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Big news yesterday was Verizon's announcement that they will soon be offering the (previously ATT exclusive) iPhone.
It didn't mean much to me at first. iPhone does some impressive stuff, but it has its flaws. I've heard too many reports of poor call quality, dropped calls, etc. It also requires a hefty data plan. There are times when having a smartphone would be handy, but not enough for it to be worth it for me. In fact, it turns out I can actually live for an hour or two without checking email.
Frankly, I'm not much for Apple products in general. Macs are designed to be user-friendly above anything else. Which is great to a point, but can also be very limiting when the software keeps assuming that you're a clumsy fool who shouldn't be allowed to do anything outside the parameters of the baby-proofing. iPods got huge market share despite a field full of better, cheaper, more feature-rich competitors... mostly because of iTunes. iTunes has a large library and is convenient to use, but is insidiously pervasive (nearly to the point of being a virus, IMO) and puts such restrictive copyright protections on everything that you can't even listen to your own music after you've legally purchased it.
All of which means that when I heard the news, I shrugged it off, thinking it wouldn't affect me. And then I watched the Daily Show's take on the matter, which focused on the call and signal quality issues. And it reminded me of the reason for that: the iPhone is a major bandwidth hog. Part of the reason it can do so much is that it pulls in a lot of data from the network. More than the cell network can handle, especially when you have a city full of the dang things.
AT&T tried to stop selling them in New York City (basically telling customers that they were on back order) because the volume of usage kept crashing their network. Israel tried to ban them entirely for that very reason. Both measures were quickly shouted down by a demanding public.
Verizon already has Android phones. (Droids use an open-source software platform designed by Google. The name is licensed from Lucasfilm.) They aren't quite iPhones, but they have many of the same capabilities. But now everyone in the city with Verizon is going to rush to get an iPhone. And a fair number of people who switched from Verizon to AT&T specifically to get an iPhone (I know a few, and they're far from alone) will switch back to get the better network while keeping the phone. Which means...
The Verizon network will soon be bogged down with bandwidth-draining iPhones. Which will hurt signal and call quality for everyone in the city with a Verizon phone, whether it's an iPhone or not. And yeah, call quality in general will be better with a phone that's actually designed to be a phone (as opposed to a mini-netbook which also happens to sometimes sort of function as a phone), but it won't be as good as it was. Data packets (including snippets of digitally transmitted voice calls) will be lost, signal strength will drop, and areas of the network may even start to crash like they did when AT&T first introduced the iPhone to their system.
It's not the cellphonepocalypse, but it is bad news for Verizon customers who don't care about the shiny overpriced toy.
I can only hope that Verizon learned from AT&T's problems and managed to shore up their network in preparation for the flood.
It didn't mean much to me at first. iPhone does some impressive stuff, but it has its flaws. I've heard too many reports of poor call quality, dropped calls, etc. It also requires a hefty data plan. There are times when having a smartphone would be handy, but not enough for it to be worth it for me. In fact, it turns out I can actually live for an hour or two without checking email.
Frankly, I'm not much for Apple products in general. Macs are designed to be user-friendly above anything else. Which is great to a point, but can also be very limiting when the software keeps assuming that you're a clumsy fool who shouldn't be allowed to do anything outside the parameters of the baby-proofing. iPods got huge market share despite a field full of better, cheaper, more feature-rich competitors... mostly because of iTunes. iTunes has a large library and is convenient to use, but is insidiously pervasive (nearly to the point of being a virus, IMO) and puts such restrictive copyright protections on everything that you can't even listen to your own music after you've legally purchased it.
All of which means that when I heard the news, I shrugged it off, thinking it wouldn't affect me. And then I watched the Daily Show's take on the matter, which focused on the call and signal quality issues. And it reminded me of the reason for that: the iPhone is a major bandwidth hog. Part of the reason it can do so much is that it pulls in a lot of data from the network. More than the cell network can handle, especially when you have a city full of the dang things.
AT&T tried to stop selling them in New York City (basically telling customers that they were on back order) because the volume of usage kept crashing their network. Israel tried to ban them entirely for that very reason. Both measures were quickly shouted down by a demanding public.
Verizon already has Android phones. (Droids use an open-source software platform designed by Google. The name is licensed from Lucasfilm.) They aren't quite iPhones, but they have many of the same capabilities. But now everyone in the city with Verizon is going to rush to get an iPhone. And a fair number of people who switched from Verizon to AT&T specifically to get an iPhone (I know a few, and they're far from alone) will switch back to get the better network while keeping the phone. Which means...
The Verizon network will soon be bogged down with bandwidth-draining iPhones. Which will hurt signal and call quality for everyone in the city with a Verizon phone, whether it's an iPhone or not. And yeah, call quality in general will be better with a phone that's actually designed to be a phone (as opposed to a mini-netbook which also happens to sometimes sort of function as a phone), but it won't be as good as it was. Data packets (including snippets of digitally transmitted voice calls) will be lost, signal strength will drop, and areas of the network may even start to crash like they did when AT&T first introduced the iPhone to their system.
It's not the cellphonepocalypse, but it is bad news for Verizon customers who don't care about the shiny overpriced toy.
I can only hope that Verizon learned from AT&T's problems and managed to shore up their network in preparation for the flood.
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And very interesting point about the network. I'm on Sprint so that doesn't affect me for now, but good to think about.
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I'd mention that Winamp is back, but you probably knew that. And I seem to recall that you don't like it for some reason. Not sure what else to suggest, as I don't often listen to music these days and am not particular about playlists. (I usually like to throw everything into a pile, hit shuffle, and just skip past whatever doesn't suit the mood/whim of the moment.)
I do wonder how Verizon's network will manage. They have to know what to expect, so hopefully they're ready for it. And I suppose having iphone users split between the two networks will help. But I just find the whole situation a little funny. People complaining about being tied to AT&T and their shoddy network just to get an iphone, never realizing that it's all the iphones that are bringing down the network. And now they plan to switch to Verizon so they can keep their iphones and get the "better network". If I wasn't tied to the Verizon network myself, I'd be interested to stand back and see what happened.
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Well, I don't want Winamp for a daily music player/database program (but then, I haven't found anything that will work there). However, what I'm looking for here is something I can use just to manage my iPod Nano (I wouldn't have gotten an Apple product myself, but as it was a gift and it's the only mp3 player I have, I'm quite happy to have *something*). Before the whole computer switch, I had foobar2000 and some plugin for it that would let me dump songs onto (and delete 'em off) the Nano, and it would copy playlists over. Problem is, it copied duplicate playlists at some point, and I couldn't find anywhere I could delete said playlists on the iPod from the foobar interface. I googled all over the 'net trying to find a solution, and couldn't find mention of anything but iTunes for that, so I just gave up on the playlist part of the mp3 player and used the genres only. I'm hoping now that I have a new computer I can do that search again, and maybe find something that *will* work.
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Can't help you with the music player. If you've got an ipod, maybe it's worth giving in and using itunes? Have you tried Windows Media Player? I got used to not taking it seriously, but the latest versions have actually given it some nice capabilities. Obvious suggestions, I know. Good luck finding something that works.