Ballmer laughs at the iPhone

That's a very nervous laugh, sorta like what's heard from the chairs in Redmond which are going into hiding.

Hey, Nick, you're lucky that the iPhone won't be out by Gaston's. This prediction of yours will go so bad we won't let you get away with eating mere words.
 
mikea said:
That's a very nervous laugh, sorta like what's heard from the chairs in Redmond which are going into hiding.

Hey, Nick, you're lucky that the iPhone won't be out by Gaston's. This prediction of yours will go so bad we won't let you get away with eating mere words.
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Nah, I stand by my statement of old (which has disappeared from the forums, I believe):

Short of dramatically reducing the price to actually be competetive, or at least offering features that are not currently found on much cheaper phones, the iPhone will fail.

edit: But I'm not trying to generate an argument, just found the video and thought it was funny.
 
SkyHog said:
Nah, I stand by my statement of old (which has disappeared from the forums, I believe):

Short of dramatically reducing the price to actually be competetive, or at least offering features that are not currently found on much cheaper phones, the iPhone will fail.
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Stealing from Penn Jillete: "You couldn't be more wrong if your name was W. R. Wrongie Wrongingstein.

There will be shortages of iPhones for the the first 90 days.

Your biggest mistake is assuming that YOU are kinda guy that would be buying one. I have no intentions of getting one for quite a while. They''ll still easily sell more than a million in the first year.

The iPhone will have outsold Windows Mobile phones in 5 years.

The Missing Sync will sync the iPhone to Exchange servers within the first year.

Somewhere along there Balmer will have tossed a few chairs.
 
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mikea said:
It will have outsold Windows Mobile phones in 5 years.
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You are probably correct. It will NOT, however, outsell Motorola mobile phones, Sony-Ericson mobile phones, Sanyo mobile phones, or even Samsung mobile phones, because they offer the exact same (in some cases better) products and services, but at 1/5th the price in most cases. Also - they are available on the networks that have the most people, while iPhone will only be available on Cingular IIRC.

That is my point, this isn't a "Microsoft vs. Apple" issue, this is a "Overpriced, under valued POS vs. Same POS for much less" issue.

My current phone does most of everything that the iPhone offers, minus camera capabilities, and without contract, it was $125.
 
If the iPhone is as well engineered and constructed as the iPod and the iMac computer, I wouldn't take one if they paid ME $500. Maybe it will be the thing that finally puts Apple in the grave. We can only hope.

ps.. the stupid iMac hard drive is going out again (2nd time). It's the slowest computer in the house for making simple internet requests, no contest. The cursor still doesn't work correctly. My iPod continues to freeze up at random intervals. So does my daughter's. I swear to god they must have some tasty kool-aid for you boys.
 
gibbons said:
If the iPhone is as well engineered and constructed as the iPod and the iMac computer, I wouldn't take one if they paid ME $500. Maybe it will be the thing that finally puts Apple in the grave. We can only hope.

ps.. the stupid iMac hard drive is going out again (2nd time). It's the slowest computer in the house for making simple internet requests, no contest. The cursor still doesn't work correctly. My iPod continues to freeze up at random intervals. So does my daughter's. I swear to god they must have some tasty kool-aid for you boys.
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It must be mountain weather, Chip.

Jann's iMac G5 - over two years no problem. *
My Mac Mini G4 Two years, no problem
My 15" Intel Macbook Pro - one year, no problem. *
My iPod video - 1 1/2 years. - no problem **

You're right. Web access is slower on OS X than Windows, even when you use Firefox on both, and dunno why that is. Leo Laporte agreed with that a year ago. You would think the real native Unix TCP/IP stack would be faster. It may be that it can be tuned to be closer, but it isn't.

* = covered by Applecare for 3 years, no claims
** = bought Applecare but never got it activated.
 
Ballmer is a monkeyboy-dancing tool.

Oh, and for those of you predicting the iPhone's demise (*ahem* Nick *cough*), would anyone care to guess the original price of Motorola's best-selling RAZR phone?

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
 
rpadula said:
Ballmer is a monkeyboy-dancing tool.

Oh, and for those of you predicting the iPhone's demise (*ahem* Nick *cough*), would anyone care to guess the original price of Motorola's best-selling RAZR phone?

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
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$500 with a 2 year contract. Sound familiar?
 
If Steve Jobs ate fiber for a year and marketed a dump called the iCrap you and Kent would defend it wouldn't you?
 
