{"id":1459,"date":"2007-12-14T08:09:49","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T13:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2007-12-14T18:39:59","modified_gmt":"2007-12-14T23:39:59","slug":"fusic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1459","title":{"rendered":"Fusic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a post I wrote about my previous mobile phone<\/a>, two years ago. It turned out to be more phone than I needed. I don’t commute, and I spend most of the day in front of a decent computer with broadband, so I have no use for all the web \/ messaging features it had. About the only feature that might have been useful to me (aside from, you know, making phone calls) was the camera. I tried it once, discovered that it sucked<\/a>, and never bothered with it again. <\/p>\n

There were many little features on the phone that I never used. I investigated them once, and found that almost everything web-related was broken, cost money to use, or both. This didn’t bother me, since all I wanted was a phone, but it did make me wonder why they bother.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I got a new phone:<\/p>\n

fusic1.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

It’s nice, although I’m not an expert on the things and I’m probably not the best person to ask. This is the phone Sprint was giving away for free, which means it’s probably crap. It’s a… “Fusic”. No, I’m not making that up. Somebody really named a phone Fusic. It sounds like a blend of “F*** you” & “music”, which is actually pretty appropriate given the marketing focus they have. The big feature they’re trying to draw attention to is the built-in music store, where you can buy DRM-saddled music which only plays on the phone. For $2.50. Their offer is so outrageous and inept it actually made me giggle when I saw it. It’s like seeing a guy in the street selling betamax tapes of terrible movies for $100. You wonder, does he know<\/i> what a complete tool he’s being? <\/p>\n

fusic2.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table>On the other hand, the phone is a fine MP3 player, which is all that really matters. It’s been ages since I bought any digital music directly. I’ve found the most reliable way to get unencumbered digital music is to just buy physical media and rip it. It’s stupid, but it works. <\/p>\n

The size of the phone – my big complaint with my previous phone two years ago – is much better. It’s more width and less depth, which means it fits in my hand when I hold it, fits on my face when I use it, and doesn’t leave a big lump when I put it in my pocket. Progress!<\/p>\n

It has a thousand features I’ll never use, most of which I have turned off to save money. I can’t comprehend their pricing system, which would give even the most eager rules lawyer the heebie-jeebies. From what I can tell most features take a flat monthly fee to enable, and then they nickel-and-dime you when to make use of them. Again, I laugh at a company that will send me a new phone via overnight express shipping for free, and then try to haggle a nickel out of me over a text message. It’s amazing that after all this technological progress what the phone companies really<\/i> want is to bring back the concept of the pay phone: Their vision is to give everyone their very own pay phone where the phone company can hit them up for loose change while the thing is in use. No matter how many gadgets they pack into the phone, aparently the part they miss the most is the one where the user inserts their coins. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a post I wrote about my previous mobile phone, two years ago. It turned out to be more phone than I needed. I don’t commute, and I spend most of the day in front of a decent computer with broadband, so I have no use for all the web \/ messaging features it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pictures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}