For all the fuss about AT&T’s new data rates (both pragmatically good and knee-jerk bad) the main point to keep in mind is whether those rates are actually good for consumers. For the most part, they are: John Gruber notes in his post that 98% of AT&T’s users fall below the new 2GB monthly plan, and that even with overages these rates beat the competition.
I’m a daily, heavy user of data on my iPhone 3GS, so I logged into my phone bill to see where I land. And lo, a surprise: not only do I not need unlimited data, I can actually drop down to the 250MB plan. Because I regularly use my home and work wifi, and I don’t download much media, my 3G bandwidth usage has been 230MB or less for the past six months.
I like the idea of an open meter, and when I change plans, I’ll probably switch to the 2GB/month plan, even if it costs me a few bucks extra. I will be happier paying $25/month and never hitting my limit than paying $15/month and worrying about, or getting slapped with, overages when I download some videos. Still, that’s found money for me, and for 98% of AT&T’s smartphone users.
One could gripe all day about AT&T’s signal strength or its needlessly expensive text messaging plans. But its data plans are well considered and decently consumer-friendly, no matter how the blogosphere reacts.
Category: gadgets (Page 3 of 4)
From my post on aiaio:
Contemplating how to service users with 1.5″ BlackBerry screens was one thing; dealing with iPad users, with their 1024×768 screens and just-like-a-laptop-only-better expectations, is entirely another. And while the iPad may be just a first step in an evolution, a million unit sales in a month suggests someone found the keys to the steamroller.
It’s easy to forget that the iPad is both a laptop and a mobile device–a blurry line that is only going to get blurrier. I know of a retailer that converted a few thousand dollars in sales on its circa-2007, Flash-enabled website last year … in iPod Touch user sessions. Evolution doesn’t wait.
I kid, mostly, and I still sort of want one, but I love this paragraph. From the New York Times’ first-day coverage of the iPad launch:
“I have no idea what he’ll do with it,” said Jessica Panzica, 30, waiting in line at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco for her husband, who could not pick up his iPad because he had a ham-radio class. “I’m sure he’ll use it a lot, whatever it is. He told me I’m not allowed to open it.”
I’ve been trying to write the perfect ham radio operator-cum-iPad early adopter line based on this but I think it’s already in here somewhere.
I’m skeptical about the new Apple iPad.
I don’t think it’s as big a deal as the excitement portended, at least not right away.
I’m dubious that, at least at first, it’ll do things in dramatically different ways that my current MacBook/iPhone combination cannot emulate.
I sure as heck don’t need one.
But, um, I kinda want one anyway.
The longer it sits there, the less I like the post below this one. I’m leaving it there for posterity (and the one on the work blog, too). But I suspect the near future will prove me all wrong—in the priority of my observations, my knee-jerk reactions, my skepticism. I sit here and wonder why I reacted like I did; after all, I was a pleased early adopter of the iPhone and the iPod, limitations and all. If I lived in the suburbs, and I had a room I called an office with an iMac on my desk, I’d probably crave an iPad, a situational divide made all the more striking by the Mac laptops I have at home and work (and, as noted, the iPhone already in my pocket).
So Sippey sounds like he’s right. Gruber is probably right. Pogue is almost certainly right, and he’s full of “don’t listen to me yet” hedges. Which makes me, er, wrong. Or at least noticeably off the mark.
I look forward to playing with an iPad in the real world this spring, where I can make some real, and properly reasoned, conclusions.
From my post on aiaio:
I’m no gadget prognosticator, and as an Apple shareholder, I hope I’m wrong. But this looks like it’s going to be a bit of a niche product, at least at first.
I’m guessing that the iPad will have a fantastic user experience, be a wonder to behold and use, but give very little practical reason for purchase. At $629 and up for the 3G model, I’m certainly not giving up my Kindle thoughts, since I already have an iPad Nano (you know it as the iPhone) in my pocket to do the iPad’s heavy lifting. And I didn’t even mention the keyboard dock. What the heck?
I’m not selling my AAPL just yet, though. People had their doubts about the iPod, and look how that worked out. And who knows? Maybe there’s a huge market for people that want iPhones without giving up their non-smartphones.
I suppose the problem is that I, like everyone else, was waiting to be OMG BLOWN AWAY by a new device that, in many ways, I already own. Taken on its own, the iPad is a nice device, if not a worldwide game-changer at first blush. The real news is that Apple’s hype machine got the best of us all.
When it comes to the news, I am a proud anachronism. I read the New York Times in print every single day that I am home (and many when I’m not). We get seven-day home delivery, and on Mondays and Wednesdays, when my wife and I want the same things (the media business coverage, Metro Diary, the Dining section), I buy a second copy at the newsstand.
