It might last 2-4 years, but some people keep updating their hardware. I realize that for some people, it's their only computer. But the prices of the phones and then the data plans are ridiculous.

She is only reluctantly finally upgrading to a new phone because a) She can -- she's been "out of plan" for years now, and b) We just bought a new car, and it has it's own app to remote start and control the car, plus Apple CarPlay, neither of which work on an old iPhone 4. But I suppose that's Apple's fault.

I also still have an iPhone 4. It has no sim card, it is used only for storing/playing music. When my wife's iPhone 4 crashed, we swapped out her sim card into my ancient 4 and it worked great. No one forces anyone to buy anything, ever. Except maybe health insurance.

My current phone is 3 years old, IIRC, an android that is still performing well. I'm considering not bothering with a smart phone in the future, but carrying a small tablet for hotspots.

aren't providing security updates after a very short period of time and with non-Google Android phones, the updates you do get are severely delayed. With more and more sensitive work being done on mobile devices, that security is going to become an issue.

Upgrading isn't just about getting the latest and greatest bells and whistles. The model of not supporting old hardware as a profit center is really problematic.

I broke my iPhone 4, had to pay the $700 to get a newer iPhone. The guy sold me on the ~$10/month insurance policy so it wouldn't happen again. After 40 months of paying that $10/month, my phone breaks so I go to get it replaced. They said I still have to pay an extra $99 one time expense for a REFURBISHED phone, and they took my old one. So, they are going to tune up my old phone and give it to some other sucker, I am getting a phone that someone else broke, and they are laughing their ass off at all of us.

Cancel that damn insurance plan

My husband got a $50-60 case for his iphone, dropped it in the grass, still cracked the glass, ever so slightly. He said he doesn't even want to know what it would cost to fix it.

My son's iPad screen cracked. I took it to a fix it stor, got it replaced and fixed for about $120.

The wireless AirPods look AMAZING. Did you look at the specs?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]

You do realize that Apple is the largest volume speaker manufacturer of all time. The R&D dollars that Apple spends on device and wearable speakers far exceeds what any Android device maker spends on all components of their entire phone line.

The AirPods are hot, and I will buy them. Feel free to buy some other wireless head phones that make you happy.

I will never buy Apple for a multitude of reasons.

If don't want wireless earbuds, then use the wired version.

When you are not using the AirPods... Keep them in their case (which looks like a package of dental floss) to charge them. Apparently, you charge the case occasionally, and the case holds a charge long enough for repeatedly charging the AirPods. I assume the AirPods' case is charged separately from the phone.

I think it's prettly a clever design. http://www.apple.com/airpods/

This is a thing that solves a problem I don't have.

And are likely to be lost, because their piece of shit headphones never actually stayed in my ears.

Don't buy one.

Why the anger?

No one's holding a gun to your head making you buy their products.

Me? I'm going from a 4gs or whatever their a gazillion 8 yr old model is to 7 plus. To each their own. I don't have to replace my phone. I want to.

Do you wish Neiman Marcus out of existence? Is Wal Mart the designated consumer supplier of all things? Do you just resent luxury goods & wish to be marketplace dictator?

Chill. No iphone for you. Grand. The sun rises tomorrow.

Its your money.

wait a minute here. I Paid that much for a galaxy and the first drop it scattered like a piece of junk. I bought myself an I phone and I've dropped it, ran over it, stepped on it and it's still the phone I use today. I like the android better than the apple OS but other than that I'll take this Iphone anyday. Much tougher and easier to use actually

I'm a linux user and have been for years now. No microshaft or apple other than my phone in my house

One drops too many and the wifi and gps stop working.

$50 and good as new tho.

Twice.

I didn't realize it fell out of my pocket. Ran over it going out of the garage and again on the way in. Had to move the car because I discovered it sitting under the wheel!

Totally fine.

