I don't have 3G here (and it would have been far more than a 2 hour drive, each direction, to get into one), so I just bought one on eBay for about $400 (including overnight shipping). T-Mobile told me I could stop by and "look" at their display models and ask as many questions as I wanted. No thanks.
Has anyone else picked up a G1? If so, where and how much? Are you using it yet? I can't wait for mine to arrive
The format is the key. Where the trouble comes in is when people have home movies or other formats (wmv, mpg, mov, avi, mkv etc) with weird codecs that the iPad doesn't support. But let's face it, you mention the words "rip the dvd" to most people and their brains turn off. This is not just an Apple problem, but VLC player plays almost any file format on an Android device, so it is much easier to tell people to just download that app and they are good to go.
The only time you need a DVD drive is when you need to use a DVD....
This was a huge beef I had with Apple years ago. Many of our old archived backups for client files are on floppies and are now on "you guessed it" DVD's. Thankfully we still have PC's to do the real work when it needs to be done, but in many cases it now takes 2 people to do what one person could do on their Mac if it wasn't making key hardware obsolete before it's time. It was the same issue when they dumped the floppy drive and dare I say it "Flash". Don;t get me wrong, I'm all for eliminating old hardware. PC's eliminated them when it was time and people didn't want them anymore, but this type of logic only solidifies that Mac's don;t think about the business and how legacy hardware still has a purpose. Oh wait... let me buy a portable drive for $100. The adapter is Apples way of dealing with need.
I always wondered why people bought the original iPods. I had a Sony Walkman Media player that was so small. Maybe 2 inches in diameter and it held tons of music. I think I paid $100 for it and it worked great. The iPod was over $200 and 3 times as big. It wasn't convenient at all until they came out with the iPod touch etc.
My family bought me an iPod because it was over $200 and they thought I would be impressed by how much they paid for it. Oh, and it came in pink.
Some formats work, but many don't. It's not "rocket appliances", but for some (and not just Apple users) even the simplest tasks can be daunting. For what it's worth I'm glad they have it figured out. Some people take the time to learn others don't. I actually sent a dropbox link to 6 couples I know with very detailed instructions on how to:
What legitimized it was the mp3 file. Only after that was there a portable format that wasn't massive. Apple may have taken advantage of the opportunity, but they were not alone in the direction things were going. If it wasn't them it would have been someone else shortly after.
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