Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Apple iPhone & Meridian?

no need to do either - just don't buy it;
It'll probably bomb anyway, given all those deficiencies...

Meridian should have put an iPod dock right in the F80.

If they did people would be waiting in line to buy them right now after they stop at the apple store.

It really would have been a slick match up.

Yeah a seperate dock is nice but it's not "Apple" to complicate things like that.

They should release an F80i.

Does the iPhone do voice calls?

I hear its the next big thing, You will actualy be able to talk to people without having the hassle of texting.
No missunderstandings due to poor punctuation etc.

Personaly, I cant wait.

Cheers, Chris

Is there anybody else like me who wouldnt use an iPod as a gift? (I feel the same about Sky)

I do have a 40 gig MP3 Player. I use it to house my collection of Audio books and dramatisations.

It was cheaper than Apple and the sound quality is better.
As for style, most would call it a clunker.
But as a tool, it works perfectly.

Luckily for me my self esteem is not in danger from my chosen brand of gaget!

All the hype reminds me of that old saying, observe the Masses and do the opposite.

Cheers, Stiring it up a bit, Chris

LOL not sure - I'll have to try that feature...!!
George - I agree - a built-in iPod dock would have been perfect...

Does anyone in the UK remember Brute 33 aftershave?
Henry cooper, "splash it all over".
Ouch!!!

It was so distinctive that it became Passee. Eventualy knowone would wear it, people wanted exclusivity.

SWMBO loves the stuff, and I think plenty of women do, but men will not wear it outside of the house. lol. It became a joke.

I have a feeling that the iPod will go the same way in the very near future.

So built in ipods will be a major draw back to any quality product.

Like a Tattoo of a former girlfriends name on your arm, its easy to apply in haste and regret at leisure.

Just my gut feeling, I could be wrong.

Cheers, Chris

My guess is Meridian seriously thought about an iPod dock for the F80 but they worried about cheapening it. When they started the F80 they probably didn't know the hype iPhone would generate.

Three things.

If you look closely at the various F80 internal pictures from the Factory Visit and other articles, you will see that every inch of space in the F80 is already used. Where would the Dock Connector and iPod recess go??? Would you sacrifice a bigger and heavier F80 to accommodate an iPod??

If you purchased an F80 for �1,500 or $3,000, how long into the future would you expect to use it?? Looking at the age of much of the equipment on this Forum`s user profiles, I expect that most would say 10 years or more

Now consider that, if Meridian had built in a 5G iPod Dock Connector that may not have been able to accommodate the much thicker 4G iPod with Video (from only 2 years ago). With the iPhone being narrower than the 5G iPod, what assurances do you have that any in built iPod Dock connector will handle future iPod successors. How pissed would we all be if we bought an F80i, which could not handle securely the 6G iPod due within the next few months.

I can see why they went with the external dock route, which gives them hardware independence longer term, when we all feel Wireless will be the way of the future

Ken,
Thanks! Chris- lol.

my mini iPhone review:
so far after about 1/2 day of screwing around its got its plusses and minuses

big plusses are slick apple integration of functions

small plusses are att service no where nearly as bad as I feared. so far its worked everywhere as well as verizon?! :shock: And the bluetooth auto integration is better than my previous phone and call quality is better too (previous phone is a treo 700)

small minuses
the data service is not as fast as verizons (no surprise). the web looks gorgeous but since its not formatted for your small display you have to zoom in etc, when you are checking for baseball scores or simple things like that the treo method is better IMHO.

medium minuses
the widescreen movie mode requires you to hold the unit in a way where the volume up and down are inverted from what you would expcect. I am actually shocked that Jobs would miss this very basic fundamental ergonomic error. Its simply software to remap the buttons. These kinds of things really annoy me.

wifi is pesky- if you use a n wifi- forget it. also if your isp that you are running wifi has different rules about sending emails than your mail host then its really annoying as there is not a different set of rules you can store for wifi. Ive turned mine off as when Im home I have real computers and laptops but still- annoying. for browsing the internet, honestly the web browser with wifi was not as fast as I was expecting it to be. Its still better than the edge service, but the edge service is not, at least not here, horribly slow. the u tube is really slow.

the keyboard takes getting used to. getting there but I am a creature of habit. also the auto correction so far has not done right by me- it constantly suggests bizarre things and I wonder if theres something wrong with my unit. right about when Im about to call apple to ask the software will then suggest something in real english... go figure...

big minuses
for me the biggest minus -surprisingly- is the email software- it does not allow for mass deletes, mass marked as reads, mass anything and if you have several email accounts theres no way to browse them together, instead you have to jump to see them.

maybe I will find out a way to do these things but so far on the iPhone I am mostly positive. its a halluva effort for 1.0.

best regards,
Jerry

Good point. They could have made it "modular" like the infamous G68

Jerry-
Agree on the e-mail; mass delete and selections would be nice; And combining accounts to one Inbox.. I would also like to adjust behaviors of the different accounts (sync and fetch behaviors); All software improvements for future releases suspect.

I don't experience the WiFi issues you mentioned; WiFi is very fast for me (using Airport Extreme 802.11n/g).

ken

On the dock integration, there's also a commercial consideration. Apple charge 10% of the price of anything with an iPod connector. If the F80 had it built in it would be a big chunk of cash. That's why it's better to make it an external add-on.

Regards

Mark