iPod Touch

We've recently been accepted on the Apple iPhone developer program, which is good news because we can start developing very cool applications for the handful of people in NZ who have iPhones.

That's being a little unfair, as I think my iPhone is the most useful piece of technology I have ever owned. I love it. I have blogged about it (frequently) photographed it (often) and I think everyone should have one (if they were affordable). Sadly they are not.

And all this is slightly weird from someone who has avoided Apples like the plague for years. Only the "cool kids" use Apple and I have always thought them so pretentious and righteous - the machines, and the people who own them. No virus, don't crash - blah, blah, blah. Until of course I owned an Apple device and loved it. Yes, they are slowly converting me. I am becoming one of "them"!

Anyway, to my point. Today we had to buy an iPod Touch, as the developer program, dictates that you MUST have a device that "may be locked into testing mode and may not be capable of being restored to the original condition". Basically, you have to buy a device, knowing that it will never be useful and may be permanently damaged, by Apples software. Extraordinary.

That's why I still partly hate Apple. They lock you down, tie you in, and everything is so expensive. We even had to pay to upgrade to the new firmware, for a device I bought off the shelf today. So that's why we bought a Touch instead of an iPhone for testing - the Touch was $449, an iPhone is $979. Easy decision really.