10 Things that "Absolutely suck" about the iPhone. (Yes I have one)

[cmaier]

Germans? Pearl Harbor?

Not familiar with the classics, I see.

 

[cmaier]

142 pages says all 3 claims can be disputed.

Surur

No. 143 pages says "iphone sucks!" "no it doesn't!" "yes it does!" "well, you're stupid!" "no i'm not!" "iphone sucks!" "wait, what side am I on?"

 

[whmurray]

In this particular instance its whether the iPhone is memory constrained or not, which would limit the size for example of the web pages it could load.

In general, its about how the iPhone is not as great as it pretends to be.

Surur

Parkinson's law of storage says that data expands to fill the storage available. Most of the storage in my iPhone is filled with music, audiobooks, movies, and poccasts. iTunes just took everything that was on my 40G iPod and put it my iPhone. I spend zero time managing memory on my iPhone (OK, I chopped one movie that I have watched several times.)

Most of the memory in my Treo is filled with applications and databases. I spend lots of time managing the available 3 gigs. I frequently try to install apps for which I do not have adequate storage. For example, I love Avantgo, find it near essential for using the web on the Treo. If I install it, no room for anythng else.

Because of the better browser and UI on the iPhone, I do not need an application like Avantgo.

While I never have enough, I feel less storage constrained on the iPhone than on the Treo. (I remember when a gig filled a box car and one could not move that boxcar a mile for the price of an iPhone. It took a year and half to read that gig if one could maintain rated speeds.)

 

[whmurray]

Not familiar with the classics, I see.

lol

 

[whmurray]

142 pages says all 3 claims can be disputed.

Surur

Most assertions can be argued. That is what distinguishes them from facts.

 

[surur]

Parkinson's law of storage says that data expands to fill the storage available. Most of the storage in my iPhone is filled with music, audiobooks, movies, and poccasts. iTunes just took everything that was on my 40G iPod and put it my iPhone. I spend zero time managing memory on my iPhone (OK, I chopped one movie that I have watched several times.)

Most of the memory in my Treo is filled with applications and databases. I spend lots of time managing the available 3 gigs. I frequently try to install apps for which I do not have adequate storage. For example, I love Avantgo, find it near essential for using the web on the Treo. If I install it, no room for anythng else.

Because of the better browser and UI on the iPhone, I do not need an application like Avantgo.

While I never have enough, I feel less storage constrained on the iPhone than on the Treo. (I remember when a gig filled a box car and one could not move that boxcar a mile for the price of an iPhone. It took a year and half to read that gig if one could maintain rated speeds.)

We are not talking about storage (I hate storage being called memory ).We are talking about RAM.

To save you reading 142 pages of speculation, I have contended that the iPhone, with 128 MB SDRAM, is RAM constrained, and therefore had a hard limit to the size and number of images it could load for example, and the number of large web pages it could have open simultaneously.

Others have disputed this, saying the iPhone runs "real OSX", and therefore had virtual memory, which meant the apps could address much more memory than the device actually possessed.

I said embedded devices hardly ever use virtual memory.

Others said Apple thinks differently.

In short, it turns out I was right.

Surur

 

[whmurray]

...........I still think web only apps will fail (if the only option on iPhone. Sun tried this route on desktop 15 years ago and got creamed. (That company is a true embarassment.

Sun was ahead of their time. I think that you generalize and mix the success of the iPhone with that of web apps.

Let me give you a data point. Intuit sells consumer tax software and a consumer tax web app. Users of the former are declining and users of the latter are growing. It is, in part, generational. My generation will install an application that we will only use once in order not to show our tax data to Intuit. Young people simply will not do that. Of course, they really have only wages and salary, a little interest income and take the standard deduction. But twenty years from now they will still do it the way they are learning today.

I am planning a trip into New York City for next week. I plan to take my iPhone rather than my Treo. Therefore, I am doing with web apps things that I would do with local apps on the Treo. One of the things that I like is the ability to store my planning results with a simple bookmark. Another is that I do not have to worry about the currency of the database. Yet another is that the applications are richer.

Since I have this 680 that I never use, I was planning to give it to my great nephew for his eleventh birthdsy. (Yes, I spoil him; that's my job.) I am sure that if I offer him the choice, he will choose the iPhone. It really is a better product for him. He has been synching his iPod since he was seven (He is on his second one). He cannot tell you why the iPhone is better for him but he knows.

 

[Mike Overbo]

142 pages says all 3 claims can be disputed.

By the 1% of folks that are having problems: the failure rate of iphones is less than 1%, much lower than industry standards, according to Business Week.

