THE PACK Message Boards

My wife Cathey keeps wondering who are all these people who live in their parents' basements but who can afford $600 video game consoles and iGadgets? I try to come up with answers, but I really can't. We see people camped out for days in front of Best Buy or the Apple Store (which I'm sure will soon be the iStore, with a patented click-wheel entry door). Don't they have to have jobs to have money? Aren't they missing being at work in order to stand in line that long? If they don't have jobs, then how the heck do they get money to buy Wiis, PS3s, and other Latest-and-Greatests of the week?

Both the CTO and the head of IT where I work disappeared friday afternoon and re-appeared monday morning with iPhones.

Their parents gave then a higher allowence of course, after much begging

Its not all people who live in their parents basements. My mates boss owns his own software company (and its small but it does OK) and he was standing on line for it. Now, dont get me wrong. He spends ALL day and night working and never leaves the house it seems. But he has his own house. A lot of the people buying them are just really big technology geeks.

My mate thought about getting one. You know how computer geeks are, they always gotta have the newest and best. Like it makes a difference.

Why buy an iPhone at all when you can buy an established phone, like a Treo or Blackberry, that costs $200 less and does the same damn thing? Christ, I am sick and tired of hearing Apple pretend to be innovative when all they do, for the most part, is repackage existing ideas in a newer, "hipper" look and point out that it was a good idea. Yeah. It is. It was a good idea before you used it, too.

Adding YouTube does not a new product make.

I'll pass on the iPhone. I have my eyes on Openmoko, a smart phone that runs on an open-source operating system. It does seem freer "as in speech" than the iPhone.

I'll let you check it out for yourself. http://www.openmoko.org/

ravaged_warrior wrote:Why buy an iPhone at all when you can buy an established phone, like a Treo or Blackberry, that costs $200 less and does the same damn thing? Christ, I am sick and tired of hearing Apple pretend to be innovative when all they do, for the most part, is repackage existing ideas in a newer, "hipper" look and point out that it was a good idea. Yeah. It is. It was a good idea before you used it, too.

Adding YouTube does not a new product make.

it is true that they do the same things, they just don't do them as WELL...

the interface, if nothing else will revolutionize the way mobile computing is done. However at 5 or 6 HUNDRED dollars, i will pass for the moment

geekboy1500 wrote:the interface, if nothing else will revolutionize the way mobile computing is done. However at 5 or 6 HUNDRED dollars, i will pass for the moment

I hope so. Most phone interfaces suck.

I was speaking with the head of IT while watching a fireworks display on top of the building today and he's said his iPhone has lived up to the hype. The only problem he's having is that it won't connect to IMAP over the company VPN. Of course, since I can't connect to IMAP at all, I don't see this as a surprise.

geekboy1500 wrote:it is true that they do the same things, they just don't do them as WELL...

Not as well how? I don't see much of a difference between the Treo interface and the iPhone interface... And the Treo's interface being self-admittedly palm pilot based, anyway.

ravaged_warrior wrote:

geekboy1500 wrote:it is true that they do the same things, they just don't do them as WELL...

Not as well how? I don't see much of a difference between the Treo interface and the iPhone interface... And the Treo's interface being self-admittedly palm pilot based, anyway.

the touch screen for one. and the ease of use with all the functions. My 58 year old mother has a palm, and she couldn't figure it out for snuff. When I showed her the iPhone she thought it was much easier. The iPhone opens up a market that was not previously exploited, namely people born before 1965

geekboy1500 wrote:

ravaged_warrior wrote:

geekboy1500 wrote:it is true that they do the same things, they just don't do them as WELL...

Not as well how? I don't see much of a difference between the Treo interface and the iPhone interface... And the Treo's interface being self-admittedly palm pilot based, anyway.

the touch screen for one. and the ease of use with all the functions. My 58 year old mother has a palm, and she couldn't figure it out for snuff. When I showed her the iPhone she thought it was much easier. The iPhone opens up a market that was not previously exploited, namely people born before 1965

Treos have a touch screen. As for the interface being easier...



I don't really see that big of a difference.

Im pretty sure my mate has had that Treo phone up there. Hes got a thing for big clunky phones that are basically mini computers.

ravaged_warrior wrote:


I don't really see that big of a difference.

I'd call having 45 fewer buttons a big difference.

Oh, they're there, they're just digital rather than physical.

ravaged_warrior wrote:Oh, they're there, they're just digital rather than physical.

Which is still a big difference

Either way I don't see how it'd be confusing, you just don't use them when you don't need them. To tell you the truth, I'd personally rather have the physical buttons, anyway. It's easier for me to keep track of buttons when I can actually feel them. Just my opinion, though.

yes it is true that many smart-phones have a touch screen. and yes, the interface looks similar, but the differences are much more than skin deep. (if that made any sense to you, kudos) the iPhones multitouch tech, and the fact that it runs OSX, means that it *supposedly* is much more stable than something like symbian. And its gorgeous. Completely beautiful. that counts for something, in my book at least.

