The iPhone 4S

This quote is interesting:

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Siri, in short, is a frontal assault on Google’s core business -- advertiser supported search.

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While I see the point behind the rest of the article, Google has always based their model on advertising. What will their revenue stream be for AI information? This question was brought to you by coca-cola, it's the real thing. I'm not quite sure what the answer is by comet cleanser, but I fear that it will scour your neves like brillo pads which produce a bright shine. Perhaps it will be some kind of embedded advertising, like Constant Contact the e-mail marketing company, but will it be unintrusive? I doubt it.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

This quote is interesting:


While I see the point behind the rest of the article, Google has always based their model on advertising. What will their revenue stream be for AI information? This question was brought to you by coca-cola, it's the real thing. I'm not quite sure what the answer is by comet cleanser, but I fear that it will scour your neves like brillo pads which produce a bright shine. Perhaps it will be some kind of embedded advertising, like Constant Contact the e-mail marketing company, but will it be unintrusive? I doubt it.

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I was just about to ask the same thing. Since advertising is their almost exclusive source of revenue, I'm not sure how they'll work out ad placement with a voice AI.

I dread finding out.

There is supposed to be a new set of GPS satellites heading up soon that will increase GPS accuracy to sub-meter levels and will better penetrate walls. When I first heard about this, it was in conjunction with a discussion about how excited advertisers are for this. This will allow them to know what product you are standing in front of in stores. Oh the joy this will bring to the average consumer....and just think about that working with your ad-driven, voice-activated, AI personal assistant. Oh brave new world, that has such devices in it...

I teamed up with fullpower601 from youtube, we tested siri on samsung galaxy s2, the video(episode 3 not 2) should be up in 24H or less.

speech recognition at very low percentage, tidiously returning to prime screen screaming high galaxy also saying it at various speeds, all sorts of getting stuck.we couldn't work many features, but he still gonna buy the phone. to make a call and dictate text much repeatition was needed.

Great. Not only will you look deranged as you walk down the street talking to yourself, but you'll sound deranged to as you keep repeating yourself, cursing, then trying to delete those extraneous words.

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Originally Posted by moti barski

I teamed up with fullpower601 from youtube, we tested siri on samsung galaxy s2, the video(episode 3 not 2) should be up in 24H or less.

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Siri on Android?!

Moti marches to the beat of a different drummer. Just sit back and enjoy the show.

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Originally Posted by GaryMazzone

So if the artical disagrees with Apple then it is of no value, after all you believe everything that apple tells you is the absolute truth. They would never lie to you or put them selfs in the best light possibe since they only have the best interest of the user at heart.

Right?

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I don't really see how that article agrees or disagrees with Apple in any respect. The writer just believes Google is going to overtake Siri, and as I said it's almost as if he's suggesting Siri won't improve.

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Originally Posted by techgnome

@Icyculyr - so then you missed the point of the article...even if it does improve... there's more to it than simple (or even complex) voice recognition... there's also context... you should read the article, seriously. It doesn't say that it's crap... but that in a couple years, even with advancements, it could be surpassed by Google's ability to do data mining that Apple can't.

-tg

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Perhaps I did, which may have been because I stopped reading :p

Google may have the data but what they don't have is a very accurate and powerful AI able to understand a users query and return the data quickly. They'll surely develop that over time, but Apple has it right now and they need only add more services to get access to more data.

For example, currently Siri can't book flights for you or check on existing flights. But if Apple was to partner with a site that allowed that, then it could. This is what Apple is going to be doing, adding more and more services so you can make use of whatever functionality they offer.

Siri might not ever be able to answer "What gift should I get for my niece", or "who should I hire as an assistant", but I don't want it to... I'd find that very creepy, wouldn't you? It doesn't need to know that information. It needs to be able to query the web for what you ask, and your phone as well.

Whether Google is able to develop a more accurate and more powerful AI than Siri faster than Apple can continue to improve Siri, no one knows.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

I don't really see how that article agrees or disagrees with Apple in any respect. The writer just believes Google is going to overtake Siri, and as I said it's almost as if he's suggesting Siri won't improve.

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Whether Google is able to develop a more accurate and more powerful AI than Siri faster than Apple can continue to improve Siri, no one knows.

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...but Apple has it right now and they need only add more services to get access to more data.

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It's not a question of AI as much as it is data. I don't know why you are pushing this point. Where did anyone say it wont improve? They are only saying that there is almost no chance that Apple will ever have access to data like Google has. They're entire business is based on just data.

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Google may have the data but what they don't have is a very accurate and powerful AI able to understand a users query and return the data quickly.

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Really? Google search is to slow for you? Even their Google Flights is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) service for finding and booking flights, and flight booking is about as slow as any type of search can go.

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Siri might not ever be able to answer "What gift should I get for my niece", or "who should I hire as an assistant", but I don't want it to... I'd find that very creepy, wouldn't you? It doesn't need to know that information. It needs to be able to query the web for what you ask, and your phone as well.

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And if Apple ever does make that I'm sure you'll be one of the first to praise it as the best thing since sliced bread.

