What the iPhone should or shouldn't do

[unixronin]

There have for some time been rumors that Apple would sooner or later bring out a smart mobile phone of their own.  The arrival of said phone is now reportedly imminent.

This columnist has his own ideas of how Apple should make its phone stand out from the pack, principally by making your phone a portal to your Mac and giving your Mac the ability to stream music to your phone via iTunes.

Personally, I think he's out of his mind.  Not only would Apple's iPhone then be competing against its own iPod, but the cellular carriers would be laughing all the way to the bank.  Instead of selling service plans with a thousand minutes of airtime a month, they'd be looking at selling plans with a thousand minutes per day.  The lowest-airtime plans that you could buy would probably jump from 700 minutes a month to several thousand.  For those of us who rarely use a hundred minutes a month, that'd really suck.

Comments

[skellington.livejournal.com]

I can only get "unlimited internet" for $20 a month, but it specifies "no streaming media".

In any case, almost no one uses minutes for Internet access anymore. All the carriers have some kind of dedicated data service.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

I have unlimited data for $20 a month.

But streaming is really going to suck in most gprs environments. The rest of the portal idea soounds great.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, I think making it easier to access your computer from your phone is a perfectly reasonable idea. But the idea of streaming music from your computer to your phone is barmy.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

in FACT- google is leading the way. gmail and gtalk are both on my phone. I'm desperately seeking 2 bugfixes (autochecking mail, and automatic signon in gtalk)- but I'm now waiting ever so impatiently for google calendar.

[outtamyskull.livejournal.com]

heh. I want auto sign _out_ on my accounts. I REALLY dislike having to remember to sign out if i walk away from a computer, my crackberry or the something.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

ah, I have a lock on my crackberry

[outtamyskull.livejournal.com]

I have a lock on my BB to, but my desktop/laptop don't lock as quickly.

[midiamin.livejournal.com]

Streaming audio and/or video over plain 'ol GPRS or 1xRTT can indeed suck. As far as I can tell, this only really works in an area with 3G/EvDO (T-Mobile USA is way behind on this point), with a phone that supports same and with a cooperative carrier (as Skellington points out above; my bet is he's with Verizon). But if you have all of the above, and more than just the major metro areas will in the coming years, it can be kinda fun. I expect you'll hear about a lot more of this kind of thing in the near future.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I live in a town that's home to a major California university and we can't even get rid of the dead zones yet, let alone pull 3g.

I'd love to see the world go all Rainbows End (apostrophe not included) on us, sure. But dude- large swathhs of the US are still waiting on wired broadband. The telcos aren't delivering.

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

Since I use way under the least hours available I just pay by the minute. It works out much better for me.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I may end up looking at that option myself, since it seems these days the minimal plan you can get is on the order of 700 minutes. I can't remember the last time we used 200 minutes in a month, between our two phones together, adding up both regular calls and direct-connect.

[outtamyskull.livejournal.com]

naw, you'll see more unlimited data plans, not more minutes. Minutes are more network intensive and are a constant drain. Internet access that can be cached on the phone to cover up a few seconds gap in transmission would be far more flexible, and could be added to a plan without making people think about the need for a different plan.