In this particular instance its whether the iPhone is memory constrained or not, which would limit the size for example of the web pages it could load.
Surur

Web page sizes are artificially limited to 10MB each, 8 pages max, according to Apple's documentation.

 

[mikec#IM]

hmm

Whmurray,

Your nephew might be better served with a copy of "Animal House".

 

[mikec#IM]

unlocked

Well, the Engadget folks have a post that the iPhone is now unlockable. (software to be available shortly?).

They seem very giddy about this.

I'm curious if Apple will zap this in the next update, despite the claims it's zap-proof.

They will probably will have some code in iTunes that says "if phone number = n/a, they delete all and send us an email reporting the offender." ;-)

 

[braj]

An incredibly great cel phone? I understand voice quality is typical, not outstanding and the address book could be improved, but sure, I'll give them that if the iPhone users here agree. I don't have huge demands from my cell phone really. I would like it if you could have calls logged and appear as events in your calendar or something like that though, some more innovation would be nice. Beyond visual voicemail I don't really think there is anything there that is really beyond most other phones. Maybe most phones are incredibly great these days?

I'd say it isn't really the best iPod ever because there is no way to control it in your pocket, and the storage is really limited. If I wanted the ultimate iPod I would get a regular iPod with some hard buttons. I think there is a lot that could be improved if it is to be considered the 'best'. As far as a media player on a phone it definitely rocks and I'd love one just for the media functionality. But with 10x the storage.

Safari is just cool so I won't argue with 'the internet in your pocket' even if it is Edge.

 

[surur]

By the 1% of folks that are having problems: the failure rate of iphones is less than 1%, much lower than industry standards, according to Business Week.

Cause for Concern?
Even if we were to assume that for every person who has posted about problems on a Web forum there were 1,000 more, the total number of glitchy iPhones would still be in the ballpark of 1% of the 1 million iPhones Apple says it will sell by the end of September. And as yet there is no reason to believe the problem rate is anywhere near this high.

So is 1% an acceptable failure rate for a new device with a lot of new technology? Yes (unless you happen to own one). ISuppli's Jagdish Rebello tells me that it's not uncommon in the wireless industry to see failure rates on new products as high as 3% and 4%, especially when the product is entirely new or, as in Apple's case, the company is building its first phone.

What's important is that the failure rate goes down over time. As products mature, and the understanding of the various pitfalls in the manufacturing process improves, Rebello says, the failure rate drops in most cases to 1% or less. We don't know the actual failure rate on the iPhone. Apple isn't in the habit of releasing such data, mainly because it's not material to earnings. Apple's spokesperson declined to comment on the subject.

But one would have to believe that if there is a problem, Apple is doing what companies in this position always do: Figure out what it is and fix it. We on the outside are forced to simply speculate, and in some cases overreact.

Wow! I did not know BW posted crap! Thats the worst logic I have heard in ages. They counted people of message boards, multiplied by 1000 and said its less than 1% of iPhones sold. And they are only counting people with screen problems.

What about this guy?

JC4
macrumors member

Join Date: Apr 2006 Well, that didn't take long. Its not hardware. In under 20 minutes of surfing(wifi) iPod crashed. After the first crash it wont last more than a few seconds(of safari use).

I had 3 tabs open, and frequently switched pages after selecting a link, being aggressive to aggravate the problem. After the first crash all it takes is reading an already loaded page to re-crash iPod. The problem surfaces with less aggressive initial usage, it just takes longer, so please don't tell me I'm expecting too much.

I still urge people with the issue to report it via Apple support. 2 updates, and they have NOT fixed the problem. They need pressure to make this fundamental capability stable.

I'll give them a call and see if they still want me to send my old phone in, but form a diagnostic stand point, the new phone loaded with my data should be just as useful.

JohnC

Edit: An update. Just spent nearly 1hr on the phone with Apple support. There was nothing in his database to indicate this is a know, being worked on, issue. He had me try a few things I hadn't already tried, and I was still able to repeat the iPod crash while surfing. In fact the entire phone crashed(black w/ apple-logo) during some of our testing(this is the brand new loaner phone). So, as I've said all along, it doesn't look like Apple has been working on this issue. I (or others) should have called this in with version 1.0.0. Whining on the forums has not brought this to Apples attention.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4084718&postcount=9

Web page sizes are artificially limited to 10MB each, 8 pages max, according to Apple's documentation.

AFAIK those were recommendations, not limits of the browser. Did you not disprove this yourself. Also people were arguing what a 10 MB web page means. Is it HTML, or with graphics included, or with all the data structures generated also?

