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iPhone Doesn't Surf Fast Enough for Jobs 436

ElvaWSJ writes with a link to a Wall Street Journal interview with Steve Jobs and AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson. As you can imagine, they're pretty enthusiastic. Just the same, they address the possibility that the iPhone will slow internet access on Ma Bell's cell network. "Mr. Jobs acknowledged that the company's new iPhone won't surf the Internet as fast as he would like on the network, called "Edge," but added that the device's ability to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots would give consumers a speedier alternative for Web browsing. For his part, Mr. Stephenson said the iPhone represents a broader push by AT&T into Wi-Fi services, including, potentially, mobile Internet calling. The two men also discussed the iPod's "halo effect" and reflected on the origins of their corporate partnership."
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iPhone Doesn't Surf Fast Enough for Jobs

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  • Not much choice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:34AM (#19688121)
    Since AT&T was supposedly the only provider who would agree to Apple's list of detailed demands, it's likely they had little choice but to accept their network. It's not like other providers were lining up for a chance at it.
    • by Gary W. Longsine ( 124661 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:44AM (#19688221) Homepage Journal
      AT&T has an HSDPA [wikipedia.org] (3G) network, but there are two issues with it. (1) It's not widely deployed (a few dozen cities, compared to EDGE, which is everywhere that AT&T offers cell service). (2) Although the network is quite fast, the chipsets that support it presently consume too much power. Apple apparently wants a lower power chipset so that battery life of the iPhone isn't adversely affected.
      • by ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:42AM (#19688917) Homepage
        Even if you use three times the power to transmit, if you can download the data three times faster, doesn't it come out the same in the end?

        I'd rather have more power consumption to download something in two seconds than less power consumption to download it in 10. The battery life may be somewhat less but if you can get the same amount of web browsing done in less time, what's the loss?

        Sorry, I prefer speed at the expense of battery life. That and no tethering makes the iPhone less than useful for me.
        • by 4iedBandit ( 133211 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @11:09AM (#19689247) Homepage

          Even if you use three times the power to transmit, if you can download the data three times faster, doesn't it come out the same in the end?

          No it doesn't. I for one find it unacceptable to have to plug in my cell phone in the middle of the day. It's why I've opted for smart phones with fantastic battery life (Sony P800 and currently the Nokia e61). Until they announced the new battery life figures for the iPhone it was a non-starter for me, regardless of how cool it may be. There are plenty of times when I'm not near a power outlet, and since I'm on-call 24/7 there are also plenty of times when I don't want to be tethered to a power outlet. Long battery life means I can go where I want and do what I want without concern about the phone dying. I plug it in while I sleep and the next day it's ready to go all day again.

          I've been to trade shows with people running around looking for power outlets so they can charge their phones. Tethered to one place for an hour or two at a time. Sorry, I've got places to go and things to do.

          Is edge slow compared to 3G? Sure, it's what I had on the P800 and it's what I have on the e61 (T-Mobile doesn't do 3G). You know what? It's fast enough for email and web surfing is tolerable. I'm not downloading Gigabytes of data because IT'S A FREAKIN' PHONE! Is 3G faster? No doubt. But for email and web surfing edge is actually just fine. If I need faster access then most likely I also need the processing power in my laptop, not a phone. For those occasions I'm after a wi-fi hotspot anyway.

          Having said all that, if the iPhone was 3G would it be better? Of course. But is 3G the "requirement" every seems to think? Hardly. Of course I'm also a weirdo who thinks the lack of flash support in Safari on the iPhone is actually a blessing.

          • by kestasjk ( 933987 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @12:14PM (#19690063) Homepage
            The thing about the iPhone is that Jobs has already talked about getting 3G into the iPhone (in the Macworld 2007 keynote). I don't know who would buy a $499 phone with a 2 year $59/mo contract for a device that will be admittedly be superseded by something much better.

