Should we buy iPhones?
 

E. Noisefield and I are considering biting the bullet and trading in our droids for iPhones. We are both making more money,and have long term plans to buy a pair of ipads.

Neither of us are Mac savvy, however, so it would all be pretty new.
Anybody have any suggestions or tips? Warnings? Etc?

I'd prefer an iPhone, any iPhone, over my HTC - model piece of shit, android.

I simply can't justify the cost. If you can, I'd buy the phone and get a pay-by-the-month plan. I pay $35/mo. for all the data and texts I want (which is all I ever use), and with AT&T I was paying $109 with a subsidized iPhone. I think the Sprint network (which unlike Virgin, can handle the iPhone) is about $50.

Paying the up-front cost of the phone will pay off in under a year.

also, the beauty of macs is, you don't have to be mac savvy to feel like you are; whereas, pc-type products generally have a steeper learning curve.

Uhhhmmmm! While androids seem "limitless" with their os. The iPhone is just a totally better feel. The toch screen and display is my favorite thing about this phone....and it's really done a lot better than most android phones I've used. As far a features and functionality...same shit? Unless yer like into hardcore apps n shit.

I await the long, nonsensical, rambling speech about consumerism and capitalism by gast.

Otherwise just get the last edition and update it. Certainly cheaper.

Exactly! Just bought the 4s.

iphones are finally where they need to be for me in terms of price/features (cloud apps don't require huge storages + you got no-contract carriers) so i'd say get it if you a) can, b) derive economic use of it not just as a toy. otherwise just get a cheap phone and save your toy money for ipads (porn, games and books are more fun in them). as a work tool the iphone is fucking solid though.

i got the 4s with virgin mobile when it came out this past summer. if sprint has good coverage in your area you might wanna consider virgin as your carrier (virgin runs on sprint) because you don't need contracts = unlimited awesome. of course you might wanna wait for the iphone 5-- not sure when the 5 will come out for virgin in the yooessay but it's already available in other cuntrys: http://www.virginmobile.com.au/

if/when the 5 is available for virgin, i'll buy one and put my 4s on ebay (no contracts rule, you can change phones anytime) (then again gotta see how their network is doing at that point). i would like faster internet cuz 3G is fucking slow if you use a lot of web apps (though i use wifi most days) and the 5 has/ will have LTE and virgin offers 4G in some markets (just not with the 4s).

if you already have a carrier and you just want to add the iphone-- yeah, it's very fucking well made... except for the new maps, but it should be fixed soon. oh and siri is still a fucking dolt -- nearly useless, however she just learned to "launch apps" (at last!) and talk you through directions in traffic (which she couldn't do in ios5.) ah, siri, you bitch! ("im just trying to help..." she answers)

ps- apple doesn't lower prices as their lineup ages so you get their best value when things are new. always consult macrumors buying guide for the best timing:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

my obvious guess is ipads will update in time for the holi-daze.

Which carrier do you use? This sounds like a great deal!

Fuck Apple, those assholes are about the greediest non-oil corporation there is. They make the most profits, approximately $400,000 per employee annually, while at the same time paying some of the relatively lowest wages, including folks selling thousands of dollars worth of Apple products and getting ZERO commission. Further, Apple sells these products for super-hyped prices and yet makes them in China for slave wages? Fuck that, and fuck them! I own a single iPod, I bought it several years ago, I use it constantly, but alas, I have many regrets :(

So you think the iPhone 5 is at its best price now?? I'm thinking of getting the 4s and then later upgrading to the 5.???

the iphone 5 is at the only price it will ever have. it will not go down until the next iphones come out. so you get the best value in the early phase of its design cycle (it doesn't mean it's worthless later, but it will be older and cost you the same as today) --> all apple products are priced the same way.

the issue is what kind of carrier you have or want, where you live, what type of service, how much $ to burn, etc.

if you have a carrier you like and want to stay with said carrier, then upgrading to the iphone 5 (if available) is a no-brainer.

if you want out of indentured servitude and want to explore the flexibility of non-contract carriers, then cricket has the iphone 5--- virgin doesn't yet have it. i got virgin with the 4S for now and love it, but I only get 3G.