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Originally Posted by techgnome

@i00 - meh, that graphic doesn't mean much out of context, specifically how were the metrics obtained, and measured. +16% ... ok... of what though? If I have a base of 100 apps and I load 16 new ones, that's a 16% increase in apps... but it still isn't much. My competitor on the other hand has 100,000 apps and adds 16,000 new ones, that's also 16%, much more impressive. Granted iWhatever and Google apps are closer, but you also have to look at the distribution methods... Apple employs a very strict set of testing and validation... so there's a longer time to market. Google app store on the other hand, is more freely open, meaning just about and Thomas, Richard or Harry can put their app out there. Does it also take into consideration apps listed multiple times (some have a free or lite version as well as a paid/full version)... and what about the alternative markets? Amazon also has their own version of the app store... it duplicates things you find on the Google App Store... so if I have an app listed in both, is it added twice? or once?

So, the graphic, while all nice and purdy, is meaningless.

-tg

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How is the graphic meaningless... also if you looked at the graph you could see that 16% market groth on android is still more apps than iphone app store 6%... android has slightly more than 1/2 of the apps ... therfore if the groth was the same at even 50% of the apps it should be double the groth% ... and it's quite abit more than 1/2 and alot more than double groth.

I explain this in psudo to show that this isn;t meaningless - without even having to pull out a calc.. if u want i could extrapolate exact numbers from that too.

K

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Originally Posted by Max Peck

Hey, maybe the iPhones are crap guys, but my wife and I both have an iPhone4 and the things work great. Just spent two weeks navigating around the Northeastern U.S. using the built-in GPS systems, keeping up with everybody, reading my books, keeping track of the subways (maps & all) and, oh yeah, they're great phones too! I won't go into the dozen or so other things I do with this little beast, since y'all (Shaggy) think they're crap. ;-)

-Max :D

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You odviously haven't tried a good HTC phone :) ... get the evo 3d ... it will blow your mind! - btw all the other android phones (non htc) arn't worth anything imo :), i have had an iphone 3gs, htc desire, htc desire hd, htc flyer and SGS2 (work got it for me, but i hate it).

K

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Originally Posted by baja_yu

It's not a question of AI as much as it is data. I don't know why you are pushing this point. Where did anyone say it wont improve? They are only saying that there is almost no chance that Apple will ever have access to data like Google has. They're entire business is based on just data.

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They didn't say that but they do imply it by what I quoted earlier.

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Really? Google search is to slow for you? Even their Google Flights is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) service for finding and booking flights, and flight booking is about as slow as any type of search can go.

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I never said it was slow, I said they don't have an AI that's accurate and quick and power that's good enough to access data like Siri, and more so like was given example in the article. Anyway, Apple will continue to add services, and Google will continue to improve it's AI. The question is, will Apple be able to add services (for access to more data) quicker than Google can improve it's AI and implement ways of accessing all their data.

It's no question that Google has data Apple probably won't ever have, but is it really viable for an AI? I'm not so sure. I'm not saying it isn't, but I definitely don't want it knowing too much.

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And if Apple ever does make that I'm sure you'll be one of the first to praise it as the best thing since sliced bread.

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Uhh, no. I'm not hypocritical, it's creepy regardless of who would make it.

>>>

PS. My folks both got their iPhone 4S's today and I'm testing them out... it feels so fast :D

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

It's no question that Google has data Apple probably won't ever have, but is it really viable for an AI? I'm not so sure. I'm not saying it isn't, but I definitely don't want it knowing too much.

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It's definitely viable for an AI. I'm with you on the second half, but I'm kind of feeling like I'm trying to hold back the rising tide with a sand castle. The fact that Apple tracks you, even if you turn off tracking, is bothering enough. The fact that all phones could theoretically do this pretty effectively, is even more so.

They can't necessarily track ME, though, at least not for about a month every year.

Talk about profit margins...

http://www.economist.com/node/21525685

And for iMac, older model but still representative of the numbers http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ima...down,2083.html

EDIT: And here's one for the first iPad http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._each_499_iPad and a cosy 75% on every iPhone 4S http://realitypod.com/2011/10/nearly...phone-4s-sold/

Got my 4s in today.

Siri was a lot of fun to play with. We asked it all sorts of stupid questions and got back a lot of funny responses. It had a hard time understanding my manager due to his accent (he's from Malaysia). It also had a hard time separating background conversation from me speaking directly into the phone. If anyone was near me and speaking while I was issuing a command it would get garbled. It also seems to lag just a few seconds too long after you issue the command (presuming its checking to make sure I'm finished speaking), so again if you had people speaking or making noise while it was waiting it would garble the command. If you physically pressed the microphone icon right when you were finished this wasn't much of a problem.

It's also a little buggy. I was associating my contacts with specific nicknames (mom, dad, fiancee etc) and it got caught in a loop when it asked me if a name it found in my contacts was the one I wanted to associate the nickname with. I answered yes, and it repeated the question ad nauseum. I had to start over from the beginning again and it worked the next time. There's also an option you tick off in settings which activates siri when you hold the phone to your ear. This seems pretty erratic right now as some times it works (mainly when I unlock and immediately hold the phone to my face) but most times I never hear the beeps indicating siri is waiting for a command.

