Greetings, readers. The Best Commenter Ever has been MIA for the past few days but now it will be up daily at about 9PM EST. Thanks for your great comments, they have been increasing in quality and we are really grateful that we have such an active readership.
Anyway, ProfessionalGun earned the first spot after telling us what he thought about Apple fanboyism. We agree.
Cheers to that, Nicholas. Apple makes very inspired products that pull a very devoted fan-base. . . but the defensiveness has gotten incredibly out of control. Criticizing Apple these days is as severe an offense as calling someone’s mother a whore. I’m surprised that people care that much. Go enjoy your system and let the haters hate, right? Personally, I find that any other approach reflects badly on the collective mentality of the users. (And as usual, it’s probably the vocal minority that ruins it for everyone else.)
The argument could be made, though, that Apple is responsible for the shit-slinging attitudes perpetuated by their adoring fans. Their recent advertising campaign (I’m a Mac, I’m a PC) is like trash-talking politics at its worst. I’d much rather see a company let its products speak for themselves, rather than throwing low-blows at the competition.
Lance earned 2nd by sharing his thoughts on the format war.
I look at this format war as a replica of what happened during the VHS vs. Beta war decades ago. The argument Mr. Lowe makes seems to be (I can only make assumptions here since there are no direct quotes attributed) is that Blu-Ray is the only possible winner because it’s the better format due to a larger data capacity alone, and that cost-cutting players isn’t going to make any difference.
Looking back, this sounds like the same old argument Sony made against VHS. Beta was a better product, better quality, better everything. But Beta lost, because VHS undercut it in price and the tapes were cheaper. I’d also argue that this is why Windows is more prevalent than Mac – the hardware and software might be better on a Mac, but it’s cheaper on a Windows machine.
When it comes down to it, given two generally equal choices in a technology war, consumers have chosen the cheaper alternative. I don’t think a price differential can be so easily dismissed.
Ricky Cadden‘s input on the iPhone data plan put him in 3rd.
I think it was a wise decision. Let’s face it, as commented above, Apple went with AT&T based on $$. (Frankly, it was really only between Verizon and AT&T, in my opinion). That left the option of either 3G (HSDPA/UMTS) or EDGE. EDGE was the smarter choice. Why?
Because AT&T doesn’t have nationwide 3G. Thus, either they would have to geographically limit availability (not good) or they would have people who live in an EDGE area buying the 3G iPhone, and having an inferior experience. And we know how Jobs feels about inferior experiences with his products.
Personally, I don’t think the EDGE network is all that slow. They’ve been sprucing it up (I think it was called Operation Fine Edge) and I can tell, using a Nokia N95, I’ve seen data transfer speeds increase lately.
Plus, I don’t think the iPhone is all that data-intensive. I average 500MB/month on my phone currently, and that’s downloading music/podcasts, streaming video, checking Gmail obsessively, and surfing the net in general.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and giving us feedback (yes, we read all of it). Keep up the good work guys!