            For a device that is clearly going to be bandwidth hungry to be useful as more than a pretty phone it needs 3G. If Wifi is available and you want to stick around a hotspot you might as well take out your notebook, if you're not buying it for the internet capabilities why not just get a plain phone?
            • by Knara ( 9377 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @12:25PM (#19690219)

              The thing about the iPhone is that Jobs has already talked about getting 3G into the iPhone (in the Macworld 2007 keynote). I don't know who would buy a $499 phone with a 2 year $59/mo contract for a device that will be admittedly be superseded by something much better.
              MacFans essentially do this on a regular basis with Apple products anyway.
            • by BlueStraggler ( 765543 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @01:03PM (#19690727)

              I don't know who would buy a ... device that will be admittedly be superseded by something much better.

              Every single person you're talking to, for starters. Haven't you just described the whole freakin' tech industry?

            • by dr.badass ( 25287 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @01:50PM (#19691331) Homepage

              I don't know who would buy a $499 phone with a 2 year $59/mo contract for a device that will be admittedly be superseded by something much better.
              1.) Waiting for a 3G phone is pointless if you don't have 3G service available in your area.
              2.) Waiting for the next iPhone means waiting an unknown length of time. It could be years.
              3.) The contract doesn't say you have to use the same phone for two years. If a better one comes out, you can switch.
              4.) Many people are more interested with having constant access to things like email, which doesn't need 3G speeds.

              If Wifi is available and you want to stick around a hotspot you might as well take out your notebook.
              This assumes you're carrying your notebook around everywhere you go. In which case, why would you buy an internet-capable phone at all?
          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            No offense, but carry an extra battery. I'd MUCH rather carry an extra battery and get fast internet speeds than get slow internet speeds.

            Carrying and extra battery means you need a separate charging station for the battery. Get one for your car. If you don't have one for your car, that's fine. Two batteries should last you more than enough time to get back to your place at night (or hotel room, wherever) and put the extra battery in the charging station and plug in your phone. Wake up, have two fresh
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        You realize that there are chipsets that will support 3G technologies /and/ EDGE where 3G is not available, right? That's what, to me, the complaints are about - the two aren't mutually exclusive.
  • by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:34AM (#19688125) Homepage Journal
    Simply put: it ain't 3G. That's going to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for iPhone. It's one of the reasons why I won't be buying one, despite the fact that I drooled over the iPhone initially.
    • by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:43AM (#19688215) Homepage
      Agree. Though the problem is not that GPRS (with or without EDGE) is slow as a network. The problem is that the ubiquity of the Blackberry has largely driven it over capacity in the places where the demand for mobile computing is likely to be the highest - commuter routes and tourist areas.

      Here are some number from the UK Vodafone GPRS (non-Edge) network collected on a typical Cambridge to London Commute:

      1. Business commuter trains (starting time) 7:15-8:45 and 17:15-18:45 97% downlink packet loss, totally unuseable. Looks like the BB is actually prioritised versus any other traffic to ensure that the people who enjoy a vibrator up their crotch have an instant vibration regularly.

      2. Transition period: 8:45-9:15 and 16:15-17:15 - works in some areas depending on cell capacity

      3. Non-business commuter trains 9:15-15:45 and after 19:15 - works flawlessly except a couple of holes in coverage. Speed is not great, but quite tolerable. Definitely useable for some minor surfing, checking mail, working on a couple of documents.

      I would not expect ATT to be much different. In fact, it is likely to be worse. With or without Edge.
      • by arivanov ( 12034 )
        I would not expect ATT to be much different. In fact, it is likely to be worse. With or without Edge.. That is meant for a commuter route in the US of course. Something like Chicago or Seattle transit system.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by timeOday ( 582209 )

        1. Business commuter trains (starting time) 7:15-8:45 and 17:15-18:45 97% downlink packet loss, totally unuseable. Looks like the BB is actually prioritised versus any other traffic

        I think prioritizing the blackberry, or at least text, isn't such a horrible idea. 1 jpg = 50 emails. Remember before video, before audio, it was static images that were going to come along and create the great "world wide wait." I guess long-range wireless is still at that point. Better to grant 50 people email access than

      • by illumin8 ( 148082 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:48AM (#19689007) Journal

        Here are some number from the UK Vodafone GPRS (non-Edge) network collected on a typical Cambridge to London Commute:
        Just because Vodafone oversold their GPRS network doesn't mean that AT&T has. I live in one of the most rail commuter heavy areas in the world (NYC area), and I see people on the train using all kinds of Blackberries, Treos, and other wireless devices. I get 160kbps downstream (tested using mobile speed test [dslreports.com]) consistently in this area, provided my train isn't going through a tunnel or underground. I use a Treo 650 GSM on Cingular/AT&T network.