The wireless set up was nice, hooked into the wifi and answered a few questions and a few minutes later the thing was ready to make calls and use the internet. Got myself set up on iCloud which was an absolutely painless process. Enter in your apple id, click a link in a confirmation email, and boom good to go. Engadget reported there's an app out there offering 50 GB of cloud storage (with a 100 mb per file upload limit) for free right now so I'll be signing up for that as well.

Call quality was great, spoke with my father for a few minutes and he said he noticed a big difference between the Dare and the iPhone. Sounded good on my end too.

Camera was nice but I was only able to view the photo's on the screen and wasn't able to put it through much of a test. It worked really smooth and fast though with no delays at all. It's also really nice that you can set it up so that each picture you take gets stuffed up in the cloud for you as well as being stored on your device. So all your photos will be backed up automatically.

Downloaded speedtest.net's mobile app and checked my speeds. At my best I had 2.01 down and the worst I saw was .31. Not a good test at the moment because where my office at receives poor signal in general. Once I get back into town where there's better reception I'll run the test again and see if the speed improves. Running a few pages on safari and it ran like butter, downloading apps on the other hand was a bit slower. Hopefully that's just due to being in a bad service area.

Overall it's neat and siri is fun to play with for the time being. I don't see using the siri software much except if I'm driving or want to set a reminder on my phone. It's just really nice to finally have a phone that works properly again. :)

If you had that around me, I'd be wandering behind you saying things like "mail porn to Mom."

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

It's definitely viable for an AI. I'm with you on the second half, but I'm kind of feeling like I'm trying to hold back the rising tide with a sand castle. The fact that Apple tracks you, even if you turn off tracking, is bothering enough. The fact that all phones could theoretically do this pretty effectively, is even more so.

They can't necessarily track ME, though, at least not for about a month every year.

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What do you mean they track you? There was a list on iOS of all your locations but Apple changed it so the list was much smaller and was more secure.

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Originally Posted by baja_yu

Talk about profit margins...

http://www.economist.com/node/21525685

And for iMac, older model but still representative of the numbers http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ima...down,2083.html

EDIT: And here's one for the first iPad http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._each_499_iPad and a cosy 75% on every iPhone 4S http://realitypod.com/2011/10/nearly...phone-4s-sold/

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And do you expect droids and other slates to have a more expensive bill of materials? I don't think so. They (speaking generally here) need to have a high markup on their products to cover costs such as R&D, employee payments, etc.

Oh, and that iMac isn't representative of their numbers. The 2011 iMac starts at $1199 and has significantly better hardware and includes a Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard. It's not comparable. It'd be interesting to see the profits on the 2011 iMac though.

>>>>

My brief and little review:

The camera and video camera on the 4S is really great quality and it puts my 3GS to shame. It works great in day, and pretty well at night. The device is snappy, and games look great which is mostly to do with the retina display right now, considering a lot of games haven't been updated with better graphics yet.

I'm very impressed with Siri. It's true that it does understand context because it really doesn't matter what way I ask it, in fact I can even pause a little and mumble (like you might in real life if you're thinking what to ask) and it still gets me what I wanted. For example, I've asked something along the lines of: Siri, will it be chilly in Paris the day after tomorrow at 3 PM? And it said "No, it won't really be chilly, here's the forecast", and I replied with: "What about Rome?" and it gave me the correct answer again. I also tried just saying "Sweden", "How about Australia", etc., and it gave me the time of the capital at the time and day I originally said.

The best thing is, I don't have to speak really clear and precise for it to understand me. I just say what I want, it shows me accurately (and speaks) what I said and then gives me the results of my query. It deals pretty well with background noise, too.

Raising the phone to your ear is a really great way to use it. It activates quickly, and turns off when you take it away. Currently, searching for locations, businesses, etc., is only available in the US. But is apparently heading to international countries in 2012, which will be good because I'd find it useful.

It also works really quickly. Text to speech and speech to text works pretty well.

I'm not sure what the battery life seems like so far (albeit I was doing some gaming and have had brightness set to max), I'll have to do my own tests. It seems to drop pretty quickly although maybe it's just in my head.

All in all, I'm very happy with it. I can't wait until mine gets here and I can set it up. I really look forward to games like Rage and Infinity Blade updating to make use of the extra graphics horsepower -- they already look pretty great.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

Oh, and that iMac isn't representative of their numbers. The 2011 iMac starts at $1199 and has significantly better hardware and includes a Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard. It's not comparable.

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Wow, what awesome powers of perception. Well no sh.. Sherlock. The article is almost 6 years old, those would have been the top (or at least higher end) components at that time.

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And do you expect droids and other slates to have a more expensive bill of materials? I don't think so.

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I (and probably every economist in the world) do: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/...fit-an-iphone/ [not on the price of parts but on the final markup before retail sales]

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They (speaking generally here) need to have a high markup on their products to cover costs such as R&D, employee payments, etc.

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So, what you're saying is that others don't do R&D and don't pay their employees?! Apple had almost $500.000 per employ profit last year, while others, like Qualcomm (which, if you ask me, has to do a LOT more R&D than Apple) had about $200K, RIM had $230K and so on. Well, that must mean that they research & develop the hell out of it there at Apple.