My family all have androids and we're "rough handlers". Lots of drops, abuse, even landing in water buckets.

scattered and never worked again as a phone
uscellular/samsung wanted 361 bucks to fix it. If it was shown that it was a factory default they would have fixed it for free but if they determined it was from the drop I had to pay the 361 full price even if I didn't want the phone anymore. I said the hell with this. once I sent it in I was either going to get it fixed for free or be charged 361bucks. I'm still pissed about the whole deal. No way for me to back out of the deal once I sent it back in. I know I talked to the samsung representative

She was lying face-up on the floor watching TV with the phone on her stomach.

It slid off her stomach onto the hardwood floor and the glass cracked from one corner to the other.


Guess the indestructibility depends on a lot of factors?

when they call these cases "lifeproof" they really aren't kidding!

So to speak.

Have a MicroSD card slot. Now no earphones? Fuck that, if someone gave me an iPhone 7, I 'd sell it.

Lightning headphones, but also includes a Lightning>3.5mm adapter so you can use any old ear buds you so choose. DAMN THEM! You're really desperately trying to find something to hate, aren't you?

And of course there never will be.

Yes we know the Apple cultists swallow whatever bullshit Apple pimps. Nothing Apple ever does is wrong.

I stand in awe of those who get REALLY FUCKING ANGRY about stuff they don't like and smear anyone stupid enough to disagree.

Jeebus, dude.

But I'm an attorney who spends a good deal of my day on the phone.

If you always/never visit me, you will find that a good deal of that time, I leave the charger plugged in and use a headset. I use a headset because I don't want a radio transmitter (bluetooth or otherwise) next to my brain. Call me crazy on that one, but it's not as if I'm a technological idiot, and have an advanced degree in electrical engineering.

Sometimes, I go to bed at night and don't plug the thing in after an evening of mobile use of the phone. In the morning, the charge is low. So, no problem, I plug in the charger, plug in my headset, and get to work.

I like devices which I can adapt to my behavior patterns, not the other way around.

current iPhone is capable of, and that's just inexcusable for a next generation device. I would consider hooking up the power and listening to whatever you want as basic functions of a smartphone, don't you?

For example, using it with you car stereo through the 3.5mm AUX port is something I do nearly every day, and given I might be in the car for several hours, depending, or doing multiple things, I also will have it hooked to a charger at the same time. I won't use a bluetooth adapter, they sound like crap, to be frank, unless you want to shell out hundreds of dollars for them, and why do that when a 10 to 20 dollar headjack or a 2 dollar 3.5mm male to male adapter work much better and more reliably?

They are bad for the country.

I think Apple users need to be stroked and I am sick of hearing Bill Press and Peter Augburn brag like they were little Fraternity boys.

I generally stay fron apple users. You do remember Apple was the Beatles and they only let steve jobs use it if it stayed out of music. A real class act that little stevie jabs was.

FUCK SAMSUNG! How dare they!

at the same time without having to buy low quality bluetooth headsets!

Shocker, I know, and you can expand the internal storage space by a practically unlimited amount through the use of MicroSD cards.

I'm actually kicking myself, I should have listened to the voice in my head that told me to wait for the S7 when I got the S6, even though I got the 64GB model, it is a little small, and no MicroSD card slot. Now its back and I'm kicking myself for being impatient.

Granted, I'm not alarmed by the price of the phone, the stripping of features is the egregious part. I just hope that its a peculiarity that stays confined to Apple products. It was bad enough when Samsung and others stripped out MicroSD card slots for no good reason, but now those have returned, showing that some companies respond to consumer demand.

I won't buy Apple products. All that $$$$ and it doesn't even take out the garbage. My android cost $15 with a two-year contract. It works just fine.

And yeah that's fucking insane. Holy crap.

Competitive with other high-end brands. A Lexus costs more than a Kia. But you can always buy an old flip phone from Walgreens. No one is forcing you to buy anything.

First, you picked the top-of-the-line model for your example. But you can buy models with less in the way of storage or screen size and save a considerable amount of money. As with most any other product, you can buy a generic store brand or get a top-level premium brand with all the bells and whistles.

