But how much can you personalize it?
Swype sucks. I get just as many typos AND smear the fuck out of the screen at half the typing speed. I’d rather tap on the glass with less typos.
Email is surprising, but SMS tone is there as “Text Tone” under “Sounds” in Settings.
Nope. That only lets you pick one of Apple’s god-awful irritating sounds. You are most definitely not allowed to choose your own sound files to use.
I really like my iPhone, but this is one of THE most moronic oversights*, along with not allowing a user to create new photo albums on the phone itself (you have to do it through your computer. Gimme a break). My ghetto-ass POS Razr could handle custom txt tones 6 years ago and my JesusPhone[sup]TM[/sup] (I love that! Haha!), touted as the most brilliantest, wonderfulest, will-cure-world-hunger-just-by-the-power-of-its-awesomeness phone there ever will be, can’t do it? Fuck you, Apple.
Oh, and fuck you for creating a dictionary that adds words you frequently use, but specifically have PREVENTED it from adding curse words, no matter how many times I’ve typed fuck, hell or or any other naughty naughty word.
*it’s either an oversight, even though they’ve had tons and tons and tons of complaints/requests for it, or it’s an intentional decision to create brand recognition so everyone knows it’s from an iPhone (ever wonder why everyone with one has the exact same damn txt message tone? Because it’s the only halfway-tolerable option. ALL of the rest are horrible.). So either they’re lazy, stupid, or narcissistic assholes. Pick one (or all three ;)).
I think if you consider the net result, the initial gains are not really worth it.
Yes - I clicked, read, and shared. But look at the context: I am in the market for a phone upgrade, and the provocative headline caught my eye. Now, I haven’t checked in on PC World with any regularity since the early nineties, but my perception of the brand still led me to expect detailed and well-researched tech reviews and speculation.
That perception has shifted a bit, now - “Ha! Made you look!” is not something that reinforces a reputation for quality information. The author comes across as an idiot, and if you publish enough idiocy it’s not going to be long at all before I start skipping over your links when they turn up in my search results.
There may be the odd good recipe at cooks.com, but I am never going to see them because I learned ages ago to ignore the ubiquitous cooks.com links that turned up in my search results, because the general quality of the content made following them a poor investment of time - I know that I am more likely to find good information more quickly if don’t bother with them at all. (In fact, when I search for recipes I use a Custom Google Search that adds “recipe -site:cooks.com -site:allrecipes.com” to the typed query. That way I don’t even waste the time skimming over their links or adding the my qualifiers every time.)
I clicked through on the link because my perception of the brand led me to believe that it would contain good information. “Hey, PC World is declaring that the iPhone 5 may be worth waiting for - that’s significant!” However, it turned out the only value in reading the article was in the form of “Point and laugh at the moron!” entertainment. That’s really not what I’m looking for when I’m looking for articles about consumer technology, and that’s very likely to influence my future behavior.
A good signal-to-noise ratio is important to me - I would definitely not count my exposure to this article as a win for PC World.
You probably should have written that then.
This is such a common complaint from iPhone users that I think it’s understandable if it’s mentioned in short form. So many people complain about the inability to customize these alerts, and that the locked-in choices are mostly impractical for the users’ purpose. Why are most of the alternatives so ridiculously long for a text alert?
There’s been a fair bit of hair pulling about this - it’s one small area where it appears that Apple is ignoring user demand in order to further the brand’s interest. Of course, many people will find that this is no big deal and an easy compromise given that they are generally pleased with the features of the device, but it can be a bit of a turn-off for people who expect to be able to have more control over things like this without jailbreaking their phone.
Will be sticking with Android. I love my Thunderbolt.
Where should I have written that? Hint: I’m not the person you replied to. Though “ReticulatingSplines” does sound really similar to “zweisamkeit”.
And Larry: exactly.
Not being able to change my SMS tones was one of the reasons I now have a new Motorola Atrix instead of that piece of shit iPhone. In fact, I just changed it now, it took me all of 10 minutes to find the settings and change my custom ring tones.
Never thought about it myself and somehow haven’t noticed anyone complaining. I’ve never moved beyond the defaults.
Fair enough. Apologies.
“Perhaps he should have written that then”.
I’ve never actually seen anyone explain how they “optimize the experience.” All I’ve ever seen is people insisting that they do.
I find it very unlikely that the new iPhone will have a leading edge camera. Steve Jobs simply won’t take the hit on the cosmetics of the phone to put in decent optics and a real flash. Look at the Nokia N8 to see what I’m talking about.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/14/nokia-n8-review/
Apple may put in a bigger sensor with bigger pixels, but something that can take good pictures indoors or at night doesn’t seem likely.
I’m probably not the one with the expertise to answer this, but I imagine if you’re getting to design each part of the handset, processor, and OS, there’d be room for more efficiency.
The iPhone is probably the best possible fit for you, because you are exactly the sort of consumer that Apple has in mind when they are designing their products. That’s not meant as a dig; this is really genius on Apple’s part - it completely confounds the general approach, which is “If you want to have an edge, and your competitor’s product allows the consumer to do X and Y, you’d better be damned sure that your product allows the consumer to do X, Y, and Z.”
Apple makes sure they include features that will be most attractive in a general sense, and part of their design philosophy is actively limiting what the user can do if it suits them. Make sure that the basic functionality is there, and strip away anything that might be inconvenient. Don’t worry if X number of people expect to be able to do [blank]; this isn’t their device.