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Originally Posted by baja_yu

Wow, what awesome powers of perception. Well no sh.. Sherlock. The article is almost 6 years old, those would have been the top (or at least higher end) components at that time.

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What on earth are you talking about? I'm well aware how old that article is and that's my point. Those may have been high-end components at that time, but it still isn't comparable considering you don't know what they were exactly and what the prices are of the components in the 2011 iMac.

You can't compare a six year old iMac to a (e.g) 2011 model and expect to get some kind of idea about what profit Apple is making on the latter.

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I (and probably every economist in the world) do: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/...fit-an-iphone/ [not on the price of parts but on the final markup before retail sales]

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So, what you're saying is that others don't do R&D and don't pay their employees?! Apple had almost $500.000 per employ profit last year, while others, like Qualcomm (which, if you ask me, has to do a LOT more R&D than Apple) had about $200K, RIM had $230K and so on. Well, that must mean that they research & develop the hell out of it there at Apple.

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No, I was talking about all companies (EDIT: smartphone manufactuers, I should say), not Apple specifically. They all do lots of R&D and have to pay their employee's, all that stuff costs a fair bit.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

You can't compare a six year old iMac to a (e.g) 2011 model and expect to get some kind of idea about what profit Apple is making on the latter.

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Why the hell not? You mean they aren't making a profit on new iMacs?! So suddenly they realized they were charging too much and now they don't? Did you look at the link or tried to find more info on the subject for your self? In fact, their profit margin has been increasing constantly, year after year.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

No, I was talking about all companies (EDIT: smartphone manufactuers, I should say), not Apple specifically. They all do lots of R&D and have to pay their employee's, all that stuff costs a fair bit.

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Again, it seems that Apple is researching and paying their employees at least twice as much as their competitors, because they have more than double profit margin of any of the competitors.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

Raising the phone to your ear is a really great way to use it.

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:lol::lol::lol:

I just had to preserve that line. That full sentence has got to be one of the funniest I have seen on this site. I realize that it is an indication of the way technology is changing, but still....

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Originally Posted by i00

You odviously haven't tried a good HTC phone :) ... get the evo 3d ... it will blow your mind! - btw all the other android phones (non htc) arn't worth anything imo :), i have had an iphone 3gs, htc desire, htc desire hd, htc flyer and SGS2 (work got it for me, but i hate it).

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Notice what you said there? The EVO 3D (Android) is great but all the other Android phones aren't worth anything. If Android was that good, I'd expect consistency across the different product lines which is obviously not the case.

Thanks, but I think I'll stay put for awhile. I've read the reviews for a number of them and Android is something I don't want. As cool as it seems to be it's inconsistent in its performance from what I've been able to pick up.

Besides, I've built my infrastructure around iTunes on Windows and it all works - and works excellently. I'm not interested in another retooling, thank you.

There will constantly be something out there that claims to be "better". No matter what you choose to use, someone is going to say that theirs is better. Sooner or later (I've found) you pick a course and change only when there are VAST benefits to doing so. Unless Apple really screws me up somewhere I'm just going to stick with it: for the phones that is.

-Max ;-)

There is a core consistency when it comes to the OS. What's different is the hardware and materials. For example, I don't like Samsung devices because of the overall plasticky feel, they just feel cheap when you hold them in your hand. HTC is much better there. There's also a difference in the front UI. Many manufacturers make their own, sort of a theme, so it might look different on first glance. You can of course switch that off and use native Android interface. But when it comes to that I prefer HTC's Sense UI which is fenomenal.

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Originally Posted by baja_yu

Why the hell not? You mean they aren't making a profit on new iMacs?! So suddenly they realized they were charging too much and now they don't? Did you look at the link or tried to find more info on the subject for your self? In fact, their profit margin has been increasing constantly, year after year.

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The iMac's have become more and more competitive over the years. I'm not saying that the profit today isn't similar to that six year old iMac only that you can't know based on that six year old iMac.

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Again, it seems that Apple is researching and paying their employees at least twice as much as their competitors, because they have more than double profit margin of any of the competitors.

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I don't even know what we're arguing about really. Is this right: you don't believe the BoM for the iPad or the iPhone is similar to other high end competitors? That's all I'm arguing anyway. I'm not sure why Apple has such high profits but it isn't because their phones or slates cost less to make.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

:lol::lol::lol:

I just had to preserve that line. That full sentence has got to be one of the funniest I have seen on this site. I realize that it is an indication of the way technology is changing, but still....

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Hahaha, it does sound funny. But it is handy, and you don't look weird talking to your phone in public.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

The iMac's have become more and more competitive over the years. I'm not saying that the profit today isn't similar to that six year old iMac only that you can't know based on that six year old iMac.

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Well that's pretty much what you said in the previous post.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

I don't even know what we're arguing about really. Is this right: you don't believe the BoM for the iPad or the iPhone is similar to other high end competitors? That's all I'm arguing anyway. I'm not sure why Apple has such high profits but it isn't because their phones or slates cost less to make.

