[quote author=“gslusher”]
I dare say that one could find an American in the same places. That proves nothing.

The cost quantman referred to is real, in part because of the distances involved. I wonder how many Europeans really understand how large the US is, geographically. (Only China, Russia, and Canada are larger). I live in Oregon, the 10th-largest state in area at 248,631 km2 (land only—254,805 km2 including water). That’s half the size of Spain and a bit larger than the entire UK.

I expect that many Americans have travelled further in miles than most Europeans have. Many people I know have been to Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, New York City, and Florida. New York is as far from me as Baghdad is from London. Staying on the Pacific coast, I’m about as far from Los Angeles as London is from Vienna or Florence. The nearest other country to me is, of course, Canada. Vancouver, BC, is about 577 km from me. From London, that radius would cover Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and parts of Germany and France. To put it into perspective for carbonat, Barcelona is closer to Moscow (3009 km) and Baghdad (3800 km) than I am to New York City (3994 km), much less Miami (4344 km—Carbonat would have to go to Tehran to come close to that).

Start from the middle of the contiguous US, say Kansas City, Missouri. A resident of Kansas City would have to travel 1200+ km to get to the nearest major city in Canada (Winnipeg) and nearly 1600 km to Monterrey, Mexico. Within 1600 km, a Londoner could find herself in France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Bosnia, and Serbia (and maybe others).

For me to fly to London would cost at least $1,000 for the flight, alone—and take more than 24 hours travel time. The cost of air travel in the US, as quantman said, can be puzzling. I can fly to New York City for under $300, but it would cost about $600 to get to Roanoke, Virginia, where I grew up. I was the executor of my father’s estate and had to travel back and forth at least 5 times. (The estate paid the bill, fortunately.) I could take trains and busses (no Amtrak station in Roanoke, despite it being over 100K), but it would still cost $400+ and take at least 3 days.

That may help to put things into perspective.

You know, with the amount of talk from Europeans on just how widely traveled they are, I’m exceedingly curious to know how many travel further than 2,000 miles from where they live when they go “overseas.”

[quote author=“daemon”]
You know, with the amount of talk from Europeans on just how widely traveled they are, I’m exceedingly curious to know how many travel further than 2,000 miles from where they live when they go “overseas.”

Yep. See this map to get an idea, though it exaggerates the size of the more northern areas like Scandinavia because of the Mercator projection.

If I consider just the places I’ve been in the US, the furthest apart would be Seattle, WA, and Miami, FL, about 2730 mi/4393 km, according to GeoBytes . That’s about the distance from London to Tehran, which covers not only a lot of countries, but at least two continents.

I’ve lived in 8 cities in 7 states (VA, MA, OH, AZ, CA, MD, OR), visited 39 states, and driven westward across the US twice, the last from Annapolis, MD, to Lompoc, CA, about 3300 miles the way I went (southern route, as it was in January). I currently live 2160 mi/3436 km from my brother in Georgia, 430 mi/692 km from my sister in California, 2284 mi/3676 km from where I grew up in Virginia, and 2582 mi/4155 km from my college (MIT) in Massachusetts. The two furthest apart places I’ve lived would be Los Angeles and Boston, 2596 mi/4176 km. All that is inside one country.

[quote author=“daemon”]
You know, with the amount of talk from Europeans on just how widely traveled they are, I’m exceedingly curious to know how many travel further than 2,000 miles from where they live when they go “overseas.”

Hopefully this isn’t a bragging competition. Americans are lucky to have a nice big country, requiring long distance travel, and the biggest and best of many things.  But Europeans can’t help experiencing greater cultural diversity nearer to home.

[quote author=“SNIPUS”]Just checked in to a small hotel off Park Lane in London and in the lobby was a well dressed young (20-25) pretty Asian girl fingering an iPhone… I said are you getting WiFi? Yes she seemed very excited. and the lobby is free wi fi but the apartments have permanent internet wired connections. She said her iPhone was unlocked and worked as a phone with an Asian sim
I cannot tell you the look of excitement and pleasure on her face. I would have sent this from the lobby on my iPhone but have to recharge it.

Something a little off-topic:
I’m reading about more and more Europeans importing their iPhone and I’m starting to get impatient to get mine
How do these people unlock their iPhones? I guess that 98 percent of users wouldn’t manage an unlock through complex software or hardware changes…
Tommo, I think you’ve already looked into this a lot, what is the easiest way to unlock an iPhone without needing to fear that an update wipes the unlock?

