FaceTime (by Apple) is good, but seems a little glitchy and disconnects the most of any that we used over the week. Another contender was Skype; This was much better, and I’ve used it before with no problems, but it seemed poor in signal quality and did drop out occasionally. (Although I blame her internet connection, as she could hear me perfectly! – Not sure if that’s how it works?)

Finally, we came onto Viber. Unlike other applications Viber allows a more traditional phone call experience, as the voices aren’t automatically on loud-speaker, meaning you can have more private conversations. There isn’t the feature of video conferencing either, meaning signal strength (for the most part) are stronger. It does drop out occasionally, but again, that’s a poor internet connection rather than the application. To top it off, the audio quality seems BETTER than when talking via actual phone calls!

Moral of the story; Get Viber! It’s free, and it will save you money (and presious contract minutes!).

In fact, here is a perfect example; The best sandwich bar / cafe in Nottingham.

Hopefully articles like this will give readers (and possibly prospective employers) an insight into my life beyond computing; A feat which many computing students find hard to portray on a curriculum Vitae!

Enjoy!

P.s. I won’t REALLY be blogging about the best Apple. Because everyone knows it’s “Pink Lady”.

Either way, Apple have responded by claiming there was a glitch in the original software regarding the signal bars, and that an update to come soon will make the signal bars more accurate and representative of the actual signal strength. To be honest it all seems a little suspect!

But all the blame can’t be put on Apple, as mobile reception can easily be boosted by carriers. For example, back when Chris Moyles was climbing kilimanjaro back in 2008 he reportedly called O2 to moan about his signal to his iPhone. O2 responded by ‘Boosting’ the signal, allowing him to have a flawless conversation with the BBC radio 1 team! Now, obviously O2 and other carriers can’t be expected to do this for every customer, but surely something should be said to the carriers as well as Apple? Scratch that, it seems AT&T are being sued too!

It started the night before, with an early night sleep followed by an early (5.00am) start. After a quick shower I jumped in the car and drove into my local town to stand outside the O2 shop in anticipation. I went prepared, with headphones and the complete ‘Inbetweeners’ box set downloaded from the night before. I got there at about 5.25am, to be greeted by a group of 7 people (6 male, 1 female) who had been there from as early as 4.00am!

As we stood and chatted for a while about the new phone, Apple/O2 marketing tactics and other things I felt part of a specialist (if not a little geeky) community – The elite and dedicated! A queue soon started to form, and by 6.00am there were about two dozen people behind me (I was 8th in line). Here’s a breakdown of the stats for my particular O2 shop;

people @4.00am – 1 (first arrival)
people @5.30am – 8
people @6.00am – 30ish
people @7.00am – 100ish
people @8.02am – 182 (official figure)

So, after making my way past the private security and into the O2 shop I looked at the handset for a few minutes and was then seated to go through the process. I soon got away and exited the O2 shop to be applauded by the ever-growing line of people (a lot of which I guess would be disappointed). One of the O2 guru’s said they had approximately 50 handsets in stock, which was a lot more than the anticipated 5 x 32GB and 10 x 16GB which they expected. Never the less over 2/3 of the line would go away empty handed.

I guess that’s it; pretty simple really. Yes, it was a major geeky thing to do, but I now get to enjoy another brilliant product from Apple as one of only a select few in my area and indeed the UK – now just got to find someone to try ‘FaceTime’ out with.

The UK prices are without any data-plans and so a pay as you go micro-Sim could be used. We will have to wait and see what prices O2, Vodafone and Orange put out when they make their upgrade/pre-order pages live (hopefully soon!)

Update 1: It seems there are a lot of complaints about the US pre-order page timing out when customers get to the ‘AT&T’ tariff selection page due to high volume of traffic to the page. So far, it would seem, only a handful of US iPhone poachers have managed to secure their iPhone 4!

Update 2: Vodafone have had their prices leaked for the iPhone 4: Read the Guardian article for more details, but it looks like the handset will cost between £90 and £280 on an 18 month contract, depending on the tariff you choose (£40 per month [600 mins / unlimited texts] makes the handset £180). Click the thumbnail to the right to see the 24 and 18 month tariffs from Vodafone for the Black 32GB device (Presumably the white 32GB costs will be identical).

Update 3: Orange has just announced their iPhone 4 tariffs! Unlimited texts on any 24 month contract, but £570 for the pay as you go handsets, which is £70 more than apple are offering directly! Take a look at the contracts HERE

Update 4: O2 have also updated their prices, including the handset price. With a similar tariff price (£40) on an 18 month contract you get 600 minutes (300 less than Orange) but unlimited texts! The handset cost for this tariff is £209. Check out all the tariffs HERE

I’m going to use it for my final year dissertation project; Something along the lines of an educational interactive learning game developed using the iPhone platform (Basically a glorified iPhone application!!).

Due to this step-up in my educational performance and seriousness i’m going to add two new categories to the blog; Mac (for all my MacBook tutorials/issues/resolutions) and FYD (The one where I will talk about the progress of my Final Year Dissertation!

WHAY!

Anyway, the people at PC World told me that they had basically quote “…Stopped selling the 13″ model due to lack of stock country wide”. I asked why the lack of stock, when such product was in such high demand, to which I got a shrug of the shoulders.

Now, normally I would drop it at that point, but when walking out of the shop I couldn’t help but wonder why Apple would (assuming a little here) produce less of the 13″ model than the 15″ (more conventional) model, as they both contained exactly the same hardware (minus the screen, of cause).

Could it be to sell more of the higher models? No, because there is a 17″ powerhouse also on sale!
Could it be due to lack of 13″ screens? No, because both the 13″ and 15″ screens are produced on site at the same factory using the same resources.
Could it be to promote another product? Possibly, but this just seemed like bad marketing at a time of such high demand.

And then I stumbled across what I think is most likely the answer. The iPad. With its 9″ screen, it is very similar to the small notebook that Apple sell – with almost identical processing power, resolution and alike. My thoughts are that perhaps they have halted production on the 13″ model in preparation (i.e. to build demand even higher) for the iPad.

It all made sense, as the PC world sales person had said the regular shipment had ceased late February. Bingo!

HOLD THE iPHONE! – I got home and rang Apple, only to discover that they had plenty of 13″ models in stock – Could it be that my focus should be on PC World’s marketing, instead of Apple?

Damn you PC World, and please don’t file a law suit, Apple UK!

Enter stage left: Amazon! They now support MP3 downloading, meaning you can buy songs at the same price as iTunes and not be restricted by the DRM stamped songs! It’s easy and quick to use. Even better is that if you have Amazon’s downloader installed the downloaded songs will automatically appear in your iTunes library!

Check out Amazon’s MP3 Download store!