IPhone | John Barrdear

Tag Archive for 'iPhone'

A post from my iPhone

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 10 August 2008
in Meta
. 0 Comments

This is a post from the Wordpress app on my iPhone. The interface is simple enough, but seems to lack any admin functionality.

The collapse of a monopoly

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 2 February 2008
in Economics and UK
. 0 Comments

As I previously mentioned, I got an iPhone for christmas.  In the UK, like the USA, Apple arranged an exclusive deal with one mobile provider, in this case O2.  The cheapest plan that O2 offered was for £35/month, which included the remarkably low 200 minutes and 200 texts per month, but did also allow for unlimited internet usage when using the O2 network rather than a local 802.11 network.

Perhaps because of the increasing availability of iPhone substitutes, perhaps because of the increasing numbers of jail-broken iPhones that can be used on other networks or perhaps because they know that the new v1.1.3. of the iPhone firmware has already been jailbroken and that when combined with the upcoming release of the iPhone SDK, it’ll stay jailbroken, O2 has recently realised that their time of being a true monopolist has ended.   How do I know this?  Because this week I received the following text message from O2:

We’re really pleased to tell you that we are upgrading your £35 iPhone tariff in Feb so you will benefit by mid March at the latest.

The new tariff will take your minutes from 200 to 600 and your texts from 200 to 500.  Plus you’ll continue to receive the same unlimited UK data allowing you to surf the internet on your iPhone.

Better still, you don’t have to do a thing to get them.  We’ll text you to let you know when your new tariff is live.

Simply tap the link to find out more, including details on all our new iPhone tariffs and to see the new tariff terms & conditions.

http://iphone.o2.co.uk/35

Which, as a tariff, is much closer to their competitors without the iPhone.  For example, Vodafone’s £35/month plan charges £1 for the first 15MB of internet each day and £2 for each additional MB and includes your choice of:

  • 500 minutes of talk and unlimited texts
  • 750 minutes of talk and 100 texts, or
  • 500 minutes of talk and 500 texts with £52.50 knocked off the 18-month bill.

They’ve only dropped down to the usual category of monopolistic competition (they still have pricing power, which they use to implement second-degree price discrimination), but O2’s time of being a complete monopolist has come to an end.

iPhone goodness

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 8 January 2008
in Personal and Technology
. 2 Comments

I got an iPhone for Christmas. It was a bit of a pain to set up, since I was on 64-bit XP and Apple doesn’t support iTunes on it. I ended up with 32-bit Vista Ultimate. I’ve been excited about the iPhone and its competitors for a while, since they manage to combine six gadgets (all of which I’ve owned separately) in a single device:

  • Mobile phone
  • PDA
  • (mini-)Laptop
  • Camera
  • mp3/video player
  • USB stick

To a certain extent, the iPhone’s touchscreen and typically-Apple UI are just icing on the cake.

It’s obviously not perfect (what is?), but I’m pleased to discover that most of what I would like to be improved should be possible on the current generation:

Would need to be in a new generation Could probably happen with the current generation
  • 3G
  • A better camera (if that’s possible, given the space limitations)
  • More memory (it’s only 8GB)
  • GPS support
  • More battery capacity
  • FM receiver
  • Open it up to 3rd-party native applications
  • Merge the SMS and Voicemail apps into the Mail app - I only want to go to one place to see/hear my various messages
  • Implement a pseudo-GPS system by using the location of various mobile phone towers and link it into Google Maps
  • The ability to sync outside of iTunes
  • The ability to sync with Mozilla applications (thunderbird, firefox, etc)
  • The ability to sync iPhone notes with anything on the PC
  • The ability to sync wirelessly (I can’t believe that I need to plug it in to sync!)
  • Make the contact list accessible directly from the main screen
  • Allow the contact list to be used in the calendar
  • Include groups in the contact list (for sms or email)
  • The ability to record video
  • The ability to use an external keyboard/mouse/monitor (maybe through Bluetooth - does it have enough bandwidth?)
  • Voice recognition (the on-screen keyboard is good for what it is, but supplementing it would be nice)
  • Entirely new applications:
    • Lists (To do, to buy, etc)
    • Dictionary/Thesaurus
    • Instant Messaging (msn msngr, google talk, aim, etc)
    • Some form of VoIP when in an 802.11 area
    • Some sort of money-management
    • MS Office and PDF readers (if not editors)

I know that some of my list are available already for jailbroken iPhones, but I’m hesitant to do that.  I’m going to hold out for a while and see if the rumours about an SDK being released in February are true.