How do you feel about iPhone philosophy?

[Shabakthanai]

I have been a happy Kubuntu user for a long time. So long that I almost forgot how the Microsoft driven Internet experience behaves. After many years I finally removed my dual-boot which contained a Windows Operating System; I did not use Windows for many years, unless my Kubuntu OS was giving me trouble. Once fixed, I immediately returned to the Linux experience.

A year ago, my daughter sent me an iPhone as a gift. I am old and appreciate the quality gift, a piece of equipment I did not value enough to feel worth while owning, and found that I like it's convenience very much.

Recently Apple decided to make changes in their contract agreements with iPhone users. Now, if you want to update an application you own or was provided, you have to agree to a 20 page in fine print document that only a lawyer would understand.

People have become complacent in recent years and take for granted these agreements and agree to their content, because they know they will not be able to use these addictive products if they do not. As a result they continue to agree to things they would not agree if they read and understood the content.

The fact that the Windows model of being driven by lust and greed is overtaking all of the previous ethical concerns when Apple was not affiliated with the evil, giant, blood sucking parent, a quality company has become corrupted into the evil child of an unprincipled parent.

Linux has made so much forward progress, that the enemy has changed their battle plan trying to seduce Linux users into the lust-greed family. Their toys, phones and the like are very seductive and tempt users to participate.

It's the same old garbage. Entrapping the user is their goal and controlling the use of the wondrous technological products which are now available is the new way to keep Open Source, the care and share way to enjoy life, from getting an increased share of our environment.

Who, among our people is willing to read the content of a take it or leave it 20 page, fine print, document to continue their more free experience in an established and demand product.

I am neither rich nor important, but I have a mind and willingness to reject the evil changes that are growing in this nation. I will not agree to their freedom diminishing contracts. I will then be unable to receive the updates and upgrades that I am entitled. In, what I believe, is probably a very short time, my phone will stop functioning in all the attractive ways provided in the large monthly price to use. At some point I will stop using their products altogether.

I believe the growing respect given to Linux users is an indicator of the weaknesses of the other side. They can see the writing on the wall and are trying to use new and devious ways to trap users of the care and share group of people.

I believe that perhaps the only way for our cause to continue and increase in the Open Source philosophy of fair and morally acceptable behavior, will be to either boycott the changes by rejecting the new changes in practice, or to find new people to invest in the creation of higher quality phones and other equipment that can compete with the immoral giant manufacturers, just like Linux has throughout the years.

I do not believe it will not take as long to show the progress we are now realizing with Operating Systems made by Linux systems. Developers like Kubuntu, Red Hat, and the many others, and the many donating contributors to this cause have done, basically have performed the necessary legwork for an ever growing Open Source experience.

The monsters we have fought against have weakened due to reaching the limits of their greed filled nature. People are finally saying enough-is-enough. They are finally willing to take a look at items that do Not have the fancy label. The many that try the Linux experience sometimes feel a little embarrassed for taking so long to experience the lower cost, higher quality, absent from lust and greed life they have become so familiar with and used to.

Pride is something people seem drawn and desire. But who actually likes the person with his nose in the air and the prideful stride. Perhaps they like his thing-filled environment, I don't know, but most seem to like or even prefer the people who share and give and help others much more. Who do you really like, the braggart or the slightly self deprecating and modest achiever.

Now is the time to contribute to the Open Source philosophy. Get off your corpulent butts and read and reject the fine print documents. Contribute to the contributing producers, and reject the enticements to join the enemy in the computer and communication market.

All the stuff we want and need from the Internet, the supplier of information, is provided to Open Source and lust/greed motivated users alike. The difference is, when motivate by lust and greed you are continually on the websites that result in spyware, adware, virus', lust and greed. When you are among Open Source users, you rarely go to those sites. As a result, you are able to get the information you need without being assaulted by a barrage of people with their hand in your pocket.

It is a totally different experience. In the change to Open Source, people hardly notice the absence of a virus or the annual cost to keep it out of their computer, or the renewal cost for any improvements that a company makes for their newer software, or a supplier hijacking their preferred site to steal the business away from them, or any of the other negative by-products provided in a Microsoft lust and greed filled environment.

Now view the behavior of a new Linux user who stays with Linux long enough to be comfortable with the different way the Linux Operating System works, in the care and share environment, then view their return to the Windows lust/greed environment for nor more than a day, and listen to their disgust and contempt for their prior Operating environment.

Thats MHO.

[Qqmike]

Hard to argue with your points. Another example, the privacy details of Windows 10 is 45 pages. It's all of them doing this, not just Microsoft. There are privacy issues, principles of personal privacy. But "they" really want to target their advertising to ALL users, to each user individually, to maximize revenues. This is a natural evolution of capitalism. Now, you get ads on the Windows 10 start menu. Can you get too much capitalism? At the other extreme, we have the philosophy of Buddhists, guidelines to personal happiness, cautioning against materialism and clinging to and wanting things. The concerning issue is money, and beyond that is greed, and beyond that is the extreme concentration of money in the hands of the very few at the top, and beyond that is the unbalanced distribution of wealth leading to what? world-wide disasters? What are "they" thinking? They are not thinking. Or, they are thinking, What the hell, I won't be around to see the mess I am helping to create. We are at 7 billion. The true test is coming as the world approaches 9 billion humans.

