New Apple Lust Objects for 2010 and onward

was thinking about getting an iPhone finally but good grief are those monthly plans in the USA expensive, with two-year contracts to boot; just hard for me to accepting spending like $1000 a year to have a phone + like 250 megs of data a month. Mostly I'm a cheapskate when it comes to monthly / recurring costs; with an upfront bill I can budget better, but monthly fees are deceptive to me. Plus two year contracts are horrible: how am I supposed to know now whether I'll still want the same plan in 2 years? I don't know where I'll be living in 2 years, or what my financial situation will be like.

pretty stoked though about the cheapass walmart/t-mobile plans pre-announced last week, though: 100 minutes of talk a month & unlimited data & texting for $30 a month, without contract. yeah I'll be stuck with some android phone but I don't really care I think: iPhone is gorgeous but until we get European-like plan prices here, they're off the table for me.

I have a 3g iPad 2 & was playing around with the idea of getting a SkypeIn # to take occasional calls on the iPad but since it doesn't fit in my pocket it's not as good as what I'd like.

I just chunk it into my "reoccurring costs" budgeting with my water/electric/cable bills.

just found this out about Mail in Lion:

The favorites bar in Mail is keyboard-accessible (just like Safari). Press command 1 to go to the first favorite, command 2 for the second, etc.

HALLELEJUAH

or however you spell "FUCK YES"

my contract is €10/month for 500GB + 9c/texts + 9c/min for calls to germany, europe and the usa /braggin

500gb?! on a phone?

Paying 10 quid/month here for 250 mins, unlimited text, unlimited data. Seems OK to me.

yeah that t-mobile plan is the first I've seen that's even ~sorta~ up to Euro standards

hoping that this'll be a big winner & force the competition down, b/c while it's fine to charge a fuckload for the iPhone, it's dumb on any phone to pay so much per month.

Hey Max there is a new iPhone coming out (nov2011 i think?) that will be prepay

yeah i did the math out on it, itd cost about the same as just sticking w/ at&t. and id have to use at&t anyway.

lol 500mb not gb

so when i ordered my 4s an option for the data plan was 4GB + Mobile Hotspot. Whats up w/ that?

Paying 10 quid/month here for 250 mins, unlimited text, unlimited data. Seems OK to me.

'kinell, what plan is that?

Three has a sim only plan that's like that except 3000 texts

giffgaff payg (sim only, yep). I think three is more like 15 quid, but maybe 300 mins.

so, not that anyone cares, but after my girlfriend has decided she wants to switch to an iphone i think were going to open a family plan--

For two iPhones on the cheapest family plans:

Verizon - $159.98/month ($79.99 per person) for 2GB of data/month (per person)
Sprint - $149.99/month ($75.00 per person) for unlimited data

given that verizon has proven it works well w/ the iphone and supposedly has the best infrastructure for 4G (for whenever LTE comes around), and given that i dont use much more than 1GB of data a month let alone two, i feel like verizon is worth the extra $5

You know the 4S doesn't do LTE, yeah?

yes. id rather be locked in to what i assume will be in two years a cheaper contract on the best 4g network than want to switch again

ah cool

(i havent signed up yet in case anyone wants to talk me out of it)

(i am bad at decision-making)

So, supposedly this new AppleCare+ plan has to be purchased at the same time as the phone, but that wasn't made completely clear. I called Apple since my phone obviously isn't here yet but I'd still want the newer plan, since it covers accidental damage. They are currently hammering out the details, but it sounds like there will be a brief period where people who preordered will be able to still get it.

so applecare+ only covers the iphone and not e.g. my MBP?

afaik applecare+ is going to be for iPhones only, at this time

£60 seems like a good deal for two years' insurance but otoh I don't know much about insurance

is the iphone covered on your home contents insurance?

for MBP you need applecare++ iirc

applecare NT & NT+ coming next year obv

So, supposedly this new AppleCare+ plan has to be purchased at the same time as the phone, but that wasn't made completely clear.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

Pretty rough considering normal applecare can be had at any time in the first year, although I suppose you could drop your phone and THEN buy applecare+.

This is the first one to cover accidental damage iirc so i guess that's it

Cozen: my house insurance covered my phone, yeh

oh damn

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/11/sprint-iphone-4s-to-be-sim-unlocked-verizon-after-60-days/

I wld go with sprint because it seems like the 'indie choice' ya mean but

Kind of hope that puts some pressure on AT&T, but who knows? Verizon/Sprint are doing it because they're trying to live up to this "world phone" label and cdma support is virtually nil outside the US, right?

yeah, i think at&t is less likely to change since they actually have a chance of getting some money out of int'l travelers, verizon and sprint werent getting any at all so its like "whatever, might as well"

xp you get cdma in aruba and baghdad i think, so verizon already had that market sewn up.

should i upgrade to lion everyone?

HI DERE

tbh I have no idea how Lion is doing stability-wise ATM; I've held off upgrading and it hasn't caused me any noticeable problems, the anecdotal stuff I've read seems to be split on whether it's a good idea or not and my wife's new MBP has Lion on it already and has zero issues. My gut call is "no, unless it has something you really need".

i kinda wanna get in on icloud

but also like, i'm a little worried about mail.app cuz i use that app so hard, and in ways that i'm probably not supposed to (like it's basically like a huge searchable database of everything in my life)

ah, I don't use the mail app at all so I can't really advise sensibly there

my friend complains a lot about the finder in lion, u notice anything weird with it?

I haven't played extensively with my wife's machine, so no.

lol really I just wanted to say hi, someone who is more knowledgeable should feel free to jump in at any time...

my friend complains a lot about the finder in lion, u notice anything weird with it?

they completely fucked up the icon view in finder.. if you sort by date modified, it creates these groups of like "less than a day ago", "more than 30 days ago" that are a single line of files you have to scroll horizontally. i just want a big ass list of icons sorted by date!!

hi xp

i never use icon view, i don't really "understand" it

i have a strange use-case where i need to visually scan over and pick out an image from a huge collection of images; other than that i mostly use detail or column view

i guess if you're dealing wiht photos or wtv that's true

ack, it looks like the Sprint / Verizon iPhone 4s won't have be unlocked for GSM?

was actually gonna consider springing for one if it did

might just have to get really big pockets to use my ipad as a phone ?

You can change icon view back to the normal style. I only use it for my downloads folder.

I'm on Lion. The only thing annoying is some weird animations when moving stuff around in the Finder. But otherwise I think it's great. And all my software works with it, though I had to wait forever for Xrite to update their monitor calibration software which was like 10 years old.

i know im gonna have problems with my uh... "special" copy of final draft :S

I have no issue with Lion other than not being able to set up spaces in a 2x2 desktop configuration which almost made me revert back but I've gotten used to.

Darn. I can't update to IOS5 with my work computer...

ooooh, icloud for itunes is live

lets you download anything you ever bought - totally forgot about some records I bought through itunes in 2007

in finder, lion made all your folders on the sidebar into ONE COLOR, it's really lame

wow apple shipped a lot today

iOS5 (iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch)
OSX 10.7.2
iTunes 10.5
Apple TV 4.4
iCloud
iPhoto 9.7.2
Safari 5.1.1
Aperture 3.2
Lion Restore update

iOS:
Airport Utility app
Find my Friends app
Showtimes app
Cards app

Updates:
iMovie
Pages
Numbers
Keynote
Remote
Find My iPhone

and still it's going to cost $250 to fix my washing machine. they can put a man on the moon.