cricket does 3G-only as well, even with the iphone 5. virgin does 4G but only for certain android models right now-- i'd suspect this might change when they get the iphone 5, but i'm not sure if and when this will happen. it's a bit of a clusterfuck, but cricket leases 3G access from sprint, and sprint owns virgin in the usa (virgin is a global brand but not a global provider).

you gotta shop around and figure what's your highest priority-- a better phone, a better network, lower intial cost vs. lower cost over the next 2 years, how likely you are to incur overages, etc. lots to consider, and it's an individual choice. if you want all the bells and whisltes an dthe strongest network then verizon is the way to go but it will cost you and they don't offer unlimited data (unless you have an old plan then you're grandfathered in). if you want the cheapest overall cost then virgin first then cricket.

you could get the iphone 4 (not 4S) from cricket for $400 and unlimited everything for $55/month (virgin is $500 and $50 respectively so at the end of 2 years it costs $20 less for unlimited). actually the cheapest plan with virgin is $30/month with unlimited text+data and auto-renew payments but talk is limited to 300 minutes (this can be a pain when you have to "wait on hold for the next available operator" or have long discussions with clients, etc.--for me unlimited talk is cheaper) see here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/257210/virgin_mobile_iphone_4s_vs_carrier_deals_compariso n_chart_.html

also take into account that apple care for 2 years is another $100-- this now includes water damage and physical destruction (with a $50 fee) that were not previously covered, so it's very useful to me (i paid $650 for my 4S, i'd rather add another $100 than lose it all). the thing is, apple care is attached to the hardware, not the person, so if you sell it, the warranty can go with it also (you recover your cost). an alternative to this is to find some aftermarket repair shop but since i use my phone for work reliability is a priority.

tl;dr: if you ask about the iphone in and of itself, i'd say "hell yeah, best tricorder ever"

i would never buy any apple products,but not for suchfriend's reasons even though they are valid.

I'm happy with my Nokia, thanks.

There is no discussing this with the Apple fetishists. They want their device and they don't care how many people were degraded.

all phones and game consoles and computers, even the ones you're using to type right now, crappy as they may be, are made in the same OEM chinese plants. just saying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn


i used to buy cheap IDE cables from foxconn ages ago when i used to build my very own oh-so-punk DIY computers. i bet you 100 yuan their factories used to be much worse back then.

bring back the photocopied fanzine.

o wait, copiers are made in china too.

bring back the mimeograph & the ditto machine fuck yeah!!!

wax tablets FTW

Does anyone want to comment on how SpotifyPremium works on the iPhone?

I love the way it works on the Droid. It keeps me moving, with instant access to nearly everything in my CD library, minus the bulk.

pretty fucking awesome on the hardware itself, and controllable with the headphone buttons (play/pause, skip forward) te same as the native music app, once spotify has launched. you can also hold the button down and tell siri to "launch spotify"-- pretty dumb, but hey, future iterations might include siri commands embedded on the app itself. i look forward to telling that bitch to play me this and that. also the new headphones look pretty awesome.

the network is a different story--on virgin 3G and high quality settings it chokes a bit (say, inside supermarkets, deep near the freezers, the network may falter), but with lower quality streams it's okay everywhere you have bars. add some offlined playlists to tie you over between connections. on wifi of course it's fucking seamless. on 4G i imagine it's going "to rule the air" as "sinceramente, jessica" used to say in her commercial.

ps- i have it on right now. i love this shit but the old style headphones hurt my ears a bit.

The Shanghai Evening Post sent one of its reporters undercover into the Taiyuan factory, where he trained for seven days and then spent three days on the factory floor assembling the new iPhone’s metal “back plates”.
He wrote: “The whole dormitory smells like rubbish when I entered.
There was uncleared rubbish outside every room. Cockroaches crawled out from my wardrobe and the bedsheets are dirty with ash. All the windows are barred.”
He reported that workers were fired if they were found to be carrying any metallic objects, and that workers had to sit still while working.
“This is the new iPhone 5 back plate, you should be honoured to have the chance to make it,” his supervisor told him, and he was given the job of marking his back plates with a pen.
“An iPhone 5 back-plate passed in front of me almost every three seconds. I had to pick up the back plate and mark four points using the oil-based paint pen. Every ten hours, I had to finish 3,000 back plates. After several hours, I had terrible neck pain,” he wrote

as well as being fueled by nuke power...