Just for the record............ and so Ed doesn't give me any iCrap........ I've never had an iAnything........... I just think the phone looks cool.
 
EdFred said:
If Steve Jobs ate fiber for a year and marketed a dump called the iCrap you and Kent would defend it wouldn't you?
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Ed, ya don't have any bias against that "little" company, do ya? ;)

It does look cool. And, if it can work better than the dang $500 Treo I have.... more power to them!
 
EdFred said:
If Steve Jobs ate fiber for a year and marketed a dump called the iCrap you and Kent would defend it wouldn't you?
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If Steve Balmer sold a crap brown thing called a Zune would you be one of the 13 in the world who would buy one?
 
KennyFlys said:
Ed, ya don't have any bias against that "little" company, do ya? ;)

It does look cool. And, if it can work better than the dang $500 Treo I have.... more power to them!
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Of course, you have to deal with Cingular's EDGE network (Read: as if your phone had 2 56K modems) instead of a real data network, but hey, I'm sure it'll sell like hotcakes. :)
 
It is sad to say that the iPhone will be wildly popular by the lemming pre-teen, teen, and "I want to be cool" 20-somethings.

The amazing part is that there are phones out there now that do all of what the iPhone proports to due, for less money. But then again it is fashionable to bash Microsoft and the PocketPC phone.

My Dell Axim lets me watch movies, listen to music, play games, do W&B balance calculations, etc. All the while it is NOT draining my already fast draining cell phone. I wonder what the batter life of the iPhone will be. Oh and one more thing..I HATE it when I get head/grease on my phones display when I talk...now you can expect that AND smudgy fingerprints on the face of the phone? No thanks....
 
mikea said:
If Steve Balmer sold a crap brown thing called a Zune would you be one of the 13 in the world who would buy one?
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I dont need any phone to do all that crap. Just need it to make and place calls. No more, no less. But I see you didn't want to answer the question.
 
did anyone watch Lost? On the last (or next to last?) episode, the phone that Sayid plays with from the helicopter pilot has an interface that looks just like the iPhone...
 
mikea said:
If Steve Balmer sold a crap brown thing called a Zune would you be one of the 13 in the world who would buy one?
Click to expand...

Steve Jobs could sell a literal pile of crap and the Mac fanboys would line up, cash in hand, and then breathlessly rail against anybody who were to dare to point out that they had, in fact, bought a literal pile of crap.

It's the same old Jobs Reality Distortion Field... Had any other company come out with the exact same product, exact same features, exact same cost, exact same reliability, exact same everything, nobody would've said boo about it. But it's Apple, so of course it necessitates a news flash on CNBC. Whatever. :rolleyes:

But even if it weren't Apple, my opinion would be the same: No keyboard, no way. My advice would be to dump AAPL now before everybody realizes, gee, it's just a lot of hype and the iPhone sure ain't no BlackBerry killer.
 
ReverendSlappy said:
Steve Jobs could sell a literal pile of crap and the Mac fanboys would line up, cash in hand, and then breathlessly rail against anybody who were to dare to point out that they had, in fact, bought a literal pile of crap.

It's the same old Jobs Reality Distortion Field... Had any other company come out with the exact same product, exact same features, exact same cost, exact same reliability, exact same everything, nobody would've said boo about it. But it's Apple, so of course it necessitates a news flash on CNBC. Whatever. :rolleyes:

But even if it weren't Apple, my opinion would be the same: No keyboard, no way. My advice would be to dump AAPL now before everybody realizes, gee, it's just a lot of hype and the iPhone sure ain't no BlackBerry killer.
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I don't think it's meant to be a blackberry killer in all honesty. I think it's a hip device aimed at the same demographic that loved the razr, krzr, etc. The late teens, early 20s college crowd who loves their ipods, and this is just one step further and they don't even need to carry multiple devices.

