I don’t often have much sympathy for Steve Jobs, but today I feel his pain while reading about AT&T’s accidental leakage of more than a hundred thousand email addresses of iPad owners.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.
A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.
I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
Republicans do not trust women.
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
Our messy unity will be our strength.
I really should read my own blog.
I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.
It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.
Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”
Tick tock motherfuckers!
Everything is totally normal and fine!!!
We are aware of all internet traditions.
The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.
There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.
Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.
Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.
How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.
Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.
They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.
Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.
There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.
The revolution will be supervised.
“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”
cleek
quick, Apple, void that contract with AT&T, and let Verizon sell iPhones! now’s your chance!
geg6
I still have no sympathy for him. His Nazi tactics over the leaked new iPhone and his obscene wealth make sympathy impossible. Meanwhile, I type and send this on an iPhone.
Cat Lady
They should have called it iTampon.
MikeJ
Sign improvement artists have been helping him with his campaign of freedom from porn.
Zuzu's Petals
My iPad is wireless only. Wondered a bit what I was missing by not having 3g.
Now I know.
pharniel
at&t and jobs deserve each other
Bill E Pilgrim
Yeah but AT&T said it had mostly fixed the leak and only 5,000 email addresses a day were leaking now, and by August they’ll have plugged it up completely.
RSR
>>However a hacker group, Goatse Security discovered a weakness
lulz
TomG
Jobs’ wealth doesn’t bother me at all.
What bothers me is the excessive control he insists on having over the way people use the devices that his company sells. Considering some of the names of people whose email addresses were leaked, perhaps pressure will be put on AT&T and Apple to allow other phone companies onto the iPhone and iPad.
Brandon
@RSR: I saw the same thing. “Goatse Security” is some serious funny.
someguy
I, for one, blame Obama.
Comrade Mary
Able was I ere I saw goatse. Also: this book takes on a whole new meaning.
mistermix
@RSR: On the Internet, old Slashdot memes never die.
dmsilev
@TomG: The iPad is unlocked, so you’re perfectly free to take any SIM card, convert it into a micro-SIM (basically, trim away a bunch of excess plastic with a pair of scissors) and stick it in your iPad.
The phone is another story, of course.
dms
burnspbesq
Fun factoid: during Jobs’ keynote address to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, there were apparently over 500 wireless base stations operating in the room. The vast majority were Sprint MyFis. The Apple user community has grown tired of AT&T’s suckitude.
Alas, Apple apparently perceives it as not in its interest to try to modify its contract with AT&T, probably because AT&T massively subsidizes the price of every iPhone. However, that contract expires in 2012, and as the expiration date approaches one hopes that Apple will be willing to play hardball to force AT&T to up its investment in infrastructure.
Cain
Pfah.. AT&T is dead to me. As an owner of a iphone, I looked hungrily at one guy’s NexusOne developer android. So much win. So fast, so responsive. I have a year left on my contract..
I probably would have liked my iphone more if the network was fast and the phone was faster. It seems like every upgrade the phone gets slower, it can’t even keep up with my typing. Balloon-juice loads a posting and it takes about 3 minutes where the progress bar shows 90% but I’m waiting for the last 10% for 2 minutes. Stupid shit like that.
Android is going to kick their ass eventually.. although I’m still puzzled why there is no good hardware interface like the iphone has.
cain
Martin
@Cain:
Because that’s how open platforms work. You can’t expect a platform designed to be open to not be free from all the problems that come from handing design control away. I don’t expect Android will actually become that big of a threat. The more it forks and the hardware splinters, the harder its going to be to hold the whole thing together, the harder it will be for developers, the more bewildering it will become for users.
But Apple is desperate to lose AT&T. Not that Verizon is terribly better – they’re really starting to get their old habits back. The voice chat on their network is an extra $5/mo. Since they’ve landed the Droid branding as a network brand, they’ve been able to reassert the nickle/dime control over the handsets. And it’s not clear that if Verizon’s data bandwidth quadrupled, that they wouldn’t be as screwed up as AT&T, but at least it’d split across the carriers. Bottom line is that the US wireless infrastructure is a fucking joke.
