Planet CNET: Phony iPhone anyone? Video

Planet CNET: Phony iPhone anyone? Video Transcript

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>> Kara: Welcome to Planet CNET, I'm Kara Tsuboi reporting from Las Vegas where I'm working on a CES related story so keep your eyes out for that one. In the mean time we've got real Apples, Apple knockoffs, and the battle over bandwidth. Let's start in Germany where the looks can be deceiving for about a Nano second. [sound effect]

>> Daniel: Hi, and welcome to [inaudible] CNET from Germany my name is Daniel and I have the latest iPhone here. You've probably have seen this box before but, what's that, a printed manual, and a replacement battery, and why seems this [inaudible] thicker than usual? The answer's simple, it's a hiPhone [assumed spelling], a fake iPhone we bought on eBay sent over from China. When you first look at the device it really looks like Apple's Smart Phone, it even uses slide to unlock and it works. There are 2 SIM slots under the battery, you can not use both cards at the same time but you can switch between them through the menu. The hiPhone features a large touch-screen with a horrible resolution, the main menu looks like Apples but the usability sucks when you start one of the applications. For example, if you want to increase your notes, for some unknown reason you must first enter a time and date. Instead of the Safari [inaudible] browser there's just a simple application for browsing [inaudible] websites. There's Bluetooth but no WiFi and there's the camera that shoots some really bad pictures, at least you've got a media player, which is able to play all of your video files [inaudible] supplied microSD card. You can buy t he hiPhone for about $130 to $180 if you want to, if that's too expensive have a look at a different iPhone clone, the CECTP168, it's even worse than the hiPhone but only costs about $100 and it features the original logos. I don't recommend using either of these two phones but if you do want to buy them use them as a gift for people you don't like, because besides from the uptake they have absolutely nothing to do with the great Smart Phone made by Apple, and besides people will probably laugh at you when they see you using an iPhone with a stylus. But there is one advantage, both fake iPhones come with 2 batteries and you can change them by yourself, you can't do that with an original Apple iPhone.

>> Kara: Yeah, replacement batteries are a dead give away. Let's move on to some real Apple news, last week Steve Jaubs unveiled a shiny new line of MacBooks at Apple headquarters outside of San Francisco.

>> Steve: We've got some exciting new notebooks that we want to tell you the story about how we created these things and what they are and why we're so excited about them.

>> Kara: Both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro models will be housed in sleeker and lighter aluminum bodies.

>> I really think that aluminum MacBook is gonna appeal to a lot of people who aren't necessarily looking for the cheapest laptop they can buy but want like a quality premium product, and I think that, that MacBook is gonna fall right into the sweet spot for them.

>> Kara: Here are a couple of hardware features that you know consumers are going to love, first of all we've got this touch-pad made of glass that functions as one big button, also you'll notice these really beautiful shiny LED screens.

>> Steve: And we've added some 4 finger gestures now, so Expose, a great way to get in and out of Expose.

>> Kara: Also, all new Apple notebooks will include Chip Maker and Videos graphic card.

>> Steve: GeForce 9400M, 5 times faster graphics.

>> Kara: Jaubs also announced small modifications to the MacBook Air and a 24 inch LED monitor that smoothly connects with any Apple laptop. [sound effect] A smooth low-cost Internet connection is getting hard to find especially if you do a lot of downloading, the Australians, however, already know all about it.

>> If you live in a country other than Australia you may not be acquainted with the notion of restricted monthly downloads. Down here the amount you pay for Internet access depends on how many Megabytes you want per month and how fast you want them delivered. This month Americans got a taste of what that's like when Internet provider Comcast chucked a 250 Gig monthly limit on residential downloads. CNET readers were incensed; they called the move absolutely unacceptable, the single dumbest move I've ever seen a business make. While it may seem brutally unfair to be restricted to a quarter of a Terabyte in what's meant to be the land of the free, have a look at some typical Australian broadband plans, yikes. But back to the issue at hand, a download caps a reasonable way of regulating Internet traffic, the head honchos at Australian ISP's think so and we're giving them less than a minute to try and convince you, go.

>> In Australia we've never had [inaudible] unlimited plans, we never had them in the dial days and we don't have them in the broadband days.

>> The problem is that unlimited devalues what a Megabyte's worth.

>> If everyone uses the network a lot, there's three parties that can pay for it, the ISP, so the person that owns the fiber, the customer, or the content owner. The attempt is being made certainly in the U.K. but also in the U.S. to push that cost onto the content owner.

>> Those guys say, "You're kidding, what about [inaudible], Net's supposed to be free man?"

>> In the Australian context, of course, the user's got their [inaudible], so [inaudible] here if customers download more the customer pays more.

>> I think it's better to have the users pay because the user can regulate them self and you say, "Well, I'm not very rich and I don't want to have very much and I'll just buy this much, thank you," that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

>> [inaudible] are not designed to be punitive, [inaudible] are meant to design to be able to say for 90% for 95% of customers this is enough.

>> Convinced, well, if not, I at least hope it's given you something in you to get incensed about, I'm Ella Morton [assumed spelling] for Planet CNET. ^M00:06:00 [ Sound effect ] ^M00:06:04

>> Kara: That's gonna do it for this week's Planet CNET, I'm Kara Tsuboi reporting from Las Vegas, Nevada, we'll see you next week, I've got some gambling to do. ^E00:06:16