WASHINGTON (AP) — Bob Michel, an affable Illinois congressman who served as leader of the Republican House minority for 14 years and was skilled at seeking compromise critical in getting many initiatives of two Republican presidents through Congress, died Friday. He was 93.
In what is widely regarded as the biggest, albeit accidental, product leaks in tech history, an Apple engineer in 2010 went out for a few drinks and accidentally left a pre-release version of the iPhone 4 behind at a bar. Famously, the device -- which was cloaked in a special case designed to look like the iPhone 3GS -- ultimately ended up on the front page of Gizmodo for the collective eyes of the tech world to see.
Apple has long masked pre-release versions of the iPhone in specially designed cases, hardly a surprise given the company's arguably unrivaled obsession with product secrecy. After all, a new iPhone model needs to undergo real world testing at some point but the last thing Apple wants is for gawking civilians to spill the beans on any new iPhone designs and features Apple has in the works.
Shedding some more light on these mysterious cases, noted hardware leaker Sonny Dickson recently shared a number of interesting photos and tidbits with MacRumors about how Apple hides new iPhone hardware during the run-up to a new iPhone release.
Pictured below is one such iPhone case designed to completely cover as much of an iPhone's design as possible. As evidenced below, only a small portion of the display itself is visible.
The yellow tape, meanwhile, is there to detect if anyone attempts to tamper with the case and remove the iPhone from its secure housing.
What's also interesting is that each iPhone travels with a passport of sorts designed to document how the device performs in any number of given tests.
"Each component or product that is tested they document in the page," Dickson told MacRumors. "The person writes their initials next to it and any notes about it passing or failing or any other comments. It makes its way through each test/person. It then is finally sent with its 'passport' from China to Apple."
With the iPhone 8 said to feature the most radical redesign that we've seen in years, it's a safe bet that Apple is doing all it can to prevent any leaks about the device's new form factor from leaking out. Still, it's hard to keep Ming-Chi Kuo out of the loop completely, with the reputed analyst relaying this week some fascinating details about the device's new edgeless design.
As of this morning, all four major wireless carriers offer data plans described as "unlimited" to all their customers. But while I'm reluctantly willing to describe the Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint plans as unlimited (despite some restrictions), AT&T's plan could better be described as a "22GB data plan but you can't actually use that data to watch pretty videos or do work on your laptop" plan.
Admittedly, it's not such a catchy description, but it does have the alternative benefit of being true.
When AT&T announced the plan yesterday, it didn't give us all of the pricing details or restrictions on that unlimited data. But now that the plan is available, we can see specifics, and it suddenly looks like less of a good deal.
Let's start with the fine print. There's a lot of it, which you can examine in detail here, but two conditions really stand out:
Tethering and mobile hotspot use are prohibited (except for Connected Cars) Stream Saver is included on select plans, including the new AT&T Unlimited Plan. Stream Saver is designed to identify streaming video content so that data speed and resolution of higher definition video can be adjusted to Standard Definition quality (about 480p). This allows customers to stream more video while using the same amount of data.According to these details, there's no way for you to use the mobile hotspot feature on your phone, even in a limited way. If you ever need to work on the go, forget about AT&T's unlimited plan, in other words. It's particularly bad when you compare it to Verizon and T-Mobile's newly-updated Unlimited plans, both of which offer 10GB of 4G tethering, and unlimited tethering at slower speeds.
Stream Saver is phrased as a consumer-friendly way of saving you data, but the end result is probably a little different than what you want: it means that you can't stream video in HD, even if you want to. Again, it doesn't look good compared to T-Mobile or Verizon, both of which actually allow you to choose if you want to stream HD or SD video.
Then there's the pricing. The spreadsheet above shows the different prices for all the different Unlimited plans, and as you can see, AT&T doesn't compare particularly well. AT&T's pricing is $100 for the first smartphone, and then $40 thereafter for each additional device. The company is promising a bill credit for $40 when you add one more smartphone, which means three or four lines are virtually the same price (although you'll stay pay taxes on the fourth line, we assume).
The estimated taxes are a best guess based on the New York zip code, as as none of the customer service teams I contacted could actually give me a firm quote for the taxes and fees on each plan. T-Mobile includes all taxes and fees in the stated price.
Based on those prices, AT&T is the most expensive, and is particularly bad if you're just one person wanting unlimited data. Given than Verizon and T-Mobile rank in front of AT&T in network speed and availability, and have plans that are cheaper and more generous with data, there's no actual reason I can see for going with AT&T's new plan.
Lucas Tomlinson provides latest update
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