Life & Technology

With the launch of the iPhone in Australia today, all the carriers will be getting their marketing people onto pushing their unique payment plans and features that their competitors cannot offer.

Telstra released what it said was the fastest mobile broadband modem in the world that is capable of downloads of up to 21Mbps, which is impressive. No doubt as part of their marketing strategy they will be touting this network’s capability, but at the end of the day, it is irrelevant because the iPhone is only capable of 7.2Mbps download anyway.

But this brings up an even wider question. Even though the mobile is capable of speeds up to 7.2Mbps, does it necessarily mean it will go that fast? The short answer is no. What affects the speed is how many people are using the tower at the same time. And this is something you won’t hear the carriers talking about. When buying the new phone it is worth testing the various speeds of the carriers. Most shops should have a testing SIM card from each carrier. Of course, this is only important to those who use the internet via their mobile to use downloads.

But is it something worth thinking about, and you can be sure that the carriers are not going to make consumers aware of the real reasons behind lack of network speed, or in the case of Telstra, an over capacity.

Today Show

Had a lot of fun over the past couple of days with the new Apple iPhone. I was never a fan of the phone in the past mainly because it did not have tethering ability, which is now has. This means the phone acts as a wi-fi modem so I can connect to the Internet will travelling around.

This is a great little unit, which has a tonne of new functions over its predecessor. It has quicker downloads; a Tap-To-Focus feature on its camera, which means you can focus on a particular spot when taking a picture; it now has a video option; you can dial a person or get a piece of music using its voice recognition technology; on-the-go encryption for security; the ability to wipe information your phone via your PC if it gets stolen; a touchscreen made of special glass that is easy to clean; as well as more than 50,000 applications from the app store. There are various price plans available, check it out.

Steve Price Show

Again, the iPhone got quite a few mentions today, but we also received quite a few phonecalls.

One call was from Margaret who was getting an annoying pop-up from Microsoft, which she wanted to get rid off. I said I’d put up the Microsoft helpdesk number in Australia up, so here it is 13 20 58. This number is available between 8am and 8pm.

Damien asked if he could buy an iPhone in the US and use it in Australia. Unfortunately the answer is no because US carrier AT&T (their version of Telstra) has exclusive rights to the phone over there, which means it is locked to that network.

Robert was having problems with his iPhone and not getting alerts that he had new text messages awaiting. I will get the answer on how to remedy this shortly. I just have to check something out before giving an answer.

All my cards on the table. I like the iPhone. There is a lot of like – it is sleek, has a myriad of apps, tonnes of functionality, is light, easy to navigate, and it’s cool.

But I also like the LG Arena, Samsung Omnia and Blackberry Pearl. However, for some reason they do not have the mystique around them that the iPhone does. There were no huge cues and resellers stores when any of these phones came on the market, nor were there pages of copy written about it, or mentions on the TV So why does this happen with iPhone? Easy. Two words – Steve Jobs.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying people like the iPhone because of him, but he is the master manipulator that gets us all excited when the new units comes out. He is the one that set the ball rolling when he came back on board in 1996 deciding that although the Mac was not the most popular computer platform, there was still a place for it in the tech mainstream.

So he set about looking for new, funky ways of using technology. Remember the first iMac that came out without a floppy drive? I was pretty angry at the time, but within a couple of months I was burning files to CD and using the CD drive. Jobs is a man of vision, and while I sometimes feel he creates unnecessary hype and over exaggerates the capabilities of his products, he certainly does keep his competitors on their toes and makes them try and out-do Apple.

Over the past five-ten years so many innovations have come out due to this competition, that in the end, we the consumers are the winners. So while I can get cynical about the Apple marketing campaign, I do realise there are benefits to be had.