iPhones & Ping Pong Ball Properties

So here's the deal: I am absolutely fed up to the back teeth of the phone market. It seems to me the biggest rip-off scandal in history. Today I am targeting Apple. Case in point:
On O2, an iPhone 4S on 300 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of data will run you an up-front cost of £270, and a monthly bill of £32. Shockingly expensive. Even moreso is the fact that you are tied into a 24 month contract with the company and there is no warranty on the handset for accidental breakage or theft.

Best case scenario, you pay a whopping £1038 for your iPhone 4S and it lasts you 5 years. But surely not? Simply showing you're willing to pay £1038 for a new damn phone shows you'll be paying for a new one most likely just after that 24 month contract runs out. That's if you don't succumb to the seductive allure of another phone before then, or accidentally drop and break its flimsy glass body. Everything so far suggests you would either have to have money bulging out of your pockets that desperately needs to be removed for your own comfort, or a head that resembles a large ping pong ball. Completely empty, and yes, suitable for playing ping pong with.

This is a ping pong ball just in case you weren't aware

Now, I would be one of the first people to say that modern smartphones are technical wonders - the iPhone especially is a triumph in user-centred design, culminating in slick interfaces that just feel like sex to use and spotless, minimalist design that communicates clearly with you - but that doesn't stop me from thinking that the purchasing choice involved is like paying a million pounds for a house made out of giant dominoes, stacked on a hill precariously in a country where strong winds and lashing rain are about as common as dirt (i.e. Scotland). Yes, your beautiful Scottish home is innovative, people will ooh and ah at its dazzling looks, and some may wish they lived in it too. But when it collapses on your head soon after, you might be slightly less happy, and your friends won't be impressed either. Unless you know any giants that love to play dominoes.


I guess the difference in this scenario is that buying a fat, old Nokia brick is akin to living in a cardboard box now your home has been devastated. But what if I told you something truly amazing. What if you could separate the functional, phone part of your iPhone, and the smart, fun part? Imagine how different such a world would be...
Except for some reason, this world exists and people are STILL buying iPhones. An iPod Touch 4 (the 32GB model, same as the iPhone I used as an example earlier), will run you roughly £210 according to Amazon. Probably still no bargain considering that given the amount of units sold, it's likely going to cost Apple much less per unit (as far as economies of scale are concerned, Apple should be able to UNDERCUT competitors rather than overprice or match them, as their profit margins confirm). Couple that with a Nokia brick or similar lo-fi phone that'll cost you £30 or less, and a GiffGaff sim-only contract of £10 per month (250 minutes, unlimited texts, unlimited data), and over the same 2 year period it will come to the cost of £480. That still sounds like quite a lot, but considering that all you're sacrificing is the cool factor, unity of having everything in one device and 3G on your iDevice for that £558 drop in price is insane. Not to mention that replacing your iDevice over the years will cost less (after all, for many it is a recurring cost, I bought an iPod Touch 2G and promptly replaced it with a 4G when it was nearly unusable 2 years later, that means that it cost much less both times), your lo-fi phone is bound to have a much greater battery life and be more reliable, and GiffGaff's hybrid PayAsYouGo/Contract will never take more out of your account than you specify and can be stopped at the drop of a hat. This is something no other phone network can boast, as any other SIM-only contract can have you accidentally spend money over your contract's T&C's and will need 30 days notice to cancel.

Best phone company EVAR

I think more than anything, the iPhone's success story is a warning light. We have entered a new frontier of computing technology where there is such an oversaturation of different types of computers, devices, doodads, screens, etc. that people will pay WELL over the odds for lucidity and unity. The whole concept is quite frightening really, that reliability, consumer control and value for money get thrown out of the window because:
a) The technology market is moving at the speed of light and is increasingly complex and confusing
b) People either do not have the time or the want to investigate different options open to them

This means that the idea of investing in a piece of technology for the long-term is dangerous, because it might be worth nothing in a couple of years. In the case of Apple, its warm, reassuring voice-overs, simple business style and consumer-centred plans mean that people are defaulting to handing their wallets over so Apple can just handle it all for them. It's like stealing candy from a horde of babies (slight adjustment to the traditional phrasing there).