We just bought a car that is advertised at about $22,000 MSRP. The model we bought cost over $35,000, because we got all the toys, bells & whistles, best engine, wheels, etc. If you want to cheap out, cheap out. Some people don't mind paying for quality toys.

And buying a phone now is almost as crazy as buying a new car anymore. I bought an LG V10 and it was nuts all the credit checks and background verification I had to go through in order to start a new contract. Sure buying all the bells and whistles will cost considerably more. I was just pointing out that people who hate Apple complain that their products cost too much. But if you look closer nearly all smartphones anymore cost that much. Apple gets the most shit because they're Apple.

Truer words were never spoken. Except maybe "Trump is a colossal asshole."

My little Kyocera Brio cost me $25 and my Virgin Pay-Lo plan costs me $25 per month for unlimited text and 500 anytime minutes.

Just the thing for a senior on Soc Sec:


http://devicehelp.virginmobileusa.com/device/Brio/Virgin_Mobile/en

Pay more if you want to, but I sure don't want to.

computer prices.

I always ask myself, how many folks need a mobile computer?

I have no land line. I rely on my "mobile computer" for everything from email to conference calls via Skype. I use it as my telephone, and when I don't have my DSLR with me, a camera. I use it to play music, and it will even start my car and turn on the AC or heat while I'm waiting for my baggage at the airport. And I carry it all in my pocket. It's worth every penny. But if you're just a retiree looking to have a connection, by all means a pay-as-you-go plan from Walmart is perfectly adequate.

streaming services without any problems and no problems during bad weather. We all make choices of where we live.

Thanks for the idea!

$769 for a computer that fits in your pocket or purse, which includes a camera or two and a cell phone.

If you don't want to buy one, don't.

I fail to understand what the problem is here.?

...fraction of the cost.
As for the headphone jack, my previous phone was a samsung TMobile "myphone" or something (the one they hired a bunch of SNL actors to promote) and the second most annoying thing about it was that the earphones had to be plugged into the mini USB port with an adaptor-- no 3.5mm jack.

That being said, I agree wholeheartedly with you. I'll never buy another one.

Except use the watch. But I can put a 200GB memory card in mine and get double the storage for 1/2 the cost.

Back in the late 80s they portrayed themselves as non-conformist and hip and the consumerism-ridden masses fell for it.

so I could put my own music (as in the many CDs I currently own) and have all of my music readily available to me.

So I put a bunch of stuff on the iPod, and a couple of months ago went to load up some more of my CDs. Turns out, Apple, in their kindness and generosity, no longer allows that kind up upload.

To say I'm furious doesn't begin to describe it. There are good reasons people hate Apple.

I just uploaded a cd a couple weeks ago.

Apple person, who was very apologetic about not being able to help me upload my CDs.

I would be happy beyond measure to be able to continue to upload my CDs.

...that the true cost of them had been wrapped up into contracts for years. Consumers actually got upset with the fact that the true cost of the device was hidden, which is why you see the full, unlocked prices listed today (and for the past few years). That price is always paid over time. Carriers have actually gotten better about not ripping off consumers now that the full prices are more widely known since rather than have a contract, you pay for the service + device and when the device is paid off your bill actually goes down.

Believe it or not, it's a good thing.

So excited about the camera improvements, my "phone" is my camera.

And they start around $375 I think.

Buy a new car with BlueTooth? Buy all new headphones? This is horrific.

Is pretty par for the course for those of us on long conference calls, hardly a rare occurrence in business, when sound quality from the speakerphone is terrible as they all are, nobody wants to hold a phone to their ear for 2+hours, and batteries quickly deplete when so used.

You could possibly be saying the same thing, but the strange use of a virgule with diametrically opposed adverbs makes me unsure.

But NOOO! There lazy Engineers are just tooling around the office, playing on their hoverboards- Fucking Bastards!

In fact, *I* do that, since when I'm not working I spend time cycle camping. Indeed I HAVE a solar USB battery. I charge it while riding, and plug in my phone when I stop riding.

I also use the phone for logging cycling data.

This may be hard for you to understand, but guess what else I like to do when I stop riding.

