Will you be ordering the new iPhoneS or C ?

Google Voice, Google+, Skype and FaceTime. As far as I know and it's not much since my Blackberry limits my experience, all 4 services are distinct and not a replacement for the other except possibly Skype and FaceTime since both can do voice chat through mobile. But Skype is much more than FaceTime. And if I am wrong then I really need a 5s, pronto. Gold please because it's a new color.


iPhone ? - now Free

 

I've already noticed that they play less commercials.

 

^^ I expect the twitter from next week to be:
iPhone buyer sues Apple over use of 'fool's gold'

Joking aside, I doubt those sky high auctions are real. I looked at the completed auctions for the Gold iPhone on it's way to me, and found they sold for $900 - $1000. After I pay for shipping and Ebay fees the profit is around $100.

 

I have the 5 and am contemplating selling it on eBay and getting the 5s. I upgraded to ios7 and am very impressed. Lots of nice features and mighty snappy to boot! Am imagining the 5s will be even speedier!

 

Since the entire family now has and only uses cell phones, we cancelled our home land line a few months ago and no longer miss paying $60/mth to be spammed by telemarketers but there's been a few times I've wished I still had one so this option you've outlined above will work nicely. Just ordered the slightly cheaper OBi100 box from Amazon and obtained a GV number.

Thanks.

 

hmm..

Perhaps it would help to think of the services in a table: internet protocols as rows, and inter-operability as columns. Google Docs Summary.

 

Why would anybody buy a used phone on eBay and pay as much as the cost of the new phone??? Why wouldn't they just buy the new phone if they're willing to pay that much?

 

eBay is weird that way. Way back one of my auctions for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer VHS set sold for more than the cost of new. I didn't say shipping was free but at that price, I happily gave the buyer a break.

And I can own up to buying something on eBay for a higher price than what the seller was selling in his own online store a few clicks away. Felt really stupid. Sometimes, you just get caught up in it.

Out of desperation, I unlocked DW's Verizon iPhone 4S to work on T-Mobile last night. So it looks like we'll wait it out until the Gold 5s becomes openly available circa Jan 2014.

So far, none of my coworkers are raving about iOS 7. They like it but no one has told me I have to upgrade yet.

 

Besides the foreign markets, two others reasons I know of:

1) No contracts. New $6-800, used $200.

2) Poor credit: can't pass a credit check with a major carrier/no credit card, etc.

 

This is where a Google number (GN) has proved SO liberating. No more being held hostage to a carrier's tele number; I just forward the GN to whatever device I want. It did take a while to propagate the GN to our human 'network' but now switching carriers does not have any barrier of old telephone numbers.

Heck, I don't even have to deal with porting nonsense.

JMD, re medical emergencies: I personally think the entire advantage of a local number is a PR stunt, but I seem to remember that you can manually add a default address to mobile phones.

 

Tmobile allows you to place an address on file for 911 calls. If you get AT&T home phone service, they have a per minute rate for some $11. It comes with a small allowance of voice minutes and then per minute rates. That's what we used to have at home for emergencies before GPS was built into cell phones. Home phone locates me at my address. The cell phone locates me in the garage or the backyard.

 

Okay, so a new phone is subsidized by the contract, and someone who does not want the contract gets your used phone cheaper than they'd have to pay if they don't take the contract. That makes sense. Thanks, JMD.

The cardinal rule of auctions is to decide beforehand what your maximum price is. eBay makes that easier with their automatic bid system: Tell them your maximum price and they'll bid for you in the minimum increments. And you don't have to worry about the other guy waiting and slipping in a bid at the last minute. I've over-bid only in charity auctions, when I wanted to support the cause or organization. Once I wanted to get a gift for someone who had done me a nice turn. She loved jigsaw puzzles, and there was a nice one in the fund-raising auction my local peace group was putting on. I decided I was going to buy it and I didn't care if it cost a couple of hundred dollars. When the bidding had reached $20, I bid $50 and got the puzzle. It probably would have cost half that new. My friend was pleased with the gift and I supported the group.

Today my iPad Mini offered to upgrade to iOS 7. I will upgrade, but not yet. I'm going to give it a while longer. It has nothing I'm in a hurry for, and maybe they'll find and fix a few bugs in the meantime.

I did some googling on "iPad rumors," and everyone seems to think the Mini 2 will be announced next month and come out before the holiday mad shopping season with the latest Apple mobile chip and retina display. If my eyes can see a difference, I may upgrade and get the 32 gig instead of just 16. Mine is 16 and nearly full. I never expected to have so many apps on it. My very first computer was a Kaypro 2X with 64 kilobytes of memory, and IIRC about a 2 KHz clock speed. (Wikipedia says it had a 2.5 MHz processor.) My iPad Mini has a quarter of a million times more memory than my old Kaypro, and I'm seriously considering doubling that.

A friend back in those days had a Radio Shack Color Computer and he was fond of pontificating that nobody could possibly actually make use of more than 16 KB of memory.