iPhone new pricing from Fido
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Hardware
Well, after a bit of trouble in connecting to Fido’s 1800 number, I got through and spoke to someone about switching my current contract with them to an iPhone.
Turns out that because I’m still in my 3 year contract, I’m not elligble to upgrade to the iPhone, but I should call them back after July 24, as they are trying to work out a solution.
Well of course they are, they can’t resist having so many customers up their monthly fees.
But as where pricing is concerned, it’s become much better, where before $80/month would get you:
- 150 Weekday minutes
- Free evenings from 5PM
- 10,000 text messages
- Call Display
- Voicemail
- 400MB Data
The same $80 will now up the data to 6GB, making it a very competitive pricing scheme.
Now if only they can get some sort of solution up in place for existing customers like myself.
Tags: apple, Cost, Fido, iPhone
iPhone launch, followed by epic crash and burn
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Hardware
Well last night I was browsing around and ran across TWiT Live, which was broadcasting Leo Laporte’s 24 Hour iPhone Launch Coverage. He started Thursday morning, and the stream just ended today (Friday) at 1PM (my local time), damn I hope I’m still able to do that when I’m 51. What an awesome job Leo.
I caught about 2 hours last night, as I only stumbled across it in the wee hours of the morning, and another 2 and a half just now. Leo started his global coverage by talking to people in Australia, moved over to parts of Europe (Austria, London..), then over to various places in the US and Canada.
Out of the couple of hours I got to participate in his broadcast, we learnt a few interesting facts. The lineups at various stores were almost non-existent, specially when you compare with the launch of the previous model, and even more interesting was that a lot of the people who took the time and effort to get in advance lines were already iPhone owners!
We also found out that some of the Australian pricing actually puts Rogers attempts at playing the miser to shame, not only is there no unlimited data plan, but the maximum data you can get is 400mb. For well over $100 of course. And on the opposite side of things, the British plans for the iPhone are roughly the same price as any other average plan for any other phone, yes with all the necessary features.
But as my title says, there were some unexpected hurdles surrounding the launch. As Leo spoke to various people around the world, we learnt that there were problems activating the iPhones, and that some stores even opened late (possibly as they tried to remedy the problem?). In fact, I thought it quite ironic, as a huge part of the “iPhone 3G Experience” was the fact that it had to be purchased and activated at the same time in the store. You couldn’t walk out without have a signed contract looming over your head for the next 2-3 years.
But, since the procedure was that once you have purchased the iPhone, you were then to activate it in a separate transaction, it turns out, that a lot of people ended up purchasing the iPhone but then walking out because of the activation problems.
Which of course meant that ebay has finally received their shipment of the new iPhone 3G.
But on positive side of things, I finally received my Dropbox invitation!
And since MobileMe is out, I get to now debate real hard whether to get it or not.
Tags: apple, Dropbox, iPhone, Launch, MobileMe, TWiT
iPhone price comparison
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Hardware
Thanks to Andy Peatling for creating a price comparison between three of the countries that the iPhone 3G will be first releasing in:
A review of Mojo, an iTunes library sharing software
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Media, Review, Software
A little over a year ago, I bought a Linksys NSLU2 NAS, or the “Slug” as it was called, in order to hook up an external hard drive and share my MP3 collection off of it using Apple’s DAAP. It went well, but as I rarely needed my MP3 collection when I was out of the house it ended up being one of those “because I can” things and I returned the Slug.
In a nutshell the procedure went like this:
- Local machine:
- Install DAAP server
- Install SSH server
- Setup SSH key files (as opposed to passwords)
- Setup port tunneling using SSH
- Remote Machine:
- Install iTunes (unfortunately the best DAAP client at the time)
- Install SSH client
- Setup port tunneling through the the SSH client
- Attach the SSH key file to make it auto login (or not, depending on security)
- SSH into the server, and Voila!
So, if you’re still with me you can tell that is requires a bit of work, and is definitely not easy and intuitive to setup.
Fast forward to the year 2008 and “Mojo is here“.
Mojo accomplishes everything outlined above with one small intuitive little client, it actually goes above and beyond as its list of features include; zero configuration, instant download capability, and playlist synchronization.
It still relies on iTunes though unfortunately.
As of release 2.5.1, Mojo is offered as free software, with its only limitation on the number of peers in your friends list. Alternatively, for the small price of $10.95, you can upgrade to Mojo Pro, which currently gives you three licenses, and lifetime upgrade membership.
The only thing really souring the deal for me is its mac only status and iTunes dependency, but I believe there is a windows version in the works. And as for the iTunes/DAAP dependency, well I’ll have to wait till Mojo starts supporting WMP/UPNP.
Tags: apple, daap, itunes, Media, mojo, network, p2p, Review, Software, ssh
