No I haven’t suddenly lost my mind overnight, or moved to some backwater place where they don’t have Macs!!!
What I mean is, do you remember the company Apple Computers? You know the one that used to be Apple before the Keynote in 2007.
‘Back in the day’ it seemed that everything was under their control – the product, the packaging, the price etc. In fact about the only thing that people griped about was the price variations between countries, that was a bit ‘win some, lose some’ based on the exchange rate. Oh, and some gripes about what was and wasn’t available on the iTunes store from country to country, but looking back maybe that was the start of the consumer era?
Fast forward to the current situation with the iPhone, and I can only guess at the palpitations Steve is suffering. No wonder the ultimate control freak was looking so thin at the last key note!
As we move closer to 11th July the iPhone situation varies totally from country to country:
- Some are offering Pay As You Go as well as contract
- Some have multiple carriers offering the phone, others single carriers *cough* USA!
- Some are offering subsidised handsets others are not *cough* USA!
- Some are offering pre authorisation schemes, others are not
- Most have announced the details or the price and plans, others haven’t *cough* Spain!!!!
- O2 are limiting customers to one only in the UK!
So I can’t help wondering if Apple where really prepared for this level of inconsistency and confusion when they dropped the Computer from their name?
As for me, despite the excellent counter to my argument by Allison Sheridan over on Surfbits I still remain in the ‘No’ camp at the moment. I have registered to receive the information as more than anything I want and need a ‘always on’ 3G contract and I have a sneaky feeling that it will be new to the iPhone here in Spain (at the moment the options are really poor), so if they offer a good subsidy I could still be tempted …..
If you are planning on picking up a 2 gen iPhone let me know. In particular I would be interested to know what feature or features swung the decision for you.
What Apple should have done, is just release the iphone, unlocked. No contracts, no exclusives…. easy. Then everyone would have one, and no one would be hacking the thing to pieces. I have one, and it is a sweet little thing, but I gave it to my wife, as it does not meet my needs. I’m not talking about 3g or gps…. just simple little thing like a TODO LIST or sync-able notes!
My BB does all that. Yes it’s clunkier, and not as purty but hell it’s gets the job done. Now Rogers in Canada does not have an unlimited plan for data, because “we don’t want to charge people for all that data they do not use”. Even if I wanted the iphone just for the PDA stuff… no phone…. can’t buy it with out a contract. Meh…. Iphone shm-iphone. Why make it so difficult?
Be careful Mac, you are sounding way too much like me 🙂
Just sharing the logical path. That’s all. And just a little miffed that I cannot get my grubby little hands on the new model.
I’m in the no camp too. Allison put forward some good points on the surface but they don’t hold water. If she’d taken her cable she’d not have needed all that running around just to listen to a podcast. In fact, who’d have gone to that bother anyway? I don’t get the obsession with syncing etc. so that doesn’t matter. As for the need to surf the web all the time, why? I can wait till I get home.
These sad people are the very same who make a big deal that they are going on holiday without connectivity! Big deal, so does the vast majority of people. Let’s face it most of the time I bet their connectivity obsessions are to feed their egos looking to see how many others are following their every move on some social network… Rant over and out
Leave it to Jeremy to drive the stake home 🙂
A very well directed stake though!!!!!
I do have a tendency to be obsessive about syncing I must admit, which is a total waste of time given how little I actually have in my diary, address book etc!!!
As for surfing the web on the go, I can honestly say I never do that, nor have I ever felt the need!!!!