New Toy!
Many of the readers of this blog will know that I am a giant, giant Apple fanboy. In fact, whenever I’m in Birmingham it’s an absolute necessity is to visit the Bullring Apple Store (as Sarah will no doubt painstakingly tell you). Unfortunately for me — or rather, my bank balance — a couple of weeks ago, I got a first-hand chance to play with the new iPod Touch. And, at this point, I think that you may see where this blog entry is going.
Rather surprisingly, however, I didn’t purchase the Touch. Since it’s quite large and my pockets are reasonably small, I decided that I’d wait a week and combine both the lovelyness of the Touch with my phone by getting the amazingly-hyped iPhone.
The traditional Apple experience of buying new products was sadly spoiled. Since there is a Carphone Warehouse less than a mile from me, it made much more sense to go there on the launch date instead of trying to get into Birmingham at 6pm. But due to the (apparently) strong demand and Apple’s ridiculous security measures, their Chip & PIN system died under the stress, meaning I had to physically go and get the cash from an ATM.
I have to say, as a device it’s stunning. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing to look at, but it fits perfectly in the palm of your hand and the very few controls are easy to manipulate. The multi-touch interface is, frankly, astonishing, with a smoothness that is sorely lacking in the vast majority of mobile phones today. In fact, I could use many superlatives about the way it’s been designed and manufactured — but I won’t.
Of course, as much as I love the Apple products, I do know the difference between paying a premium for an elegant, innovative product and simply being taken advantage of. There was simply no way that I was signing up for the 18-month £35 O2 contract. So with the phone now activated, I’m using it temporarily on a PAYG phone until someone finds a way to unlock it.
The one disappointment was that Apple got greedy. Taking such a large chunk of O2’s monthly revenue simply meant that the additional cost got passed along to the consumer. So what you get for a £35/month contract, you could easily get for £25/month. And apparently, this is something that the average British resident is simply not going to do, with only 26,000 iPhones being activated since their launch on 9th November.
This greed led to the lack of any third-party applications, with the fear being that AT&T could potentially file a lawsuit to find Apple in breach of contract should an unlock solution become available. Clearly, with Steve Jobs’ announcement of an SDK in February, something has been worked out with AT&T in regards to this, and we should certainly expect many additional security measures to be put in place in subsequent software updates.
So whilst I will immensely enjoy my jailbroken, activated and hopefully unlocked iPhone in the future, there will always be that one disappointment, and the knowledge that this unnecessary greed only makes the iPhone a great device — not an amazing one.