myPhone to go

As of yesterday, I'm a happy owner of a black 16GB iPhone 3G with an Orange plan. That's why my "old" one (after all, it's all of three months old) is now up for sale here, and it already finds quite keen interest. Which is unsurprising because I've pwned it (there's a new word for you!) for OS X version 2.0 with the Pwnage tool and paying close attention to this and this indispensable tutorial. The procedure is not as fool proof as Ziphone's (which is not available yet), but that's less a matter of IT knowledge rather than of dexterity in hitting the right buttons at the right time ... good luck!

At this point, an upgrade to 2.0 is not urgent for iPhone classic owners who use a lot of installer apps, because most of them have not been upgraded to the new OS version, yet. But there is one case where it's advisable to upgrade, and that's if you want to sell it. Only version 2.0 has a safe delete feature with which you can remove safely all the information you've put on your phone. If you don't do that, the buyer can get access to all your info quite easily. So, for once, it's seller beware!

Swan Upping

Haven't we talked about Swans before? Here's an interesting video on HM Swans - enjoy!

Subscribe to keep

About a week ago, I subscribed to the download membership that is newly on offer at Magnatune. Magnatune is an extremely fair online music label with a selection & quality of classical music, jazz and world that is very much my cup of tea. With the download membership, it got that much better: for $54, you get three months of free download access to all of their program. Did I mention quality? You can choose between a number of different formats, including AAC and full quality WAV. Unlike with other subscription models, you don't loose your music when your membership expires. Very good value indeed!

Size matters!

This is a technology forecast of sorts. It is the result of using iPhone for the last few months, confirming my suspicion that iPhone indeed is the game changing device that it is heralded to be. Those who say that there's nothing new about it in technology terms are right, of course. But they suffer a very common geek mistake: it's not the feature set that counts, it is the mainstream ease of use of those features. Recently, I've had quite a enlightening insight into how that works when I showed my iPhone to a Lady in her seventies who had never even used a PC. Within minutes or less, she was happily zapping through photos, zooming & rotating, and she looked up stuff on the Maps app. I am pretty sure she is going to have one of her own soon, if they are available at all. I'm expecting my black 16 GB iPhone 3G with an Orange plan on Monday.

But that was no forecast, that's reality. iPhone shines because of its ingenious user interface with multitouch. As with every innovation, multitouch is now being tried on other devices such as laptops or computer screens. And here's my forecast: Those are going to fail utterly. Why? iPhone works because you hold it in your hand, so you can easily wipe its screen on your sleeve to get rid of those fingerprints. I'm doing that Monk-like almost whenever I use it. But try that with a laptop or - worse - a computer screen ... QED.

Email in Schönenbuch

Die Weltwoche ist zwar auch nicht mehr, was sie mal war (daher ist sie jetzt auch abbestellt), aber wenn sie schon die Gastrokritik eines der beiden Restaurants meines Wohnorts bringt, muss sie zitiert werden: "Email hat hier drin noch nichts mit elektronischer Post zu tun, sondern ist ein Schmelzüberzug, mit dem man vor Urzeiten Reklameschilder verzierte". Gute Idee - lies selbst.

Classical music with shining eyes

Football craze

The Basle indigenous will hopefully be forgiven for thinking their home town to be the centre of the universe for the next couple of weeks. Not only is the high and mighty Art world currently assembled here, but even some football tournament is being kicked off as we type ... but don't expect to read anything more about it here. 

Trainspotting

No, not the movie - this! Amazing!

Apple pays

That was quick! Local newspaper BaZ seems to keep close tabs on the Apple-Suisa skirmish - we've reported earlier.  Now BaZ breaks the news that Apple has backed down on Saturday and will be paying up the millions that it has accrued in levies. But apparently not before getting a letter from a Swiss consumerism organisation demanding that Apple pays back the surcharge retained from consumers, should it be successful against Suisa. So that matter's settled - but Suisa continues to look into whether iPhone will be considered a media player that is subject to the levy.

Apple refuses to pay levy

This story is about our preferred purveyor of fine fruit, and I post it because I haven't seen it anywhere else - probably no netizen reads Basler Zeitung ... anyway: they have this story about Apple refusing to pay a blank media levy imposed on the sale of media players (i.e. the iPod) by Suisa (Swiss Society for the Rights of Authors of Musical Works). Apple apparently refuses to pay because their online store is located in Ireland and mails iPods directly to its Swiss clients and therefore, Apple thinks, it is not liable to pay. Suisa's levy on RAM-based media players used to be extremely hefty: until 1 April, the levy on a 32 GB iPod touch was CHF 153. Under heavy attack, Suisa decided to lower that levy unilaterally to 42 francs.

Now I am certainly no friend of Suisa's. Nevertheless, I think Apple's position in this matter is quite untenable. They claim that they never included any levy in the pricing of the players, yet the price difference between the Swiss Apple store and others magically is about equal to what the levy amounted to before it was lowered. And it hasn't been lowered still, so everybody who buys an iPod on Apple's Swiss online store is not very intelligent. This certainly does not generate much goodwill with clients either. What's more, Swiss VAT is applied to the goods sold online, and the store claims to be subject to Swiss law, so ... I'm guessing that the legal goings-on in a tiny province of Apple's vast realm (that doesn't even have the iPhone, yet - legally) has escaped the eye of Cupertino's lawyers so far. This is bound to change soon, and we'll hopefully see a levy refund to Swiss Apple Store clients soon.

Update: As this post creates so much traffic, I went back to check my facts and, lo & behold, the prices of the Swiss Apple Store have been brought back in line with the Euro pricing: CHF 719 (EUR 440) for the 32GB iPod touch, down from ca. 840 on last check. This is lower than the price at the German store (EUR 459), but not by as much as the roughly 10% points difference in VAT would suggest. The difference, again, is close enough to 42 francs. Therefore, the retail price includes the levy, but Apple refuses to fess up. Good policy?