Chris Bracken » Rants http://cbracken.com/blog Weblog of Chris Bracken Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:09:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Apple Reinvents the Phone? http://cbracken.com/blog/2007/01/26/apple-reinvents-the-phone/ http://cbracken.com/blog/2007/01/26/apple-reinvents-the-phone/#comments Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:21:39 +0000 Chris Bracken http://cbracken.com/blog/2007/01/26/apple-reinvents-the-phone/ After watching the Steve Jobs iPhone keynote, I have to say I’m a little disappointed. While this phone has a slicker GUI than any other phone I’ve seen, it’s not so much the $499 US price-tag, but the stone-age functionality of the phone that makes my jaw drop.

Here in Japan, for 1 yen, I can get the following in a cellphone:

  • 3G download speeds of 50 Mb/s
  • Two-way video-phone
  • Built-in fingerprint scanner (for security checks)
  • MP3 player and download service
  • Edy BitWallet (like Interac, except you swipe your finger on the phone’s scanner to accept the transaction)
  • Can be used as a Suica train pass
  • Can buy movie tickets and scan in at the theatre, bypassing the lineup
  • Can wave it at vending machines for food and drinks
  • Will figure out train routes, transfer locations and times, and ticket prices
  • Can scan barcodes which take you to websites – eg. scan at the bus station to pull up the schedule or scan a magazine to order a product
  • MP3 player and download service
  • Decent email (+ attachments), SMS, calendaring, notepad
  • Automatic location triangulation (by determining which antennae are nearby) and location-aware mapping, shopping/restaurant listings
  • Interactive mapping of current location with zooming and scrolling
  • Integrated graphical web-browser
  • Built-in TV tuner
  • 1 megapixel Camera, Video camera
  • Display/graph your phone usage to the day
  • Can write and deploy your own Java/C/C++ applets

If you go for a high-end phone with more than the above, you’ll need to pay more than one yen, but the price range is normally below ¥20,000 ($200 Canadian). In its current state, the iPhone won’t sell in Japan even if it’s free; Apple is going to have to do some major work if it wants to compete with even the bare-bones models on the market in Japan.

]]> http://cbracken.com/blog/2007/01/26/apple-reinvents-the-phone/feed/ 0 A Mystery Solved http://cbracken.com/blog/2006/09/02/tokyotrashmystery/ http://cbracken.com/blog/2006/09/02/tokyotrashmystery/#comments Sat, 02 Sep 2006 03:22:23 +0000 Chris Bracken http://cbracken.com/blog/2006/09/02/tokyotrashmystery/ One of my biggest complaints about Japan has always been the complete and utter lack of garbage bins in this city. There are none to be found. If you buy a (most likely seriously overpackaged) snack, you either have to carry all the wrapping and leftovers around with you until you get home, or toss it on the street. But the streets are impeccably clean here, which had led me to believe that like me, the other 12 million people out for a walk this afternoon, will be carrying their litter around in their backpacks and shopping bags.

But it turns out this is not the case: an article in Metropolis unveils the answer to The Big Tokyo Trash Mystery.

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