I had to laugh

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Klutch9
Yea but the new iPhone has an SD card slo... oh wait, nope, still doesn't have that!


Funny how HTC one has integrated battery and no SD slot and its OK.

I think its stupid for Apple to not have one. With a new baby, I take a LOT of pictures, and it would be nice.

But its not like other "flagship" products arent set up the same way these days.

Originally Posted By: Kuato
Originally Posted By: CurtisB
I'm surprised these folks can afford a new smart phone every year. With all that free time to wait in line, who's working to pay for it.


Well if it's anything like I've noticed, they have money for a new phone and cigarettes, but get their electricity disconnected and their new car repo'd...



What's also funny is how when I make a deal about people swapping low mileage, fairly new cars with others bought on debt, I'm just such a bad guy for talking about it, and it is so horrible that anyone (me) would question why folks do so... Yet there is such negativity on here over folks swapping an iphone, which for many people would be LESS than one month's car payment in initial outlay.

 

[Mystic]

Yeah, there are people who pay way too much for a car and a car is basically just transportation regardless if a person drives an expensive Mercedes or a Ford Focus. And there are people who are constantly buying new cars. It really makes more sense if a person can find a good quality two year old car. You will say thousands of dollars.

A cell phone is basically a cell phone, regardless if you are talking about an iPhone or a cheap cell phone. And for a cell phone you probably really should be looking more at what kind of service is offered-how much of the country is covered, etc.

People would save thousands of dollars if they made more logical decisions. And if people were smarter consumers the corporations would have to offer better quality products and services at less cost. According to what I have heard Apple makes something like a 40% profit off of its products.

 

[SLCraig]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
I saw on TV the long lines of people waiting to buy the new iPhones. Some people had waited in line for days! I had to laugh. People waiting in lines for a cellphone!


Without even entering this thread I already knew that was what it was going to be about.

I agree, it's a total joke. Poor lemmings!

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: Klutch9
Yea but the new iPhone has an SD card slo... oh wait, nope, still doesn't have that!


Funny how HTC one has integrated battery and no SD slot and its OK.

I think its stupid for Apple to not have one. With a new baby, I take a LOT of pictures, and it would be nice.

But its not like other "flagship" products arent set up the same way these days.

Originally Posted By: Kuato
Originally Posted By: CurtisB
I'm surprised these folks can afford a new smart phone every year. With all that free time to wait in line, who's working to pay for it.


Well if it's anything like I've noticed, they have money for a new phone and cigarettes, but get their electricity disconnected and their new car repo'd...



What's also funny is how when I make a deal about people swapping low mileage, fairly new cars with others bought on debt, I'm just such a bad guy for talking about it, and it is so horrible that anyone (me) would question why folks do so... Yet there is such negativity on here over folks swapping an iphone, which for many people would be LESS than one month's car payment in initial outlay.


The HTC One also comes with halfway decent built in storage sizes at reasonable prices. You can get a 32GB one for $99 at best buy right now. Which is a lot less than a comparable iphone. I personally love my One, and I haven't actually missed the removable battery or storage yet. That's me personally of course, I don't blame people that want those. But I was never really one of the people who had a problem that the iphone didn't have them.

And honestly with iOS 7, the iphone has finally caught up to android in some big ways, imo. I'd still never buy one, but I no longer feel the product itself is completely out of date like I have before now.

 

[rshaw125]

The lines are all for the free publicity. The vast majority of the 9 million who have already bought one pre-ordered / ordered on the internet.

As I said on here a few weeks back. The most successful people I know all have iphones. People who travel the globe. They want a 'world phone' that gets the job done.

 

[Mystic]

Most of the most successful people I knew, the executives where I worked, all had Blackberries. Now I know the Blackberry is in trouble and in the future may be for business and not available to consumers but that is what they were all using.

I remember one guy who had bought his own iPhone. It was one of the first iPhones and I think he said he had paid $800.00 for it. I was thinking if I wanted a cell phone I could get one cheaper than that. That guy was hardly the most successful guy I knew.

For a wealthy person, or for somebody who wants to appear wealthy, an iPhone is not that expensive.

I can see where it would be a useful device. In addition to making and receiving telephone calls you could take photos and it has maps and all of that. But any decent cell phone will work. Verizon has the widest coverage at least in the USA as far as I know. And I would rather take photos with a real camera and I can get maps using my desktop computers at home.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Nick R

The HTC One also comes with halfway decent built in storage sizes at reasonable prices. You can get a 32GB one for $99 at best buy right now. Which is a lot less than a comparable iphone. I personally love my One, and I haven't actually missed the removable battery or storage yet. That's me personally of course, I don't blame people that want those. But I was never really one of the people who had a problem that the iphone didn't have them.

