Apple drops price of iPhone by $200, gives cookies to the losers September 7, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Trends, VOIP, itunes, open source, Miro, Songbird , 3 commentsI heard about this yesterday when Apple announced their new line of iPods, including a device that does almost everything the iPhone does except make calls, dubbed “iPod Touch”. Today, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to everyone who’s already bought an iPhone that says “tough crap, I’ll give you $100 gift card, go away, you bother me.” Obviously, the tech bloggers have something to say about this.
Here’s my response to Jeremy Harrington’s Thoughts on iPhone Price Drop:
My personal opinion is that they lowered the price of the iPhone so they would sell FEWER Touch units… if they are the same price, but one makes calls and the other is a portable hard drive, which one is of more value to you? I bought a Sony Mylo a few weeks before the original iPhone announcement because it makes Skype calls, and it came with a free year of T-Mobile HotSpot… as far as I know, yesterday’s announcements didn’t mention anything about free access at Starbuck’s. For that reason alone, the Mylo was worth it and continues to be a superior device, because I can make VOIP calls with it. I’m sure the next rev of Mylo will have touch and lots of the things that make the iPhone so great right now. I waited on iPhone, and now I’ll wait for a touch/wifi device with a camera (does Touch have that?) that can make VOIP calls, and there will be another giveaway like a free year of wifi because they’ll have to keep up with Apple.
Granted, there are a lot of benefits with buying an iProduct. The synching, the media, the iTunes store, the podcasts… still, I will call attention to my post of a few days past about Miro and Songbird. If you don’t like to, how you say, “pay for media”, you’ll like that Miro and Songbird can do everything iTunes can with the same ease of use and the same download price… free. On top of that, you’ll know that if you want a new feature, you can send a message to the guys and girls that design the software and be heard.
Jeremy said it pretty well:
Apple has become a consumer product business, and the exemplary customer satisfaction they tout in their marketing and interviews took a hit yesterday. If they keep this up they will be a big consumer electronics business like they wish to be, the kind everyone hates.
I hope this doesn’t happen, but it looks like the way things are going.
From the Vault: Cervo Guys 02 February 21, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Cervo, Trends, VOIP , add a commentThis is a quick podcast Charlie and I recorded at Charlie’s home outside of St. Cloud. We are wondering about VOIP and why phone companies don’t have better audio.
Ryan Price vs. Skype, PayPal, Gizmo, Verizon February 3, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Reviews, Shopping, Trends, Web Sites, VOIP , 1 comment so farI have a girlfriend who lives in England. I have a Skype account. Hell, I even have a Skype phone in my Sony Mylo, and I got it mostly because I wanted a more telephone-like experience when talking to my girlfriend. I have, however, not been having a fun time with Skype today, nor my Verizon Wireless phone, nor option number 3, the Gizmo Project. I’m not even going to qualify any of these services with a link.
First off, Skype’s online store is down. WTF Skype? Did your developers fall asleep at the wheel? I’m sure you’re getting ready for some fun pre-Superbowl beefing-up because you’ll be running ads or something, but I need to buy more credits! The site has looked like this all day:
skype Hosted on ZooomrSecond, I figure I’ll just dial my damn cell phone, it can’t cost that much, right? Well Verizon seems to think that there’s no reason you’d want to make an international call unless you authorized it! Sure, your phone might get stolen or the kids might get a hold of it, but when I’m in a situation where my mobile is my only phone this starts to get very frustrating. Thank you Wendy at customer service for being so nice, but why don’t you people want to take my money? BTW my account is under the control of my business partner and his wife, I can’t add the international “Hoo-Ha” to my phone.
Lastly, I remember reading about a number of new VOIP services over on Techcrunch, so I check out the Gizmo Project. OMG they have a Mac version. Create an account, I want to buy some credit, hooray for PayPal, and then my transaction is immediately cancelled!
gizmo Hosted on ZooomrI have decided against leaving the house for a phone card because I’m afraid that if they don’t have any more cards at the store I will throw things at the nice service industry workers.
Update: About 10 minutes after posting this, the Skype store was functioning again and I got my credit. In the interim, I was talking to my friend Emily and she offered to try and get her Verizon international calling turned on. Turns out this will take until sometime on Monday.
The prologue to all of this is a major annoyance with Skype: their international calling rates are some of the cheapest around. To call England is supposedly just 2.1 cents/minute. Apparently this rate doesn’t apply to international mobile calls. My calls end up costing more like 22 or 23 cents/minute instead. Why Skype, why? Luckily Kait is getting a landline this week.