Small computing devices for accessing the Internet do lead to addictive behaviors. As do cigarettes, Starbuck's coffee, booze, shopping malls, and driving fast cars.

People need more education.

Scientists-mathematicians-psychologists-philosophers need to be an important part of decision-making on this planet.

Does that help? What was the question?

[GreyGeek]

In 2010 my son gave me an iPad 4th Gen. A thin litttle device with a four inch screen and an eight hour battery life. It was wifi only. No phone chip inside. My fat fingers made the virtual keyboard nearly impossible to use and my increasing finger tremors didn't help. The next year my son gave me his 10" iPad, wifi only. It's virtual keyboard was "Ok", but I found myself using it for exactly the same things I used the 4" iPad for, playing Angry Birds. Neither device was good for writing documents, programming, or doing work, but the 10" was OK for browsing the web and watching movies on Amazon.

For perhaps 15 years my wife and I have been using the same two flip phones from Motorola. Our "plan" did not include texting, email or web browsing. The little screen hardly seemed practical to do any of that stuff. When some inadvertently sent us a text msg, and we read it, Verizon would charge us 40 cents. If we replied they'd charge us another 40 cents. We were paying $67/mo for two phones. To upgrade to a "smart" phone would require buying new phones and the most affordable plan we could find was 2000 minutes with 200 txt msgs per month, shareable, for $127/mo. Besides, the excess data charges at the time were unarmed robbery. $10 per extra Gb. No thanks.

My son and daughter kept complaining to us to join the 21st century and get texting because that is how they communicated most of the time. It was convenient, they said. They could send a msg when they wanted to (I could call when I wanted to), and they could reply to a msg when they wanted to (I had to answer the phone when it rang or let it go to the "inbox" and log in at a later time and cycle through the unheard calls. Calling back required remembering the contents of the voice mail. Uh oh. My memory is shot. Hence I rarely checked voice mail and my inbox was always full. Who knows how many calls I missed.

Last January my son took the bull (me) by the horns and led me to an AT&T store. They were having a special. Two smartphones, 30GB of data and unlimited phone calls and texting for $110/mo, my share, if I joined their expanding plan which included six lines. Ok, $110/mo beats $127/mo. I bought my wife an iPhone 6 and i bought an iPhone 6+.

WOW! Having a high res screen and the phone chip made all the difference. My fingers are still too big for the virtual keyboard but not for my 5" stylus. I'm typing rather fast, for me. My 9 year old grandson types like lightening, 3 or 4 times my speed, with his two thumbs. My iPhone has 64Gb. After adding a wide range of apps, dozens upon dozens, I still have 35Gb unused. Twenty Gb is being backed up on my iCloud account, which costs $12/yr.

Texting has more power than I ever considered. While fishing with my 9 yr old grandson he lands a 3.5 lb Bass. Out comes the iPhone to document it with a photo, or a hires video, which is immediately msg'd to his mom and dad, to share the moment. Need a paper copy of a document that landed in my gmail inbox? I don't own an AirPort wifi, or Apple laptop, or Apple printer, but I use Dragon Printer to send it to either my HP 1606dn duplex laser printer or to my Kubuntu laptop. Need GPS while driving? Either Apple's Map or one of several GPS driving apps works beautifully, even IF you are outside of a tower connection, because GPS comes directly from satellite. That includes construction and congestion warnings. Need an instant weather report as good or better than the radar reports I used to get while doing flight planning? MyRadar works perfectly. Want 5 day forecasts? Wunderground does the job perfectly.

Your doc tells you that your wife has sleep apnea but in 52 years you have NEVER heard her snore once? SnoreLab answered the question unequivocally. I snore. She does not. Even if she had "Central" (also called "Clear") sleep apnea a C-Pac machine does not help Severe Pulmonary Hypertension.