Looks only go so far for me. Once you factor in price, I'd rather have the Treo... Unless somehow the iPhone were free for me. I think that Apple is an obnoxious, self-important company that isn't nearly as good as they think they are, but their little devices are pretty awesome... If you factor out the price when compared to existing products that usually do the same thing. Hate their OS, though, never saw what was supposed to be so damn amazing, especially when they pat themselves on the back for things they had nothing to do with... Like virus protection. It's not that they have good virus protection, it's that there isn't any needed because nobody would waste their time writing it. That doesn't stop Mac fans from complimenting them on their virus protection, though... But I've heard people say a lot of illogical things when it comes to Macs.

Need to shut up now, I've gone off topic.

ravaged_warrior wrote:Looks only go so far for me. Once you factor in price, I'd rather have the Treo... Unless somehow the iPhone were free for me. I think that Apple is an obnoxious, self-important company that isn't nearly as good as they think they are, but their little devices are pretty awesome... If you factor out the price when compared to existing products that usually do the same thing. Hate their OS, though, never saw what was supposed to be so damn amazing, especially when they pat themselves on the back for things they had nothing to do with... Like virus protection. It's not that they have good virus protection, it's that there isn't any needed because nobody would waste their time writing it. That doesn't stop Mac fans from complimenting them on their virus protection, though... But I've heard people say a lot of illogical things when it comes to Macs.

Need to shut up now, I've gone off topic.

the virus protection is better but not as good as they make it out to be, (the virus protection is better because, fundamentally OSX is unix based. turn to lupin for a more in depth report.)

Apple put MILLIONS of dollars into this "multi touch" tech. Once the "wow" factor has worn off, the price will come down, and you will be left with one helluva phone.[/i]

There already is a root password to access the iPhones, however, there is not that much to exploit given the modifications between the iPhone's Darwin and the regular Darwin for Mac computers.

I'd rather stick to a phone that I can actually play with. Imagine hosting a website from your cellphone using Apache, mySql, and php. I do hope that openMoko runs X11 as its interface. I could then SSH the X server over to my computer and actively develop the website on the phone from my house or anywhere else on the planet. That actually be great because I am not allowed to run my computer on 24/7.

*having a nerd moment here...*

Besides, I would doubt apple would allow me to do stuff like that on their phone. If I can't geek out with a $600 piece of silicon, I'd rather not buy it. Buttons or no buttons.

I don't exactly understand how multi-touch will be useful, but I understand how it's innovative. Honestly, I don't understand what took so long for it to come up.

geekboy1500 wrote:(the virus protection is better because, fundamentally OSX is unix based. turn to lupin for a more in depth report.)

Once again, though, other than choosing to make the OS Unix based, what did Apple do that they should be congratulated for this? I've seen some (not all, mind you) Mac fans that will say that my Linux computer is more likely to get viruses than their Macs, and Linux is also Unix based. Okay, the last statement had no point, just an example of a weird Mac statement that seemed relatable.

Once the "wow" factor has worn off, the price will come down, and you will be left with one helluva phone.

Two answers, placed chronologically:

1. One can only hope.
2. Damn straight.

On second review. openMoko Runs an X server. I'm soo buying that phone

psiguy wrote:On second review. openMoko Runs an X server. I'm soo buying that phone

I don't get it... Does it have it's own service, even though the software is open-source?

ravaged_warrior wrote:

psiguy wrote:On second review. openMoko Runs an X server. I'm soo buying that phone

I don't get it... Does it have it's own service, even though the software is open-source?

The phone *should* have a service provider. It is being planned to ship on a Neo1973 type phone. Expect to see it supported by AT&T and T-Mobile in America sometime in the future.

I did provide you all with a link earlier to the phone's website. What sets this apart from an iPhone is that you can do what the heck you want with the software. If I had the brains to make my phone into a web server, I could do just that. It would certainly beat having to pay ~$10 per game and song I download. Not to mention that there's the possibility of porting game emulators on this puppy.

psiguy wrote:There already is a root password to access the iPhones, however, there is not that much to exploit given the modifications between the iPhone's Darwin and the regular Darwin for Mac computers.

From a security perspective, there's not much to exploit.

From the /etc/passwd on my laptop:

# Note that this file is consulted when the system is running in single-user
# mode. At other times this information is handled by one or more of:
# lookupd DirectoryServices
# By default, lookupd gets information from NetInfo, so this file will
# not be consulted unless you have changed lookupd's configuration.
# This file is used while in single user mode.

In fact, my normal user account doesn't even show up in the passwd file.

psiguy wrote:
I could then SSH the X server over to my computer and actively develop the website on the phone from my house or anywhere else on the planet. That actually be great because I am not allowed to run my computer on 24/7.

Even HDSPA won't have the bandwidth to make networked X11 not suck.[/quote]