Business Traveller

The UK is all in a flutter about bullies again, and the bleeding hearts are wringing their hands and saying how terrible it all is. Just to be clear. I was bullied. Allot. There was a time in my life where I was beaten up every day at school. I had the sort of strict christian upbringing where it was drummed into me that I must always turn the other cheek, or risk going to hell. I turned the other cheek, and this was obviously fun for those who wanted to prove their toughness without any risk of getting hurt. So I know all about being bullied. I know how terrible it feels, and I know how it can affect you. That’s why I think that these bleeding hearts are doing so much harm at the moment. I’m older now, and understand what happened to me in school allot better now. And if these idiots could stop telling the poor bullied kids how awful it all is, getting them to feel even sorrier for themselves, then they could start to fix the problem. Not bullying. I don’t think that there is any way to stop that. The real problem is that these kids think that they are being bullied because people hate them. That’s what does the real damage. The sooner the bullied kids understand that it’s nothing to do with them, and that it’s the cowards that are bullying them that have a problem, the more we can minimise the psychological impact of bullying. Also, changing the mindset of those being bullied from ‘Everybody hates me’, and cringing away from people contact (which in itself invites bullying) to ‘I’m alright, and those cowards won’t get me down’ will dramatically reduce the incidence of bullying anyway!

I’ve finally managed to get my hands on an iPhone to fool around with for a bit.

What’s cool about the iPhone

They’ve definitely gotten the user interface right. that is seriously cool. for those of you that haven’t seen one up close yet, it’s about the size of an iPod, but the entire front is taken up by a screen. The screen itself uses a new technology to allow multiple points of touch and move. The coolest way of experiencing this is – while browsing the web, you pinch your fingers together to zoom out, or spread your fingers to zoom in. you can also twist and manipulate things on the screen using this mechanism. Very cool.

Another cool thing is they way that, in certain modes (mainly when browsing the web, or looking at photos), when you turn the phone sideways, it recognises this, and moves what you’re looking at into a landscape view. Turn it back up, and it goes back into portrait mode.

So in essence, what they’ve made is a seriously sleek and cool web tablet with some apple applications on it, and similar storage to an iPod nano. And it’s also a very usable phone. Very cool.

What’s not cool about the iPhone

Once the initial ‘wow that’s very cool’ wears off, there are some things that are not so cool. It’s very obviously been created in america because creating a text message takes allot of work on the touch screen, although I reckon that – with a little bit of practice – you could get used to that. Worse than this is the fact that there is no 3G. If this had been made by Nokia, it would not only be 3G, it would probably be HSDPA, and you’d get serious download speeds out of it.

Other niggles that I can see coming up are the fact that the battery is (like the iPod) sealed into the unit, so any problems with the battery become a problem with the phone. Speaking of battery, the battery life is really poor, and the more you use that fantastic screen, the faster it runs flat. Not cool.

One last area of concern is that Apple have become the first mobile phone manufacturer ever to demand a percentage of the revenue from all calls made with the phone by their customers. Some mobile networks have accepted this, but the extra cost will most likely be passed onto consumers – that means that, if you have an iPhone, everybody else will probably end up paying less for their calls than you do.