Most critically, on March 23rd, my wife had her second heart surgery to replace a defective cow valve that was put in during her first heart surgery eight years ago. Because, while waiting for the operation, she developed SPH, and because after the new pig mitral valve was put in her heart, she was still left with a minor regurgitation in the peri-annular ring, adjacent to her aortic artery. And, her tricuspid valve developed a moderate regurgitation because of the SPH developed before surgery, which the doctor was not willing to repair because of her fragile condition. I needed to monitor her heart function without taking her to her cardiologist every time she felt a palpitation or other irregularity. Enter ALiveCor, an EKG device that attaches to the back of my iPhone and communicates to the iPhone via ultrasonic waves. The app is free but the device costs $75. Chicken feed for a device that can record Lead I, Lead II, Lead III and Precordial V4 or V5 (depending on how you place it) EKGs. I've been a runner for the first half of my life and a bicyclist for the last few years before I retired. My resting heart rate was 50-55 BPM and my BP was 120/80, resting. My vital lung capacity was above 5 liters. I never had a palpation, skip beat, or other heart problem. Imagine my surprise when I awoke one mid-September day with tachycardia and palpitations. My own use of the ALiveCor EKG device had given only "Normal" readings with Sinus Bradicardia. That day it showed Atrial Fibrillation with tachycardia, 144 bpm. The valsalva maneuver dropped the HR to 95 bpm but the AF's continued. No doubts that a visit to the Dr was necessary. I am now taking 50 mg of Metoprolol per day along with 2.5 mg of Warfarin. The good news is that the episode is idiopathic, A TE ECG showed clean heart arteries and veins and the valves are in excellent working order. Because my primary physician took the EKG and my cardiologist referred to it instead of taking another when he prescribed the ECG, Humana is balking about paying for it because the doctor didn't report taking an EKG prior to doing the ECG. I'm appealing because the CMS standard in operation (for one month!) during the time time the ECG was taken, which is justified by the EKG showing both AF and Tachicardia, didn't require the same doctor do the EKG at the same time and in the same place. We'll see if my final bill is around $200 or $2,000.

There is so much power (screen resolution, processing speed, RAM capacity, available applications and attachable hardware - I'm looking at a $200 FLIR device) in my iPhone that it has taken over 99% of what I do with a digital computer. On my Kubuntu 14.04 laptop I play Minecraft with my grandsons, and I do online bill paying with my bank, because of app limitations by my bank's app, and sometimes I watch movies on the 17" screen. But the sound on my iPhone is so beautiful (Surround Sound!) and at 12 inches the screen is big enough that my wife and I have been using it to watch Youtube videos and movies online. The Minecraft version for the iPhone isn't as easy or fun to play as it is on Kubuntu, otherwise I'd be using Kubuntu only for banking. I don't program anymore, which would be the only reason why I'd using a big laptop. If my bank releases a more useful banking app for the iPhone I might find myself not using my laptop at all except to play Minecraft with my grandsons. Most of the time I use my iPhone to post messages to this forum, except for this msg. I doubt very seriously that I will be buying another laptop.

We are on the verge of creating a quantum computer running on a Silicon substrate without the need for cryogenic temperatures. Couple that with an AI operating on a smartphone form factor and that will be the death of the laptop for most computer users.
http://www.gizmag.com/silicon-quantum-computer/39711/

[DoYouKubuntu]

Since I'm a Linux-only person, it follows that all of my mobile devices run Linux--in their case, the version known as Android. Therefore, I have no personal experience with Apple, its philosophy about anything, iPhones, etc., but I do know that Linux, including Android, suit me really well.

[GreyGeek]

Indeed, and since we have KDEconnect there is very little in the way between Kubuntu and Android.

Da Boss forced onto me an iPhone 4 and as far as I'm concerned it's beautiful hardware is crippled to death by it's OS.

Apple certainly has erected a walled garden and monitized their gatekeeper, making it difficult to print through non-Apple wifi's to non-Apple printers, or to save data, etc., but there are ways around or through their handcuffs and walls.

[Qqmike]

No i-phones here, just a couple of flip phones (Consumer Cellular, btw, very comfortable plans), but we do have a laptop, two desktops, and two nice 8.4" Samsung tablets.

I was surprised the other day to discover the value of an i-phone or carrying your tablet with you when shopping. At a Target store, I picked up a microwave oven and wanted to grab a pair of gloves while there. Gloves $21 but with a 30% discount, so $14. Found out that discount is for "Cartwheel" customers, ya gotta have your i-phone or tablet with you to get the Target app and to get the discount. A $6 immediate discount for having such with you. I didn't have my 8.4" tablet with me, of course ... The world is changing. Fast.

[logan01]

I have an older 4S which I like. Don't do much on it other than about 10 minutes conversation time, perhaps a text or two every 24 hours, check emails, a small amount of internet. I get about 65 hours of battery life (fairly easily) so you can see I don't live on it. I have a great appreciation for the quality of the phone, battery, hardware, software. I detest the absurd controlling nature of Apple. for example, downgrading features of browsers other than Safari; things like that.

[GreyGeek]

Just having the tablet/phone with you isn't enough, you also pay through the nose for a data plan.

That's a fact! My son and his wife and my grandson are living in a hotel right now while their house is being remodeled. They have a 40GB data plan with six lines. Normally my 9 year old grandson plays his iPhone games at home connected to his AirPort wifi. Even then he'll use 12GB of cellular data per month. This month he crossed 24GB with 10 days to go! AT&T has been happy to charge their account an additional $15/GB, which he is burning daily! Checking my cellular data I notice that I burn about 500-800 MB/mo. My wife uses less than 200 MB/m.

For AT&T it's like charging customers for the oxygen they breathe. They can't tell me that they are selling the contracts at a loss and have to make their profits on over charges.