Aidan Williams - High Acuity

My sister and I met up with my brother at his new offices at 30 St Mary Axe (‘The Gerkin’) for an early Christmas lunch last Friday. He has the most incredible view over London from his office on the 31st floor, and despite the fact that the weather was terrible – it was still a great experience. We proceeded to the restaurant on the 40th floor which had more beautiful views over London AND fantastic food, and possibly the best Earl Grey tea blend I’ve ever tasted! (is it wrong to get that excited about great tasting tea? I don’t think so) I will definitely be going to visit my brother more often in the New Year.

If I were to regale you all with the fabulous food that my mum cooked over Christmas, it would provoke longings to embark post haste for my parent’s house, there to eat oneself cheerfully to death and gorge on Christmas delights. Everyone claims that their mother is the best cook in the world, but my mum really is the best cook in the world.

Christmas with my parents in the West Midlands was a haze of frosty mornings, country expeditions, conversations aside a crackling open fireplace, wonderful food and sweets, and a couple of great classic Christmas movies thrown in there for good measure. I cannot have Christmas without watching Scrooged at least once – it’s still timeless and classic and still my favourite Christmas movie of all time… just ahead of Die Hard.

On Boxing Day, my friend John, who I’ve known since I was twelve, and his girlfriend drove us out to Hay On Wye – a small town that’s famous for being filled with pretty much nothing but book shops and cafes. They have an annual famous literary festival where my brother saw Bill Clinton speak a few years ago.

We had a great day out walking in the (freezing cold!) countryside and ended it with a nice meal in a country pub at the Llantony Priory, which is the only building left standing in the ruins of an Augustine monastery that was build in 1180AD.

All in all it was a wonderful break for my girlfriend and I. I haven’t been home all year, so it was great to spend some quality time with my parents.

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.

A couple of weekends ago I met up with an old school friend, Jon, at Borough Market for what was supposed to be a brief meeting for coffee in the morning, but ended up being an entire day of catching up and walking around central London.

I hadn’t seen him in seven or eight years and it was great to catch up again. He’s one of those genuine, kind, funny, intelligent people you’re always happy to meet up with. I’ve also yet to meet anyone who enjoys walking as much as my old friends from Hereford do – aside from lunch and a break in Saint James Park, we were walking pretty much solidly for eight hours.

My girlfriend has graduated from university! She had her graduation ceremony last week – congratulations baby.

She and I bought unlimited passes to our local cinema a few weeks ago. So far we’ve seen The Bourne Ultimatum twice, Knocked Up Twice, and I saw 1408 with my flatmate Oleg the other day. Knocked Up is a lot of fun – well worth seeing. 1408 – well, you’ve pretty much seen it all if you’ve seen the trailer, to be honest, but if you like a fright, go for it.

Oleg and I spent the day walking around London with the aim of going to the Apple store to check out the new iPods. The new Shuffle colours are nice, the Classic is a good update, but the Nano is far more impressive in the flesh than I thought it would be. They’ve really put a lot of effort into the software this time and the screen looks brilliant. It’s a shame the iPod Touch isn’t released in the stores sooner – we’re obviously most interested in seeing that one.