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You’re completely missing the point of his article. Did the iPod touch have a hardware problem? Yes. Was HIS problem with the iPod touch a hardware problem? No. HIS problem was a software issue that was well-known and well-documented.

This would be like me taking in my car because there was a safety recall on the brakes, and having my dealership tell me that they won’t fix the brakes because my front bumper is scratched.

Anyway, I can definitely attest to the fact that Apple customer service at the Genius Bars has taken a serious turn for the worse, but that’s to be expected when a company gets as big as Apple is now. I’ve had some great experiences and some terrible experiences at the Genius Bar, but the reality is that customer service used to be an anchor point that I would use when heavily recommending Apple hardware over the alternatives. I would tell people that Apple would go far above and beyond what, say, HP or Dell would. Now that’s not really the case.

Their customer service is still far better than anyone else when it comes to the iPhone, but that’s only because of how abysmal the service is through your carrier or from competing OEMs. When it comes to their other products, they’re basically on par with everyone else, or only slightly better.

about 11 hours ago on Is this cnet review editor out of line? 2 replies

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Rdio does that too.

about 14 hours ago on How Google beat Apple to a streaming music service

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I’m in a similar boat – dying to upgrade my laptop from 2010 and looking hard at the retina line, but everything I’ve read about Intel’s upcoming Haswell architecture makes me want to wait. Haswell promises significant performance and battery life improvements that are orders of magnitude greater than any other generation-to-generation spec bump in Intel’s recent history.

Also, Apple has a history of making significant advancements with their 2nd-gen products (MacBook Air, iPad, etc) that make buying a 1st-gen a sketchy proposition even early in the product cycle, and extremely unwise this late in the cycle.

about 19 hours ago on MacBook Pro Retina: Wait or Switch

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My mother has a 64GB iPad 1. It’s serviceable but definitely not an ideal experience. Apps crash and things are pretty laggy. I’m buying her a new iPad for her birthday (this month!) so I’ll see first hand if she experiences a noticeable difference and report back.

I definitely wouldn’t buy a 1st gen iPad for anywhere close to $200 today.

about 19 hours ago on Does anyone still have a first generation iPad??? 1 reply

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Why don’t you ask Windows Phone users how happy they are with all the Instagram “alternatives” out there. Surely they don’t care about that app when there are dozens of photo-filtering apps in the Windows Phone store?

Just because there are other apps that offer similar functionality, doesn’t mean those apps offer the best execution.

I’m an iOS user who uses a variety of these so-called BBM “alternatives,” but none come anywhere close to being as robust or as satisfying as BBM.

3 days ago on Message received: is BBM for Android and iPhone a sign of strength... or desperation? 1 reply 2 recommends

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This is great news for consumers but terrible news for BlackBerry. As a former BlackBerry user, BBM was one of the anchors of the platform for me and was a big reason for why I stuck with BB for so long. Sure, I use WhatsApp/iMessage/Viber/Facebook now, but BBM was (and still is) hands-down the best messaging platform I have ever used. The only people who don’t see this as a big deal have clearly never used BBM before.
Yes I’m happy that it’s coming to iOS for purely selfish reasons, but this news means there is just one less reason on an increasingly short list of reasons to keep using a BlackBerry.

4 days ago on BlackBerry bringing BBM to Android and iOS this summer 2 replies 5 recommends

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Apple TV use is very scalable across users of varying technical aptitude.

My mom barely knows how to use email, yet she frequently uses her Apple TV for watching videos and photos from her iPad on the big screen TV. My sister rents and buys movies from iTunes and watches them via the Apple TV.

I use mine primarily to listen to music or podcasts from my iPhone on my sound system via AirPlay, and for laptop display mirroring (I have a PC so I have to use AirParrot to do it).

AirPlay is the primary reason I would recommend an Apple TV over something like a Roku. I don’t even use mine for things like Netflix or movie rentals (I use the Xbox 360 for that), but if any of the competing boxes can figure out how to incorporate AirPlay-style features with the ease of Apple’s implementation, I’d have no problem getting something else.

9 days ago on How good is Apple TV?

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Nonspecific monotheism here – kind of like the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica.

I believe in a supreme being but don’t participate in any particular set of rituals relating to worship of that being (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc).

