Chris Brandrick

O2, the UK mobile network that holds the rights to sell Apple’s iPhone finally revealed a few days back the price for the upcoming Pay & Go (no contract) version of the popular device. Personally I think the price point is pretty steep, especially considering those on Pay & Go are usually on the simplier service for one of a few reasons, be it no ties, lack of constant use, or general savings.

The 8GB version of the iPhone will retail for £349.99 while the 16GB version of the mobile will sell for £399.99. For those of you reading stateside, the 16GB model will roughly cost just over $700. The Pay & Go option will be availble from the 16th of September, and will include one year of free web/data use.

Do you think the price point is two high, or is it justified considering the technology within?

Last week I posted about how my Mac’s Magsafe cable had broken, today during a train journey I had some spare time to burn while in Birmingham so I visited the Apple Store in the Bullring, booked a session with an Apple Genius and told them my problem.

Despite me calling an Apple store earlier in the week and being told that the cable would need to go to a repair centre the Apple employee swapped my old cable for a new one (the new model) right there in store. Convenient!

Still, the cable should not have broken in the first place, so Macbook owners be weary of the cable and keep an eye out for any changes in it’s appearance.

This post comes to you from my Macbook.

A little personal post today about something which is bothering me, and that Macbook owners should be aware of.

In January I bought myself a Macbook as I was long overdue a laptop. Since then me and my mac have enjoyed a great relationship, where it worked, and I was happy. In fact I am so impressed with the Mac OS I find myself on my PC less and less, but that’s another story.

Over the past few days my ‘Magsafe’ Power adapter has been giving me problems, initially upon plugging in the charger it charged…but only for a few minutes, then charged again. This intermittent state of charging was random, unsatisfactory and more than anything concerning. Last night this problem revealed it’s true side.

The cable had melted, and the inner wire was visible. I stopped using the cable immediately as I would prefer not to burn down my home. After a brief period of research online, I discovered that this was a common problem many Macbook owners were experiencing. Just check out this Flickr set for examples.

An example of what my cable now looks like.

Despite me being under warranty I still checked out the Apple site to see what the going rate was for the power adapter. Unfortunately it was, to my disgust, £59.99 (Which works out at about $120).  I am going to call Apple later today to try and get a new cable. It seems a revision has finally been made to the cables, as seen in this picture from Flickr, so hopefully I will receive one of these newer models.