Martin
@TomG: Apple tried to get other carriers. They all turned Apple down – including Verizon. Only AT&T was willing to do it, and their condition was exclusivity for taking the risk. Remember, Apple wouldn’t cede design influence to the carriers – that was new. The carriers historically have had a surprising amount of design influence on the phones themselves. Did you ever have a phone where the controls were packed in such a way that you were always accidentally dialing up their premium sports news service, or some such? The carrier insists that the controls be designed that way – they’re trying to get that accidental income, trusting that you won’t bother to complain about the charges every month. That’s not bad design by the handset makers, they do that on purpose. The carriers insist that certain features be turned off or be metered. There’s a reason why Motorola manufactures 120 different phone models (and has about the same unit sales as Apple with their 2 models). Nokia makes even more. The phones are designed for the carriers, not the users.
Apple’s conditions was they couldn’t do that – they could meter calls and then they needed to have unencumbered data, and that was it. Apple would set the features on the phone, not the carrier. The carriers balked at this because they were afraid people wouldn’t pay for the expensive plan and thought the teaser rate plus all the addons (which comes to the same amount) were easier to sell consumers on. They’re probably right, but that hasn’t slowed the iPhone down much.
Anyway, Apple still has its exclusive deal with AT&T so they’re a little stuck. The jump to a CDMA phone is non-trivial anyway. The way that CDMA cannot handle voice+data simultaneously presents some really challenging issues for the phone software. How does it notify apps that the data network just dropped off to take a call, that kind of thing. They’re certainly solvable as every Android phone does it, but Apple never had to bother solving it. If they can hold out for the 4G launch later this year/early next, then they can just skip that effort entirely. I’d expect the iPhone to launch alongside Verizon’s 4G effort. November at the earliest, January more likely. Moving to Verizon before then is just a lot of work and not much payoff for Apple. They can wait half a year.
Sentient Puddle
Alls I need is Android 2.2 on my phone, and my wireless-only iPad is as good as the 3G version!
Come on Motorola, roll it out to the Droid in a reasonable time frame…
licensed to kill time
@Cat Lady:
Or the iPlug.
El Cruzado
Part of it is that Apple would rather not bother building a CDMA phone and stick to GSM models (since GSM is pretty much where it’s at everywhere else in the world). By the time the 5 year exclusivity is over networks should be on the way to merging standards so it would make their job a lot easier.
burnspbesq
If Verizon had an exclusive on the iPhone, I wouldn’t own one. I travel internationally for work. CDMA is a deal-breaker.
Comrade Luke
I need to do the math, but I’m thinking that it’s worth it for me to fork over the $700 for the new iPhone with no contract.
My current contract with AT&T is through next July, and when you take the cost of adding another year to the contract plus the (recently increased) early termination fee, I might as well pay the higher price up front. By next year either 4G will be prevalent enough to have better options, or maybe an Android phone will come out that’s good enough to switch.
This is all bunk. Anyone should be able to buy any phone and use it with any carrier.
Martin
@Comrade Luke: According to my contacts, Apple agrees with you. Unfortunately, all the power is in the hands of the carriers. Apple tried to go with a largely unsubsidized approach in the beginning, but it wasn’t working well.
The main problem in the US is the proliferation of incompatible standards. Even if carriers are using the same standard, they’re on different bands. Making one phone to cross all networks is absurdly difficult. A national standard (like we have with TV, radio, and every other fucking thing on the spectrum) would solve a LOT of the problem.
Secondly, the carriers insist on telling the handset makers what to have in the phone. One of the reason why Apple has gone with the approach they have is that they win on economy of scale. Apple’s margins on their phones are substantially higher than for other handset makers. The other players have to make dozens and dozens of phones to appeal to all the carriers (US and Intl) which drives up the cost of having to maintain so many different manufacturing lines, different design lines, testing, and so forth. With just two principle models (with color and storage variations, neither of which requires much extra tooling, testing, or design) Apple can probably cut the price of their phones by 40%-50% and still maintain stronger margins than the other handset makers. They won’t because they are price competitive right now, but if the other handset makers could start doing what Apple is doing, they’d force Apple’s prices down. In the meantime, because the handset makers are at the carriers bidding (who rig the game to screw consumers out of as much money as possible) and undermining their own ability to compete, Apple is raking insane profits in.
Apple will cut prices when they need to in order to compete. So long as the carriers and handset makers keep playing this self-destructive game (which Apple is partially trapped in themselves), nothing is going to change except that Apple might find themselves powerful enough to take on the carriers themselves.
DPirate
They sold them, and are pulling this stunt to cover it up.
CalD
At the point where you’ve shelled out $500 bucks — the price of a low end tablet computer — for an iPod Touch that won’t fit in your pocket, I figure you’ve already been screwed. ;-)