The one-week iQueue. The saddest fanboys of the lot

[tarannau]

There are perfectly functional ARM implementation of flash out there. ARM is the low power RISC chip on lots of mobile phones.

Why its not on the iPhone is a mystery.

I'd suggest it's because Adobe's optimisation of software has been a real problem of late and Apple's keen not to let the shitey performance/lack of responsiveness of Flash become an issue on the iphone. Particularly given that Flash tends to work in a more proprietary way than Apple would like for consistency.

Adobe came out last week or so and claimed that they've now got Flash running 3x as fast as the present lamentable version on the mac, apparently because 'they have 'identified the bottleneck in the Flash Player for OSX. Like in the other plugins the culprit is text rendering, in this case rendering using device text.," . Which begs the question how the fuck did it take so long to reach that conclusion

Since Adobe became so dominant they've shown the same slapdash attitude that characterised Quark in its declining days. The prices are up and the software's not as sharp as it should be

 

[Crispy]

Apple have pissed off adobe twice in a big way now.

1. You must re-write all your applications for intel!

2. Oh! And if you want to support 64-bit, rewrite them again using cocoa instead of carbon!

 

[Gromit]

Im afraid I may have to Fan Boy on Friday and queue up at a store before 8:02.

I know its sad but I don't want to find out that after this batch is sold there won't be another load for a month or however long it takes their Chinese factory to crank out a new batch.

 

[editor]

Im afraid I may have to Fan Boy on Friday and queue up at a store before 8:02.

Each to their own, of course, but there is no phone, electronic gizmo or consumer item that would get me queuing outside a shop early in the morning to provide a nice PR opportunity for the carefully managed press hype. None.

 

[skyscraper101]

Here's some photos of the iQueue from the first iPhone launch in New York last year. Some of you may recall I was posting on Urban from inside the Apple Store on launch day.

The line stretched from the Apple Store on 5th Ave all the way down E59th and onto Madison Ave and then snaked back on itself. It was a marketeers wet dream what with the added press coverage from CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC, FOX...etc all stationed outside with their news vans.

Check out the guy selling his space for $5,000!

 

[tarannau]

Apple have pissed off adobe twice in a big way now.

1. You must re-write all your applications for intel!

2. Oh! And if you want to support 64-bit, rewrite them again using cocoa instead of carbon!

True, but if Chizen didn't know about the Intel switch well in advance I'd be very surprised.

The thing about Cocoa and Carbon is slightly more mystifying mind. Cocoa's obviously the better long term framework, but Apple's been as guilty of rushing out Carbon apps as anyone.

 

[Crispy]

The Finder is Carbon, ffs!

 

[jæd]

Apple have pissed off adobe twice in a big way now.

1. You must re-write all your applications for intel!

2. Oh! And if you want to support 64-bit, rewrite them again using cocoa instead of carbon!

Everyone else has managed to do this, even Microsoft. Or does Adobe not have any developers any more...?

Oh, and if you really want it, a port of Flash has been developed by a third-party...

 

[Structaural]

I'd suggest it's because Adobe's optimisation of software has been a real problem of late and Apple's keen not to let the shitey performance/lack of responsiveness of Flash become an issue on the iphone. Particularly given that Flash tends to work in a more proprietary way than Apple would like for consistency.

Adobe came out last week or so and claimed that they've now got Flash running 3x as fast as the present lamentable version on the mac, apparently because 'they have 'identified the bottleneck in the Flash Player for OSX. Like in the other plugins the culprit is text rendering, in this case rendering using device text.," . Which begs the question how the fuck did it take so long to reach that conclusion

Since Adobe became so dominant they've shown the same slapdash attitude that characterised Quark in its declining days. The prices are up and the software's not as sharp as it should be

Yep. They drive me up the wall as I have to use their software all the time. CS3 is buggy as fuck. Bridge is a joke. Illustrator have bugs that can only be described as mystical (okay pressing 'b' today crashes it). The latest but one apple update screwed saving files over the network (only from Adobe apps though). I lost 160 photoshop files to corruption that day (thank bod for backups). They blamed each other. InDesign has continual bugs that are never fixed from version CS1. They bring out new versions rather than fix bugs. They never reply in the forums any more and Adobe Cue update in CS3 corrupted every version of CS3 if anybody ran it. /rant

It's a shame Aldus and Macromedia fell by the wayside at least they had a competitors then. Quark's failing haven't helped getting inDesign improved.