Look, I get it. You either upgrade your headphones or get used to the fact that you can charge OR use the phone, but you cannot charge AND use the phone.

into the cig lighter for power. That way I can listen to music, have the GPS interject with directions as needed and not empty the battery in the process. Its great, sounds really good(CD quality or better, Galaxy S6).

But, and I'll be frank, never used nor have been interested in the iPhone, its a walled garden designed to trap users into proprietary spaces, as Apple has been known to do for a long time. This attempt at abandoning a standard way to listen to audio is a classic example of this, and idiotic as well. It will fail as Firewire failed, hopefully.

So then I got a call from him, saying we don’t have to worry about money no more. And I said, that's good! One less thing.

somehow I manage to live a fulfilling life despite most of the panhandlers I encounter having a better cell phone than I do.

And if you don't want 150.00 headphones, don't buy 150 dollar headphones.

Daytimer, compass, calculator, level, accelerometer, unit converter, barometer, stenographer, personal trainer, star finder, meteorologist, etc...

WTF??? Really??? The poutrage!!!

It has a barometer? whoa

and when I need a level I use a real one.

My point is, considering all of the things that smartphones (not just Apple) can accomplish, the price is not really all that crazy. There are many more features and capabilities that I did not list. Fingerprint scanner, airplane identifier (just ask Siri what flights are overhead), HD video, bluetooth, wifi, TV Remote, thermostat programming, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, gyroscope, a more secure way to use electronic payments (NFC), etc...

So basically, you get a single device, that years go required multiple expensive devices all rolled into a single expensive device.

I can download "apps" that can do everything an IPhone does, except without the insane price tag.

Seriously, how does that little screen on any smart phone compare with my ultra high def screen on my Kindle?

It doesn't.

Also, what are your download speeds like when off of wifi?

They are trying to leverage their technology to sell their Beats and other addons, at a premium price, but with little real benefit. They seal their batteries so the only way to replace the batteries is with a 75 dollar charge, and they adopted the same nonsense with their computers. No external memory slots in their phones, so users have to buy a large enough memory model, which of course is more expensive, and if they don't have enough memory, then of course they will be only too glad to encourage putting it up on the cloud, which they will charge a nominal fee if it exceeds a certain amount. Some of the Androids follow the same suit.

Microsoft has their own share of confusion. In Windows 10 was created because they made such a mess with Windows 8 by completely changing the user interface. While Windows 10 addressed many of those complaints, the Windows 10 anniversary edition update not only introduced errors, but messed up some important issues. It isn't as efficient as the original windows 10, and they took away configurable registry options under the home edition.

Another example is what YAHOO did to their finance page. They used to have the best finance page on the internet. They completely destroyed the us version with a different look that buys the user nothing, and runs incredibly slow. It is almost unusable with a million ads. Fortunately they didn't touch the Canadian site, and that is where I go now: ca.finance.yahoo.com.

While there is no doubt that Jobs and Gates were not easy to work for, their companies did produce better quality products then what has been happening now.

U.S. Yahoo finance site is unusable. The interface is unbelievably slow, they throw tons of ad spam, they moved things completely around without any realized benefit from the old system, and in fact made it less accessible, requiring more mouse clicks. The message area, now renamed as comments is a complete failure also.

As I mentioned, 90% of the issues found on the U.S. Yahoo financial site, can be bypassed by going to the Yahoo Canadian site, which fortunately for our neighbors up north, do not have to put up with the disaster Yahoo did to us in the U.S.

The URL is:

ca.finance.yahoo.com

That has been the cost of an iPhone from 2007.

Many wireless headphones are FAR MORE expensive.

half the price, that essentially have the same functionality, plus a memory card slot, and a removable battery to boot.

Yes, Apple, Samsung, and others sell at a premium, but if people waited a little while they could buy the same phone at a significantly reduced price. It was because of those high prices why cell phone companies stopped subsidizing the phones, and introduced the buy on time at 0% interest.