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I'm not saying their profit margin is higher because they get parts cheaper, I'm saying it's because they charge you more for it, and in part due to total lack of any price adjustment. We talked about this fact previously but you for some reason don't find it odd. Do you think the components in an iMac cost the same at day one when a model comes out as they do year and a half later, when Apple sels you the same iMac for the same price like on day one? Do you think it cost the same to make the Magic Mouse 2 years ago when it came out as it does today, yet it still costs $70? Same applies to all their products, including iPhone. High end Android devices cost less from the start than iPhone, and you can be sure that after three months on the market the'll be at least 10% cheaper than on launch, and it'll keep going down. That's how the market normally works. Parts become cheaper, new models come out, the price goes down. The article I posted (if you read it at all since you seem to abort at the first sign of anti-Apple stance) clearly shows that Apple has gigantic profit margins compared to competitors, yet you are still arguing for it and trying to justify it with various ludicrous explanations. They're basically ripping you off and you couldn't be happier about it.

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Originally Posted by baja_yu

Well that's pretty much what you said in the previous post.

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I don't think so, and either way it's not what I meant to say.

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I'm not saying their profit margin is higher because they get parts cheaper, I'm saying it's because they charge you more for it, and in part due to total lack of any price adjustment. We talked about this fact previously but you for some reason don't find it odd. Do you think the components in an iMac cost the same at day one when a model comes out as they do year and a half later, when Apple sels you the same iMac for the same price like on day one? Do you think it cost the same to make the Magic Mouse 2 years ago when it came out as it does today, yet it still costs $70? Same applies to all their products, including iPhone. High end Android devices cost less from the start than iPhone, and you can be sure that after three months on the market the'll be at least 10% cheaper than on launch, and it'll keep going down. That's how the market normally works. Parts become cheaper, new models come out, the price goes down. The article I posted (if you read it at all since you seem to abort at the first sign of anti-Apple stance) clearly shows that Apple has gigantic profit margins compared to competitors, yet you are still arguing for it and trying to justify it with various ludicrous explanations. They're basically ripping you off and you couldn't be happier about it.

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I don't see Apple charging more for the iPhone 4S than other high end smartphones. It's $199, $299 or $399 on contract for 16GB/32GB/64GB or $799, $899, and $999 to buy it outright. And no I'm well aware things become cheaper over time. And the BoM for the 4S won't really be any lower than its competitors either.

I just read that Samsung are trying to get the sale of the IPhone4S banned in Australia.

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Originally Posted by Nightwalker83

I just read that Samsung are trying to get the sale of the IPhone4S banned in Australia.

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I'm glad I got mine already :p

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There is supposed to be a new set of GPS satellites heading up soon that will increase GPS accuracy to sub-meter levels and will better penetrate walls

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Mine sent me the wrong way last week and I can tell you now that it's ability to penetrate walls is practically nil. It barely made a dent.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

Mine sent me the wrong way last week and I can tell you now that it's ability to penetrate walls is practically nil. It barely made a dent.

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You do realize that some things that taste funny shouldn't be eaten, right? Hitting all the threads with jokes sounds like your mushrooms might not have all come from the market.

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Hahaha, it does sound funny. But it is handy, and you don't look weird talking to your phone in public.

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Ain't that the truth.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

I don't see Apple charging more for the iPhone 4S than other high end smartphones. It's $199, $299 or $399 on contract for 16GB/32GB/64GB or $799, $899, and $999 to buy it outright. And no I'm well aware things become cheaper over time. And the BoM for the 4S won't really be any lower than its competitors either.

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Seriously, are you that retarded or that arrogant?? It's not about the price of parts but the profit margin, or how much they are charging over the total sum of parts and costs. And oh yes, you're totally right. All android phones cost a thousand dollars. That's a standard price. Talking to you is more of a waste of bandwidth than ***** enlargement spam...

Artical on Apple R&D

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20...=2547-1_3-0-20

Apple sells a whooping 4mil+ 4s phones in just one weekend. Truly amazing.

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High end Android devices cost less from the start than iPhone, and you can be sure that after three months on the market the'll be at least 10% cheaper than on launch, and it'll keep going down.

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Are you speaking about on contract or unlocked? I'm just curious because I'm not sure as to what you're making your comparison on. For me it came down to the Bionic vs iPhone 4s and I chose the iPhone because it was a 100$ cheaper on contract (300 vs 200). As far as I'm concerned the bionic is at the highest end of technology within verizon's offerings (and I'm super jealous of it's LTE capabilities, coworker is pulling 26 MB down consistently!) and it is priced much higher than the iPhone.

Also, after spending the weekend playing with siri and talking with other friends and watching youtube videos, I have to say it has a loooooong way to go before it becomes something truly amazing. Unless you're issuing very terse commands or messages, it produces way too many errors to be useful. I find myself often writing (what I would consider anyways) a small message to be forced to go back and fix all the mistakes the software made. AFAIK there's also no way to append to a message she's composed. So if you take a pause on something and she thinks your done, you have to start the whole message over or take it over by hand to complete it. Kind of forces you into knowing exactly what you want to say at the beginning, and at that point it probably would have been faster to just type it out.


Right now its kind of like a parlor trick. Siri, how many calories in a bagel :wolfram alpha result image: neat-o. It's fun to play with but until they go through a few revisions of it I don't see it being as much use to me.