And honestly with iOS 7, the iphone has finally caught up to android in some big ways, imo. I'd still never buy one, but I no longer feel the product itself is completely out of date like I have before now.

My

Does "right now" imply some sale with a higher price typically? OK, regardless, $100 more. Cant say that is a ton, and all these subsidized prices (how much is google paying in subsidies to get their stuff out there) makes the line very vague.

Caught up? Blew everything else away as far as processing benchmarks go, and 4G LTE battery life, which is important to me, as my phone is way more a non-wifi web browser than anything else.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/5

And a ton more benchmarks like this all over. Considering that google was playing catch up for years, good for them that they did indeed catch up, but there is nothing revolutionary there, nor is there anything revolutionary in ios anymore. But one was the first to market with a proper system, and one was dumping garbage for a long time. Kudos to the google ecosystem to have caught up and make evolutionary improvements, but that's what they are. They bought their way into the market, which is fine, but they arent the newton, palmpilot, ipaq, jornada, etc. either.

Its more or less toyota camry vs honda accord. F150 vs Silverado, etc. Each iteration is "so much better" than the last, but what that really means is more marketing speak than anything.

The 5s is somewhat exciting given the two flash camera and still not-as-obnoxious size. Im not ken on switching from the perfect form factor of my 4s, but given that I pay into a subsidy from ATT each month, it may be worthwhile to do. BTW, my 4S just got an offer for $210, two years old and chipped.

Stupid to wait for anything in line for that long and to spend excess money in premiums to have the latest when each thing comes out, IMO, personally... But that's for most anything. But for the droid fans (nothing wrong with preferring that) to come on and say how its so much better and iOS had to catch up, well, that just makes me laugh too, because all this stuff is just so incrementally evolutionary anymore that Im not sure there is anything in any ecosystem that is downright exciting, to give a reason to make comments one way or another, or justify camping out on lines to get item x.

 

[rshaw125]

I remember when the Blackberry was the phone to have. Especially people in business/sales etc.

I think a couple of reasons that people prefer the iphone is because it is well made and just gets the job done.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: rshaw125
I remember when the Blackberry was the phone to have. Especially people in business/sales etc.

I think a couple of reasons that people prefer the iphone is because it is well made and just gets the job done.



Nothing beats the blackberry keyboard, IMO. It will be a sad day when work takes my blackberry and gives me something flat with a virtual keyboard under glass.

 

[Mystic]

I agree that there is no reason to be camping out in a line to buy the latest iPhone or whatever. Use what you have for as long as it works and try to get the new stuff as cheap as you can.

I know Apple stuff a little better than some of the other stuff. The operating system for iPhones and iPads (IOS7) does not impress me compared to a Mac OS X operating system. I would rather have a Mac desktop than an iPad and I would find a cheaper cell phone than an iPhone. Even the commercials on TV are encouraging people to constantly upgrade to the latest iPhone when there really might be little improvement. I find Windows 8 more impressive than iOS7 also. A Windows desktop computer or Apple desktop computer is much better than a tablet computer. For real work in an office using Windows Office or Photoshop or Lightroom it would be a major strain on the eyesight to use a tablet computer or try to do Excel work or Photoshop work on the tiny screen for a tablet computer. Plus in a work environment there is no real need usually for a tablet computer and somebody could walk off with one easier.

So to sum it up, I still laugh when I see people camping out in line to buy the latest iPhone.

 

[JHZR2]

Agree totally that a tablet or uber-obnoxious giant super-phone is no replacement for a real computer. Not for doing anything substantial.

 

[rshaw125]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: rshaw125
I remember when the Blackberry was the phone to have. Especially people in business/sales etc.

I think a couple of reasons that people prefer the iphone is because it is well made and just gets the job done.



Nothing beats the blackberry keyboard, IMO. It will be a sad day when work takes my blackberry and gives me something flat with a virtual keyboard under glass.



Yep The BB keyboard is the best I've ever used. I miss it. Also my BB Bold had the best reception as well.

 

[Mystic]

I did read that Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, supposedly uses his iPad for 80% of everything. He must have pretty limited computing needs, or maybe his secretary or office assistant or executive secretary takes care of everything he needs to do on a real computer.

No wonder these computer executives at Apple and Microsoft don't appreciate real computers if they have pretty limited computing needs and use their iPads or Windows Surface tablets for their needs.

Maybe Tim Cook should do some photography using a digital camera and work on the photos using Aperture on an iMac. Then maybe he would understand the needs of digital photographers.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Maybe Tim Cook should do some photography using a digital camera and work on the photos using Aperture on an iMac. Then maybe he would understand the needs of digital photographers.