I love my Times. I literally read it cover to cover, leafing through every page, glancing at headlines and diving into a relatively large number of articles. I’m an expert in the dying art of the accordion fold. I read nyt.com online during the day, of course, but despite my career in new media, I’ve never so much as considered deviating from my print copy of the daily paper.
Until.
After shrugging off the Kindle for the past year or so—I’m not much of a book reader; I read a few gajillion websites, half a dozen magazines and the aforementioned paper—I stumbled across the amazon.com page advertising daily Times delivery. A few days later I found myself on the subway playing Toobz on my signal-less iPhone, staring jealously at a woman reading on her Kindle. And suddenly it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Less money. Less waste. And other stuff to read when the paper is done.
I began to seriously wonder, should I buy a Kindle and switch to electronic delivery? I did a little cost assessment and realized my newspaper is a very expensive habit. The Times, to its credit, gives daily subscribers a break: our papers cost us $11.70 a week (at the newsstand it’d be $17). Factoring in the Monday and Wednesday purchases, and assuming we remember to stop it when we go on vacation, 50 weeks of the New York Times in print costs us $785 a year.
Compare that with the Kindle, which costs $259 for the small version—the pocket-sized, and therefore commute-friendly, one—and $13.99 for a monthly subscription to the Times. After one year, I’ll have spent $427, and I’d have a shiny gadget to boot. Heck, we could get a second one for Amy, and after 14 months, our spend would be tied, $910.60 for print versus $909.72 digitally.
More intriguingly, I could just download the Kindle iPhone app, save $259, and read the Times right there. Then again, I’m not sure I want to permanently downsize to a 3.5″ screen; the Kindle would reduce eyestrain while still being cost-effective.
Regardless, the piece of the future that I was willfully neglecting has suddenly come into sharp relief. Getting the newspaper on a gadget, nicely designed for comfortable reading and invisible updates, has become a realistic option. Even for a daily-paper addict like me.
I do still enjoy reading things on, y’know, paper. So I’m not about to toss our subscription out the window. (I suspect that even if we went digital, we’d keep getting weekend delivery, just to have the Sunday New York Times Magazine and its crossword in hard copy. Then again, Jeff Bezos has bathroom reading covered, too.) But the news here is that I am at long last considering it. And if I’m ready to give up my beloved newspaper, the horizon just got a whole lot closer.
From my post on aiaio:
In partnering with HTC, a company that produces cell phones for every US carrier and two different operating systems, Google ceded control of the overall experience. Never mind that the handset is slim and fairly attractive. It’s also generic, and apparently imperfect. When David Pogue pushes your phone’s home button, you really don’t want it to fail.
There’s a huge difference between designing and engineering a device, as Apple did with the iPhone and Palm with the Pre, and a company having a device “built to its specifications”. Google was telling HTC, “We want our phone to do this,” and HTC was putting the requisite componentry in place. This tends to minimize holistic product definition and by its very nature waters down the innovation. In contrast, Palm and Apple (and Motorola and Nokia, for that matter) manage the entire process, and their software is designed to complement the hardware, maximizing user experience. Google, a company that is strictly virtual, doesn’t know how to do this.
Apple completely reengineered the UI of mobile telephony with the iPhone. Visual voice mail. Screen-based keyboard. Multi-touch interface. The list goes on and on. Google, in contrast, is very “me too” at this point in its phone development cycle. It will be interesting to see if Google follows the Microsoft model and finds nirvana in its third or fourth release.
From my post on aiaio:
[The Apple] tablet’s pixels per inch will be impressively high, like the 160 ppi of the iPhone. Most Mac desktop and laptop displays hover around 110 ppi. An 11″ screen at 160 ppi will provide almost the same amount of pixel real estate as a 13.3″ MacBook screen does now. This will help minimize people’s perception that they’re giving up detail for size.
Apple wants an iPhone in your pocket, an iSlate (or whatever) on your coffee table, and an iMac on your desk, with laptops positioned for students and the mobile workforce. It’s ambitious. And more than a little smart.
My new iPhone is much faster. Every function performs better, from finding wifi to launching apps.
The iPhone 3GS feels noticeably lighter than the first-gen phone, despite their officially weighing the same in grams.
According to my wife, people calling my phone can now hear me clearly, as opposed to my old one, which had developed awful reception and sound quality. On my end calls are less crunchy but not entirely different.
The warmer white point makes everything look irresponsibly yellow. I feel like my phone is jaundiced.
The ringer/vibrate button is in higher relief than on the old phone, and every time I put it in my pocket, the ringer turns back on. I hope my soon-to-arrive case will mitigate this effect. (Also: the AT&T Wireless store charged me $10 more than the manufacturer’s website pricing for the aforementioned case. Rude.)
I am now keeping up with the joneses… until July, when the iPhone 3GT or whatever makes me instantly out of date.