New Apple Lust Objects for 2010 and onward

I'm still getting a 5 but I won't be queuing up on day 1 like I did in 2010

Just pre-ordered, will be posted to me when available. I should know to never say anything like ^^^ about anything ever.

(basically the deal is good v any other option I could have taken, so why wait)

I live in a country where it is forbidden to subsidize phones so any upgrade involve shelling out the full catalog price - makes it hard to get motivated to get the new one.

The subsidy thing is awful, because Apple just takes the actual price of the device, adds the price of subsidy to it, then charges the carriers that. We end up paying 399 or thereabouts either way.

Original iPhone had no subsidy and was 399. iPod Touch is the same minus radio and some bits and bobs and is 200. Basically these should be sold ot carrier for 400 and subsidised down to ~100 if the carriers want do that.

I live in a country where it is forbidden to subsidize phones

would immigrate

mine will cost au$107/mth inc. phone & 4 gb lte data (2 yrs)

oh and it's the 64 gb model

£70 a month! Wow. Do you have to make a downpayment?

nope, nothing upfront. pretty decent too considering it's on telstra, which has one of the most comprehensive 3g networks in the world.

£1680 in total then. Same on Three here is £1015, Orange is £1200. It looks like everyone's making the subsidy back with these 2-year contracts.

I'm boggling at those numbers. T-Mob offered me £17.50/month + free iPhone 4 = £420 TCO.

That was just before the 4S came out - maybe they were desperate to shift their old stock?

I did the sums based on my current (cheap, and no 4g access) plan + buying the phone outright, and the difference was negligible. the plan I just signed up for on its own + outright phone = way more than the same on contract. not sure why tbh.

I bought the 4s outright, but basically have saved myself v little I think (assuming I can ebay it now for ~450) as it's hard to get lots of data and tethering on any sort of cheap price plan

btw I'd have paid maybe 30% less if I'd gone with one of the other shitty networks here (one of which doesn't won't have a 4g network for another year)

Best TCO in the US, btw, seems to be Virgin Mobile.

i bought mine outright, did it because i spend >2 months/yr in three countries. but tbh, with my usage i'm sure i'd do the same if i were always in germany/uk. those 10 local currencies/month PAYG type things are a fine for me. the killer is the 2 months in the US (a land where the sim card costs more than a a month of all you can eat in the UK) and if you don't spend money every month you lose your number.

I have to put money on my French phone every few months to keep it from eating my number (tbh it's a French number, so it's tasty no doubt)

ordered mine from Verizon last night at 2:01cdt, felt very fanboyish but it was kinda fun to set the alarm, make a quick order, then go back to sleep

When I visit the US I just do the data-only ipad sim switch. $15 for 250mb for a month is all I need, and I just use voip for phone calls; but I ahrdly make any phone calls anywhere in the world.

do you use that data only sim in an iphone. does it work when you go back 6 months later, assuming you pay the $15 for the month, or do you need a new SIM?

worth it if only for the huge bump in performance. 3GS -> 4 seemed pretty significant to me, 3GS -> 5 would be huge i imagine.

Performance as in speed? I do find the 3G (not 3GS) a little sluggish. Just clocked it, launching iPod is about 6s, time lapse from clicking on Camera app to being ready to shoot also about 6s.

it's more that browsing the web in safari, over the course of a day, is going to be minutes longer than it would be on a newer phone

I do find the 3G (not 3GS) a little sluggish. Just clocked it, launching iPod is about 6s, time lapse from clicking on Camera app to being ready to shoot also about 6s.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, September 14, 2012 9:49 AM (2 hours ago)

tried this on my 4, from a cold open both camera and ipod take about 2-3s

do you use that data only sim in an iphone. does it work when you go back 6 months later, assuming you pay the $15 for the month, or do you need a new SIM?

Don't need a new sim, no, although do tend to need to put my credit card number in again. It does depend on having an iPad to activate it in, though (and probably this won't be so good with iPhone 5 nano sims). But it's the only remotely sensible solution I've found to going to the US with an iPhone and using data.

I can imagine I'd be happy with a 3G (maybe...) except for the screen - probably 80%+ of my non-work reading is on my phone, and the retina display makes a huge difference for that.

and yes, using the sim in an iphone; you just have to set APN stuff to ATT broadband.

