm pessimistic. But the content owners sure doesn't seem to be friendly towards Apple at all, so I just don't see how much Apple can direct this in a "good" way.
Hmmm, well I suppose we'll agree to disagree on that point, then.
Agreed, but that could be primarily used as a "fill in" for content your provider hasn't licensed, much like I still have a 10-year-old VCR hooked to the TV for the few movies I never rebought, or aren't available, on DVD.
Assuming a future where everything scales properly, you might be right. But one-way radio transmission is simply far more efficient than the CBS streaming server crashing when 70 million viewers all try to tune into the Survivor finale. Ask anyone who tried watching the Obama inauguration live via streaming how well that went at times!
Perhaps, but no new form of media introduced since radio has completely replaced its predecessors, so I doubt the internet will "kill" TV- just change it.
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