Comments on: Report: Apple and AT&T to partner on U-Verse, $99 Netbook

By: CCS

CCS — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:58:39 +0000

Come on you guys! They found a bunch of old eMates and are going to stuff 3G cards into them. ;-)

Kidding aside, there are plenty of non-Windows OSes out there.

By: appleton

appleton — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:56:17 +0000

Seems like this “100% source” is making things up to me – as @daGUY has pointed out, how can they release a product so much cheaper than the iPhone yet include so much more functionality. Smells like BS.
http://appleton.me/2009/03/apples-99-netbook/

By: appleton.me // Apple’s $99 Netbook? // A blog about the web, technology, design and engineering

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:53:08 +0000

[...] is quite apart from the point made by a commenter at RoughlyDrafted that a netbook would cost more to produce yet expect to sell for less than the [...]

By: cfJeff

cfJeff — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:11:15 +0000

Sounds like a good match (for Apple to get more devices into the consumers hands) but how far can it go? I have Uverse and have considered dropping the cable TV and getting all my content off of iTunes. The only thing I would miss is sports and that’s why they invented Sports Bars.

By: Why build a device when an app would do? « Sharing the truth one thread at a time

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:33:49 +0000

[...] the obesity crisis is over? Why build a device when an app would do? March 24, 2009 Roughly Drafted: A report citing a source “pretty high up in AT&T’s food chain” says it has “100% [...]

By: John E

John E — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:19:26 +0000

the rumored new U-Verse iPhone app would just be like the SlingPlayer Mobile app demo’d at MacWorld and scheduled to be released soon, which will work with all CATV systems and even TiVo. it will be a good new feature for the much smaller number of consumers who use the slick and seamless but very tightly controlled and limited U-Verse setup instead of CATV. but that’s all, hardly innovative or earth-shaking.

a subsidized Apple net-whatever would be a big deal tho. the advantage of an AT&T high speed data plan that worked anywhere without needing wifi hotspots would be huge, potentially worth a two year contract. VOIP would have to be blocked tho – no microphone, not even an input. but if it is as large as a 10″ screen as rumored, $99 is hard to believe unless the data plan costs a lot.

By: gus2000

gus2000 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:21:12 +0000

I tried the demo U-Verse TV receiver in the AT&T store, and it was so abysmal that I’m happily paying the $100/month extortion to Time Warner cable instead. If AT&T figured out that the biggest consumer impediment to adoption was the user-surly interface, they may have approached their partner Apple for help.

I’m actually mad I didn’t think of this first.

By: MarkyMark

MarkyMark — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:36:18 +0000

I dunno, it seems to me like U-verse needs a much broader market penetration for this to make sense. Plus they have so far been mainly implementing FTTN. At least they’re already running H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) over IP multicast, thank god.

By: danpoarch

danpoarch — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:21:00 +0000

So… A DVR/WiFi/3G-repeater box that you put in your home for tight DVR/Cable/On-Demand integration, with wifi and better cell reception? I guess that what we’re talking about? AppleTV on steroids? Hmm…

Apple has always said that they don’t see how to make money on the netbook market. Maybe this is their trick. Subsidized/subscription model to support the cost. An $800 netbook that you pay $100 upfront and $100/month [Sounds like the current iPhone]. I mean think about it, the iPhone costs must have plummeted for Apple at this point. Shared technologies could put a netbook at the $800 price point. The proven market and Apple’s sales potential could bypass the higher premium paid for the original iPhone. ATT could have signed on at the already-adjusted contract price so they can hang on for the big money. That in concert with an enhanced AppleTV would definitely mop the floor with anything else offered currently.

This is all geekery for now. I’ll believe it all when I see it.

By: thgd

thgd — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:19:46 +0000

From what I read U-Verse uses Microsoft’s IPTV platform.
Does this mean Apple and MS would also be closely working together ?