[quote author=“sleepygeek”][quote author=“daemon”]
You know, with the amount of talk from Europeans on just how widely traveled they are, I’m exceedingly curious to know how many travel further than 2,000 miles from where they live when they go “overseas.”

The fact is that within the US there exist a very homogeneous culture across a very wide geographical area, and it is so big that generally speaking there is no need to search for other countries to do business or tourism. I was not meaning that Americans did not travel, but they mostly do within their country boundaries. they rarely go abroad. Yes, they might not need to, because they have everything they want in such a vast territory. But for this same reason they tend to forget (or not care about) of the existence of *outer life*.

Living in such vast homogeneous cultural territory has very advantages, the obvious one is the homogeneity itself: One language, one law, one general pattern of human activity, one everything… Sure, I would have been happy for not having to learn and use foreign languages for my daily activity, or not having to rely or think about possible offending cultural differences as I talk with a French, an English or a Croatian, but I am sure that this has also enhanced my life and life experiences in many ways. Many Americans do not have the opportunity to experience it, being it because it is very expensive for them or because they do not feel as needing it.

Once I had an English teacher who was from the US (she was the spouse of a basketball player that lived in my country for one year and several years in Europe) and she turned from almost deprecating everything not conforming to the US cultural patterns, to become a person ready to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that she did not necessarily agree with. Living for several years in several places of Europe absolutely changed her way of looking at things, and it was an enlightening experience for her and knowing her was also very enriching for me.

[quote author=“MacCroissant”]Something a little off-topic:
I’m reading about more and more Europeans importing their iPhone and I’m starting to get impatient to get mine
How do these people unlock their iPhones? I guess that 98 percent of users wouldn’t manage an unlock through complex software or hardware changes…
Tommo, I think you’ve already looked into this a lot, what is the easiest way to unlock an iPhone without needing to fear that an update wipes the unlock?

I am pretty sure tens of thousands of iPhones are being activated & unlocked every week, and sold on to innocent customers, ebay being the main way to find a supplier. IMO the only realistic way for Apple to play this is to break the unlocking process with the next firmware, but not to break the already unlocked iPhones. Anything else is either a contractual or a PR nightmare, to say nothing of the lost revenue and consumer’s legal rights to unlock. Apple would have made a public statement by now if they intended to “brick” activated phones with no AT&T contract.

Hence I am taking my chances. If you want to take the chance, I think you should buy in the near future. We can’t know when the firmware will be updated on new phones.

Apple has this beautiful window for a few weeks to get thousands of iPhones into every market in the world bypassing approvals, carrier contracts etc. generating local demand and awareness, and giving this quarter’s iphone sales numbers a boost. Even in the UK, France & Germany, each one of these iPhones will probably generate 5-10 new sales on contract after Nov 9th.

[quote author=“sleepygeek”][quote author=“daemon”]
You know, with the amount of talk from Europeans on just how widely traveled they are, I’m exceedingly curious to know how many travel further than 2,000 miles from where they live when they go “overseas.”

I have all those, plus many African and Asian languages within blocks of my home in Toronto. I’m pretty sure NY and London are similar.

[quote author=“jimlongo”][quote author=“sleepygeek”][quote author=“daemon”]
You know, with the amount of talk from Europeans on just how widely traveled they are, I’m exceedingly curious to know how many travel further than 2,000 miles from where they live when they go “overseas.”

I have all those, plus many African and Asian languages within blocks of my home in Toronto. I’m pretty sure NY and London are similar.

Don’t forget Los Angeles, especially around Universities: peoples from all over the world.

Of course, outside of Universities, Los Angeles is unfortunately highly segregated, and we’re all expected to communicate in English so the impressive diversity is not readily experienced, alas.

About the travel, just want to add my 2 cents.  I’ve been lucky enough to travel some.  But my wife’s family in Russia travel to the Mediterranean countries every year and think nothing of it.  The vacation packages are very cheap, for one thing. 

Work culture wise many Americans hold as a point of pride skipping vacations all together.  Even in a University, but non-academic department, management thinks nothing of asking everyone to forego summer vacations to better meet the workload.  America certainly doesn’t have a culture of “shutting down” the country for the summer vacation time.  So with less of a defined vacation season, supply and demand economies of scale for travel packages are much less in America than Europe, I would imagine. 