Still think the phone is a great device though, have enjoyed using it immensely over the weekend.

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Originally Posted by BackWoodsCoder

Are you speaking about on contract or unlocked? I'm just curious because I'm not sure as to what you're making your comparison on. For me it came down to the Bionic vs iPhone 4s and I chose the iPhone because it was a 100$ cheaper on contract (300 vs 200). As far as I'm concerned the bionic is at the highest end of technology within verizon's offerings (and I'm super jealous of it's LTE capabilities, coworker is pulling 26 MB down consistently!) and it is priced much higher than the iPhone.

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I'm talking about unlocked of course. That's the only real measure. With a contract the carrier pays for part of the initial price, but then you pay through the nose for the next two years.

On a quick glance Bionic seems higher speced than iPhone 4S (larger screen, faster CPU [I've read somewhere 4S is clocked at about 800Mhz], comes with 16+16GB expandable to 16+32) but that's not very relevant, they are quite close, and the only two listings I found for it priced it at $550 and $670, which is the same or cheaper than the basic 4S. And I guarantee you'll be able to buy it for between 4 and 5 hundred in 3-6 months.

EDIT: And probably the most obvious price hike is the price difference between iPhone models. $350 more for 48GB, and 32GB memory card costs $30-$50, retail price.

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Originally Posted by baja_yu

Seriously, are you that retarded or that arrogant?? It's not about the price of parts but the profit margin, or how much they are charging over the total sum of parts and costs.

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I'm neither.

I'm well aware it's about profit margin. The iPhone 4S will have a BoM (e.g $200) similar to that of its competitors and it also sells for a similar price (e.g $800). Let's say both make $600 per phone, and out of that comes R&D, software development, etc., etc., which will be significantly less for Apple because they only produce one smartphone per year, unlike Samsung which produces more like five or more which also requires a larger team as well for further increased costs.

They'd be making as much profits as Apple if each of there phones sold as much as the iPhone did, but they can't. That's just way too many phones.

Anyway, that article of yours is misleading as has been mentioned by several commenting on it. To quote one of them:

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It's misleading to compare the Market shares of EXISTING stock phones against the market share of annual profits from sale of NEW phones; the former compares the 'static' position of each handset maker (in number of phone units) while the latter is the 'growth' of each handset maker (in profits).
One wouldn't have been able to draw the conclusions you just have by looking at these graphs without information on % change in phone units.

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Additionally, it's deceptive to not show actual profits for each company rather only percentages.

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And oh yes, you're totally right. All android phones cost a thousand dollars. That's a standard price.

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No, they don't. But I said "all high end droids" not "all droids". Apple also sells the 3GS and 4, although I don't know how they compare to other droids for their price.

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Talking to you is more of a waste of bandwidth than ***** enlargement spam...

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Oh? Do you want me to stop sending all of them to you? I thought you might need them...

I jest, but seriously chill dude. You don't have to reply to me if you don't want, I don't find you particularly reasonable either, but I don't really care either.

Really? Which Android phone costs $1000, or $800? And again, keep in mind that what ever the launch price of an Android phone is, it will be significantly less as time goes by, which will not be the case for iPhone.
You can see that Apple has twice the profit margin of HTC (60% vs 30%), but HTC spends only %3 on R&D and Apple spends %2, so where does HTC lose all that money? It's especially interesting to see how your arguments change and pile on as you're presenting with a few facts. Not too many posts ago it was "well Apple needs to have a high margin on iPhone because of R&D and employee salaries which costs a lot" you said (even though workers at Foxconn work for about $100-$150 per month), and now that you've seen that Apple spends less than almost any other tech company, suddenly R&D is not so important since they only have one device :D

And how do you comment on the memory aspect? Each iPhone is exactly the same apart from memory capacity. The retail price of 48 GB flash memory would be about $60, yet Apple charges you $300 for it.

Here's a non-iPhone one for you. 8GB (2x4GB) of RAM for the latest iMac is $400 from Apple, but you can get the same thing on Amazon for $50. Why do you think that is? Let me hear your "particularly reasonable" explanation. And before you try and explain how it's some far superior quality (to justify an eight fold price increase?!), let me tell you that it's the exact same make and model as the one that ships with the iMac from the factory, Kingston in case of my iMac.


EDIT: As for the article (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/...fit-an-iphone/), you quoted something someone said in the comments.

Quote:

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It's misleading to compare the Market shares of EXISTING stock phones against the market share of annual profits from sale of NEW phones; the former compares the 'static' position of each handset maker (in number of phone units) while the latter is the 'growth' of each handset maker (in profits).
One wouldn't have been able to draw the conclusions you just have by looking at these graphs without information on % change in phone units.

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Why? Do you understand what he said and why? I'm no economist, so if you do please explain it to me. Or did you quote it just because it's an argument against what the article states? So until you explain it, I'll be inclined to trust what an analyst from Bernstein Research says, over what who knows who said in a comment.

