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Angry iPhone owners blast AT&T
- lsb 17y agoIf you're all so damn mad, push for public mobile broadband and you could use Skype on your iPod Touch.
- absconditus 17y agoDoes the iPod Touch have a microphone?
- dmix 17y agoNope.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- robg 17y agoAnswered my own question, the iPhone headset works with the Touch and Skype - at least by this guy's account: http://truthseekernz.blogspot.com/2009/05/ipod-touch-and-skype.html http://truthseekernz.blogspot.com/2009/05/ipod-touch-and-sky... This is actually an interesting option. We switched our cells to paygo and use Skype with a number. We're saving over $1000 this way over the next year alone. Now we have a way to get rid of the paygo too!
- TJensen 17y agoBut it will support Bluetooth headsets with 3.0.
- lsb 17y agoAnd it doesn't have background processes, which is what you'd want for Skype itself to work as a P2P app. But you get what I'm saying: it's just bits in packets, and we could do so much more if voice weren't special.
- TetOn 17y agoNo, but you can plug a set of earphones with a mic into it and it will work.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- haseman 17y agoSadly, the extra 200$ is a fair price. They recoup that money over the course of your contract... Perhaps they could prorate the discount for the amount of time you're through your term? Further, the only reason they were able to offer the discounted price when shifting from 2g to 3g was the additional 10$ a month they made off the new data plan. For the 3gs, they'll actually lose money on upgrading customers because their bandwidth costs go up.
- dbul 17y agoI wonder why they don't just have a 3-year contract? Update: Looks like others have suggested this. http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/06/10/sign-3year-att-contract-iphone-3g-199299-subsidy-pricing/ http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/06/10/sign-3year-att-contr...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- mlinsey 17y agoEither that, or append an additional two years to the end of your current commitment? (Why are most cell phone contracts two years long anyway?) Of course, with a new iPhone every year, continuing to follow such a policy could leave some die-hard fans with commitments lasting decades...
- mattmaroon 17y agoI'm guessing most contracts are two years long because that's the most Americans will generally sign. People expect they'll want a new phone in that time (at the longest) and maybe want to switch carriers.
- haseman 17y ago...another year older and deeper in ...contract?
- quellhorst 17y agoI will be angry if these people do get the subsidized price. Being logical, I skipped the 3g hoping for more features around the time my contract expires on my 2G that I paid $600 for. Just because Apple releases a new phone every year, doesn't mean you should get it every year for cheap.
- Tichy 17y agoThis is where lack of basic maths skills really bites the average person. I wonder if the practice of mobile phone companies selling "cheap" phones could be considered fraud, given that many people are apparently unable to understand it. The optimum outcome of this would be for phone companies to give up the practice, as it only enrages customers in the long run.
- jdbeast00 17y agoits a catch-22. subsidizing the $600 iphone is the only way to get dump people to buy the phone, but it also means you'll have to spend time explaining why they can't have 2 iphones for the price of 1. At the same time, they should make it more clear how the payoff schedule works...if i decide 1/4th the way into my contract that AT&T sucks, i should be able to pay 3/4 * (amount subsidized) + interest and thats it.
- Tichy 17y agoTrue, but realistically, if you call AT&T, you should be able to talk them into giving you some benefits that amount to roughly that? It is just a shame that they make it complicated for you. But their benefit is that a lot of people won't bother and just pay the higher price.
- mattmaroon 17y agoWrong, and wronger. People fully understand they're getting the phone with strings attached. It isn't that they're too stupid to do the math, it's that humans are predisposed to value now over later, because there might not be a later. It's a symptom of our evolutionary history, and the phone companies know it. The optimal outcome for them is to use that to get people locked into their service for two years, and give them a device for $0 that a company without a contract would have to ask $200 for. They're not stupid, at some point somebody surely said "hey, what if we sold these phones for a higher price unlocked" but then everybody laughed and that guy felt like an idiot.
- Tichy 17y ago
- cjbos 17y agoI think Apple has more to answer to here. Why can't they enable the voice controls and video capture on the old hardware with the update? Hardly think AT&T is to blame that you can't use features your phone is capable of using in the OS 3.0 update, and therefore should get a subsidized upgrade.
- zacharypinter 17y agoI've heard a lot of back and forth about subsidized pricing and how this is standard procedure for phone companies. The problem here is that Apple is a company that drives its customers to constantly buy the latest gadget. Cell phone subsidies make the early adopters feel like they're getting shafted, as they are not eligible for the advertised price. The real solution here is to only subsidize the "average consumer" version of the device, or to avoid subsidy programs that are significantly longer than the time span between different versions of the device. A 2 year subsidy makes no sense if Apple is producing a new phone in less than a year.
- hellweaver666 17y agoThat's the solution right there - only offer subsidised prices based around 12 month contracts, then the fanboys get to upgrade every year around the time the new phones come out but they have to pay a bit more for the phone.