        The reason I switched from T-Mobile to Cingular was the data speed. T-Mobile clocked in around 40kbps average, where Cingular/AT&T was 160kbps.
    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:51AM (#19688319)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Scyber ( 539694 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:11AM (#19688531)
        I thought most of cingular's 3G phones fall back to EDGE when not in a 3G coverage area. If that is the case, then the entire country could still use the iPhone if it was 3G.
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 )
          The problem is power consumption of the 3G chipsets. It's too high to give the battery time in the form factor Apple wanted. Had they gone with 3G, they would have reduced the performance for the majority of users in terms of battery time, so that a few users can have 3G speeds between home and office.

          Hopefully, AT&T will get a massive deployment of picocells in areas with extra need going to ease the network burden. Apparently AT&T has done a lot to open up extra slots on their EDGE network that
      • Wrong! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Mr2001 ( 90979 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:25AM (#19688683) Homepage Journal
        EVDO is 3G, and it's available across the US [evdomaps.com]. And my EVDO phone's battery lasts a lot longer than 45 minutes.

        The US is 3G ready - it's Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile who aren't.
  • by gravos ( 912628 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:34AM (#19688127) Homepage
    But 640kbps ought to be enough for anyone?
  • OK I made it half way through Job's first sentence, which was:

    One of the things we feel is this is the biggest breakthrough in user interfaces in 23 years. Since the Mac in 1984 brought us the mouse and bit map displays and folders and icons

    hmmm...
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by profplump ( 309017 )
      You had a commercially available computer before 1984 that had a mouse and a bit-map display and folders and icons? Or you got one in 1984 that wasn't from Apple?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by juuri ( 7678 )
      And you stopped reading because?

      I won't make any apologies for Job's well known asshole tendencies (but supposedly those are much more subdued since NeXT, guess winning does fix everything?) but all he is doing here is stating what really happened. Were the primitives and direct inspiration for the Mac gui borrowed from Xerox? Damn straight. They borrowed from other places too, but they had the foresight to slap it all together and shove it out to the masses. This is how humanity works people, we build on
      • by Khuffie ( 818093 )
        Apple borrows. Microsoft copies, eh?
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by LKM ( 227954 )
          Actually, this seems to be the case quite often. Going from something like the Xerox Star to the Apple Lisa and the Mac is quite a feat (and Apple actually hired lots of people from Xerox, instead of just lifting their ideas). The first few versions of Windows, on the other hand, were just Macs with half the features cut out.
      • by niceone ( 992278 ) *
        Yeah, I think I agree with everything you wrote. I hadn't really analysed why I stopped reading, but...

        If you pay close attention to Job's words he actually doesn't take credit for anything that Apple didn't do. Anything they co-opt and bring to market is always a "we" or an "us".

        That's it, I hate it when people say stuff like that. If you read it carefully, sure he doesn't claim anything, but to most people it will read it as Apple invented all the stuff he listed.
  • -sigh- (Score:2, Insightful)

    by xhrit ( 915936 )
    "Since the Mac in 1984 brought us the mouse and bit map displays and folders and icons, there really hasn't been much except for the evolution of that in the last 23 years."

    Nice to see Apple continuing the fine corporate tradition ov copying other people's innovations and claiming them as their own.
  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by svendsen ( 1029716 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:40AM (#19688179)
    I was afraid we wouldn't see a single iPhone advertisement...I mean article today...my fears have been relived...
    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)

      by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:53AM (#19689051)
      I was afraid we wouldn't see a single iPhone advertisement...I mean article today...

      What better advertising for the iPhone could there be than Apple's CEO complaining that the data rate is too slow?

      my fears have been relived...

      I'm sorry you even had to live them once, much less twice.

  • Mr. Jobs: We have lots of people writing applications for our computers. We have almost one million people in our developer program. I don't think that's what matters to customers. What matters to customers is the experience they have using the product.
    Everyone knows it's "Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers."