Also, I think a lot of Americans are starting to travel more and more to Central and South American countries.  Costa Rica is becoming very popular.  Of course, a lot of that is resort “vacationing”, kind of like going to Hawaii, so maybe it’s not really considered to be on par with “experiencing” Europe, North Africa, or East Asia.

[quote author=“sleepygeek”][quote author=“Constable Odo”]Hard to imagine most of the users dumping their BlackBerrys.  That’s very unlikely.  People here aren’t even dumping their BlackBerrys for iPhones.Blackberry-dumping on a large scale will begin in 6 months or so. daemon was specifically referring to the French government having deprecated Blackberry because the servers are outside the EU or something, so they can’t snoop, sorry, ensure confidentiality of communications.[quote author=“Constable Odo”]Do the people in Europe in Britain have that much money to throw around on high-end handsets considering the high price of gasoline and such and the use of subsidized nearly free handsets?Yes.[quote author=“Constable Odo”]I figured they’d be more than happy just to hold on to their Nokias rather than buy some American branded cellphone.No. Any anti American feeling is not directed against American citizens or products or business in general. Anti-Apple is restricted to those afraid their personal sky will fall if Apple becomes more successful.[quote author=“Constable Odo”]I’m asking these questions since I’m not familiar with the European and British mindset.  Is it fashionable to buy American goods?No, being American, and being fashionable are unrelated in Europe.[quote author=“Constable Odo”]Don’t the British think of Yanks as capitalist wankers or something?

Llike us, you are capitalist wankers, but we don’t give it much thought. (I believe one of the popes claimed not to be a wanker, but that was fifty years ago).[quote author=“Constable Odo”]I’ve never been overseas so I’ve no first-hand knowledge of their cellphone usage.

I believe most americans have never been overseas. A European who hasn’t been overseas is quite a rarity. And there are more activated mobile phones than people in the UK.

America is like a woman who has been undressing every night with the curtains open, while the world watches. We know her intimately, but she barely realises we exist. Your post was like seeing her peer out into the dark briefly

Thank you for your reply and patiently answering each question.  You probably think I’m trying to stir up some sort anti-overseas antagonism, but I’m really ignorant of this sort of stuff and my questions are sincere.  Sure I watch TV but I live an minority ghetto and am fairly homebound due to family care responsibilities.  My parents traveled overseas quite a bit after they retired, but they were more interested in scenery and such.  I’ve only met a couple of British or Scottish people in my entire life and never discussed cellphones with them.
So I’m not trying to insult anyone even if my questions are not properly composed.  I have no reason to do so.  I just need some varied opinions to see what chances the iPhone has in sales overseas.  Thank you for bearing with my stupidity.

I’ve traveled quite a bit in the US, but that’s it.  And it was merely to see scenery, not to really find out how different the people were.  I usually got along well with everyone I met in my travels.  This was long before cellphones became popular.

[quote author=“Constable Odo”]... You probably think I’m trying to stir up some sort anti-overseas antagonism…

Absolutely not, I think Europeans were probably on the whole delighted with your post, expressing questions that we are painfully aware never enter the minds of some Americans. It is a rare gift to realise what you don’t know. I’m not sure I have it. I was worried you might think my reply was making fun of you. (well maybe it was, a tiny bit )

A PHILISTINE OBSERVES:

In London I am sure not worried about iPhone sales. In an Italian restaurant last night had my iPhone out (unlocked but no 02 sim yet) and the Maitre’D and waiter asked if it was an iPhone. The waiter about 25 said he was getting a Nokia 95 but ‘‘knew all about the iPhone’‘. I showed him some photos, played a music video, how intuitive Mail was and then took their pictures, brought up the pic on Photo and used multi touch to adjust the sizing. The young waiter held it for less than a minute and you could see how excited he was… ‘’ I am getting one of these’’ he proclaimed while the older Maitre’D looked on smiling in agreement.

By the way the small restaurants here some off of alleys (mews) in a lot of cases have large storefront window signs saying FREE WI FI and I am told this is becoming more and more a norm…. bodes very well for Apple products

It will be a huge success without any doubts…

I checked yesterday at an apple premium reseller in Brussels (store was still crowded at 6:30pm) and they told me they had lots of people asking about the ipod-touch (coming out end of the month here) and full pre-orders listings…

I am sure that most of the ipod-touch buyers will jump onto the iphone the minute it comes out in Belgium (whenever that will be…)