EDIT2: Something to the prior discussion: http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/10/17/...i-on-iphone-4/ Now, do you, and your "educated forum user", still think the reason Siri isn't officially on iPhone 4 is because of hardware? (It's still a work in progress but considering 4S has been out for 3 days, it's amazing)

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Originally Posted by baja_yu

Really? Which Android phone costs $1000, or $800? And again, keep in mind that what ever the launch price of an Android phone is, it will be significantly less as time goes by, which will not be the case for iPhone.
You can see that Apple has twice the profit margin of HTC (60% vs 30%), but HTC spends only %3 on R&D and Apple spends %2, so where does HTC lose all that money? It's especially interesting to see how your arguments change and pile on as you're presenting with a few facts. Not too many posts ago it was "well Apple needs to have a high margin on iPhone because of R&D and employee salaries which costs a lot" you said (even though workers at Foxconn work for about $100-$150 per month), and now that you've seen that Apple spends less than almost any other tech company, suddenly R&D is not so important since they only have one device :D

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How about this: if you can find me the base model of a high end droid or two that was initially released for less than $800, I shall agree with you. Or, we can just stop talking about it altogether, it's up to you.

I'm pretty sure I said "all companies" not specifically Apple. (I was referring to the staff at Apple and at Apple stores, not manufacturer staff.) Yeah, I was thinking that Apple's R&D was quite a lot (and the same with other companies) but it seems I was wrong. It makes sense that Apple's R&D would be significantly less considering they make fewer devices overall.

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And how do you comment on the memory aspect? Each iPhone is exactly the same apart from memory capacity. The retail price of 48 GB flash memory would be about $60, yet Apple charges you $300 for it.

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Apple charges you an additional hundred to double the memory capacity up to 64GB starting at $799 up to $999.

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Here's a non-iPhone one for you. 8GB (2x4GB) of RAM for the latest iMac is $400 from Apple, but you can get the same thing on Amazon for $50. Why do you think that is? Let me hear your "particularly reasonable" explanation. And before you try and explain how it's some far superior quality (to justify an eight fold price increase?!), let me tell you that it's the exact same make and model as the one that ships with the iMac from the factory, Kingston in case of my iMac.

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To be honest I don't believe the RAM is identical, however the differences are small and at best would increase the price by a few dollars. (I'd rather not get into that though, we've already got enough arguments going on here and it doesn't matter either way.) Oh, and it's $200 to "upgrade" from 2x2GB ($25) of RAM to 2x4GB ($50) of RAM, not $400.

And the reason Apple charges more for upgrades than their competitors is 1) they can, and 2) they only update RAM prices when there's a refresh for whichever particular product it's being sold with, which means they don't decrease prices as RAM becomes cheaper.

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EDIT: As for the article (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/...fit-an-iphone/), you quoted something someone said in the comments.

Why? Do you understand what he said and why? I'm no economist, so if you do please explain it to me. Or did you quote it just because it's an argument against what the article states? So until you explain it, I'll be inclined to trust what an analyst from Bernstein Research says, over what who knows who said in a comment.

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It wasn't just one commenter, it was four, five or maybe even more. The reason I think it's misleading is because it appears that a company with such a small market share is making so much profit compared to everyone else.

The problem with that article is that most, if not all of these companies also make standard cellphones which sell by the millions, e.g Nokia, which skews the results because of the sheer amount of them compared to smartphones. Of course Apple is going to be making a lot more of the profit when there's cellphones involved.

What would be good to see is a smartphone comparison which included only HTC, Samsung, and Apple and to include not only percentages, but growth rates and absolute numbers. (Out of curiosity, does Samsung and HTC sell cellphones as well? Or do they only sell smartphones?)

Quote:

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EDIT2: Something to the prior discussion: http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/10/17/...i-on-iphone-4/ Now, do you, and your "educated forum user", still think the reason Siri isn't officially on iPhone 4 is because of hardware? (It's still a work in progress but considering 4S has been out for 3 days, it's amazing)

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That's not "running" that's just the UI. When they've got Siri working, shoot me the link and I'll eat my words. Here's some of the posts I've read by this "educated user" which is why I suspect they won't get it working properly (accurately, with low data usage, and quickly).

(Regarding getting it working on iPhone 4)

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Unless they can come up with a clever work-around, no, it won't. The fourier comb amd Markov filter -- essential to turnning a stream of words into a tiny handful of contextually-cogent bytes -- runs in one of the two PowerVR GPU cores that is in the newer A5. The 4S has extra links between the GPU output and the baseband chip so that the Siri application has its own dedicated connection to the cloud processing farms (currently, just the one in Philadelphia), piggybacked on the primary stream to and from the cell.

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Fraid not, ol' bean - the stock 4 doesn't hae the graphics grunt. The original Siri ran on a 3G, but it was sluggish and used an awfully huge amount of data to send the speech back to the Siri datacenter for processing. The new incarnation uses one of the two PowerVR graphics cores in the A5 to reduce the spoken queries into a tiny handful of bytes.

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(Regarding having low data usage.)

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Yes, it will -- although thanks to some very clever tricks that can turn a twenty-second-long verbal query into a data-packet that's less than one hundred bytes, the impact won't be huge. Speech responses to your iDevice will also be microscopic.

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(Regarding background noise)

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Siri's input filter software runs in one of the PowerVR GPU cores and uses narrow multiple bandpassing to home in on vocal structures.