Ramblement Pt.1

So I decided to actually make a first blogpost :D. Figured since I'm going on holiday in a couple of days and will be busy packing and shizzle until then I ought to do one now. Liking the look of the blog, I didn't think I could get it looking so good since the actual Blogger site itself looks pretty ugly and hasn't been updated by Google in a long time. I wonder when they'll next get round to it, hrm.

But a few things have been on my mind recently (as is fairly usual :P). The news recently has been more than a little depressing, as Amy Winehouse has died from a drug overdose and a load of people in Norway got massacred by a conservative who thought muslims were going to overrun Europe. How he thought killing his own people would help I haven't fathomed yet, but the whole thing has definitely shed light on how people can be ever so insane while appearing to be fairly normal. Leading on from that, a friend said he'd found an article on drugs in Russia. It painted a picture of the worst of horror stories. Turns out there is a massive heroin addiction problem in Russia, but since heroin is so expensive to get a hold of, and it's nearly impossible to hold down a job while taking heroin, lots of people have resorted to a similar but more impure and cheap drug called Krokodil. The reason being that it's made by cooking codeine-based headache tablets that are about £2 a packet. The drug is multiple times more powerful then heroin, and so the withdrawal symptoms are nearly impossible to deal with (pain that can cause you to pass out over the period of a month). In trying to sustain a heroin habit these people have resorted to a drug that is even harder to kick, and even worse this drug slowly rots the flesh off your body until you're in a state where you can no longer survive. They literally take it until it wastes them away as it's just not possible to deal with the withdrawal symptoms unless you're being helped or weaned off it carefully with purer substances. So yeah, even more depressing stuff there, the article definitely left me shell-shocked.

Yaaaaaaaaaay!!!

Onto ever so slightly happier stuff, MINECRAFT!! I've been playing it plenty this last week and a bit, totally addicted to it, but it's a good kind of addiction (if that exists lmao). It's definitely brilliant as a creative outlet, even if few will marvel or be impressed by your works in it. I've dragged a few people into loving the game with me, namely Chris Ward, Becca and Jemmeh Watt. So it's been nice to share these things with them, and I even played a multiplayer survival game with Chris the other day, that was a pretty cool experience even though we had to use phones to talk because he doesn't have a microphone XD. I'ma try and find a way to play with Becca when she gets back from holiday and I'm back from my holiday in France though. Past that I've even been watching a video podcast about two guys' adventures in Minecraft, it's on YouTube and it's called Yogscast. I guarantee you that despite the fact watching a podcast of two guys playing a game sounds incredibly lame and boring, they're really really entertaining to watch and most of their videos have upwards of 1 million views. So clearly a lot of people agree with me there :P.

Episode 1, I put it here just in case you were too lazy to go find it :P.
WATCH IT NOW!

Alsooo, these past few days I've been on the Spotify Premium free trial! It's absolutely brilliant, and if I wasn't a student I'm pretty sure I'd subscribe. I'm able to stick a bunch of music into relevant playlists, or subscribe to other people's playlists and make them offline. This works straight onto the iPod too, so any playlist I've made on my computer I can download it straight onto my iPod to listen to while I'm on holiday. Bonus is it auto-updates if someone adds songs or changes them around when you next go online, allowing for dynamic playlists like the Radio 1's playlist I have on mine. Problem is when it ends I'll really miss it XD. Still, I activated it at the perfect time to go on holiday with it :D. New songs I love and found through the service: Helena Beat by Foster The People and Bambous by Caravan Palace. CHOOOOOONS :P. In all seriousness though, if you have Spotify you can just click my little gadget button I installed in the left column and it'll take you to all my playlists :D.

Also known as: God of playlists
I do seriously wonder what music has to do with spots though

Now all I can do is wait for my girlfriend to get off what sounds like a bit of a crap holiday and show her all the awesome stuff I has found :).

First ever blog post, over and out ;).