Surur

 

[braj]

iTunes just took everything that was on my 40G iPod and put it my iPhone.

You only had <8GB on your 40GB iPod?

 

[tirk]

...and it does offer an incredibly great internet experience while being very pocketable.

"incredibly great internet experience" and EDGE surely do not go together.

 

[cmaier]

We are not talking about storage (I hate storage being called memory ).We are talking about RAM.

To save you reading 142 pages of speculation, I have contended that the iPhone, with 128 MB SDRAM, is RAM constrained, and therefore had a hard limit to the size and number of images it could load for example, and the number of large web pages it could have open simultaneously.

Others have disputed this, saying the iPhone runs "real OSX", and therefore had virtual memory, which meant the apps could address much more memory than the device actually possessed.

I said embedded devices hardly ever use virtual memory.

Others said Apple thinks differently.

In short, it turns out I was right.

Surur

You were right? How so? I haven't seen anything definitive either way yet - all we know is that we've been unable to force the phone to use enough memory to trigger demand paging, while running top. Even that other guy, who seemed to understand vm, suggested that the evidence supported demand paging (which is vm). We don't have a smoking gun one way or the other, but that doesn't add up to "i was right."

 

[cmaier]

An incredibly great cel phone? I understand voice quality is typical, not outstanding and the address book could be improved, but sure, I'll give them that if the iPhone users here agree. I don't have huge demands from my cell phone really. I would like it if you could have calls logged and appear as events in your calendar or something like that though, some more innovation would be nice. Beyond visual voicemail I don't really think there is anything there that is really beyond most other phones. Maybe most phones are incredibly great these days?

I'd say it isn't really the best iPod ever because there is no way to control it in your pocket, and the storage is really limited. If I wanted the ultimate iPod I would get a regular iPod with some hard buttons. I think there is a lot that could be improved if it is to be considered the 'best'. As far as a media player on a phone it definitely rocks and I'd love one just for the media functionality. But with 10x the storage.

Safari is just cool so I won't argue with 'the internet in your pocket' even if it is Edge.

Re: the ipod functionality - why can't you control it in your pocket? that's what the button on the earphones is for, no? I agree re: the storage. Stick that interface/media functionality on an 80GB ipod, and it's the best ipod ever. It's certainly a better ipod than the nano, however.

 

[surur]

You were right? How so? I haven't seen anything definitive either way yet - all we know is that we've been unable to force the phone to use enough memory to trigger demand paging, while running top. Even that other guy, who seemed to understand vm, suggested that the evidence supported demand paging (which is vm). We don't have a smoking gun one way or the other, but that doesn't add up to "i was right."

I think, with the available evidence we have now, the burden of proof has shifted.

Surur

 

[cmaier]

Wow! I did not know BW posted crap! Thats the worst logic I have heard in ages. They counted people of message boards, multiplied by 1000 and said its less than 1% of iPhones sold. And they are only counting people with screen problems.

What about this guy?


http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4084718&postcount=9




AFAIK those were recommendations, not limits of the browser. Did you not disprove this yourself. Also people were arguing what a 10 MB web page means. Is it HTML, or with graphics included, or with all the data structures generated also?

Surur

AFAIK those are hard limits (they were next to the maximum image size, etc.) but I agree that I have no idea what they mean. I know PDFs and word docs can be bigger than that (i guess they aren't part of the web page by apple's definition). If my html is 4 lines of javascript that generates 50MB of data, what happens?

My guess was that it was the size of the transferred html - i'm assuming its held in some sort of buffer until rendering is complete, and there's a maximum buffer size. The 8 page limit is definitely a hard limit.

 

[cmaier]

I think, with the available evidence we have now, the burden of proof has shifted.

Surur

Everyone who actually is familiar with the mechanics of VM seems to think there is VM. This isn't a court of law, so I'm not going to get into burdens of proof, but I will say that one way or another we will get to the bottom of this in the near future. While it seems demand paging must be happening if he was able to fill up memory without going over (if it was just dumping tabs, the quantum would have been more than 1MB!), I agree that we need either a direct answer from apple or we need to allocate and use more than 128MB in a controlled way and see what happens, preferably with top.

 

[oalvarez]

"incredibly great internet experience" and EDGE surely do not go together.

all i know is what i experience on my iPhone, and compared to all other devices i've owned, the iPhone offers me the greatest internet experience of them all. edge has worked just fine up to now and when in and around wi-fi spots (which seems to be more and more of the time) it's even better.

for me the iPhone offers a great internet experience (on a pocketable cell device). :thumbsup: