Here it is. The first post on my iPhone from the Wordpress app. Pretty cool. I kinds had to skirt around the rules to get the iPhone…
I went over to Rogers as a new activation, only got the 8GB, and I’m going to have to wait until I refuse the shipment of the iPhone I ordered from Fido before I can swap in my phone number (you know, the asian friendly one).
C’est la vie. I’ll save a little money in the mean time.
I’ve been taking a few days off, I went to Niagara Falls to take in the sites and hurt a few muscles. That’s another story all together.
When I got back, I received an email from a guy who… get this:
Small world. Connected world. Cool.
You all know I’m a Mac User. I swear by most things made by Apple (Save for the “Mighty Mouse” and any hard-drive based iPod). But this was too funny to pass up.
I Googled my name (Matty G) and found “mattyg.net.” Of course I was curious, so I clicked the link. It forwarded me to a “MobileMe” ad page. I wish I could cash in on that bit of advertising.
So we all know the bad publicity that Rogers has been getting lately.
We all have heard the rumours of redirected iPhones that were supposed to go to Canada are now going to the UK to remedy their “out of stock” sign on O2’s website.
We’ve all heard the marketing tripe that Rogers has spewed about “high value” and all that bull that translates to a big FOAD from Uncle Teddy.
But in all of the stuff that’s going on, we haven’t heard anything from our good friends from Apple Canada or even the Great and Mighty Steve down in Cupertino. They have as big a stake in this as Rogers does. Rogers is going to lose out and Apple is going to lose money over people not buying the iPhone in Canada. Mind you, Apple won’t lose as large amounts of money as if the US boycotted AT&T, or even possibly O2 in England, but they’re still going to lose money.
So what say you, Apple? You’ve stayed hush on the whole thing. Is their something up your sleeve as someone had (supposedly) quoted one of your CSR’s saying to a Canadian customer? Are you really diverting iPhones away from Canada? We’ve been waiting for a year for the iPhone; when we finally get the new and improved iPhone, we get collectively screwed on rate plans from the monopoly on the GSM network. Why, Steve, Why?
I, once again, got a response from the Rogers/Fido consortium on my iPhone rant. To save time, I’ll just c/p my reply in which I wrote my rebuttal based on what she wrote. It starts now:
I’d like to give you a response that is more, perhaps, polite than the average rabid iPhone fan would give you, based on what I’ve read, and how I feel personally.
On Jul 4, 2008, at 6:24 PM, Rogers Communication Person, who’s name will be kept private wrote:
The iPhone 3G bundles released on June 27 are not the only price plans
available to our customers, they are the high value plans that allow our
customers to use this device to its fullest and offer considerable
savings over separate voice and data plans that exist in our market
today.As always, our customers have many choices, they can use their existing
voice and smartphone data plans if they wish, including for example,
selecting from our new data pricing (ranging from $30 for 300MB to $100
for 6GB or $50 Flex Rate plan) and then adding a voice plan that suits
their own needs, or they can choose a voice and data plan to best suit
their individual needs. Additionally, our customers do not need to take
the value packs and can order most other features a la carte, such as $7
for Caller ID.
When compared to International Carriers with the iPhone:
As an existing customer, your account is unique. Depending on your
needs, you can keep your existing voice service plan and pick a separate
data plan (not in the iPhone 3G bundle) to meet your needs. On pre-paid,
you will need to check your upgrade eligibility, but any customer with a
monthly service fee that is over $30 for example, can upgrade to an
iPhone 3G at $199 (for the 8GB model). Other pricing may be available
depending on the your individual account information.
I hope this provides you with some information on the many options that
exist for the iPhone which were not initially reported.
But the data plans, at the theoretical top speed of HSPA of roughly 7 Mbps, it would take only about 7 minutes (at top speed) to download 400MB. And on the iPhone, that is possible with the 8GB (or 16GB) storage. I know of the option to bump it down to EDGE speeds, however, part of the “gadget lust” *is* the high speed network.
And for me, someone who doesn’t live in or near the downtown core of any of the major cities in Canada, wi-fi is not as readily available.
As I said to Investor Relations, “Are you still wanting to play catch up?” I think Rogers could lead the pack of wireless carriers by offering unlimited data on the iPhone. It would have Bell and Telus shaking in their collective boots - like they were when they heard about the iPhone in the first place.
Here’s an open letter to all the Big Contacts that were on RuinediPhone’s Blog:
To whom it may concern:
Let me begin to say, I have respected the Fido brand for many years. I haven’t had a Fido phone due mostly to the fact that I or my mother have worked for the competition for years and have had ridiculous discounts that I would never expect you to fulfill.I was caught up in the excitement surrounding the iPhone, and its release here in Canada. I was so excited that I cancelled my account with the competition and ported my number to a Fido prepaid phone, just so the upgrade to the iPhone would be quick and seamless.When the rates were released, the excitement died. Not only would I have to pay $20 more than I currently do; I would lose 100 minutes per month, unlimited incoming calls, 125 text messages and call display for that price. The uproar that you may or may not have heard about on ruinediphone.com seems to revolve around the lack of data included in the package. This is easily solved: match the unlimited browsing feature that Bell will have on the Samsung Instinct, which I believe is either $7 or $10 per month. Also, having a “mandatory” 3 year contract turns off a lot of possible customers. The rest of the world offers unlimited browsing and shorter contract terms; maybe you should match the rest of the world and actually lead the other phone companies to lower prices.It’s not too late to “sweeten” the deal for the iPhone. Drop the contract obligation, add some minutes, make the data unlimited and maybe you will get Bell shaking in their collective boots - like they were before you released the monthly pricing. Having heard the uproar, you are allowed to react and make the thousands of rabid iPhone fans happy again - along with your shareholders.
“You will be able to use most of our existing voice & data plans & are not limited to the four iphone bundles that were announced. We require a contract because we are selling a $600 device to the customer for $199. we don’t offer unlimited data plans but are looking at the sizing of the buckets.”
“I do understand and have heard that iPhone customers are not required to get the iPhone packages. However, with current pricing structures at both Rogers and Fido, the consumer would not be able to get even half of the features that are included with the iPhone plans for even the same price.As for the mandatory contract, I would gladly pay $100-$150 more if I could sign a 2 year contract rather than a 3 year.As for the “size of the bucket”, my news feed just popped up yet another unlimited data package: Telus will sell the HTC Touch Diamond in August with the $30 unlimited messaging and surfing, on device that can serve up full web pages. Are you still wanting to play catch up?Thank you again for your time.”
So I got out of my contract with Telus over the excitement of the iPhone launch in Canada.
Old news, I know.
So I got a prepaid Fido phone in hopes that when I upgraded to the iPhone I’d still get the good deals they give out to new Post-paid contracted subscribers.
I know, I swore off contracts for the rest of my life, but the iPhone would have stuck with me for a few years. As my wife and every other person who knows my gadget fetish laughs their collective asses off.
Then, the moment of truth as Rogers announces pricing for the iPhone rate plans came out. Then the uproar.
At first, I thought I wouldn’t use more than what I got with the lowest plan ($60, 150 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, 400MB).
Then I realized that $60 actually meant $74.45 plus tax. $60 for the plan, $6.95 for the “System Access Fee” (quotes like that never mean anything good), $0.50 for the 911 fee (which is understandable) and $7 for call display. That’s about $25-30 more than I was paying with Telus.
You all saw the uproar. I think that fuckrogers.com should have stuck… however, maybe it’s not very professional. Enter ruinediphone.com and look at the 30,000+ signatures (mine included, I signed at about the 12,000 mark) that are saying that they aren’t going to buy an iPhone from Rogers. You’d think that at least 30% of those actually were going to buy an iPhone from Rogers/Fido, but now aren’t.
I still have friends that work for Bell Mobility franchises. Before Friday, they were sweating bullets. They probably thought that Rogers was going to offer unlimited surfing for either the $7 or $10 a month - or even match AT&T in the states with the $30 high speed unlimited data. But no…
I emailed one of my friends of the Bell persuasion and told him that I don’t think Bell will have much to worry about.
And now Bell is offering the Samsung Instinct which is the CDMA equivalent of the iPhone (well, not really, but it’s closer than most). No iPod, but it has touch screen with the multi-touch (once again, sort of) and removable/expandable memory that plays music of the un-copy protected persuasion.
