xenadu

Man, sure are a lot of folks who don't care for Apple in the Apple subforum

I used to love tinkering with my windows mobile phone, installing custom ROMs, etc. Then I got out of college, got a girlfriend, etc. I don't have time for the BS anymore. I use Apple products because they just work. Doubly so if you use an all-Apple ecosystem. Sure, other products "can" do feature X, Y, Y but how much time will I waste installing drivers, troubleshooting codecs, installing custom ROMs, and so on? If I plug in my digital camera iPhoto just opens, imports the pictures, sorts them into events based on date, tags peoples faces, pumps them over PhotoStream and they just show up on my phone and iPad. I don't have to think about it, click on any dialog boxes, or otherwise waste any energy messing with it. When family comes over and asks about wedding pictures I just grab my iPhone, tap photos, tap AirPlay, then bam.... I can show them on my TV. No muss, no fuss. When I create an appointment on my iPad, it just shows up on my phone. When I buy a new game on my Mac, it just shows up on my phone and iPad. My friend wants to see that new app I was talking about? I just hit AirPlay, Mirror on my iPad and he can see what I'm doing on the TV.

I used to build my own gaming PCs and upgrade every six months. I was the first person in my area to have dual Voodoo2 SLI, Quake was my playground Now? I just play an Xbox 360 'cause I can just turn it on and play for an hour and move on with my life.

Of course now that I have an app in the iOS app store I am a somewhat biased source as every iOS user is another potential customer

Use whatever works for you buy please don't pretend Apple is a fad or just marketing or whatever. They make a certain value proposition about simplicity that a lot of customers find very attractive. If they are failing then I'd love to be that big of a failure!

The bands are close enough that the antenna should work. Why couldn't an upgrade of the baseband enable those frequencies? Would it be that the Qualcomm radio isn't capable of restricting its broadcasts tightly enough without a hardware filter?

I so await the days of cheap low-power software radio. It is coming some day and the idea of having a carrier/frequency specific device of any kind will seem laughable. The device will just switch among the various antennas as needed for microwave, 1500-1900, and 700-900. Anyone have a technical objection to this prediction, other than software radio chips currently being too expensive and power hungry?

I also wonder if you couldn't have a solid state antenna that could switch segments in and out to change length (and thus frequency response) but I don't know enough about electrical engineering and antenna design to know what the pitfalls are there.

I live here and I can tell you this is quite accurate. Some areas are great, others are dog slow. Can't wait for the complete deployment to be finished.

Please post a link to your app. I may just have it already, and if not, I might be interested in buying it.

Wasn't sure if that sort of self-promotion is allowed or not.

My app is Storm Sim, a rainstorm sound / whitenoise app to help you sleep. It is different than most as it is not just some pre-recorded storms. It dynamically generates a storm that never repeats or loops. You can save as many different storms as you like and edit each one (less, more, louder, softer, more variable, more consistent, etc and mix-match different effects). You can also buy add-on packs to add other sounds like trains, waterfalls, etc. There is a free version but the paid one is way cheaper than buying all the in-app purchases on the free one so save your $$.

http://goo.gl/hk1lD

The problem is more general... The Chinese government pays for tons of stuff, via the state owned banks, etc. Hear a rumor that Apple may be building a new product? The Chinese government will put 150 people through a school crash course, fund the building of a factory, buy patent rights, setup a supply chain, etc - all on a speculative basis. When your lead time to market in China is 4 weeks vs 8 months in the US, everything else becomes irrelevant.

We don't have anything like an industrial policy here and when politicians do take chances on funding startups or funding education everyone whines about the deficit. When those Chinese loans go bad, the state banks just roll them over to a new loan - often for years until the factory can find a product to build. Eventually they are going to have issues due to the malinvestment and jacked banking system but they can plow on for many years before that happens.

I would also point out that the US is king in software and Apple has given hundreds of thousands of us a platform to sell our software. I personally have an app in the App Store and it is bringing in money every month. That means every single iDevice worldwide is another potential customer... I read the other day that developers are capturing something like $30 per iDevice. Not sure if that is accurate or not.

Any word on the Dallas upgrade plan? I know it is in the first round of upgrades. There are a few locations where I seem to get > 1MB speeds so I suppose those might be upgraded towers but near my place in Plano I'm lucky if the Speedtest.net test will even complete, let alone break the 100K barrier.

I'm also curious what frequencies Sprint owns in this market - if they have the full iDen spectrum or are limited. I presume they own the PCS G block and the normal range of PCS frequencies.