Posts by Alex Johnson

3G iPhone not ready for the enterprise?

Whiners

The O2 offer is much better than AT&T is offering. Maybe that's irrelevant, but it leads me to suspect that O2 makes less per iPhone customer than Apple's launch partner does, and so asking for even more is unrealistic and peevish. The £35 whiners will, even after the £99, be paying O2 £81 LESS than the £45 punters over the 18 months of the contract. What part of that are they struggling with? Why is this "unfair"? I am on £35 and I am happy I'm not being held to my original contract, never mind getting the new model for £99 which is, as people have noted, the same price as an iPod nano. Doesn't it make for a happier life to see the glass half full rather than half empty?

O2 prices up the latest iPhone

@The people who don't read before posting

By all means have strong opinions, but is it too much to ask that you actually have some idea of the facts?

@everyone: isn't it better than a kick in the teeth that the iPhone 2.0 is cheaper here than in the US (£99 inc. VAT = $193 ex. sales tax) and the £35 tariff has remained the same while AT&T increased the US one by $10? I know, I'm not leaping from the rooftops either but it is as I say better than a kick in the teeth. O2? You done alright.

@Andy Kay: it's free for iPhone 1.0 owners. Only iPod Touch users need to pay, if they want it. Why would O2 be bothered?

@Tim Spence: they did, which was in the article and on O2's website hours earlier.

@Jamie: what part of the iPhone SDK and being able to add applications, many of which are free, are you struggling with?

@Matt Clark: you will find that the £100 you're being asked to pay on the £35 tariff works out cheaper than the extra £10 a month you'd need to pay over 18 months to get a "free" phone.

@Peter Batten: so get the £35 contract! The £30 tariff is new and obviously aimed at people who don't chat but want the email.

@Wonderkid: a) iTunes STORE has been available on the iPhone for at least 6 months. No PC needed. b) have you noticed how all the battery bleaters shut up? How you are the only person to bring this up in this thread, when last year at the 1.0 announcement this was the most prominent objection? That is because it turned out to be a non-issue. It also makes for a smaller device. c) clearly you want an N95 or N96. Or a Japanese phone. You like phones that tick all the boxes. Fair enough. iPhone fans like phones that are a pleasure to use. Also fair enough. We're in different markets.

Be a hater if you want but come on, take the 30 seconds to make sure you have your facts straight.

3 told to cut rates

You would get double the included minutes

PAYG is tricky, but receiving party pays is, in general, a much better system. This is used in the US and the advantages are several. First, it doesn't matter if you are calling a mobile or a landline, and that goes to area codes. Second, if each telco terminates all their own calls and nets off (as they do, on the basis that it comes out in the wash), then at a stroke that removes swathes of admin and the necessity for regulation. That reduces costs and increases efficiency. Lastly, on a mobile you would expect to get double the minutes. On PAYG minutes would cost half as much - compare US plans and you will see they hand out minutes like confetti, even more than here. If you engineer it such that you always receive calls yes you would lose, but the person calling you wouldn't be losing anymore. There is quite a lot of research that says that overall, the consumer pays less. Personally if I no longer got hosed when I called mobiles from my landline, or 08xx numbers from my mobile, I would love it.

Porsche to challenge London CO₂ penalty in court

@Peter D'Hoye

What pollution? This isn't about diesel particulate, this isn't about SO2 or carbon monoxide, this isn't about lead. All of which might be somewhat valid. This is about tax and politics, but let's for one second pretend that it is about CO2, a colourless odourless non-toxic gas making up around 4% of what you exhale. Most of us aren't choking to death from our own breath, and nor are the plants which depend on it to live. This isn't even about noise pollution as an idling taxi or bus, or a motorbike, will blow away any of these vehicles in terms of noise.

So, you're left with CO2 as a source of climate change. Fine - but I think you'll find that doesn't respect the dotted line on Ken's map, and more to the point, nor do the emissions from power generation and third world growth.

You may not like 4x4's or Porsche's, but their mere exisence in London isn't harming you in any measurable way. Unless of course you get run over by one, but I think you'll find an eco-fiendly bus could finish you off even more efficiently.

Jealousy

Let's separate out the jealousy from the issue. The jealousy is just pathetic - and don't kid yourselves, that's what it is.

Andy Goss is quite right: there are a couple of issues here. First, Ken is conflating congestion and climate change. Not to be pedantic, but CO2 is NOT a pollutant. It's a part of our atmosphere. Any car with a catalytic converter prodocuses water and carbon dioxide as exhaust gasses. That's just about it, and that's why if you want to top yourself ina agarage, you have to find an old banger with no catalytic converter. That climate change is a serious issue, I don't doubt, but why is this in the hands of the grubby little mayor? It's like when he starts having diplomatic relations with other countries - oh I forgot, he already does that. Get on with running London, not with running a parallel government. Is being mayor of one of the world's greatest cities not a big enough job for you Ken? And, as we know, he is planning to increase the numbers of vehicles which will be extempt. Hang on, how does that help *congestion*? Isn't that what we voted for? If we are going to be concerned about greenhouse gasses, let's be worried things worth worrying about, like all you people who eat red meat; like balancing China's desire for growth (good) with the power they will be consuming to get there (not so good); like making alternatives like solar more economically viable. And let's do this by getting people on side, not alienating them for really no quantifiable gain or purpose whatsoever.