    Or has Jobs put his finger on the real difference between Apple and Microsoft?
  • WiFi (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jshriverWVU ( 810740 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:47AM (#19688277)
    I'm amazed AT&T or any cell company would allow a cell to enter their market that has built in wifi. Won't this cut into their profits? Since anyone can go to McD's and check their email instead of having to pay their provider for the online minutes.
  • by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:48AM (#19688281) Homepage
    Why did not apple buck the whole system and offere the iPhone as a unlocked device only.

    that way you could get your choice of service, your phone is not held hostage by unscrupulous Service providers, and it would have forced a change in the way cellular companies abuse their customers.

    a win,win,win situation.

    • Because (Score:3, Informative)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      Some of it's voice mail features required the carrier to change it's network. If you just put it on the market as an open device, no carrir is going to botherto spend the millions to change their network.

      Of course, if the iPhone does become the next iPod, then other carriers will start to make changes to support those features. Then APple will open it to other carriers.

      This is very Jobs. Get his foot in the door, then eventually be the hippest cat in the whole room.
      • by Khuffie ( 818093 )
        Apple could have dropped that visual voicemail feature, which is a far better alternative than being tethered to AT&T. Not to mention opens up the market to any provider that uses GSM (ie, most of the world). At this point, to sell iPhones in the middle east, Apple would have to make an agreement with each provider (and trust me, they'd wanna sell iPhones down there. Especially in the gulf countries, those guys change phones every 6 months to stay 'hip'. Cash cow.).

        Apple could develop their own servi
    • Agree, that's like Dell selling a computer that only works with AOL. What does Apple have to gain by ONLY selling via AT&T? I know if I was selling a product, I'd want it to be sold not only at Best Buy, but Target, Walmart, etc. Plus unless you're really rich or really hardcore, no one is going to spend a couple hundred dollars just to break their current contract to switch to AT&T to get a phone. Sells would have been threw the roof had it been available for any network. I would have bought one.
    • by chill ( 34294 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:14AM (#19688559) Journal
      You've drunk the Kool-Aid.

      Apple is NOT your friend, and they are NOT trying to bring about a revolution for the little guy. They are trying to worm their way in to every possible aspect of getting your money. Why do you HAVE to go thru iTunes to set a ring tone? Why can't you just use an existing MP3 that you downloaded/copied over to the phone? Because Apple doesn't get a cut that way.

      The phone is not unlocked because Apple gets a cut of the service from AT&T. The phone will most likely only be unlocked when Apple negotiates a cut from the other GSM service providers.
      • by Hijacked Public ( 999535 ) * on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:34AM (#19688791)
        Wait just a minute here, you are saying that a for-profit company in a capitalist economy is trying to get my money?

        The most they can you say?

        Well this is an unsettling development.
        • by chill ( 34294 )
          :-)

          I'm not criticizing. I'm just trying to point it out to some people who think Apple is their benevolent buddy, and are doing this for the greater benefit of humanity. Steve Job, and Apple by proxy, is a control freak extraordinaire.
      • by TALlama ( 462873 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @11:49AM (#19689689) Homepage
        You've drunk the Kool-Aid.

        And it was tasty and refreshing, thank you very much.

        The reason I want an iPhone is because I've been extremely happy with every Apple product I've ever bought. They want to provide me with a service I desire for a price I find appropriate? Oh, that tricksy Jobs! He's got me again!

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by p0tat03 ( 985078 )

        Okay, so we know that Apple is in fact a for-profit company seeking, well, profit... but what does that have to do with iTunes and ringtones? Last I checked, iTunes is not exclusively for purchased music, in fact the vast majority of everyone's iTunes library is not in fact purchased from iTunes.

        So forcing the user to go through iTunes is in fact *not* a form of lock-in, since that mp3 I put on my phone as ringtone could have come from ANYWHERE I wanted. If Apple starts implementing a "only purchased music

  • What is up with Jobs selling nonexistent features?

    Ringtone business gets a tease:
    Mr. Jobs: One might imagine a lot of things down the road.
    Mr. Jobs: There's a lot of things you can imagine down the road.

