Wednesday, June 03, 2009

You Rang...

photo.jpgFirst iPhoto I iTook with iMy iPhone (outside our iOffice)
Warning: This post uses outdated technology. Updating can be financially taxing.

I'm fresh back from a 6-week stint in China, during which I couldn't really/maybe could have but was too tired/lazy to update the blog. It's not the first time, and surely not the last. But all good procrastination/hiatus must come to an end, so here we are.

I had a list of gripes about China, but I lost it, and it's hardly fun to get back to posting with a bitch session, now is it?
On a more positive note, back in Japan and with my pockets lined with hard earned cash, I found a spending spree was in order, and the first order of business was ditching the old burner. About time to get an iPhone.

Though I spend stupid amounts of money on gadgetry across the board, I very rarely pick something up on the launch date. Got a PS2 well over a year after they came out. My PSP, DS, Xbox 360 were all years after the first ones came out (though the DS and PSP were new editions of the same). I always buy my cameras one model older than the latest, and my iPods and cellphones are not the newest on the market.
Reasoning? The first is money, and the second is customer feedback. Without fail, any major electronic release (esp. gaming) gets a barrage of online forum complaints about bugs and defects. Look at the debacle with the first Wii, or how desparate people were for new iPhone software the day it came out. I love new stuff, but in this case I'd rather wait for the DVD release (so to speak), just in case the movie isn't that good.

iPhones have dropped fantastically in price since their release in Japan, for the basic fact that they are not at all geared for Japan's needs. No infra-red (the most popular way to share contact details and data here), no cell internet (including sites to pick up purikura (those cute Japanese photo booth things) online, and no microSD drive for storing off the hard drive. Plus, the phone treats email like normal computer email, where in Japan cellphone email is the substitute for inter-network SMS. However, for a net-loving gaijin in a country with wi-fi almost everywhere, it's fabulous. Not perfect, but quite nice.

I may be approaching my quarter century, but I'm still a kid who likes his toys, even if they're not the latest ones on the shelf.

2 comments:

Sarah-Rose said...

Haha. I never got all the fuss around iPhones when they were released, saw the people in London queueing in the freezing cold and just thought they were mad.
Then I played with one and realised that they're pretty damn awesome.
But like you, I don't rush to get the new new newest version. Craig is angling for me to get a new iPhone so he can get my hand-me-down and use it to decide if he REALLY wants to shell out for his own. Which, of course, he will.

Unknown said...

Like.. how cheap then? heh. I'm so jealous of friends having them at the moment.