brave [little] meme

iPhone 3GS - First hands-on impressions

Let’s get one thing out of the way: it’s fast. So fast in fact, that previously tedious task switching between apps like Mail and Safari now feel almost like true multitasking.

Within Safari itself, pages load at a very close approximation of desktop browser speeds. Pages loaded with Javascript and containing multiple images load in an instant, and switching between pages feels considerably quicker.

Yes, the VGA video camera’s very cool, the autofocus stills camera is a great improvement over the iPhone 3G’s, and the compass offers amazing future possibilities with regards to augmented reality, but that’s all gravy.

For me, it’s the the improved fuidity of the entire user experience that really marks the device. The 3GS’s new hardware has smoothed out all those small but cumulatively annoying glitches and hang-ups of the iPhone’s UI into one silky, unobtrusive experience.

It would seem to me that in the 3GS the iPhone’s refined UI has finally found a worthy home - one capable of providing it with all the muscle it needs to flow as it should. While the iPhone 3G is a great device in itself, it sometimes struggles to catch up to its user’s activities. This, it would seem, is no longer the case.

Some may think me crazy for shelling out full-price for the device, but I don’t really care. If I have to throw money at technology, what better than to throw it at what has become my most used personal gadget.

Dear O2 (and Apple): Thanks for Nothing.

Consider this an open letter to O2, the UK’s exclusive iPhone carrier, and by association Apple, a company who needs no introduction.

As a long-time O2 customer and long-time iPhone user, I would like to express my deepest disappointment in the way the company plans to treat me, and many others like me, with regards to the upcoming iPhone 3GS upgrade path. Or rather, the lack thereof.

You see O2, I was more than willing to sign my life over to you for another eighteen months, during which time you would have unfailingly collected my hard-earned money for the simple privilege of upgrading to the latest iPhone incarnation. I have after all been with you for over two years, and am well into the twelfth month of my current contract.

Was it too much to expect to have a clear upgrade path to adding a shiny new ‘S’ to my iPhone 3G? But no, that would be too simple, too common sense. Fact is, even your friendly customer service representative could barely keep a straight face when delivering the blow that is your strategy for the new handset.

So I have to buy out my contract, you say? To give you, my current carrier, six months worth of monthly fees, at once, plus the full cost of the new handset, for the simple privilege of signing up another 18-month contract with you? The hell you say.

Thankfully, your friendly minimum-wage phone drone was also human. In not so many words, he hinted that this little scheme of yours may well be temporary, a way to catch the blind, drooling hordes of early adopters who lose all perception of common sense at the sight of a new Apple logo. In time, and not long at that, I have the feeling you will suddenly clear a sensible upgrade path to the rest of us loyal customers.

So here it is, O2: I’m onto you. I see your hand, and call it. I will tinker with the shiny new iPhone OS update, and watch the privileged few rush to your stores on launch day as I did myself a year ago, almost to the day. But this time, I will not be joining the hordes. This time, I’m not giving you one damn penny more than you deserve. 

So let’s see who breaks first. I may be too weak to give up my iPhone, too much of an Apple fanboy, and too dependent on the damn thing’s versatility. But I am prepared to wait my contract out for a full six months, and I am betting you fold before that time is up. Either way, you can count on one thing: the day your iPhone exclusivity lapses, I will ditch you like a bad date. 

So thanks, O2. Thanks for nothing.

[ Want to make your voice heard? Sign this petition to tell O2 just how you feel. Requires a Twitter account. ]

Have your say: who should Apple buy?

Should Apple buy Twitter? How about EA Games? With rampant speculation as to what Apple intends to do with its $29 billion cash reserves, this is your chance to speak up. Who or what should Apple do with all that cash?

Microsoft’s anti-Mac campaign underhanded, desperate

I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice a growing sense of unease in Microsoft’s latest marketing onslaught on Macs. What stands out for me however is the utter lack of any positive message in the new advertising campaigns, a sign which, at least in politics, often indicates the adoption of last resort tactics.

In the past, even the somewhat transparent and woefully artless “I’m a PC” campaign maintained a primarily positive spin: by concentrating on how the ideal of a PC can be transposed onto everyday people and their lives, Microsoft attempted to evoke a sense of affinity to its platform of choice. Not so, unfortunately, with the latest two marketing salvos.

Take the much talked about “Lauren” advert. In a nutshell, an everyday student is given $1000 to go buy a laptop. After much research she finds Macs too expensive, buys an HP, and keeps the change. Now forget for a second that our student is actually an actor, and that the entire premise of the advert as a real-life experiment is false. The point here is that nowhere in the advert do we get any real information on how good Microsoft’s product is, or what advantages it provides. All we can take home is the message that a non-mac laptop is cheaper.

Of course the advert won’t tell you that the laptop in question is cheap for a reason, but we won’t get into that here. Let’s instead move on to the online banner side of the same advertising campaign, the new “slot machines” ad.

Again, the same message: Macs are expensive. Is that really all Microsoft’s advertising agency can come up with? You would think they might have at least one good thing to say about the product they are supposedly promoting, but no. It seems that, with all the cards on the table, Microsoft has had to resort to misleading price claims (as in claims ignoring total cost of ownership, which is usually lower for Macs) in order to shill its wares.

Here’s hoping that Windows 7 will give Microsoft something real to talk about, because frankly its latest marketing ideas have moved into the realm of true sadness.