What you're talking about is a very niche market. 80% of the people take digital photographs and post them on the social media network of their choice straight from their device. Just as 80% of the people don't use ArcInfo for GIS dataset analysis and just as 80% of the people don't use AutoCAD or Microstation to design a bridge and just as 80% of the people don't use SAP accounting software as a comptroller in their free time. You couldn't use a tablet for any of that.

The computing needs of the CEOs of Apple and Microsoft probably line up somewhat roughly with the computing needs of most people. They use their devices for communication, whether that's email or video teleconferencing or calendars or whatever. I'd say that we use our iPad/iPhones at home for 80% of what we do, too. We use Microsoft Office 2011 on our iMac for things like writing the annual Christmas card letter or maintaining our personal finance spreadsheets. We probably COULD write our Christmas letter on the iPad, but that'd be silly. We probably COULD try to update spreadsheets on the iPad, but that'd get frustrating pretty quick.

There will always be things you can't do on a tablet. And there will always be things where a tablet is easier to use than a laptop or desktop computer. They're different machines and each will be better than the other for certain tasks. There will always be a solution for those in niche markets with specific tasks. I couldn't do 25% of the work I do at work on a tablet. Now the boss...he could probably get away with one for most of what he does (and in fact does have an iPad at work and does use it a lot).

 

[Mystic]

I am sure the programmers who developed iOS7 and Windows 8 and so forth are still doing their work on desktop computers.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
I am sure the programmers who developed iOS7 and Windows 8 and so forth are still doing their work on desktop computers.


To be sure they are. That's another niche environment: computer programming.

I'm sure that desktop computers will always be around. There are too many things that cannot be done on a tablet. For most consumer uses, tablets work very well. In most production environments, tablets would work very poorly.

 

[Mystic]

There are a lot of photographers and computer design and graphics people who work on photographs and a lot more. Look around you and much of what exists, from women's dresses to skyscrapers has been worked on by somebody in software like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Mac computer sales have declined from a high of about 5.1 million computers a quarter to something like 3.8 million a quarter today. If Apple produces software that will benefit those photographers and computer design and graphics people that could make up the difference in the loss of sales.

In any case, I will continue working on my photos. It is a lot of fun to make a photograph better. Of course you should try to take the best photo you can, but working on a photo is great fun also. Until you have done it, you can't appreciate it.

Sort of like doing your own oil changes and making sure good quality oil is used and the job is done right. Might give a person a better feeling than taking the car to Jiffy Lube.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
There are a lot of photographers and computer design and graphics people who work on photographs and a lot more. Look around you and much of what exists, from women's dresses to skyscrapers has been worked on by somebody in software like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.


Of course, but those technical tasks are handled by a very small percentage of people. Sure, there are a lot of them, but there are a LOT of other computer users, too.

This is demonstrated best by the number of declining desktop computer sales. Before the world of tablet and smart phone devices, the desktop computer was the only tool in the shed. There was no other way to do email or pay your Discover bill or download the open swim schedule at the local Y. So all that stuff was done on a desktop computer. We've seen in the last decade devices brought to market that are more optimal for those types of tasks, and the explosion in sales of those devices (and commensurate decline of the desktop computer's market share) evince the amount of people who used desktop computers for very simple tasks.

I'm not saying that photograph retouching isn't a fun or worthwhile thing to do...not at all. I'm simply saying that the percentage of people who do do that is very small, and the evidence of that is the exploding small device market and declining large device market.

 

[Mystic]

And I am saying that whoever ignores the needs of photographers and whoever ignores the needs of computer design and graphics people will probably pay a price. Already Windows workstations are used a lot rather than Mac Pros by a lot of professionals. But Microsoft has also gotten kind of strange recently.

The creative people who want to do design and computer graphics and work on photographs will go whenever they have to go to be able to do what they want to do. If that means using some new computer operating system from Japan or China that is what they will do. What these creative professionals do affects everybody in the world. From the design of women's dresses to magazines to books to the design of buildings to much else. And these people, small in number, may have a lot of influence. So it might not be so smart to ignore these people.

And in any case, somebody has to create the computer operating systems and the software to do these things-to design buildings and create magazines and all the rest. So whoever supplies the operating systems and the software is going to be rich. If Microsoft and Apple do not want to be a part of that I see no problem with that. Somebody else will do it. Maybe that is what we need to have happen.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
And I am saying that whoever ignores the needs of photographers and whoever ignores the needs of computer design and graphics people will probably pay a price.


I agree: there is certainly a market for desktop computers, and as I said before, I think there will *always* be a market for desktop computers. I would agree that if someone's in the market with a half-baked design or OS, they're likely wasting their time.