    But you can forget 3G in revision one:
    Mr. Jobs: No, we just don't comment on future stuff.

    I also got a kick out of this:
    Mr. Jobs: There's often times a Wi-Fi network that you can join whether you're sitting in a coffee shop or even walking along the street piggybacking on somebody's home Wi-Fi network.

    Theft of service, it's the Apple way!
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      Don't want people to connect to your wi-fi? DOn't have your Wi-fi asking for connections.
    • by LKM ( 227954 )

      piggybacking on somebody's home Wi-Fi network.
      Theft of service, it's the Apple way!

      When I moved into my new flat, I used an open Wi-Fi network I found. When I got my own a few days later, I left it open so others in a similar situation could use it. I don't mind you using my Wi-Fi network as long as you don't destroy my bandwith.

  • by jshriverWVU ( 810740 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @09:50AM (#19688305)
    With all the hype over people getting sued and arrested for using someones open AP, I wonder if the iPhone autoconnects without user intervention or if it requires some manual selection. If auto this could cause legal problems as the user would be according to recent suits "stealing bandwith and computer fraud by illegally accessing an another persons network" I dont agree with it, but that appears to be the direction we're going.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by LKM ( 227954 )
      Just like the Mac, it only auto-connects to hotspots you've used in the past.
  • Does the iphone browser incorporate a server side compression system (a la Opera Mobile)? - that would seem to be a good solution for speeding up a slow data link to a device that has limited display capabilities anyway.

    How about some plugins to block graphical advertisements or other unwanted content on popular sites (a la greasemonkey) ?

    There are so many options to optimize web browsing for such devices - this slowness web surfing MUST have come up in beta testing - what solutions are included?
  • WSJ: Steve, how are you feeling now about how this device will impact your iPod business? Will it cannibalize iPod sales in any meaningful way?

    Mr. Jobs: We can report to you that it hasn't so far.
    I think they should actually wait until it is released before they can tell if it's going to or not. :-D
    • by LKM ( 227954 )
      Whoosh.

      I'd like to add to this that Jobs has said that phones would eat into the iPod's sales either way, and he'd rather it's Apple's own phone that does it.
  • by Brit_in_the_USA ( 936704 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:00AM (#19688391)
    Seems that there are credible reports coming in that in the last 24 hours AT+T have increased EDGE speeds to >200 k bits/s. This should be good news to all AT+T EDGE users:

    http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/28/atandt-customer s-seeing-sudden-boost-in-edge-speeds/ [engadget.com]

    As we know, increased means they probably removed some artificial cap....

    I wonder how many days will go by until the drop the speed again? I guess there will be a halo effect of new iPhone buyers showing their friends - "hey look at this I can browse the web" - just for the sake of it....
  • Flame me all you want, but I think Apple blew it by going with Cingular/AT&T for the iPhone.

    Apple should have gone with Verizon Wireless, which would have given the iPhone the ability to access EVDO wireless networking that has data transfer rates in the 350 to 800 kilobits per second range. In that case, the iPhone would have actually been a truly useful device to access the Internet and corporate email systems.
    • by jonwil ( 467024 )
      Apple actually contacted Verizon first but Verizon said no (probably because Apple wouldn't give Verizon the control every other cell phone manufacturer gives them). So apple then went to Cingular and they said yes.
  • taken out of context (Score:2, Informative)

    by rishio2 ( 1121987 )
    nice how the rest of his response was cut out... "Mr. Jobs: You know every (AT&T) Blackberry gets its mail over EDGE. It turns out EDGE is great for mail, and it works well for maps and a whole bunch of other stuff. Where you wish you had faster speed is...on a Web browser. It's good enough, but you wish it was a little faster. That's where sandwiching EDGE with Wi-Fi really makes sense because Wi-Fi is much faster than any 3G network. What we've done with the iPhone is we've made it so that it will a
  • Someone needs to tell Zonk that removing one vowel won't reload Slashdot on his iPhone any faster.
  • How long do you suppose before someone is able to crack the iphone to use a wifi connection for internet calling?
  • by packetmon ( 977047 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:09AM (#19688505) Homepage
    It will surf teh interweb, answer email, make calls, play MP3's, wash your car, clean your house, spank you off. FINELINE PRINT: Product may not work as advertised. In order to benefit from our huge technologically advanced vertically intergrated technologically advanced technology, users must first purchase an advanced proactive neurally intergrated vertically horizontal network card from our vertically implemented horizontally vectored service provider.
  • While I don't have any experience with the newer 3G wireless internet services and other such things, using my CDMA phone with 1X internet is painfully slow, even for playing the online "who wants to be a millionaire" game, or even load up the google mobile search page. Not only that the batter gets drained pretty fast if you're doing any kind of prolonged surfing. I imagine that anything faster would just draw more battery power. I'm not sure whether mobile internet will ever be a good thing. Even if
  • More bullshit from AT&T:

