Built in maps worked fine for me in my limited testing
- Turn by turn to my new house that is still being built
- Found my parents house
- Looked up a couple of restaurants. No issues.
Then again I consider my self a pretty light user of maps.
What is Apple doing here?
-No availability for phones;
-No availability for cables to replace my existing setups (car, bedroom, computer);
-no docks or holsters;
I like my 4, although I am really on the fence about staying with Apple vs. moving to an Android phone. The iPhone 5 itself looks great. Its all of the other baggage on both sides that give me pause. I am a decided wait-and-see with this.
This woman has some solid reasoning to why you should get the IPhone 5.
I heard Samsung already hired her for there next waiting in line commercial.
Well, wait and see is the best approach here since the stuff you’re complaining about is mostly an artifact of the phone having been out for three days now…
I walked into the Apple store near my house in San Francisco and bought three lighting to USB cords.
And the reason there’s no availability on the phones is because they’re sold out. APPLE IS D0MED?
I just bought a Lightning-USB at the Apple Store in Seattle’s Southcenter. Need it for my car’s USB port.
I picked up two lightning-USB cables at the apple store. There was a whole wall of them. Granted at $19 a pop for a stupid cable is a complete rip off. I can’t wait until the cheap Chinese knock off cables come out on ebay for $2.50 each shipped.
No, I don’t give a shit about scratches. I do care about shattered glass, which is why I put my iphone4 in a case. But the iphone5 doesn’t need one.
You know what was crazy? I’ve avoided Apple Stores for a year, but I went in today to buy a new Lightning cable. And they’ve got a sign right next to them saying you can just pay using the iPhone Apple Store app and walk right out. I ended up taking it to one of the employees to pay, and it took a minute because they were all talking to customers. He got my credit card and asked if I knew about paying through the App. I said, “But don’t I need a sticker or something from you guys to show I paid?”
“No, we trust you.”
So there really is no reason you couldn’t buy an cable on the app, then walk in the store, take the accessory off the wall, and walk right out. And you don’t need mental gymnastics to realize you could probably skip the entire “paying” part of that formula, walk in, take it off the wall, and walk out. They won’t bat an eye. (Maybe pretend to fitz around on your iPhone for a minute to make it look like you’re paying.)
I gotta think Apple does this because their employees are slammed helping customers on much bigger purchases (iPhones, iPads, Macs), and tearing them away to process a $30 transaction is not time efficient. Besides, their wholesale price on cables and cases has got to be peanuts, anyway, so who cares if they get stolen? It’s a rounding error on their balance sheet.
That is pretty much anti-consumer evil incarnate. The cable should cost 3-4 bucks from Amazon.
I’ve payed for smallish items using the store app 2 or 3 times now. Save effort and is frictionless. What’s not to like?
But I agree that I could never imagine best buy or similar doing this…
Diego
Wow, that’s just sick. :(
I’m sure there is some official Apple reason as to why this sort of thing is necessary, but it’s hard not to see it as Apple gouging their consumers. Because most people will grumble, open their wallets, and then forget about it.
Between the cable and the maps fiasco, it’s making me really second guess my purchase. It feels very much like a shift away from being driven by customer needs, and focusing more on Apple’s bottom line. It’s a shame too, as I’ve been happy with my iPhones so far. I grumbled a bit about the 4S at first, but the camera really won me over.
Writing “This Is The Chip Apple Is Using To Stop You From Buying Cheap Cables” makes for an attention-grabbing headline, but if you consider that the cable lets you plug it in in either direction, there’s maybe another reason or two for it to be a “smart” cable.
Super. It’d be awful nice if you could buy a knock-off, even it it wasn’t reversible.
I’d think that the “made for iPhone” program still allows people to make knock-off cables, but I’m just guessing. It’d still be more expensive, of course, but then it gets tested/certified and they get a shiny logo…
Wait, why doesn’t the iPhone 5 need a case?
The back of the iphone4 was glass, and not even gorilla glass. It shattered if you looked at it wrong. The back of the iphone5 is metal. Soft metal, anodized aluminum, so it’ll dent and scratch like crazy, but it won’t shatter. The top and bottom of the rear are gorilla glass 2, which can break, but won’t do so at the drop of a hat.
That’s my reasoning, anyway.