...About Apple

I don't have a long history with Apple. I'm neither a fan boy nor a apple hater but I do admit I have been quite a late entry to the race. The very first Apple product I bought was an iPod Nano 4th generation, most crucially, in purple. Previous to that I hadn't thought that I would listen to music whilst out and about so what would be the point in spending £150 on a device that I wouldn't use? Well turns out that I can't go out without listening to music. I don't know what it is or how I got the bug but once I got it it stayed and I doubt it will never leave. 

I remember that when I was looking at buying a 16gb nano in the shop the guy tried to sell me the 8gb 1st generation iTouch for £20 more. I remember how he was trying to sell me on the idea of apps and having a device that can do it all etc. In the end I had to say to him quite shortly that I just wanted a device that could play music and have good battery life. I came in knowing exactly what I wanted and it wasn't an iTouch. Partly because of the poor battery life but mostly because they don't come in purple.

Skip forward 3 years and several chances to use other peoples iTouchs later I decided I wanted one, mostly for a couple of simple apps such as Shazam and Game Dev Story. But, as always, I thought that the prices for a new iTouch was way to much because knowing me I probably wouldn't use it after a week. Good thing I know me because if I didn't I'd be in trouble, both mentally and financially. Fortunately it was a cheap Ebay buy and I got a 2nd generation iTouch and sure it was useful was places where I had access to Wifi. But if I had an app that tells me train times which live updates, chances are I'm going to be on my way to the station where there is no Wifi available. What Apple have done here is an incredible marketing ploy. Yes, we'll give you all the apps you want on a cheaper device but if you want to take them outside, away from a computer, then you'll have to spend more of your money on adding a phone and 3G connectivity. Not just a little bit more, but a lot more.

So skip forward to last Friday and I decided to buy a 16gb iPhone 3GS, again, from Ebay. The idea being is I'd sell my iTouch and my phone along with a spare I had which should cover the cost so I don't waste to much money. I've never really wanted an iPhone or a Blackberry because I wanted to be slightly different. So I was in a situation where I had both a Sony Ericsson X1 and Palm Pre. I decided on the Sony because of it's amazing physical landscape qwerty slider, which just sound geekily dirty, and I bought the Palm (for my girlfriend who then due to changes circumstances gave it back within a month) to play with WebOS. The problem with the Sony is that it had slow, clunky Windows Mobile 6.1 and the problem with the Palm was the hardware was not up to standard. If I could somehow glue these phones together, make a XPre (too close to Windows XP) and add apps it would be perfect.

So after two screen replacements in three day (only one of which was my fault) I spent an hour setting up my new iPhone the way I wanted with the apps I wanted. Got it syncing with both my work and personal email as well as importing my SIM contacts. That confused the hell out of it. One thing I could say about the Palm is that its contact merging system worked pretty flawlessly and included Facebook integration. The iPhone on the other hand does get a little confused and no doubt I'll have to spend a few hours in the future sorting it all out but other than that I'm perfectly happy with it. Except one thing...it's not purple!