James Galvin

If you’re an Apple fanboy like me, you have waited all this time for the iPhone to arrive. Not a dirty hacked iPhone, but the real deal. It comes courtesy of O2, as expected. You check the price tag and see that they are not bumping up the price of the phone significantly compared to in the UK, surprisingly. Good stuff. Then you see the Paddy tax. Rip-off Ireland lives on in O2’s call charges. I think I might take Pat up on that bus to the north to get an unlocked iPhone.

“There is no excuse for paying such high prices and getting so little in return. The minutes, the text bundles and the data package are completely inappropriate for Irish people and the massive difference in what Irish and UK and Northern people get for the same price suggests that they’ll throw any old scraps at the stupid Paddys.”

Here is another reason why my MacBook Pro is better than your Thinkpad.

The gameplay revolves around two core principles:

• Tilt your macbook from side to side to move paddle
• Scream at your macbook to increase paddle size

This has to be the greatest invention since the seed drill, and it is open source.

I’m learning new stuff every day on my MacBook Pro. Today, OS X Hacker points out how you can zoom in on any part of the screen, simply by holding control and dragging two fingers along the trackpad. I can’t see this being useful, but that is beside the point. Little features like this are what makes OS X really cool… I will find it difficult to go back to Linux on my desktop.

The worst customer service since Soundstore in Blackpool. My brother’s 40gig iPod was dodgy from the day he got it. He tried to make do with it for awhile, before opting for tech support. Apple in Ireland wouldn’t talk to him, as the iPod had been bought in America. Apple in USA told him that he needed a replacement, but they wouldn’t send it to an Irish address. A lot of hassle, but another brother in San Francisco was able to help out. It took a very long time, and more trouble. Apple were a disaster; it would be easier to talk to a banana.

Time passed, and seasons changed, and George Best got sick, and George Best got better. Then George Best got sick again - only this time he did not get better - and then my brother in Ireland finally received the iPod replacement. But anytime he did something stressful to it, such as attempting to load songs onto it, it would freeze and lock up.

This time, the tech support call didn’t last quite as long. “Did you try it on a different PC?” - “Yes, same problem” - “OK, Send it in to us for repair”. Apple then informed him that his warranty was expired by two days and that it would cost him $319 to get this fixed.

He gave it to me to see if I could make it useful even as a portable hard drive or something. I downloaded the latest firmware, reflashed the iPod, and problem solved. How difficult would it have been for Apple to say this on the phone?

How can they honestly expect someone to pay $319 for repair on a product which is not even worth that much new? Do they really expect you to go to the hassle and expense of shipping a blank iPod to them when you could just buy a new one, and maybe use the old one as a paper weight or something? I would be up in arms over this - the original support request was opened well within warranty, its their fault if the replacement was a dud… just lucky that it was so easily fixed. I wonder how many people would have shipped it back and paid for the repair.