New Apple Lust Objects for 2010 and onward

family plans (lol)

Why lol? A 2-year family plan usually saves you money over two separate contract-free phones -- it's a pretty reasonable way to go for US customers, unless things have changed a lot since the last time I set this up.

But what do I know, I keep my iP5 in a case. (My old one, caseless, never got scratched, but I just like the heft of it in my hand with the case on.)

caek otm about focus on non us markets. Samsung is eating apples lunch in asia

gold iphone! game over, samsung

"Faintly remember some talk at the time about some coating need time to harden. Since the very first ones were straight from the factory and they didn't have time to set."

that sounds ridiculous.

Does a $549 iphone become price competitive with samsung?

Yeah

Why lol? A 2-year family plan usually saves you money over two separate contract-free phones -- it's a pretty reasonable way to go for US customers, unless things have changed a lot since the last time I set this up.

not saying lol at the people who choose them. it's a totally sensible thing to do given the options.

but you know what would be better than family plans saving you a little bit of money? sanely priced individual contracts (i.e. 80-90% less than what they cost now).

due to government/industry collusion there's not much else we can do about it

at least t-mobile usa is getting some part of it right -- if you buy an iPhone outright it's the base price, but if you subsidize it over a contract period you actually end up paying a little less for it

I mean, rather than the current system where you pay some fake number and then get jacked for a high amount every month regardless of what device you chose

dy, do people mostly own their phones in HK or do they get them as part of a contract?

Everybody owns. No contracts

Well there are contractual deals

HK otm

How does paying for a phone on t-mobile monthly compare to buying it outright? Do they effectively charge interest or is it the same price divided by 24 months?

Lock in contracts severely disadvantage apple. They can only sell phones to people every 2 years

And for people willing to pay the upgrade fee, locked phones severely limit who they can sell their phones to

How many people would really buy a $500-800 phone every year otherwise though?

The same people who cycle through iPads and MacBooks

Resell market is robust for those products

Phones are status symbols as well. Apple introduces gold phones so people won't think you're a plebe who only has an iPhone 5

i change my laptop up every couple of years. with resale i get a brand new laptop for like $200.

same would go for phone if i felt they were getting qualitatively better

the 2 year iphone cycle is the one vestige of the US market being what they had in mind when they first started making phones

Hurting, I just said some details re: t-mo above

I think the best coverage for me locally would be verizon but for some reason I've always found them irritating

no doubt Verizon sucks, but in all my years of hearing about people on other carriers complaining about service, I've never heard someone complain about Verizon. I switched from Sprint to Verizon years ago and have never had coverage complaints.

i am never locking in to a coverage contract again

mh, saw that but wasn't sure I understood your post. Like is the total amount you pay over the two year period roughly equal to what you would pay upfront? Cause if so you'd be crazy not to pay over two years, right?

The amount you would pay over two years is less, or at least it was with some T-Mobile plans. I believe if you break the contract and keeping the phone, you end up paying a little more, with fees.

So yeah, assuming you're willing to stick with them for the two years, it's a better deal. Ideally companies should be giving you a discount for loyalty?

In the United States, a single model of each line supports both AT&T and Verizon, as well as T-Mobile, with support for Sprint coming in a separate model that is also compatible with KDDI and Softbank in Japan.

Thank goodness

about time honestly. but i'll still be locked into Verizon due to family/friends/being in the northeast

OMG ill bitch about Verizon til the cows come home but thats more as an ex-employee than a wireless user.

But do you bitch about losing a signal and think, damn, I wish I had T-mobile.

sunny, I preordered a 4S and got it on day of release? I think it depends on if you preorder on the first day it's available or wait.

― beautifully, unapologetically plastic (mh), Tuesday, September 10, 2013 1:35 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did too, but i was in Australia (shipping to my US address) when i pre-ordered it. Maybe the website read my IP and bumped back the order to the Australian release date or something. Who knows.

Can you buy these straight from AT&T stores? Is that an option?

https://twitter.com/nokia_uk/status/377488875075035136

On a drive from Chicago to Duluth, my friend w/ iPhone 5 on Verizon had solid data service the whole way- not a single dead spot that we saw.
I've got the same phone but w/ AT&T and I had ZERO data & terrible voice coverage outside of bigger towns.

The only reason I kept AT&T was b/c Verizon doesn't do simultaneous voice and data, but I'd rather be forced to choose one or the other than get neither.

xp definitely find the gold phone a little trashy. doesn't seem like a move Jobs would have allowed.

no doubt Verizon sucks, but in all my years of hearing about people on other carriers complaining about service, I've never heard someone complain about Verizon. I switched from Sprint to Verizon years ago and have never had coverage complaints.

― dan selzer, Tuesday, September 10, 2013 4:19 PM (26 minutes ago)

yeah, at work I support mobile phones for national field sales and after dealing with many carriers there's no getting around the fact that verizon is signal king. customer service ain't bad either tho their plans and policies can get a little byzantine.

their signal is great. My main complaint is the confusion I experience almost every other month in trying to figure out what I am paying and why

and I find their service reps often misrepresent things to me, whether deliberately or not

its deliberate

They have that thing where if you can go over your minutes, you can supposedly "backdate" a higher minutes plan. Only when I tried to do this, they didn't actually backdate the plan like I asked them to (in writing, it was a chat) and as a result I was billed significantly MORE money than I would have been, because they "prorated" my 700 minutes plan for the first 21 days of the month (the period during which I went over), resulting in me going even FURTHER over. ARGHHHHH!

I had to threaten to leave (I am out of contract) to get them to fix this.

That shit is typical. I was the release coordinator and before that QA for their billing system. There is really no way I can think of to do that in there.

AT&T, on the other hand, offered to up my plan (didnt know there was such a thing at the time!)and ended up saving me close to $350 when I once completely miscalculated the data I would use internationally. I've never had a problem with them but to be honest i rarely call them.

(xxxp) they bought the company i was working for, alltel, which had the regonial USA covered so, yeah, i bet their signal is great.

xp definitely find the gold phone a little trashy. doesn't seem like a move Jobs would have allowed.

LOL at Nokia bashing on gold phone when they were responsible for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertu

iirc I switched at&t plans mid-month once via the website and it actually asked if I wanted it to be effective that day, the beginning of the current billing period, or the beginning of the next

verizon's site does that too but (surprise!) there are often reasons why you can't do changes through the website. For example, if you've already made one change that month through the website, you can't make another for some reason. Also there are timing issues.

Guys, 64 bit is a big deal. This is Apple actually hinting where they're going next and we won't feel the full impact of it for a year or two. 64 bit in this release feels like a technical solution now to a problem that's in the pipeline rather than a feature that people will wank themselves to death over today. At which point the 5S you buy today will still be supported while the 5Cs are on the junk heap.

is the future problem video games with crazy math?

apple gives 0 fucks about people who think the gold iphone is ugly. it + the CIRCLE AROUND THE HOME BUTTON allows them to capture people who care about letting everybody know that they have the newest iphone. this has been a problem for apple since the 3g and 3gs