Let’s do a comparison, shall we?
| iPhone (Rogers/Fido) | Instinct (Bell) | |
| Price: | $199 - 8GB $299 - 16GB |
Depends on contract $150-$450 |
| Contract: | Manditory 3 Year |
None to 3 year |
| Monthly Cost in Canada: |
$60 ($75+tax with CD & SAF) |
$40 ($61+tax with CD, VM & SAF) |
| Base Plan Includes: | 150 mins daytime, unlimited eve/wkends, 400MB data, 75 text outgoing, unlimited incoming text, visual voicemail | 150 mins daytime, unlimited eve/wkends, unlimited incoming calls (unlimited surfing added for $10) |
| Plan Advantages: | Free wi-fi at Rogers Hotspots, Visual Voicemail, per second billing (Fido), 75 texts included | Unlimited incoming, unlimited surfing |
| Device Advantages: | Glass display cover (less prone to scratching), plays anything iTunes plays, “Exchange for the rest of us”, easy install of new software, syncs with your computer | Monthly cost options, contract options, video camera, user changable battery, comes with extra battery, turn-by-turn GPS out of box |
And that’s just what I’ve read in the last 20 minutes. There are some assumptions on Bell’s unlimited mobile surfing (I’ve read $7 and $10, so I made it the more expensive option), for example, among other points. Don’t take this comparison as gospel.
If anyone has anything else to add, please feel free.
I can’t believe that I’ve hammered out two Wordpress themes in less than a month.
I’ve never gotten one done to my liking completely in, well, less than a month. My first attempt at a completely-from-scratch template was CAMfest, a local arts and music festival website that I did for free ’cause it was a charity, getting off the ground. It was fun. I hammered away at it while they had a placeholder website available to the public.
Fastforward to now. I was asked to finish one website which was coded in PHP, which had no database backend.
Isn’t that slightly pointless?
I upgraded it to Wordpress. I gave them adding and editing new content with an interface that a monkey could use in the time that it took the last guy to code a PHP site with no database. And added videos too.
I just finished up another template for a bunch of professors from a bunch of the colleges in Ontario. Creating art for math. It seems like an oxy moron. And I know, some would argue that fractals are art created with math. Moving on.
After all that I’ve taken in with creating these two templates - getting my feet wet, so to speak - I think I may create a step-by-step giude to creating a Wordpress template from scratch. Might be an interesting writing assignment for myself.
The title may sound like I’m frustrated. Really, I’m not. I just think this will be working on a level of Mathmatics that I should have gone to school for.
Now that I would have been frustrated with.
I guess a little background information is necessary. I’m developing a way of plotting user inputted co-ordinates and getting flash to convert it to draw it on the screen. The way that I want the user to enter the co-ordinates - specifically for circles - having a start/end point and a center point. But from what I’m learning (as I go), Flash uses a Quadratic Bezier formula to create a circle (which takes 8 curves to create a realistic looking circle). How would I translate what is essentially 2 coordinates into 8 curves (of which each has 3 sets of coordinates)?
I’ve downloaded Ric Ewing’s draw methods, and I hope that with the drawWedge method, it will make creating circles a hell of a lot easier.
I thought for the two things that I wanted to rant about, I would make that much geekier, by writing it in Actionscript.
car.prototype.setSpeed = function() {
var maxSpeedKmph:Number = 80;
if (vehicleLane == “right”)
vehicleSpeed = (Math.Random() * 20) + (maxSpeedKmph * 0.85);
} else if (vehicleLane == “left”) {
vehicleSpeed = (Math.Random() * 20) + (maxSpeedKmph * 1.25);
}
};
Ok. That’s about as much as I can stand. Basically, if you’re in the fast lane, you should be *at least* going the speed limit. Please.
The other thing that I find annoying: Has anyone heard that the Ontario Provincial Government, who has labotimized the Health Ministry over the last 15 years (over the course of three parties in power), has added to the stupidity: they are now paying for sex change operations. This from the people that do not pay for dental or eye exams. Both things that I think might be a little more important to the health of the populace. As far as I am concerned, a sex change falls under the medical umbrella of plastic or cosmetic surgery. So is the government going to pay for my nose job because I feel that God didn’t give me the right nose shape?