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Well, you could legitimately use 2GB by simply purchasing a movie that they discussed in the presentation. A 720p version of "Drive" on iTunes is 3.17GB. Soon i

by kacy 15y ago

Well, you could legitimately use 2GB by simply purchasing a movie that they discussed in the presentation. A 720p version of "Drive" on iTunes is 3.17GB. Soon it will be upgraded to 1080p, which would be at /least/ 5GB. That's at least $50 in data for one movie, assuming the data plans stay the same.

samstave 15y ago
Someone needs to do exactly this, then sue the balls off these carriers for such draconian plans and rates.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  Suing the balls off of someone requires that you have "cause".
  - jrockway 15y ago
    The government allows Verizon and AT&T to use the wireless spectrum with many caveats. One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers. Hence, cause for a lawsuit is established.
    - mburns 15y ago
      "One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers." You can't objectively define what constitutes "royally fuck[ing]" their customers. Just saying "this cost more than I think is reasonable as a wireless customer" means absolutely nothing in court.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
    - beedogs 15y ago
      > One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. Clearly you do not live in America. We abandoned the concept of consumer protection decades ago.
    - batista 15y ago
      > The government allows Verizon and AT&T to use the wireless spectrum with many caveats. One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers. Hence, cause for a lawsuit is established. We have a saying in my country, when a child exhibits some great talent, that we also use ironically when a child does or says something very dumb. "How can you not send this kid to college?" I think one of the two intentions applies perfectly to the quoted comment.
  - incongruity 15y ago
    Indeed – but it might well go far in the court of public opinion... that's gotta count for something...
  - noonespecial 15y ago
    You need a cause to get to trial and then even more so to win. You don't need one to file the suit, get the attention, and cost them big time to address it. In America you can sue anyone at any time for anything. You don't have to win to win.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  Go for it!
AntiRush 15y ago
Apple doesn't let you download anything (apps, movies) bigger than 50mb over a cellular connection.
- dagw 15y ago
  But once you go to 4G, that limitation just doesn't make sense any more. I know several people for whom 4G is the fastest internet connection available to them. Sure you could hack around it by setting up a wifi hotspot on a different 4G device, but still forcing them to use a slower network for larger downloads seems kind of dumb.
  - bunderbunder 15y ago
    Heck, for me 3G is the fastest data available to me. However, 3G (and 4G) are much more expensive, in terms of the price it costs to transmit a given quantity of data. And compared to glass and copper, the total number of bits available within a given geographic area at any given moment is a fraction as large. Unfortunately, cellular companies failed to realize that offering "unlimited" data plans would set up poor expectations. They (apparently) didn't anticipate seeing a significant percentage of their customers try to use the cellular networks for transferring large quantities of data, and thought that for most people "unlimited" would just be a marketing-friendly euphemism for "a couple hundred megabytes." In turn, people who assumed that "unlimited" really means unlimited, and assumed that the prices that were originally offered for "unlimited" were realistic prices for high volumes of cellular network usage, now seem to think that the prices that cellular network providers want to charge for data usage are rapacious. On the contrary, it's not that the price they're trying to charge now is disastrously high; it's that the price that they used to be charging was disastrously low. There's also a serious resource contention issue on cellular data. The towers can only be placed so close together before they start interfering with each other, and the bandwidth that's being advertised is the bandwidth you'll get if you've got the tower to yourself. Chicago's an illustrative story: A company came along offering household internet service through a 4G network, promising impressive bandwidth numbers. And they delivered on them for the few months between when they first opened for business and when they started getting serious traction in the market. Since then, they've earned a reputation as a pretty crappy ISP, simply because the technology itself couldn't deliver quality service to that many users at once. A wireless network cell is effectively a hub, and like on any hub resource contention can be a serious issue. Which, I suspect, is ultimately why Apple goes along with the file size caps for cellular network transfers: From a user experience perspective, they would much rather allow everyone to transfer small files at high speeds, than let everyone's user experience suffer because the network is being choked by large file transfers.

by kacy 15y ago

samstave 15y ago

Someone needs to do exactly this, then sue the balls off these carriers for such draconian plans and rates.

tedunangst 15y ago
Suing the balls off of someone requires that you have "cause".
- jrockway 15y ago
  The government allows Verizon and AT&T to use the wireless spectrum with many caveats. One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers. Hence, cause for a lawsuit is established.
  - mburns 15y ago
    "One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers." You can't objectively define what constitutes "royally fuck[ing]" their customers. Just saying "this cost more than I think is reasonable as a wireless customer" means absolutely nothing in court.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - beedogs 15y ago
    > One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. Clearly you do not live in America. We abandoned the concept of consumer protection decades ago.
  - batista 15y ago
    > The government allows Verizon and AT&T to use the wireless spectrum with many caveats. One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers. Hence, cause for a lawsuit is established. We have a saying in my country, when a child exhibits some great talent, that we also use ironically when a child does or says something very dumb. "How can you not send this kid to college?" I think one of the two intentions applies perfectly to the quoted comment.
- incongruity 15y ago
  Indeed – but it might well go far in the court of public opinion... that's gotta count for something...
- noonespecial 15y ago
  You need a cause to get to trial and then even more so to win. You don't need one to file the suit, get the attention, and cost them big time to address it. In America you can sue anyone at any time for anything. You don't have to win to win.
HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
Go for it!

AntiRush 15y ago

Apple doesn't let you download anything (apps, movies) bigger than 50mb over a cellular connection.

dagw 15y ago
But once you go to 4G, that limitation just doesn't make sense any more. I know several people for whom 4G is the fastest internet connection available to them. Sure you could hack around it by setting up a wifi hotspot on a different 4G device, but still forcing them to use a slower network for larger downloads seems kind of dumb.
- bunderbunder 15y ago
  Heck, for me 3G is the fastest data available to me. However, 3G (and 4G) are much more expensive, in terms of the price it costs to transmit a given quantity of data. And compared to glass and copper, the total number of bits available within a given geographic area at any given moment is a fraction as large. Unfortunately, cellular companies failed to realize that offering "unlimited" data plans would set up poor expectations. They (apparently) didn't anticipate seeing a significant percentage of their customers try to use the cellular networks for transferring large quantities of data, and thought that for most people "unlimited" would just be a marketing-friendly euphemism for "a couple hundred megabytes." In turn, people who assumed that "unlimited" really means unlimited, and assumed that the prices that were originally offered for "unlimited" were realistic prices for high volumes of cellular network usage, now seem to think that the prices that cellular network providers want to charge for data usage are rapacious. On the contrary, it's not that the price they're trying to charge now is disastrously high; it's that the price that they used to be charging was disastrously low. There's also a serious resource contention issue on cellular data. The towers can only be placed so close together before they start interfering with each other, and the bandwidth that's being advertised is the bandwidth you'll get if you've got the tower to yourself. Chicago's an illustrative story: A company came along offering household internet service through a 4G network, promising impressive bandwidth numbers. And they delivered on them for the few months between when they first opened for business and when they started getting serious traction in the market. Since then, they've earned a reputation as a pretty crappy ISP, simply because the technology itself couldn't deliver quality service to that many users at once. A wireless network cell is effectively a hub, and like on any hub resource contention can be a serious issue. Which, I suspect, is ultimately why Apple goes along with the file size caps for cellular network transfers: From a user experience perspective, they would much rather allow everyone to transfer small files at high speeds, than let everyone's user experience suffer because the network is being choked by large file transfers.