Hi Scott. Thanks for the info, and the compliment. It does sound like my info on the US is outdated, which makes me wonder why on earth Apple continue to foist carrier restrictions on customers and insist on deals for sales. If Apple wants all the control, they can easily go all-out retail, and take it. So why don’t they? I can assure you that on this dank little island, as well as other major players in Europe, the margins on carrier-supplied gear is as low as it can possibly get, and there are no subsidies either. For consumers, Apple is just the very expensive, but very attractive option, and not much else. We could do without the absurd fawning over the health of carrier relationships. I have put this down in a couple of bug reports to Apple, and they only ever get fixed when the carrier agrees to sales targets for Apple. It’s ridiculous.
As for FM radio, I’m really with you. Convergence is a good and healthy thing. And indeed, between demand, hardware design, aerial design, and chipset limitations, it probably just doesn’t make any sense. Still, I do hear those arguing on the basis of emergency communications, and nostalgia. Certainly the one thing FM can do that the Internet can’t, at least now, is work anywhere there is reception of the broadcaster. We need to get the Internet to a place where radio mesh networking can take up the slack in times of crisis, or resilient community networks are built and sustained. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, and I’m fairly sure it will happen, one day. Then the Internet will always be available, cheap, and reliable, and people won’t think twice before turning on the “Radio”. Cheers, Sabahattin -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
