Aidan Williams - High Acuity

After an incredible week, cramming in 5 days of work into the last two, and looking after my girlfriend who was sick, I started my journey to Cape Town on the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Airport.

After checking in and doing a small amount of duty-free shopping, I sat and surfed the web for free via The Cloud network with my iPhone – I fricken love this thing! I was able to send a couple of last-minute work emails to ensure everything went smoothly while I was away and give myself some peace of mind, and I was able to surf the net and relax before the flight.

My brothers Kim, Rory, his girlfriend Caroline and I spent most of Sunday visiting Vinyards in Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, such as Tokara, Dieu Donné and Delaire, where we did some wine tasting. The views in this area of Cape Town are particularly breath taking. Every time I visit Cape Town, I understand why there are so many health resorts in this part of the world – it’s so beautiful, peaceful and rejuvenating.

On Monday morning, a small group of us walked up Lion’s head. While the most common tourist destination in Cape Town is Table Mountain, I really think the walk up Lion’s Head gives the best views over the city and the surrounding areas, not least because you get incredible views of Table Mountain as you walk up.

While some people seem to find walking up Lion’s Head a rather blasé affair, making it to the top is always somewhat of a cathartic experience for me. And while I feel as though my heart is about to explode in my chest just before I make it to the top, making it to the top and seeing those views is always a great moment.

On Monday and Tuesday nights, my brother Rory rented a beautiful beach house for us out in Hermanus. Kim brought his poker set so on both nights we played into the wee hours of the morning. While Rory, Dan and I spent the evening shouting playful banter at each other, Kim quietly and stealthily gleaned our chips from beneath us. Whenever we pointed out to him “What’s going on here, Kim?? You’ve got all the chips!” he would consistently reply “What? I’ve got hardly any chips! Look at Aidan, he’s got them all!” (I had a bit more than the others). I ended both nights with fifty percent more money than I put in, but Kim really took the pot both nights.

On Wednesday and Thursday I spent a lot of time looking after my beautiful niece and nephew, Nicholas and Maya. We played various games, mostly involving drawing with crayons, various forms of hide and seek, and also clambering all over me whether I was standing or sitting. I also took them to see Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium – which is a fun film and worth seeing. These children are wonderful, but they have way too much energy for me – I know I’m relatively young and should have more energy, but they nearly gave me a heart attack on numerous occasions. Needless to say, they and I slept very well on both of those nights.

Friday was Kim’s birthday so we met up with him at the Planet Bar inside the beautiful Mount Nelson hotel. Kim has some amazing friends – I met Lars (or ‘Larry’ as Kim calls him) a Norwegian actor who I last met just after he finished playing the part of ‘Bugs’ in the film ‘The Beach’. He kept on walking up to me, putting his arm around me and pushing olives into my mouth, and as I was trying to have a conversation with people, I ate them, despite the fact that I just can’t get a taste for olives. I see everyone enjoying them so much and I want to try them every time, but the taste is just horrible to me.

After visiting various pubs and clubs around Cape Town, I ended up staying at Kim’s friend Stephan’s flat at about 5 in the morning. The next day Stephan and I went out to Haut Bay for a great ‘steak roll’ lunch and n the way back, he showed me around his university labs. Stephan is researching minimally-invasive heart surgery techniques using da Vinci S Surgical System robot, going in through the abdomen and working your way through the body to the heart. No more cutting open the breast-plate/chest!

For my final meal in Cape Town, Kim, Stephan and I went to a restaurant in the city where I had an ostrich fillet steak on a bed of crushed sweet potato with red thai curry sauce – yes, it sounded a little strange to me too, but wow… very tasty.

Overall I had an incredible time in Cape Town. Yes, there were some family politics and other things going on, but I always have an incredible time with my brothers. If you have a hectic lifestyle and need to go somewhere to relax for a week or two, I couldn’t recommend any place better than Cape Town.

Okay, come on, you knew I was going to get one!

I picked up an iPhone a few weeks ago and I have to say, it does have its shortcomings, and they could be considered significant: A 2 megapixel camera with no other features, settings or flash. Mono Bluetooth audio on a device that’s designed to play music. Edge and no 3G on a device that’s designed to browse the Internet. No expandable memory. No detachable battery. No multimedia/photo messaging. No front-side camera for video calls. No GPS. No Radio. No 3rd party applications (for the moment).

That’s a lot of very old technology for a device that’s supposed to be so technologically advanced. These issues are compounded by the fact that the iPhone’s direct competitors do have all of the very latest technologies in these areas and are sold at a fraction of the price, sometimes even given away free with a new contract. Such as the Nokia N95 with it’s 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus, flash, great camera settings, stereo Bluetooth, and 3G. To add to this, the sound quality of voice calls isn’t brilliant, and there is a big difference between the sound quality on the iPhone and the Sony Ericsson phones I’ve owned.