13 days ago on Do you believe in any gods?

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iPhone 4S user here. I was jailbroken for about three weeks. Spent some money on a bunch of Cydia apps (Auxo, Zephyr, Infinifolders, etc) and then went back to stock for stability.

Maybe I’m just unlucky but I had a ton of serious dealbreaker bugs – my phone would no longer sync with my car’s bluetooth receiver properly, the phone crashed all the time, and worst of all, sometimes the camera would take pictures but wouldn’t save them, so I ended up losing a bunch of photos until I realized what was happening (and then I had to constantly check the camera roll out of paranoia).

Believe it or not, the one feature I miss most was a tweak that put a timestamp on every SMS message, instead of the default practice of the iPhone just intermittently timestamping whenever it feels like.
A close second would be the many defaults and intents tweaks (e.g. being able to make Google Maps the default map app, and Chrome the default browser).

18 days ago on To all the jailbreakers

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“The Q10 review is coming,” according to Josh Topolsky on the latest Vergecast (check the last 3-4 minutes of the show) but no specific date or reason for the delay was mentioned.

22 days ago on BlackBerry Q10 Review

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They did briefly mention on the latest Vergecast that “the Q10 review is coming,” so they are indeed reviewing it, but no indication of when it’s coming or why it’s delayed. This was somewhere in the final 3-4 minutes just before the show ended.

22 days ago on BlackBerry Q10: reviews are out!

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I’m in Canada and I have a 6GB data plan. I turned Wi-Fi off for an entire month just to see how much data I was consuming, and I barely broke 2.5GB.

In an average month with Wi-Fi at home and at work I don’t even come close to 1GB.

I consider myself a pretty heavy user (Twitter, Facebook, Pulse, Podcasts, Games, etc.) but the difference is I don’t do a lot of streaming video. My father is a much lighter overall user but the majority of his phone use is streaming video, so he easily hits his 1GB cap every month.

I would say that if you do a lot of streaming video, 1GB is not enough, and if you don’t, it’s plenty.

24 days ago on Is data what people want?

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+1

I don’t mind that they folded BlackBerry Juicers into general mobile, but if they’re going to stop covering BlackBerry altogether I’m going to be a little worried. Hopefully there is a legitimate explanation (maybe their review unit was defective or was delayed in shipping), but part of me can’t help but wonder if the “broader coverage” of late might mean that the staff is spread too thin to cover certain tech topics.

24 days ago on BlackBerry Q10: reviews are out! 1 reply 2 recommends

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I don’t have a problem with “expanded coverage” and branching out into as many areas of interest as you want, as long as there still remains a strong focus on technology. Unfortunately I can’t help but feel that tech coverage is going to suffer – case in point, all your competitors have a BlackBerry Q10 review out right now, but I don’t see one anywhere on The Verge at the time of this writing.

Of course it could be completely unrelated, but when the average reader scrolls around the main page and sees news posts about pranking SWAT teams, learning to like unpleasant foods, and market analysis of the pot growing industry, but no Q10 review, you can forgive someone for drawing a (perhaps irrational) conclusion that maybe staff is spread a little too thin to cover the type of tech stuff you used to (and that your competitors at CNET, Engadget, et al. still do).

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the site and think you guys do an incredible job – that’s precisely the reason why I don’t want to see the tech coverage suffer, because I really want The Verge to remain my go-to spot – but it would really suck for me if I was forced to use some other site (with dubious article quality) as my main source of tech info because you chose to become less comprehensive with your tech coverage.

24 days ago on If you have questions about The Verge and our coverage, feel free to ask them here 2 recommends

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As an avid “This American Life” listener, I wholeheartedly approve.

25 days ago on 90 Seconds on The Verge: 'Futurama,' Reddit, and 'This American Life' 3 recommends

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What I would really love is for a way to set up separate profiles for different family members, and I’d pay $11.99 instead of $7.99 for the privilege. My watch suggestions are totally borked because of my brother’s constant anime-watching and my sister’s frequent and repeated viewing of terrible Nickelodeon shows.

Seriously Netflix, I am willing to give you an extra $4 a month to stop recommending iCarly.

25 days ago on Netflix will offer $11.99 family plan with up to four simultaneous streams 2 recommends