That said, I have the same concerns others have asking about battery life. And of course, it's a nice looking phone with the glossy exterior, but how will it react to the first time you drop it? Seriously, that's one thing I can't stand about new phones... they make them glossy and shiny and yet if you were to accidentally drop it, the best you can hope for is a gash in that glossy finish. So you've gotta wrap it in an ugly shell or faux leather case.
 
wbarnhill said:
I don't think it's meant to be a blackberry killer in all honesty. I think it's a hip device aimed at the same demographic that loved the razr, krzr, etc. The late teens, early 20s college crowd who loves their ipods, and this is just one step further and they don't even need to carry multiple devices.
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Fair enough, but the space BlackBerry users fill is where the money's at. I mean if you think that Razr-Krzr-iPod crowd is fanatic about their devices...

wbarnhill said:
That said, I have the same concerns others have asking about battery life. And of course, it's a nice looking phone with the glossy exterior, but how will it react to the first time you drop it? Seriously, that's one thing I can't stand about new phones... they make them glossy and shiny and yet if you were to accidentally drop it, the best you can hope for is a gash in that glossy finish. So you've gotta wrap it in an ugly shell or faux leather case.
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Yeah, those are both big concerns. But I don't think that'll stop anybody from buying them, especially the Apple fanatics. The guy I sit next to at work here is one of them and he owns four -- yes four -- iPods. Why? "Well when a new version comes out I just have to have it." :rolleyes: To people like that, it won't matter if the battery lasts 5 minutes and it crushes like a beer can.
 
ReverendSlappy said:
Steve Jobs could sell a literal pile of crap and the Mac fanboys would line up, cash in hand, and then breathlessly rail against anybody who were to dare to point out that they had, in fact, bought a literal pile of crap.

It's the same old Jobs Reality Distortion Field... Had any other company come out with the exact same product, exact same features, exact same cost, exact same reliability, exact same everything, nobody would've said boo about it. But it's Apple, so of course it necessitates a news flash on CNBC. Whatever. :rolleyes:

But even if it weren't Apple, my opinion would be the same: No keyboard, no way. My advice would be to dump AAPL now before everybody realizes, gee, it's just a lot of hype and the iPhone sure ain't no BlackBerry killer.
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Wow! Thanks for the financial advice.

AAPL is 104.23 as I write this.

I'll buy 25 shares of AAPL from you on October 1, 2007 at that price. Wanna cover me? Anyone? That's a lot of money for a company in that will be in dumper by then. That's a full 3 months after the iPhone will tank.

BTW, the thread was started by the fan boys who wanted to be smug and be assured by that great technology leader, Steve Balmer, that it was all gonna be OK. The ones that think the iPhone will tank.

The people who buy the iPhone - and like I said I won't be one of them for 3 or 4 revs - will just be at the bar and in the office quietly using it and watching you put your nose up and cower and fume. Those damn fan boys will prolly keep torturing you by actually using the thing and liking it, and there will be a lot of them who are so stupid they keep buying them, but maybe if you control your anger for a short while you might be able to borrow one to try it out. You'll have to stand in line behind the cool chicks. :D
 
mikea said:
Wow! Thanks for the financial advice.

AAPL is 104.23 as I write this.

I'll buy 25 shares of AAPL from you on October 1, 2007 at that price. Wanna cover me? Anyone? That's a lot of money for a company in that will be in dumper by then. That's a full 3 months after the iPhone will tank.

BTW, the thread was started by the fan boys who wanted to be smug and be assured by that great technology leader, Steve Balmer, that it was all gonna be OK. The ones that think the iPhone will tank.

The people who buy the iPhone - and like I said I won't be one of them for 3 or 4 revs - will just be at the bar and in the office quietly using it and watching you put your nose up and cower and fume. Those damn fan boys will prolly keep torturing you by actually using the thing and liking it, and there will be a lot of them who are so stupid they keep buying them, but maybe if you control your anger for a short while you might be able to borrow one to try it out. You'll have to stand in line behind the cool chicks. :D
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C'mon now, Mike, the cool chicks already have UMPCs. ;)

And it doesn't make me angry... It just confuses me. I guess I pay for functionality and not for "cool." And the iPhone just doesn't have anything close to the functionality I need, nor do I believe it'll meet the needs of business users out there, and that's the big cash cow. Even if later iterations do, BlackBerry and the like will already be only further entrenched in corporate infrastructures, and I don't see CIOs replacing hundreds of thousands of dollars in mobile messaging infrastructure because teenagers and 20-somethings think the iPhone is cool. That said, it'll still sell... Just not to a level that matches the ridiculous (but typical of Apple) amount of hype behind it.

