Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Extortion I tell you!

So I'm back from WWDC, Steve Jobs' promise that the iPhone will not cost more than $199 still fresh in my memory and waiting for Vodafone, New Zealand to announce their pricing for iPhone plans, because, well, everyone who isn't an idiot knows that Apple will be getting a cut from the cell phone carrier too.

Well, today Vodafone put their plans up. Guess how much you will have to pay to get the iPhone for $199? $250/month! I'm sorry Steve, I like your iPhone, your AppStore and all its features, but if this is what you really meant at your keynote, I'm staying well away from your device because it's just not worth it. It looks like you just pushed the price up. That leaves me with a problem - what new phone should I buy? (because I do need one)

You know what? Maybe I'll go with a phone where nothing is hidden. I mean nothing. I can get it for US$400 and then decide what plan I want. Yes, it has GPS built-in. Yes, it knows when its being tilted. Yes, it has a touch screen. Yes, I can add however many ring tones I like. Yes, I can make my own applications for it (and I will). No, it doesn't have 3G, but then, Wi-fi is good enough for me...and yes, it has 802.11g. It doesn't look as cool, but it works and by the time I have to buy a new phone again, the playing field will be a lot more even.

I think, Steve, for all practical purposes, you can take New Zealand off the list of countries that you will be selling the iPhone in.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree 100% - wild and cute enough to make you want to play with it.

Linux has laid the foundation.

Firefox has taken good care of our browsing.

OpenOffice + Google docs have given us portable information.

KDE 4 has given us a flashy desktop, GNOME has given us a simple yet powerful one - both are beautiful in their own right.

VLC/Mplayer have given us independence of video formats.

Linux + Firefox + KDE 4/GNOME + OpenOffice + VLC/Mplayer = desktop independence. Only piece of the puzzle left is gaming. Once we have gaming, drivers on Linux (for anything consumer oriented atleast) will no longer be a problem. I definitely see that happening within the next 3 years, but we as a Linux community HAVE TO back whichever video card manufacturer gives us the best Linux drivers. Make them work for our cash and very soon, Linux will be a standard platform to release for.

Found this on slashdot have to say that its perfect and concise analysis. Cheers mate.

Carl said...

Thank you :)