It comes right back to the consumer. There is already a slowing down of smart phone repeat sales, where people are realizing that they do not need a new phone every year. The new changes aren't buying them that much.

The bulk of Apple's business comes from iphone sales. That is why they are looking for other sources of revenue, such as music, or television. The advantage they have is they have billions of dollars of cushion so they have time.

I will wait to see what the Iphone 8 has to offer

it was less powerful than the original pc, had a whopping 8k of actual core memory.
3 refrigerator-sized cabinets housed the cpu
another refrigerator-sized cabinet house the hard drives.
of course there was also a card punch and card reader.

for a few hundred bucks, today's computers are absolutely mind-boggling.

Ireland - the nation - sued Apple:
The Latest: White House Worries Apple Deal to Cost Taxpayers

6:10 p.m.

The White House says the Obama administration is concerned that American taxpayers will ultimately bear the brunt of the European Union's decision requiring Apple to pay billions of dollars in back taxes.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest says Apple could deduct the payment from those back taxes to the amount owed the United States government. Earnest says that's not fair to American taxpayers.

Earnest says it's important for the U.S. and Europe to work collaboratively on the goal of preventing the unfair erosion of the tax base rather than taking a unilateral approach.

When asked about the EU's concerns about an unfair playing field within Europe, Earnest says he won't discuss internal EU business, but that President Barack Obama is committed to ensuring American companies and taxpayers are treated fairly. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/latest-ireland-appeal-eu-ruling-apple-taxes-41738502
"ABC 123 THAT'S HOW EASY LOVE CAN BE..."

because with the dearth of pay phones around, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get one of the damned things.

I got sticker shock on most of them. My fancy ass Kindle was cheaper and does everything but make phone calls.

Looks like it'll be Wal Mart, a dumb phone, and a prepaid contract for me.

and I love my phone company now.

I'll have to check whether they work in the Rockies. Lots of companies don't.

than 15 dollar wired earbuds?

The phone cost is typical, its the lack of the 3.5mm jack that's inexcusable, I mean, a long held standard for audio equipment the world over, with decent high fidelity, and they want to replace it with their own proprietary wired connection that also doubles as their charging port? This isn't even taking one step forward, two steps back, its taking 5 steps back while claiming its actually 3 steps forward.

I consider several hundred dollars for a new phone to be a shockingly large amount of money. But then, my income is below the current average for this country. Which means, that all of those who earn less than the average are totally shut out. No one seems to give a flying fuck.

But here's the essential problem: fifty percent of everyone lives below the average, or median, I'm a bit confused here as to what exactly is the number I should be using. But the point is, 50% are below the average (median, whatever). And that's a huge number. I understand that those on the bottom rungs are a lot less likely to vote, but even so.

Every time someone postulates that most people know such and thus, or are engaged is some particular aspect of social media, you should regard that statement with extreme suspicion. How can you know it's true? How much have things changed recently? And so on.

In a related issue, whenever you look at inflation calculators, or the value of money in different eras, you need to think carefully about how money was spend in different times. Now, we all expect to have cell phones, or more typically smart phones. We all have cable and internet. Some years ago, none of us had those things. So how we spent our money was very different.

When I look at the inflation calculators, I'm astonished at how rich I supposedly was. But even though my income back then was supposedly worth a whole lot more today, I know that I still was barely getting by. As are so many today, in no small part of the expectation of things like smart phones, cable TV, and the like.

Some people don't care, but most of us can wait a year or two and get the same stuff at a much better price. We don't need to be the first.

Plus, with a lot of new devices and tech, it's better to wait and let the early adopters wring the bugs out, anyway.

I'm a late adopter. And I feel totally betrayed by the Apple people. I was led to believe I'd be able to download my existing music, the CDs I already owned, and all of a sudden, no dice. I couldn't download my stuff. If I wanted to have those CDs on my iPod I was going to have to pay for them. Really? Why should I have to repurchase music I already owned? Not to mention the already outrageous cos (in my opinion) of the iPod in the first place, which I'm willing to gloss over.

Explain to me exactly why I can't transfer what I've already paid for to another format. Really?

