Weird Machines

There's been much hullabaloo over the JesusPhone 2.0 since its announcement. As far as I can see, most people are relatively excited about it. Apple has apparently managed to incorporate 3G and GPS without a significant hit to battery life.

However, there's also been some criticism about the price. At the WWDC keynote at which the iPhone 3G was announced, El Capitan Jobs listed 5 major improvements of the new iPhone: 3G data speeds, Enterprise support, third party applications, availability in more countries, and last but not least, more affordable. Jobs announced that the new iPhone would sell for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. The crowd of course goes nuts.

The problem is that it's not more affordable. It's less affordable. AT&T decided that unlimited data for the 3G iPhone was going to cost $30/month, which is $10 more per month than the original plan. Stretch that out over 2 years and you've paid $40 more for your iPhone 3G than the original. The math goes like this:

$20/month (iPhone) * 24 months = $480

$30/month (iPhone 3G) * 24 months = $720

$720 - $480 = $240

Factor in the $200 price drop in the new iPhone and you're still paying $40 more over 2 years for the new iPhone. So completely overlooking the fact that this is supposed to be a major selling point for the new iPhone, you might say, "But Chris, surely GPS, 3G, 3rd party apps, etc. is all worth this $40 premium." To which I might say, "Yes. I suppose I agree." However, there's more. Today, AT&T announced the official pricing and plans for the new iPhone. Take a look here and here. Essentially what it says is that you only get the price announced at WWDC if you are eligible for an upgrade. I talked to an AT&T representative on the phone and was quoted a 20-month time frame from your last upgrade. Have you perhaps casually gotten a new phone because you weren't happy with your last one? No cheap iPhone for you. There are any number of scenarios in which you are suddenly ineligible for this fabulous selling point that Jobs felt the need to announce at WWDC. You'll have to pay the price of the previous iPhone ($399/$499). Did I mention you still have to get a 2-year contract? The only upside I can see is that, according to Engadget's post, previous iPhone owners get the discounted price.

BUT WAIT! There's more! Did you want to buy that iPhone without activating it, as you could with the first iPhone? You get to pay even more than the previous iPhone cost! Yayyyyyy! Get ready to plunk down $599/$699 for the new hotness. Wait, isn't that more than the first iPhone EVER cost EVER?

So way to go, Apple. I don't know what the fuck happened, but next time I suggest you wear a cup so AT&T doesn't have the chance to get the vice grip on your balls that I can only imagine they must have. I don't even know how to put into words how weasely this is. I expect better from Apple.

Let me sum up this monster of a post in this sentence: The iPhone 3G is in no way cheaper than the original iPhone, in spite of what was announced at WWDC, and what is clearly supposed to be a selling point.

I know I said I wanted to keep this blog technical, but it looks like that may not be the case. Maybe I can look at this from a technical point of view...

http://twistori.com/

twistori is an interesting, social experimentish Twitter visualizer that lets you choose one of 6 predefined words relating to emotion, and watch as related tweets go by. Technical: It's not Flash, which means AJAX + DHTML, which is kind of neat. It's definitely nicely done. So often these things aren't.

Someone showed me a demo from a piece of software called Seam Carver, which uses a very clever algorithm for "content-aware" imagine resizing. The software searches for rivers of what it deems to be unimportant pixels. These rivers or "seams" are then removed as needed to resize the image. Check out the website/video for a more detailed explanation, and mind-blowing demo:

SeamCarving.com