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I'm waiting for Anandtech's article which I really hope will be incredibly detailed and cover these things, and why it can or can't be used on the iPhone 4 or previous generation devices, as well as every other aspect of the device.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

How about this: if you can find me the base model of a high end droid or two that was initially released for less than $800, I shall agree with you. Or, we can just stop talking about it altogether, it's up to you.

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Nexus One was $529 unlocked, the current HTC Sensation is $600, Samsung Galaxy S2 $540, found Droid Bionic for $670 (only one seller, it's pretty new too soon to tell real price), HTC ThunderBolt $599, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc $400... These are all the most recent devices, and Nexus Prime is said to be released in two days.

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

Apple charges you an additional hundred to double the memory capacity up to 64GB starting at $799 up to $999.

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Ok, so that's $200 for what costs them not more than $10.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

To be honest I don't believe the RAM is identical, however the differences are small and at best would increase the price by a few dollars. (I'd rather not get into that though, we've already got enough arguments going on here and it doesn't matter either way.) Oh, and it's $200 to "upgrade" from 2x2GB ($25) of RAM to 2x4GB ($50) of RAM, not $400.

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I'm not talking about upgrade during purchase, but buying it and upgrading after. http://store.apple.com/us/memorymodel/ME_IMAC_S11_27 But even then, it's $200 for something that retails for $50. And it is the same, I know because I've bought it and installed it myself, in the process had a look at the factory memory, the same Kingston modules.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

The problem with that article is that most, if not all of these companies also make standard cellphones which sell by the millions, e.g Nokia, which skews the results because of the sheer amount of them compared to smartphones. Of course Apple is going to be making a lot more of the profit when there's cellphones involved.

What would be good to see is a smartphone comparison which included only HTC, Samsung, and Apple and to include not only percentages, but growth rates and absolute numbers. (Out of curiosity, does Samsung and HTC sell cellphones as well? Or do they only sell smartphones?)

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Why does it matter what they sell? It can be smartphones or apple pie, profit margin is profit margin, that's the whole point of the article, and the only number for profit margin is percentage. What would growth numbers have to add to the story?
On a side note, I think HTC and RIM are all smartphones, Motorola still makes a few of those classic cell phones.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Icyculyr

That's not "running" that's just the UI. When they've got Siri working, shoot me the link and I'll eat my words. Here's some of the posts I've read by this "educated user" which is why I suspect they won't get it working properly (accurately, with low data usage, and quickly).

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Apple's server's aren't responding because of the device ID, I'm sure with the first sign of a jailbreak they'll be able to spoof the ID to trick the server.

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Originally Posted by baja_yu

Nexus One was $529 unlocked, the current HTC Sensation is $600, Samsung Galaxy S2 $540, found Droid Bionic for $670 (only one seller, it's pretty new too soon to tell real price), HTC ThunderBolt $599, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc $400... These are all the most recent devices, and Nexus Prime is said to be released in two days.

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Mmm, all right. I'll leave it alone for now. I'll be watching to see what the Prime costs though :p

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Ok, so that's $200 for what costs them not more than $10.

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Mmm, no... 16GB of storage was $30, $60 for 32GB (2x16GB) and $120 for 64GB (2x32GB), about a year and a half ago. That would mean (assuming the costs are the same today) they're making $70 for you to upgrade from 16GB to 32GB, and $40 for you to upgrade from 32GB to 64GB. (This however was what they were making back then though.)

Link: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/New...Estimates.aspx

That's about a year and a half ago, but I doubt flash prices have dropped by two thirds.

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I'm not talking about upgrade during purchase, but buying it and upgrading after. http://store.apple.com/us/memorymodel/ME_IMAC_S11_27 But even then, it's $200 for something that retails for $50. And it is the same, I know because I've bought it and installed it myself, in the process had a look at the factory memory, the same Kingston modules.

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Ouch, that's expensive. So these Kingston modules have these specs:

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Register: Non Parity
Low Noise 8-Layer PCB
Meets and/or Exceeds Apple/Intel Specifications
Fully Compliant with JEDEC specifications
RoHS Certified

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If so, then I guess you're right.

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Why does it matter what they sell? It can be smartphones or apple pie, profit margin is profit margin, that's the whole point of the article, and the only number for profit margin is percentage. What would growth numbers have to add to the story?
On a side note, I think HTC and RIM are all smartphones, Motorola still makes a few of those classic cell phones.

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When you're comparing profits it's usually fair to compare it with similar products. Of course Apple is going to have more profits vs any cellphone manufacturer since they make a lot less than smartphones. But yes, profits are profits. Ah, good to know.

Well, it'd show us more detail about the market, to put it simply. For example, we'd see how many units Samsung is selling vs how many units Apple is selling, and other little bits of info.

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Apple's server's aren't responding because of the device ID, I'm sure with the first sign of a jailbreak they'll be able to spoof the ID to trick the server.

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Correct, but when they do start responding I believe we'll see several things:

1) Inaccuracy (this is just a guess)
2) Significantly longer response times
3) Larger amounts of data sent

>>>

I can ask Siri what the time is in Paris two days from now and she'll tell me in about one second. It's not so great if it takes five seconds. We'll see soon enough how it works out though.