Apple's stepping into the fold but I don't want that either - another massive proprietary organisation locking me into badly maintained software from the same people I buy my hardware from. No thanks.

 

[Structaural]

Apple have pissed off adobe twice in a big way now.

1. You must re-write all your applications for intel!

2. Oh! And if you want to support 64-bit, rewrite them again using cocoa instead of carbon!

init, and now we won't get Photoshop CS4 in 64-bit on the Mac because of it. Tossers the lot of 'em. Photoshop made Apple big and the mac made Photoshop big but if you want to run it with more than 3gb of ram you'd better buy a PC.

 

[Sunray]

Each to their own, of course, but there is no phone, electronic gizmo or consumer item that would get me queuing outside a shop early in the morning to provide a nice PR opportunity for the carefully managed press hype. None.

What he says.

Its not like Apple are going to run out of these any time soon. Wait a week or two and they will become available, just like the last one did.

 

[tarannau]

The Finder is Carbon, ffs!

I know, that seemed a strange cludge for Apple. I can only guess that it'll be improved in the next version of the OS, with Apple seeking to optimise and make more consistent rather than add fratures

I'm not really as clued up as I could be on the p&cs of both frameworks, but the writing did seem on the wall for Carbon, always positioned as more transitional than the more ambitious Cocoa. Apple's been emboldened by the success of the migration to OSX and the appeal of a fresh slate - criticisms of Vista being hidebound by a bloated codebase and bet-hedging back compatability do seem valid.

I can't say it's going to be the easiest route, but it does make sense and I'm surprised by Adobe's lack of foresight in many ways. There's likely to be an unstable year or two mind

 

[nick]

This kind of adds to the saddo factor (quotes from macrumors)

The first iPhone 3G launch will take place in New Zealand on July 11th at one minute past midnight local time. This translates to July 10th at 5am Pacific Time. The crew at iFixit actually flew to New Zealand to stand in line in order to disassemble the iPhone 3G immediately after its release. They are #4 in line.

Employees have received training on iPhone activations and are humorously instructed to allow the customer to "enjoy the feel of the phone in their hand" before proceeding with activation.

See the way in which the sacred object is to be cradled
http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2008/07/09/iphone-3g-activation-process-give-them-a-chance-to-enjoy-the-feel-of-the-phone/

 

[Lazy Llama]

Today the O2 website says:-
"On average, we will only have a few dozen iPhone 3Gs per store (some stores more, some stores less, dependant upon store size so we expect to sell out quickly). Sales of iPhone 3G will be limited to one per customer and two for business customers."

 

[Gromit]

Staff at the store i'm going to said they won't know how many they are having in themselves until the morning of the launch.

 

[Structaural]

I know, that seemed a strange cludge for Apple. I can only guess that it'll be improved in the next version of the OS, with Apple seeking to optimise and make more consistent rather than add fratures

I'm not really as clued up as I could be on the p&cs of both frameworks, but the writing did seem on the wall for Carbon, always positioned as more transitional than the more ambitious Cocoa. Apple's been emboldened by the success of the migration to OSX and the appeal of a fresh slate - criticisms of Vista being hidebound by a bloated codebase and bet-hedging back compatability do seem valid.

I can't say it's going to be the easiest route, but it does make sense and I'm surprised by Adobe's lack of foresight in many ways. There's likely to be an unstable year or two mind

The main difference between the two AFAIK is Carbon is C++ and 32-bit and Cocoa is Objective-C and 64-bit. Photoshop for example needs to be almost entirely rewritten for Cocoa as it's mostly Carbon based at the moment and Adobe aren't happy about that, especially as both PC and Mac versions utilise almost the same C++ code.
This article says it's not Carbon that's the problem with the Finder but lack of optimisation of code, and that Carbon is actually pretty powerful.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/21/mac_os_xs_finder_cocoa/

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

MOst expensive data plan in the world here.

So over £60 a month for the first 6 months.

300 minutes talk time.

300 mb of data (approx 30 minutes on youtube) everything over 15 p per mb
on 3g/edge.