In the US it's a well-known non-secret that the carriers pay more in subsides to Apple than anyone else, which is why they push Android phones heavily. But the popularity of the iPhone means they have to offer it or lose subscribers, so they put up with it and pay Apple more per phone than other companies get. In the US, an unlocked iPhone 5 costs $450 more than one sold with a 2-year contract.

Oh, has anyone upgraded to iTunes 10.7? Other than iOS 6 support, is this a big improvement i.e. less bloated and faster/easier to use?

i got my 4s for £30 per month with a one year contract but it's with *ahem* tesco mobile.

/The home button on my 4 is dying so I'll likely replace it with a 5

― DARING PRINCESS (DJP), Thursday, 13 September 2012/

fwiw this can sometimes be solved with a reset (for real!)

I kiss you for this, btw

10.7 is just a normal maintenance release afaik. That new redesigned one is probably 11 and coming in October.

xp that worked?? omg

completely unable to find out whether capacity of home screen folders will increase from 12 to 16

not sure if anyone has linked to this yet, but it does pretty effectively indicate how screwed for choice americans are (whether travelling abroad or not) as well as anyone who regularly travels to america. obv if would be dead simple if the world could agree on ONE network standard, EVER, and just get on with it

It's not like anyone is going to take billions of dollars of CDMA infrastructure off of AT&T's hands.

I mean Verizon's, obviously.

Weird thing is that the non-US (A1429) iPhone 5 supports the same three LTE frequencies that the CDMA iPhones used with Verizon and Sprint in the US do. The problem is that neither company is routing voice over LTE yet, so they both use CDMA for voice still which means you can't talk on you rest-of-world GSM phone on those two networks. I would have expected AT&T's iPhone 5 to work globally (and global iPhones to work on AT&T) but AT&T is using unusual LTE frequencies that most iPhones don't support. I'm guess the LTE chipmakers (Qualcomm and the like) will catch up soon and make an LTE chipset that works on every frequency used worldwide.

Travellers to the US can insert a SIM card and talk and surf on AT&T or T-Mobile's network, but on HSPA+ (still pretty fast, but not LTE) for data and GSM for voice. T-Mobile uses oddball frequencies in most places and has iPhone-compatible HSPA+ in only a few big cities and no LTE at all, so you're going to fall back on slow 2G data speeds if you use any iPhone on their network. At least you can talk since they're GSM.

so ... verizon's iphone is still the best bet for global compatibility?

It seems so - a complete reverse from the iPhone 4 which didn't even have a SIM card slot and couldn't get reception in most of the world. The Verizon iPhone 4S is dual CDMA/GSM, but designed not to work on American GSM networks (read: AT&T) - the SIM card slot is there so you can use it outside North America.

So... I have a question about old Apple lust objects.

I need a new computer (mine is from early 2008) but I don't want to buy a new Apple computer. It's just too much money. It's like a car — i'd rather buy used.

So I'm thinking of buying a newer used macbook or macbook pro. My question is about the unibody Apple notebooks. How many years do the batteries last? Mine is JUST now starting to give me "Replace soon / now" warnings. If I buy a 2 year old macbook will I need to replace the battery soon?

I'm wary of buying a computer that deliberately makes it difficult for the user to replace or upgrade parts.

for 1000 dollars you can get a refurb macbook pro i5 that's still a plenty useful computer.

I'm wary of buying a computer that deliberately makes it difficult for the user to replace or upgrade parts.

downloading ios6 to ipad now...

well I think it would def depend on how many cycles the battery's been through, whether the previous owner left it plugged in all the time, etc. I think the app coconut battery app tells you this info?

http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/service/battery/

any passes for passbook available yet?

Can it even be installed yet? I open it and it gives me a dead App Store link

Ditto.

ios6 = 791MB

we're gonna be here for a while

Installed

Bluetooth on-off toggle is now not so buried, so much better.

Took about four tries to load iPod/music without crashing.

Flying Delta tomorrow evening I wonder if passbook will work tomorrow.

assuming they haven't fixed the password visibility issue? still blows my mind that on a presentation device like the ipad your password is displayed character by character. because I want everyone in the room to know what my password is.