Posted on June 15th, 2009 by geofas
Assumption: you want to get the latest iPhone as soon as it comes out and you take good care of your gadgets and your iPhone is in good/great condition so you can sell it.
After taking a step back and looking at iPhone upgrade options long term I realised that it is cheaper to alternate between getting an 18 months contract and buying the respective new iPhone in a Prepaid bundle.
I purchased the iPhone 3G in June 2008 and my contract ends January 2010. Apple offers the iPhone 3GS from 19 June 2009. Since my contract does not end for another 6-7 months I would have to cancel it, ie. buying myself out of the contract paying for the line rental for the remainder of the contract. Then I could get a new 18 month contract with the iPhone 3GS lasting until January 2011.
Given Apple’s iPhone update cycle it is likely that the next iPhone will be released in June 2010, let’s call it the iPhone 2010 for argument’s sake. At that point in time I will again have an 18 month contract with 6-7 months left on it.
Considering the lowest tariff, buying myself out of the contract would cost around £200 each time.
The iPhone 3GS 32 GB costs £538.30 as a Prepaid Bundle, and £274.30 with a new 18 month contract.
I can sell my current iPhone 3G 16GB to a friend for £200, then the Prepaid Bundle will still cost me £338.30, only £64 more than on a new contract. But the important part is that my existing contract will end in January 2010 as per normal. When Apple brings out an iPhone 2010 I can just upgrade my existing contract without having to buy myself out of it, which would cost another ~£200 on top of the hardware cost. So over two new iPhones I spend ~£136 less compared to buying myself out of each contract every time.
So in conclusion, if you alternate between buying the new iPhone as a Prepaid Bundle when your contract is still running and upgrading when you have finished your contractual obligation you actually pay less over time. Take good care of your iPhone so you can sell it for a good price when you get yourself a new one.
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Filed under: APPLE, iPhone
Posted on June 11th, 2009 by geofas
If you’re as keen to upgrade from your iPhone 3G to an iPhone 3GS as I am, you’ve probably figured out by know what your carrier offers you. In most cases you will have to buy yourself out of the remainder of your current contract with your network provider.
In my case I got the iPhone 3G on launch date last year and have about 6 months left on my 18 month contract. Obviously I want to lower the financial impact of the upgrade as much as possible!!
Luckily I could lower my tariff to the lowest one, thus reducing the damage by £30. Not bad.
So before you hit the stores on 19 July (or later in wave 2, 3 or 4 countries) remember to lower your tariff if you carrier allows it. It is important to consider one’s billing cycle to see when the change will be effective. Better hop on the phone with your provider quickly to check.
With O2 in the UK you can lower it to the next one down, one tariff at a time after the 9th month of your contract.
The normal early-termination-process is to pay for every month left on the contract as per the tariff valid at the time of termination. Your carrier might handle things differently for some bizarre reason, so please ensure to check to avoid disappointment.
~~~ Happy Upgrading!! ~~~
Update: Looks like I have to cancel my contract prior to going to the store. So I will do that once my new lower tariff has kicked in on 14 June. Wow, complicated. I would really appreciate if they could just charge me a premium to upgrade from an iPhone 3G and I can avoice the hassle.
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Filed under: Uncategorized
Posted on June 8th, 2009 by geofas
Apple just made the GM build for the iPhone 3.0 operating system and the final developer build for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard available to registered (paying) developers.
The iPhone 3.0 Gold Master seed and the final developer build of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and are now ready for download. …
… If it was not for them actually not being downloadable due to the high demand of those files. Guess the new $1 billion data centre in North Carolina can’t come quickly enough.
I keep getting the “The requested application was not found on this server.” after waiting a long time for the download to respond. To mix things up a little is get “An error occurred while processing your request. Reference #171.e57e7a5c.1244494416.3de6b489″ at other times. The iPhone 3.0 Apps Checklist also throws an error that the resource is busy. The latest iPhone 3.0 SDK shows the same behavior as the iPhone OS.
I wishing everyone (including myself) good luck with the downloads! And enjoy the latest and greatest in Apple OS software around.
Update: An hour has passed and the strongest storm seems to be over. The download started.
Update 2: Full speed ahead! Tuesday morning Cupertino time and I’m maxing out my bandwidth; consistant speed of 1.7MBps. 
Snow Leopard in the coming.
Edit: build released for Snow Leopard is of course not GM, but final developer seed. thanks, fpar.
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Filed under: Uncategorized
Posted on May 26th, 2009 by geofas
I just received the following funmail and I think it is a geat idea!
Dear Mr. Darling (editor’s note: that’s UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling),
Please find below my suggestion for fixing Britain’s economy. Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan :
There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. - Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:
1) They MUST retire. Twenty million job openings – Unemployment fixed.
2) They MUST buy a new British CAR. Twenty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed.
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage – Housing Crisis fixed.
4) They MUST send their kids to school / college /university – Crime rate fixed
5) Buy £50 of alcohol / tobacco a week there’s your money back in duty / tax etc
It can’t get any easier than that!
P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.
If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know. If not, please disregard.
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Filed under: musings
Posted on May 17th, 2009 by geofas
Some of you may already be familiar with the Zeitgeist online movies at http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/. Those of you who aren’t, I’d like to whole-heartedly recommend them to.
Not that I take any of the contents for granted but they surely provide a great input for everyone’s consideration when looking at certain things. Putting things into perspective and providing us a bit of food for thought is always good in these times when we are overloaded with input and it becomes more and more important to tell information from misinformation.
So besides the very enjoyable Zeitgeist movies, I’d actually also recommend to have a look around WikiLeaks at http://www.wikileaks.com/wiki/Wikileaks. It is a resource for highly sensitive material which often sheds some light on how certain events went down.
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Filed under: musings