And if you're so confident in it, I'm, er, familiar with a company that'd be happy to open ya up an account so you can buy some October calls. ;)
 
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I guess the best question is, "Why do you really care if the iPhone tanks?" unless you have a stake in the company you can't get rid of quickly. I like the phone, and will purchase one, if you don't like it, I say stick with your current phone and plan. I'm a pretty recent Mac convert, as I just got tired of Spyware, and Viruses and all sorts of endless updating, and patches, and whatever, so I decided to try out a Mac. It was slow going at first, but within a year, I'd purchased a Mac Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro, an iPod or two, .Mac service (so cool), and now I'm on the wait list for the iPhone. The reason I'm buying it is simple, it will sync with .Mac. Love it, I can manage my customers information from a single source over numerous PC's without any configuration required, well, I have to login to .Mac once. Can't do that with a Blackberry, and hey this is probably about as useless as debating Highwing vs Low wing on an aviation board...
 
HIGHwing said:
I guess the best question is, "Why do you really care if the iPhone tanks?" unless you have a stake in the company you can't get rid of quickly. I like the phone, and will purchase one, if you don't like it, I say stick with your current phone and plan. I'm a pretty recent Mac convert, as I just got tired of Spyware, and Viruses and all sorts of endless updating, and patches, and whatever, so I decided to try out a Mac. It was slow going at first, but within a year, I'd purchased a Mac Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro, an iPod or two, .Mac service (so cool), and now I'm on the wait list for the iPhone. The reason I'm buying it is simple, it will sync with .Mac. Love it, I can manage my customers information from a single source over numerous PC's without any configuration required, well, I have to login to .Mac once. Can't do that with a Blackberry, and hey this is probably about as useless as debating Highwing vs Low wing on an aviation board...
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You fan boy. :cheerswine:

As we've discussed ad nauseum those who haven't tried switching know better than those of us who have.

My Window Mobile phone is a curse and barely usable. The sad thing is it looks like my most viable choice until iPhone ver 4 comes out, is another WM phone with a usably-faster CPU. :vomit:
 
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HIGHwing said:
I guess the best question is, "Why do you really care if the iPhone tanks?" unless you have a stake in the company you can't get rid of quickly. I like the phone, and will purchase one, if you don't like it, I say stick with your current phone and plan. I'm a pretty recent Mac convert, as I just got tired of Spyware, and Viruses and all sorts of endless updating, and patches, and whatever, so I decided to try out a Mac. It was slow going at first, but within a year, I'd purchased a Mac Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro, an iPod or two, .Mac service (so cool), and now I'm on the wait list for the iPhone. The reason I'm buying it is simple, it will sync with .Mac. Love it, I can manage my customers information from a single source over numerous PC's without any configuration required, well, I have to login to .Mac once. Can't do that with a Blackberry, and hey this is probably about as useless as debating Highwing vs Low wing on an aviation board...
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I care because it might actually stop the flood of all techincal support questions being answered with "get an iMac."

I also care because I do not trust Apple after the crap they've pulled in the past, and any company as shady as Apple deserves to be in the ground.

edit: More than anything, I care because the video was kinda funny.
 
mikea said:
You fan boy. :cheerswine:

As we've discussed ad nauseum those who haven't tried switching know better than those of us who have.
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Like I think I mentioned a while ago, I used a PowerBook on and off for a bit. It wasn't bad, and it did what I needed it to. But overall, if Windows isn't an option, I'd rather run Ubuntu over OS X (and save the $$$). It just didn't impress me all that much... Nice and functional, but mainly a bunch of flashiness to the point that it was almost schmaltzy. But that's just me... I'm the "a fancy UI is a sure sign of a developer with not enough real work to do" type, so... :dunno:

mikea said:
My Window Mobile phone is a curse and barely usable. The sad thing is it looks like my most viable choice until iPhone ver 4 comes out, is another WM phone with a usably-faster CPU. :vomit:
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Yeah... it's been my experience going back to PocketPCs and later Windows Mobile devices that you can never have enough power under the hood.
 
Nice phone Alon, but for a pocket PC I want AT LEAST a 3.5" screen.
 
ReverendSlappy said:
Yeah... it's been my experience going back to PocketPCs and later Windows Mobile devices that you can never have enough power under the hood.
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I think they made the decision put in a 200MHz CPU due to cost and battery life. Now that have 400 (and 800Mhz?) CPUs.
 
Ken Ibold said:
Since Jobs is going around making iEverything, I guess it's time to copyright my last name.
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I dunno... That didn't stop him from taking iPhone from Cisco. I'd be afraid, very afraid... :D
 
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