    Mr. Stephenson: If you think about wireless broadband networks, EDGE is the only ubiquitous nationwide broadband network deployed today. It's a 300-plus kilobit type service. We're selling in the tens of thousands every single month of smart phones that operate on nothing but EDGE. The service experience is really, really good and what you're going to see with the iPhone is the caching technology that Steve and the Apple guys have developed here makes the EDGE experience even better. Between the Wi-Fi and the EDGE coverage, this is a really good experience.

    High latency, low bandwidth broadband. Huzzah!

    Sprint's EVDO network is deployed as widely as AT&T's EDGE network (not even all of AT&T's GSM network is EDGE). Worse, Sprint's EVDO revA network is deployed in most metropolitan areas, nearly all interstate highways, and nearly all tourist areas.

    For AT&T, Edge is "all the speed you need", up until they deploy HSDPA, in which case that will be, "all the speed you need". Just like this: http://www.nyquistcapital.com/2006/03/30/att-proje ct-lightspeed-and-the-jedi-mind-trick/ [nyquistcapital.com]
    Mr.Stephenson said that AT&T's field tests have shown 'no discernable difference' between AT&T's 1.5 Mbps service and Comcast's 6 Mbps because the problem is not in the last mile but in the backbone.

    Ridiculous
  • There are rumours of a major speed boost (up to 200 kbps) in the EDGE network today.
    http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/28/atandt-customer s-seeing-sudden-boost-in-edge-speeds/ [engadget.com]

    No idea if this is true, but there are similar rumours coming from elsewhere as well.
  • My initial reaction was that, come the European launch, if the iPhone doesn't have 3G/UMTS/HSPDA then it would be laughed out of court. However, on reflection, it sounds as if Apple's attitude is:

    GPRS is good enough to check your EMAIL and gives good phone coverage. If you want a decent web-surfing experience on the train, subway or in a coffee shop, your best bet is if some bright spark has installed WiFi. So lets do a phone which makes a much better job of doing WiFi than the competition and not weigh i

  • Around Christmastime last year

    Mary Cheney: Dad, you look so sad, it's Christmas! You should be happy! What's wrong??

    Dick Cheney: Well Mary, I'm having a hard time holding things together. My boss is a halfwit, nobody understands me, the press is relentless, and things might come unravelled if people start asking for emails. On top of that Michael Moore is coming out with a film that could hurt all of our big pharma stocks. I don't know what to do. *sigh*

    Mary Cheney: I have lots of connections in SanFrancisc
  • by helixblue ( 231601 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @11:52AM (#19689731) Homepage
    If you want faster surfing on EDGE or GPRS, get Opera Mini [operamini.com]. It slims down the HTML and graphics substantially before it gets to your phone. It breathed new life into my Sony Ericsson P910 (GPRS only), making it faster in use than Pocket Explorer my wife's EDGE phone with the AT&T network. The inability to use alternatives like Opera Mini is part of why I'm not as excited about the iPhone as I thought it would be.
  • Revising history? (Score:3, Informative)

    by argent ( 18001 ) <{moc.agnorat.6002.todhsals} {ta} {retep}> on Friday June 29, 2007 @12:44PM (#19690481) Homepage Journal
    Since the Mac in 1984 brought us the mouse and bit map displays and folders and icons, there really hasn't been much except for the evolution of that in the last 23 years.

    That would be either "The Xerox Star Office System" in "1981" or at least "Lisa" in "1982", Steve.

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