Price for the 8gig is about £145

16gig white or black is about £205

So about £500/£550 for the first 6 months of owning either.


er, yeah. fuck off.

 

[Iam]

Still no email here, so I seriously doubt I'll be getting one tomorrow.

 

[Lazy Llama]

Still no email here, so I seriously doubt I'll be getting one tomorrow.

I got a confirmation email yesterday. However , it said:

Your order (on-001xxxxxx) for the 16Gb 3G iPhone was successfully placed on 07 July 2008.

I'm sorry but I'm unable to guarantee if you'll receive your order on 11 July 2008.

As the demand is expected to be high, the orders will be delivered on a first come first served basis. We'll deliver as many orders as possible on 11th July and then the delivery may take up to 2 weeks.

So even though they confirmed on the credit check phone call (36 minutes on hold) that it would be delivered on Friday, it might not.

My wife's order has been confirmed and she's already received her first bill, cheeky fuckers!

ETA: O2 have just updated (last 10 minutes?) their Shop software, and my order is now showing as dispatched with a DHL tracking number.

 

[editor]

Today the O2 website says:-
"On average, we will only have a few dozen iPhone 3Gs per store (some stores more, some stores less, dependant upon store size so we expect to sell out quickly). Sales of iPhone 3G will be limited to one per customer and two for business customers."

Sure smells like stinky PR bollocks to me. "Ooooh OMG! Look our £3m server iPhone-only has crashed!!" "Ooooh, let us tell you how many zillions of orders people tried to make and how many web pages were requested (but we'll continue to keep schtum when it comes to actual sales figures for any time over the last year - unless we finally get some figures we like)."

To paraphrase Johnny Rotten, "Ever had the feeling you're being conned?"

Still, at least they finally realised that the fake US-style hyperbolic queue nonsense wasn't going to work over here after the last hilarious failure.

This whole launch feels manufactured and manipulated and for what? An identical phone to the last one except that it's got 3G and a plastic back.

Sure, it's a nice phone. But it ain't that fucking good.

 

[Iam]

The "track my order" bit if I go and sign in just diverts back to the homepage.

Oh well, as long as they don't take the payment, I don't mind.

 

[Lazy Llama]

The "track my order" bit if I go and sign in just diverts back to the homepage.

If you log out, log back in, then go to the "Track My Order", not once, not twice, but three times, it works. The first couple of times it said either that my session had expired, then thanked me for logging in, gave me a blank page, or took me to the front page.

At least that's what I found.

I'm sure a lot of their £3m was spent on testing.

To think, I built some of the bits that became O2... They all worked when I left

 

[Iam]

Oh yeah.

"You currently have no orders"



Have to say, this doesn't exactly give me faith in using them as a provider...

 

[Lazy Llama]

Yeah, the "wave a dead chicken over your computer if you want to see your order" is a bit silly.

I'm not fond of the idea of using O2 either, and I'll probably keep my Virgin PAYG account for use where O2 charge even sillier money...

 

[Iam]

I've just emailed them and said "you took all my payment details, can you please confirm whether or not you're planning to take any money?"

 

[editor]

You certainly couldn't accuse Apple of not "thinking differently" when it comes to sorting out distribution partners for their phones in the UK. What a palaver!

 

[pk]

Nothing, and I mean nothing could ever be as sad as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at one of their Nazi-esque rallies though.

Nothing.

 

[editor]

Nothing, and I mean nothing could ever be as sad as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at one of their Nazi-esque rallies though.

Oh, I dunno. Him and Jobs are both insufferable pricks in their own way.

 

[dogmatique]

Oh yeah.

"You currently have no orders"



Have to say, this doesn't exactly give me faith in using them as a provider...

Well, I'm duly amazed. Just checked into my account for a laugh, and instead of the "no orders" like yesterday, it now says "in progress" with a 16GB jobby. You could have blown me down, etc.

Immediately assumed that it just meant I was in a queue for when they restock, so phoned them to find out, and they claim that I've definately got one out for delivery tomorrow with DHL. We'll see, eh?

 

[dogmatique]

Oh deary deary me...

Outside the Apple Store, Regent St, 10 minutes ago...

This chap's selling his place in the massive queue on ebay...

Knobber...