Why should I pay again? Why are the Apple people being such assholes? And why should I support them?

This is EXACTLY why Apple is such a stupid concept. They make you pay, and pay again.

About 25 years ago, when I was looking to buy my first computer, I had absolutely no bias whatsoever about the difference between Apple and a PC. But I quickly learned that I could get twice the computer for half the price if I went with a PC. Hmmm. Not much of a decision there.

And all these years later the difference is still obvious. The Apple people want to own you, body and soul. While the PC world lets you float on your own cloud.

That's what I do.

My bitterness towards Apple is that they've stopped making the 160 gig ipod entirely. Once mine die, I'll have to figure something else out. They say "no one wants to carry around 160 gigs of music" - bullshit, I'm a Deadhead, I'd carry around 160 Terabytes of music if I could.

They have models at different price points, and expand using Microsd cards. Some have 2 slots, so that allows up to 512gb.


http://m.fiio.net/en/products?c_id=1

Right now Ive got 2 of the old 160 gig classic ipods but they wont last forever.

I don't have quite as much to manage as you do, but I have quite a bit and I don't want to decide what to have with me - I want it all. I don't use iCloud for anything other than backup, and I haven't had any problems with my music, whether I bought it on CD, MP3, recorded it at a concert and digitized it, downloaded it, whatever. It's all there.

I do have an external 1Tb drive where I keep a copy of all the music and some photos.

not enough serious improvements to warrant the upgrade unless you really need it.

But if suckers are willing to line up around the block and beg you to take their cash, why stop them?

It actually isn't the price that gets me. That price point is similar to others. BUT you get less for it.

I just can't believe anyone is so stupid as to buy their crap. "Courageous" to remove the headphone jack to replace it with a proprietary thing that doesn't work with your current headphones or speakers? No, not courageous (what pretentious horseshit is that keynote anyway), just fucking greedy.

Fuck Apple. I hope they those their shirts on this (but they won't because for the idiot fans, they can do no wrong).

They are living off all the middle class consumerist suckers who bought into the "Apple is non-conformist and hip" marketing of the late 90s and early 00s.

Completely asinine and more than a tad dickish, but fascinating.

I also love my iPhone. Only Apple product I own.

well, technically assigned one to me while I work here I guess. I've never been a Mac fanboi although they were always around as my wife was in graphics and they own that industry for hardware. Never saw the point of paying fifty percent more for lesser features because the case looks cool in a curvy minimalist sort of way. Everything fanbois always claimed I found to be false for me. The Mac interface was infuriatingly non-intuitive, and freezes were more common than on Windows machines. Cross platform compatibility was never as seamless or as universal as claimed either. Never had a malicious virus do the slightest damage to either platform in well over two decades with trifling security if any. So I wasn't too enthusiastic about the phone, which I just looked at and see is a 6s if that matters to Mac cognoscenti.

I was proven both wrong and right.

The phone qua phone is the best I've used. All the supposed thoughtfulness and simplicity that i-things are said to have is here. Why have I never found an Android phone where I can just play the voicemail directly from the notification instead of calling and entering another fucking passcode? One where it's so easy and intuitive to block a number from a scam outfit or the drunken lowlife buddy or bill collector, or both, who keeps insisting on trying to reach the number's last owner many months later straight from the call record without an app (why I always seem to inherit numbers from deadbeats with scummy friends is a corollary for another time)? It's possible some Android phones do these things, but none I ever used from basic to supposed flagships.

The phone qua mobile computer/web device is absolutely execrable though. Never had so many app freezes, what apps I can find for the proprietary cage that is. Compared to my wife's similarly recent and expensive S6 side by side in every wifi spot we've tested, including one we are at several times a week, I without fail get both tested and demonstrated connections which are 30-50% slower, and take much longer to join. The rotating view goes into landscape at a millimeter's millisecond wobble but refuses to go back to portrait without repeated wrist-spraining correction. Apple infuriatingly refuses to allow a basic folder management app so I can load, manage and remove my own media without the massive, and massively intrusive, Itunes on my PC, which even then only works for media it likes and still doesn't allow me to move files where I want them.

Hell even the battery is the same thing in microcosm. Best standby and talktime I've ever come across. Days as a phone is fine on one charge Spend ten minutes playing some basic 2D freeware puzzle game and 30% has bled away.

I have no idea if this model or even item is an outlier, but so far iphones truly are wonderful phones to me. It's the other 90% of the things they are supposed to do that makes them godawful.

I really enjoyed reading it.

"The rotating view goes into landscape at a millimeter's millisecond wobble but refuses to go back to portrait without repeated wrist-spraining correction."



I think the iPhone is really beneficial to people like me as it seems to be somewhat dummy-proof when using it for simplistic and daily tasks.

You hit it out of the park with the Apple folder issue. At least I haven't found a good way to do it. There are numerous apps I could put on my phone that would get it done. That defeats the purpose completely. Mostly I would like it for email attachments. I haven't fully looked at OneDrive yet. That might be what I need to research for my folder issue.

I avoid iTunes. Really dislike iTunes.

And then cut and paste just normal stuff like pdfs and word docs and mp3s from the computer to where I can get at them on the phone I'd greatly appreciate it. Haven't found anything yet. The Google Drive/OneDrive things need to download cloud-based files and my wifi is spotty and slow enough here in the boonies to make it unworkable. Why is it so hard to just put a file on a phone?

Come to think of it why can't we use flash too? I don't care how passe it is in geekdom, it's what the cheapest stock-trading site uses and therefore what I need. Any way round that?

its easier to set up than FTP or Samba sharing on a Windows machine. You do still need local wifi, but not internet.

Basically all you do is download the app from the google store and run it. Once you do, then type in the web address it shows on your computer's web browser. Chrome is best for this, and then you can directly upload and download files from your phone. Its drag and drop through Chrome, for Firefox you have to click the "upload" buttons. You can browse your files, download folders into zip files on your local computer, etc.

I found it useful and painless to use, though it may be a tad slow, but over wifi, you can't expect extremely fast speeds.

With the operating system updates.

An Apple store employee confirmed what I already knew. That the new updates are made for newer iPads and that they slow down older ones.

Funny though that they slow down my older one. Funny that they couldn't make updates for individual models or write code that doesn't do this.

I'm calling BULLSHIT. Planned obsolescence I say.

Price, but I know why it costs so much. I think calling it a phone is a disservice. I can do anything and everything from my so called phone.

Last edited Thu Sep 8, 2016, 11:58 AM - Edit history (1)

new phone and I thank them.

Edit; Screw them, later in the program they were absolutely sickening. I think I will stop listening to this mornings recording. Actually repulsive to me.

Random Radioshack ad from the 80's.


The phone basically replaces all of the devices on that page of ads.

Louis CK's "Everything is amazing, but everyone is miserable" applies.

For me at least.

Part of my job takes me on the road doing investigations. With my phone I have not just a phone but:

Multiple phone numbers thanks to apps.
Fax machine
Email
Scanner
Navigation system
Camera, and one that's instantly integrated to email to send pics without downloading.
Translation tool that will translate many printed languages to English. Not perfect, but functional.
Voice recorder to recording interviews. That instantly backs them up to my desktop.
When coupled with a Bluetooth keyboard a powerful enough computer for typing up reports.

I do all this on an IPhone 6plus

What would it cost me to buy and have in my car working:

Simple phone
Laptop
Digital camera
Voice recorder
Scanner/fax
GPS

Far more than the phone cost.

And for that far higher cost it would be far less user friendly and take much more time to make it all work.

Now if you really just need a phone, don't buy an iPhone. I think you can still get a prepaid flip phone at Walmart and you won't be buying all that stuff you don't need.

I gotta wonder if, when the Swiss Army knife was first produced in the late 1800s, stubborn anachronisms lamented the demise of simpler days, when all you needed to get by in the bush was a knife, two screwdrivers, a can opener, a saw, a file, and a corkscrew.