iPhone Interest Still Going Strong 339
Only $220 to Make an iPhone. Bomarc writes to tell us BuinessWeek is reporting that according to a recent analysis the new iPhone only costs Apple in the neighborhood of $200 ($220 for the 8-gigabyte model) to manufacture.
iPhone User Review. Alexandros Roussos writes "It has been an unforgettable week-end for the first iPhone buyers and MacScoop will now put the focus on one of them who provided to a complete review of Apple's very anticipated gizmo."
Mistakes in the iPhone Interface. Rakesh writes "I love the iPhone. It 's here to stay as my primary cell phone. But I've come across a bunch of things that make me think Apple rushed at the end to get this thing out there. Here's my list of the top 10 mistakes Apple made with the iPhone interface."
iPhone Security Roundup. An anonymous reader writes "Although some security researchers noted problems getting their iPhone activated, others wasted no time tearing the new device apart. Seth Fogie, from Airscanner, reported passwords can be found for the device from running strings obtained from the backup images through a password cracker. Robert Graham, from Errata Security, writes about Safari and Bluetooth bugs on their blog."
iPhone Hardware Details. abdulzis writes "Engadget has the scoop on the iPhone's hardware specs through a leaked firmware. 'Sascha at Gear Log seems to think given the recently discovered Samsung chip in the iPhone, perhaps the processor in question is a Samsung S3C6400, a recently-produced 667MHz ARM1176JZF-based CPU that seems to fit the bill.'"
Re:Who cares really? (Score:5, Informative)
The prediction is they will move 10+ million by the end of the year.
That's who cares. It's tech. This is a tech news site. It's the biggest thing techy to happen in the past week.
He's modded flamebait because he was baiting flame.
Configured my bosses - impressive (Score:4, Informative)
The EDGE network blows. But, browsing off of it from our wireless network is a breeze. The screen is solid and I was amazed at the clarity of the screen with fonts, images when zooming really close. After setting it up on the network, it does need a few things.
1. ActiveSync or something to sync to our mailserver so the user can get contacts, calendar and mail.
2. IPSec VPN ability - maybe Cisco will get a client in this?
3. Open Office documents (Excel, Word)
4. Open PDF docs.
I am sure this will get better as it goes. But, far far better than I would have expected as a first gen device. It does make my Treo 700p look poor.
Re:Configured my bosses - impressive (Score:4, Informative)
2. IPSec VPN ability - maybe Cisco will get a client in this?
3. Open Office documents (Excel, Word)
4. Open PDF docs.
2. I have no idea.
3. Already opens Word/Excel files.
4. Already opens PDF.
I heard there was a bug related to PDF, but not sure about that as I haven't tried it yet. I would expect a bug fix software update for several issues soon.
Re:What I find funny is... (Score:3, Informative)
I've got an HTC Blue Angel, which is also known as a Orange SPV2000 or T-Mobile MDA2s. I think! The problem is that the company that makes them (HTC) has only recently began selling phones under it's own brand. The rebranding from telcos makes it complicated and has definitely killed brand recognition in their products. Don't bother with this one, it's not far off being three years old now and there are better ones available. My next one would be likely be the HTC TyTN [wikipedia.org] as wifi is essential to me.
Quick feature rundown is: slide-out qwerty keyboard, wifi, bluetooth, 128meg storage (it's old), sd-card. Built in email supports imaps, which I waited years to get on a phone. SSL is essential IMHO and pop is useless for accessing mail from multiple locations. I just run my own mail server (courier-imaps on debian). Connection speed is GPRS but the one I linked is 3G. Keyboard is also essential IMHO, if you want to write anything longer than a 160-character text message. SSH on a touch-screen keyboard is horrible; the dictionary doesn't help obviously and using vi is a nightmare without a keyboard.
I also have OpenVNC set up to hook up to my router, meaning that on-the-road I get an IP on my LAN. This is handy for copying files and uploading data as you can just drag & drop onto windows shares etc. There is free software for the usual traceroute/dns queries, the one I use even has a basic port scanner.
One cool thing you can do is use it as a network access device. I've not tried it, but in theory you can use it to share a GPRS data connection over an ad-hoc wifi network. You can off course use it as a traditonal BT modem for retro dial-up fun. This is more of a novelty for me, if I had one of the 3G versions using the same platform it would likely be something I'd use all the time.
He he, I'm sure I once saw a terminal server for mine once. There are several remote-management tools you can get; I use SSH and VNC a lot, though you can also use RDP. I mentioned the network analysis tools earlier. You can even get a serial cable so you can use it as a dumb-terminal. I heard someone suggest once that it could be used as a remote-access device hooked up to a server, giving you remote console.
Re:Good profit margin (Score:3, Informative)
I'm completely against DRM on my computer, and I run Linux at home. I have no interest in most closed-source software for use at home or at work (most of my work is also on Linux machines).
But I looked at the iPhone this weekend and was quite impressed. It did everything a so-called "smart phone" should do, only it does it right. It was easy to use Google maps to find directions, to take notes, to play music, to watch Youtube videos, to surf the web, and lots more.
You see, an open-source Linux-y solution just isn't feasible for phones, at least not yet. The problem is the carriers, and also the handsets. You can't expect someone to roll together a phone that can do Google maps and stuff like that, and have it work really well with one of the American cellular providers due to the way they operate.
I currently have some piece-of-shit Audiovox (LG) phone with Verizon, and I hate it. It was the cheapest flip-phone I could get at the time, and I had no interest in any other features because it seems most American providers want to nickel-and-dime you to death with them, instead of just selling you a phone with lots of useful features that work well, and don't incur some ridiculous monthly or per-use charge. The phone totally sucks because hitting the camera button on the side a few times will put it into photo-taking mode, turning on the LCD screen inside and burning up the battery. Since I usually carry the POS in my pocket (because the POS plastic holster it came with broke), these buttons get inadvertently pressed, and next thing I know my battery is dead. What kind of idiot would design a phone this way? If I want to take a photo, I'll open the handset first.
So in the store, this iPhone looked really useful. I'm constantly wishing I could look up phone numbers or directions online, or surf the web, just using my phone which I already constantly carry with me anyway. I didn't get a chance to investigate further, but my only concern is what the data charges are, since carriers like Verizon like to charge more for a few bytes of data than for the high bandwidth that voice transmission requires. If it costs a fortune just to surf the web or send data, then something like this is useless.
Re:let's assume a 10% profit margin (Score:4, Informative)
This is important to note, if nothing else, for those who go around saying things like, "If it's OS X, I should be able to load Mac applications on it." Yeah, we'll get back to you on that after you load World of Warcraft on your Treo, Einstein.
Re:$220 to buy the parts, not "to make" (Score:3, Informative)
There is an unlimited data provision for email in all the iPhone plans. You can send email instead of SMS or email with a photo attachment instead of MMS all day long and pay no additional fees. Using SMS or MMS just removes money from your pocket and sticks it into AT&T's.
Happily, the iPhone is software upgradeable, so you can look forward to the addition of an IM client to give you even more free ways to sling text around.