This is a winning strategy, but it is necessarily going to alienate a significant portion of consumers, who may initially be attracted to Apple’s products (because, let’s face it - their elegant design is beautiful,) but end up being frustrated when they try to do things that seem so simple it seems incomprehensible that you can’t do them with such popular devices.
I loved using a Mac at school - but I only ever owned one myself - because (while it was really sweet to use in the limited sense you’d use it at school) when I got it home I found that it was a tremendous pain-in-the-ass to try to use it to do many of the things that I’d want to be able to do with my computer.
I was very attracted by the iPod, and initially thought it was just the best .mp3 player possible - but I found it incomprehensible that I couldn’t just use it directly, like any other .mp3 player, which I would expect to be able to use to move .mp3 files around using anything equipped with a USB Mass Storage driver. Hey, I have music on my player but I’m in the office and just want to copy it over to my Music folder and listen to it over the speakers. Nope, can’t do it, because it’s designed specifically to thwart this expectation. Hey, I want to share it out on my network and use VLC to stream my music to my home media player. I can’t? That’s ridiculous.
iPhone and iPad are both beautiful, but not for me because I know that my expectations about what I should be able to do are not going to be met by them. This is going to be a pretty common experience for a significant proportion of consumers, and this is a basic design philosophy thing - Apple is probably never going to attract these consumers and that’s okay because it’s really not their strategy.
From the provocative headline of the linked article, I actually expected something that would get around this resistance, somehow - something that could conceivably expand their demographic even further, and attract an even wider selection of consumers.
If Steve stood up and announced iTrustYou, a power user mode/alternate firmware that would bypass all the inbuilt limitations and allow wider direct access to the device, including features that consumers asked for and which had previously been ignored because Apple didn’t want to deal with the complications of trying to include them, this would be something that would prick up my ears. (Of course, they’d have to roll out in parallel iScrewedUp, an opt-in subscription support option for people who probably ought not to have fiddled with iTrustYou in the first place.)
If Apple is going to “dominate” much more, their going to draw these other types of consumers into the fold, without alienating their base. That’s going to take something pretty spectacular, and in retrospect it seems a little silly that I opened the article expecting to find something that actually was pretty spectacular. At least, something more than… well, nothing.
I guess he did show admirable restraint by leaving off “6. The Antenna Works Now - Take that, HTC! Doom!”
I’m willing to give that more credence on the Mac side, since they only have to worry about the relatively small number of chipsets, GPUs and support peripherals they sell (as well as supply the drivers for) as compared to the massive amounts of shit Windows has to run on- while relying on vendor-supplied drivers of questionable quality. On the phone side, I don’t buy it since it’s still built from the same purchased parts that HTC, Samsung and everyone else uses. The A4/A5 is slightly interesting but it’s still a licensed ARM core; it’s not like HTC has any headaches with a Snapdragon in an EVO vs. a Snapdragon in an Incredible.
ETA: in my opinion, the one thing Apple does that sets them apart from everyone else and leads to their reputation for a high degree of polish is the fact that they do not release features unless and until they are complete.
But doesn’t Apple also “create” some “features” for its products, so that the consumer believes he’s getting something that only can be gotten with Apple. Even if they’re trivial and childish things? “Omigosh, it comes in colors!”
If I mention that the iPhone does not come in colors, will you then complain because they don’t offer user choice?
The only unhappy Apple consumers I’ve heard are those that actively need a windows computer for work (both at work and at home) and those who play games and tinker a lot. Obviously these people are rather few and far between; the average Windows consumer buys a $500 laptop and wonders why it’s a piece of shit in two years. In my experience, the only Windows laptops (granted, this data is going 5 years back as I’ve only had macs in the time) that weren’t total pieces of shit were Sony Vaios and IBM Thinkpads, both of which are nearly or actually are same price as the entry level Macbook. So on price, it’s not really an issue if you’re getting durable hardware on both sides.
What Apple does it does better than anyone else. What it doesn’t do, obviously, isn’t of concern to them. And while that may be limiting in other avenues of life it’s completely wonderful when it comes to computers and peripherals because a closed system prevents you from all the headaches everyone experiences with Windows machines. Closed systems also work in the NFL. Someone mentioned in another thread why we don’t have the death penalty for hackers/spammers (none of this “on death row for 20 years” stuff, but within a year’s time) and I’d like to know why not myself. Perhaps this would solve much of the problem. Windows machines always seem to have slow security updates.
I mean, VLC for whole-house audio? Obviously they want you to either use an input jack or an Apple TV. For the latter - sure, it’s expensive, but the market is proving that people are willing to pay for an ironed-out no-fuss interface. Play it at the office? Use Pandora for variety or plug it into a $25+ iHome. Or why not have iTunes on the work machine too?
I was a tech repair/support person in high school and college (2001-2006); I worked both in the computer labs and fixing people’s malware/spyware/viruses/naked people crap so I certainly was better educated than the masses. Most people would try valiantly to learn all of what I was telling them and what new brands existed for virus/spyware removal and how often to run scans and what sort of websites to avoid entirely but I constantly felt like I was fighting a horrible, losing battle myself. I still spent hours a month running scans and all sorts of shit to clean my machine up. Macs may have this problem in the future but as of now still don’t.