Suffice to say; I am very disappointed with the iPhone’s shortcomings. Partly because I really like having a decent camera on my phone, and given all the hoo-haa Apple made about displaying photos on the iPhone, I would have thought the device’s built-in camera would have been more… substantial/advanced, etc. But I’m also disappointed largely because Apple is usually so good at knowing what a new device needs in order excel in the modern market place, and in knowing what the public wants.

However, even with all these shortcomings, I have to tell everyone that the iPhone is absolutely stunning and it does all the typical mobile phone functions far better than any other device on the market. And the extra features that no other mobile phone has are all excellent as well. Three weeks in and I honestly can’t imagine living without this incredible device. I genuinely didn’t expect to be quite this impressed as I am, given that I’d read everything about it six months ago and was starting to feel a little bored with all the adverts, articles and press on it.

Even basic everyday functions, such as being able to walk down the street while listening to my music with the iPhone’s heaphones and knowing that I’ll be alerted to any calls, texts or emails is brilliant - and being able to answer calls without getting it out of my pocket … okay, maybe I’m getting excited over nothing - but this thing is awesome!

The iPhone shows an infinite amount of promise and I can imagine some absolutely incredible improvements and applications available on future generations… but I really do miss that great camera on my three-year-old Sony Ericsson phone.

As a side note, I also bought a family pack of Leopard for myself, my girlfriend and my flatmates and upgraded, and I love it as well! Definitely worth upgrading, especially if you’re working on OSX every day.

It’s a beautiful blue-skied sunny autumn day in London and Steve Jobs & the Apple team are at London’s Regent Street Apple store announcing the UK release date of the new iPhone.

Apparently the adverts for the iPhone which they showed at the beginning of the presentation are all rehashed versions of the old US ones with the O2 logo replacing the AT&T one and the Guardian website replacing the New York Times.

It seems everything about the presentation was slightly anti-climactic, although perhaps people got their hopes up a bit too much when they found out that Steve Jobs was coming to give the presentation, in expectation that it would be something even more special – the iPhone is exactly the same as the US one – no 3G and no bigger hard drive – they do have unlimited browsing data plans, but they only start at £35 for the cheapest plan and they’re not strictly ‘unlimited’ - 1.400 page views per day – which doesn’t sound too unreasonable unless you plan on using the iPhone exclusively as your Internet browser, and even then it’s not that bad (according to Google Answers the average Internet users see 100 – 150 pages per day).

In a country where we’ve become pretty accustomed to getting even the newest phones for free, or at the very least below £50 - £100, it’s difficult to weigh out the benefits of buying an iPhone.

I think if I buy one, it will be an extravagance relating to my enjoyment of using Apple products, and I think the vast majority of UK mobile customers will steer clear of the iPhone with it’s £270 price tag and £35 monthly tariff.

So what are the benefits?

Well I’ll be able to sync my iPhone with my 17” Macbook Pro, sharing addresses, phone numbers, calendar appointments, photos, etc – which I already do with my three year old Sony Ericsson K750i.

I’ll be able to surf the web and check email on a full colour screen, with full html email including images – which I can already do with my Sony Ericsson K750i, albeit to a far more limited degree and without the WiFi connection – but if I’m near a WiFi connection, that’s what my laptop is for.

I’ll be able to listen to my music and watch videos - which technically I can also already do on my current phone, albeit in a far less simple manner, on a far smaller screen. I have an iPod for that too, which sort of dwarfs the iPhones 8Gig memory, which will also be taken up by other things such as software.

I have to say, if you think rationally about it and ignore the ‘touch-screen technology’, which is obviously a huge plus for the iPhone, when you compare the actual technological real-life day-to-day advantages of owning an iPhone vs most other modern phones in Europe, it’s not all that mind-blowing or practical. And when you consider that most prospective iPhone users more than likely already own an iPod, that removes that element from the equation - and will also probably be more sensible, since using music and video, and all of the other extras on the iPhone will take away valuable battery life – the iPhone dock will definitely get a lot of use with these phones.

Quite a few prospective UK iPhone owners seem to be upset that it’s taken them this long to get the iPhone here, given that Apple have been so good at simultaneously launching their products internationally in the past. But the iPhone is obviously a-whole-nother kettle of fish, since they’ve had to find and partner with an appropriate provider.

The UK Market has been very good to Apple in terms of iPods and its computers, but I think Apple may get a slight shock from Europe when it comes to the iPhone. We’re not used to paying £270 for a phone and we will weigh-out the pros and cons of an iPhone vs the competition, before buying. Many are already saying they’ll wait for the 2nd generation iPhone and hope that it receives an International launch once all providers are established.

Having said all that though, anyone who knows me remotely, knows how much I love technology, and with undoubtedly the best mobile Internet and mobile email device on the market, you know I’ll more than likely pick one up at some point, especially considering I’ve purposefully not upgraded my old phone while waiting for the iPhone to be released. I’m sure I’ll find many excuses to convince myself to do so in the next two months before its release, but I will also be checking out the competition in the meantime.