Recent Comments:
Kim Kardashian Sheds More Pounds But Says "I'm at a Healthy Weight" {That's Fit}
Dec 2nd 2009 2:38PM She has one sweet-looking body. She definitely needs to be cloned.
Tiger Woods Releases Statement Regarding Car Accident {Fanhouse Golf Blog}
Nov 30th 2009 2:01AM When you become famous by hitting a little white ball with a club into a hole then you can get away with anything. Besides, he wrote a couple of checks to the law enforcement agency for a few tickets to the Policeman's Ball.
Plucky little iPhone 3GS confounds expectations, tops Japanese sales for July {Engadget}
Aug 17th 2009 9:09PM Not good battery life at all. The Sharp SH-06A gets about two and a half hours of continuous talk time. Do you know the main reason why Japanese cellphones are so beloved in Japan? Basically because there isn't much choice of anything else. Anyway, Japanese users have good reason to keep using their own localized cellphones with eWallet, 1Seg, etc. Plus the carriers have customized their networks so heavily with specialized packages it's a wonder how most Japanese can afford to use those things. I do understand the government trying to keep the population buying their own goods and they try to give users good hardware at a low price.
This #1 position for the iPhone is nice, but it's only a temporary spot, although it does show that there are people in Japan buying iPhones. It shows the iPhone is not a complete failure in Japan. I'm sure sales numbers aren't as high as in other countries, but the Japan market is a tough nut to crack. The Japanese do not "hate" the iPhone. The iPhone had helped Softbank to grab a higher percentage of new subscribers than the other two much larger carriers.
However, those cellphones that most of you think are so great would not appeal to people in the U.S. even if they could afford to buy them unlocked. There's no eWallet infrastructure or 1Seg broadcasting in the U.S. OLED displays are just starting to get here and they hadn't been cheap before the Zune HD. As far as those high megapixel cameras go, Nokia can easily surpass the Japanese models. The user interfaces are not all that good.
So hate or not, it really doesn't matter. The iPhone is doing OK in Japan and that's about as much to be hoped for considering all the obstacles in such a closed country where people still wear warazoni, geta and use wooden masu to drink sake from. There's just something unusual about the Japanese culture that they're unable to leave the past behind.
Research finds iPhone hurting operators, Boy George unavailable for comment {Engadget}
Aug 17th 2009 2:39PM BS. If AT&T was hurting that badly, they would have tried to get out of the contract. I keep hearing that AT&T wants the exclusivity contract extended. Why do bloggers make up these lies. I'd heard that AT&T takes an initial hit when giving out a lump sum to Apple, but that is supposedly made up over the length of the contract. I'll bet it's costing AT&T a fair amount of money by having to constantly upgrade to handle bandwidth, but I think that would be a good thing. When the iPhone contract ends, AT&T should have a robust network when subscribers start leaving and bandwidth stays the same.
Zune HD lands September 15th, up for pre-order today {Engadget}
Aug 16th 2009 5:55PM Seems like a nice media player, it appears to be very responsive. It just won't rule the world because the iPod already does. As long as the Zune HD can easily get content on it, it has a chance of selling in respectable numbers. The hardware is good and it has potential. The price isn't going to be a clincher once the price for the iPod Touch takes place. Ten bucks isn't enough to pull lots of people to the Zune HD platform. I doubt if it will make any Apple Touch users switch, but Microsoft may get a lot of former Zune users to buy this new model. No early judgments. We'll see how it does over a year's time.
Microsoft probably won't even offer any software for OSX if Mac users wanted to use the Zune HD.
Alyssa Milano Ties the Knot {Popeater}
Aug 16th 2009 2:03PM I wonder how long it will be before the wedding night photos or videos are uploaded to the internet. I suppose that video will be called "One hot night in Milano." I wish her all the best, but the odds of her living a nice quiet life are probably slim.
I don't think you'll be able to marry one of the Olsen twins. I hear they do everything in pairs which should benefit you greatly.
Keepin' it real fake, part CCXXXII: Nokla strikes again with E81 rehash {Engadget}
Aug 16th 2009 11:21AM That is definitely a slick design. Sort of strange looking form-factor, but should work out nicely. I'd use that lanyard hole for hanging it around my neck. I'd like to see how that swivel mechanism works. The mirror on the back is a nice touch, too.
Streaming video from your iPhone? They crippled the app for that. {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Aug 16th 2009 10:51AM I don't know why people are always asking why they can't do streaming on the AT&T network. I can't believe there are still people that don't realize the AT&T network is on the verge of collapse from lack of bandwidth. The iPhone uses more bandwidth than probably any smartphone and within the last three years AT&T has added more subscribers than any other network. In a large city, there is almost no way they can add enough bandwidth to keep up. They can't arbitrarily offer streaming to smaller cities where there is enough bandwidth because then there'd be more griping about why some cities are getting it and others aren't.
Yet users continually ask why they're not allowed to do unlimited streaming over 3G on their iPhones. They truly want to crash the network and if it goes down they'll be even less satisfied when they can't even make simple telephone calls. But other people can do it! Then get whatever network or handset they're using and enjoy your life. Griping about AT&T and Apple not supporting this and that isn't going to make it happen when it comes to limited bandwidth. It just isn't feasible to do with the present technology and that's why 4G is being rushed out.
AT&T isn't about to freeze subscriber growth in large cities, so the network will never catch up to the number of users. That's it. End of story.
The MacBook Micro is here, also might have a camera {Engadget}
Aug 15th 2009 6:21PM Apple wouldn't build something like that. The keyboard is too cramped and the screen is too small. It looks like a netbook built for a midget.
Apple tablet pic 'leaked': this is the real one, we can feel it {Engadget}
Aug 15th 2009 6:17PM It's a damn good thing that Apple doesn't build devices for Engadget tech-nerds. They'd never be able to sell a product that doesn't match up to some theoretical specs a bunch of tech-heads have in mind. Apple is in business to make money, not please the five hundred or so people who want a device with best of everything. Tech-nerds make up such a small part of the consumer industry it would be a waste to design a product that 98% of the population can't even figure out how to use.
People here want a CrunchPad. What's so special about that? Nothing. It's pretty much like any tablet before it except it runs Linux. People here want an Archos 9 tablet. It runs Windows 7 on some clunky Atom processor. In theory, both of those products could be very useful devices. Somebody, somewhere thinks they're worth building for consumers. Of course, nobody here is willing to pay more than about $500 for them. Yeah, like that's going to happen with such low production quantities.
So many people here seem to be so unhappy about the form factor of a tablet. It doesn't fit in this. I can't carry it in my pocket. It's too thick. It doesn't fold. Basically most here say that a tablet in general will never be successful because of the form factor. It can only be used in vertical markets such as health care or inventory. Amazon tried to put a keypad on the Kindle, but that wasn't good enough. I get the feeling that everyone thinks that netbooks are more useful for consumers than tablets. I call BS on that. Even the CrunchPad has the netbook beat in spades but not for $300. They'd be out of business in a month selling it at that price.
Once somebody puts out a tablet that can deliver ALL multimedia content on demand, it will be a success and it will sell. It will sell better than netbooks. People will force themselves to learn type on the tablet because it will probably become indispensable to them.
I don't know if this device in the picture is the real deal (probably not), but whether it looks like that or not, Apple will sell millions of them. Why? Because as someone said, if you put an Apple logo on a turd, lots of people will spend plenty of money to buy it.