Second, this is classic - if ham-fisted - attempt to divide and rule, and as a Londoner it stinks. It stinks that Ken gambles a whole class of people were never going to vote for him anyway, and that they are therefore in a position to be victimised and piloroed as he mugs away to those he thinks will vote for him. I don't want to seem hopelessly naive, but no one should applaud that, whatever you think of 4x4's and Porsches.

In short, this is tokenistic nonsense, and politics of the cheapest kind.

Apple to announce iPhone and iPod Touch price cuts?

Whatever

This is one of those "the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning" stories. Of course they'll cut the price and in time, and eventually discontinue the lower capacity model. But, after the fuss in the summer there is no serious chance they will do this in February. I was actually a little surprised they charged more for the 16GB model; I'd imagined they would just bump the 8GB model and leave the price the same. They didn't; they're not going to change their minds over a couple of weeks.

Orange France iPhone total hits 90,000

@zedee

I stand corrected but Flext 35 with unlimited data it's still £37.50 (on T-Mo's site) for an 18 month contract. So as I was saying I don't see why this makes the iPhone plan the rip off people seem to accuse it of being. £269 for the phone is a lot, but you say you have an iPod touch so you've paid about the same anyway, haven't you? I disagree on ease of use and much prefer full web pages to cut-down versions, but to each his (or her) own.

Mike Wharton

Demonstrate to me that the tariff is "sh1tty". For unlimitd web browsing, unlimited real email, and visual voicemail I think a small premium is fair enough. You don't. But what are you paying for your uber data-inclusive tariff that makes £35/mo. so wretched? TBH I'm obviously a fanboi and would pay whatever Steve asked me to pay but I keep seeing these comments about what a rip-off it is and I just don't see it. What I do see is people "forgetting" that the iPhone includes unlimited data, and that it offers something a bit better than a walled garden (or a walled garden with a non-obvious gate) of WAP or the "mobiel" internet. I've had a BlackBerry most recently and I know exactly what that means. But as sceptcial as I am, I'm genuinely interested, as I have compared T-Mo tariffs (see above) and BlackBerry O2 tariffs, and find I'm not getting a give away, but in no way am I being ripped off, either. You?

AJ No, I don't

AJ - I get that you want a cheaper iPhone. No doubt, in time, you will get one. You obviously know you could buy one right now and unlock it and use it on T-Mo or anyone else. It'll cost you £269 - cheaper than France or German, but more expensive than the US by about £40 (addng sales tax). It is what it is. I do think it's worth saying that you are getting a full iPod in that price too, which despite what Nokia et al would have you believe, outclasses some other mobile in every possible

But why do you then compare the plans to T-Mo's Flext? Flext 35 offers 900 minutes OR 1,800 texts and unlimited weekend minutes for £30. O2 offers 600 minutes AND 500 texts for £35 - and no free weekends, though you can buy that for £7.50. But it also offers UNLIMITED DATA. With an iPhone, THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. Oh, you might say, but I can get "web 'n walk" for £37.50. Well a) that's for WAP which bears no comparison with full web browsing and email, and b), that's now more than £35. Add in those free weekends to the iPhone and the price premium is £5/mo. It's hardly a scandal, is it? And you get full web browsing, email, and visual voicemail. Maybe that's worth it to you, maybe it isn't.

Look, I don't for a second suggest the iPhone is cheap and I'm sure they'd sell more if it were (though whether they would make up the revenue in volume I have no idea - you have to assume they don't think they would). But we really have to kill this idea that it is some kind of rip-off. Demonstrably it's not the cheapest deal out there (though it's not the most expensive, either), but who cares? If you want cheap and tacky T-Mobile has lots of offers for you.

O2 sweetens its iPhone deals

Price of the iPhone

It seems to me that the real sticking point is the price of the phone. I have one, and for me the price of the iPhone compares well with the iPod Touch and previous top-end iPod models. I would have had an iPod come what may, so the added cost of the iPhone is minimal. I do actually use the data and unlimited means what it says. If they want to put language in there so that if someone develops a P2P app for it, or manages to get it tethered and does much the same thing, they have a come-back, and I just don't find that weasely or objectionable. Looking at what's available for data, the iPhone tariffs certainly aren't bargain basement, but demonstrably they aren't a rip-off either. If you want some other smart phone and you can get it on a lower tariff, well congratulations, but that's rather like saying a Chevrolet Matiz is equivalent to a BMW. In a way, it is - it will get you from A to B in roughly the same amount of time. If that's your one metric for comparison, well it's a no-brainer. Personally, I would never buy a Matiz, and I would never buy a Windows mobile device for much the same reason. Nor do I buy Tesco Value even though the calorific value of its products must be much the same as branded. And so on. Maybe the iPhone's pricing isn't pitch-perfect for the market they're aiming at (though it isn;t a million miles away). But who cares? It's a game-changing device, on a reasonable tariff that just got to be a whole lot better value. I'm quietly delighted, FWIW.

TerraTec Noxon 2 net radio and iPod dock

Real Support for BBC??

Any chance the reviewer could tell us whether this supports Real, which the BBC uses for its higher-bitrate services, and which is required for its "Listen Again" service? I presume not - and the Noxon website is terrible - but I'd hope the review covered the bases. It's a great idea but without Real support, it;s a harder sell for UK listeners.