When I was a kid, digital calculators were roughly the size of a brick, and had satisfyingly chunky displays. They also, in those pre-internet days, provided a means of minor technical mischief. Type in 5318008, flip your calculator upside down, and it appeared to say ‘boobies’. If you were five, this was the most hilarious and original gag in the history of the world.

In this modern and rather less innocent age, the media would have you believe that personal technology devices in the hands of children merely teach them how to joyride while murdering innocent puppies and simultaneously fashioning bombs out of string, jelly babies and bits of twig. It’s presumably for this reason that Apple considers it a good idea to warn you (Every. Single. Time.) when you download an eReader from the App Store that it—shock!—potentially enables you to view content that some people might deem objectionable.

Enter, stage right, James Thomson, creator of iPhone/iPod touch calculator PCalc. In a minor slice of design genius, he combined the two issues mentioned above and PCalc now slaps a huge ‘Censored!’ sign across ‘naughty’ words when your device is flipped, thereby ensuring fragile little minds aren’t warped beyond all recognition.

This is a smart, funny, satirical swipe at the recent trend towards over-zealous censorship. Unless you’re, say, Sajid Farooq of NBC, who, inexplicably takes Thomson’s joke seriously (and, sadly, he’s not alone) and states PCalc’s change would “make even George Orwell shudder in his grave”. I’m thinking Orwell would be more likely to laugh his CENSORED off.

Atebits rock. The company has three products, and they’re all ace. Two of them are called Tweetie, and are Twitter clients. Unlike most apps, Tweetie began life on iPhone and then headed for the desktop. Atebits is now preparing to release Tweetie 2 for both platforms.

Tweetie 2 is pretty much a rewrite. The dev has taken time to figure out what’s needed in a modern Twitter client and has tried to design something that’s both streamlined and feature-packed. Also, saved searches will sync across the Mac and iPhone releases.

The thing is, the dev has also had the audacity to say he wants some money for his efforts. He says he’s going to charge nearly three whole dollars for his app. The nerve! What an absolute git—hasn’t he heard that everything should be free these days? Doesn’t he realise that he should just be so thankful we’re all using his software that free is the most expensive price-point he should even consider? Hell, he should really be paying us for the privilege of knowing his software’s being used!

And if you think I sound like a total arse right now, you can at least take solace in the fact that I’m not in the least bit being serious, unlike, say, Patrick Jordan, who suggests the Tweetie 2 $2.99 price-point is a bad call. In fact, he calls it a “very,very,very Bad Call,” capitalising ‘bad’ and ‘call’, and emboldening both, just to drive the point home. He suggests he “just can’t find a way to think of [the price] as anything less than spitting in the face of existing Tweetie users”. Seriously. He also moans that offering “no upgrade discount” is a “slap for those who have helped make Tweetie a success,” despite the App Store not offering any means for devs to provide upgrade pricing.

As I wrote in The downward spiral of App Store pricing, it’s pretty clear any semblance of common sense has long left the building regarding App Store pricing. The new version of Tweetie is going to cost three bucks. The dev has rewritten his app and added a load of new features, and it’s going to cost three bucks.

You’d pay more than three bucks for a crappy sandwich or a luke-warm beer in the pub. But, apparently, three bucks is too much of a ‘reward’ for the hard work a dedicated indie dev has put into a leading and brilliant product.

On Twitter, Stu Dredge just said: “Remember how O2 wouldn’t let iPhone 3G buyers upgrade to a 3GS until their contracts were up – which was fair, but caused lots of anger? Well, those contracts are all going to be up exactly when T-Mo / Voda start selling the 3GS too – i wonder if O2 has shot itself in foot.”

Some of those contracts will be a bit too long for that, extending past the time when the newcomers enter the fray, but it’s pretty certain O2 will lose plenty of potential customers and existing ones will look to jump networks during an ‘upgrade’. And due to policy elsewhere, O2 may also lose Pay & Go customers. Back in August, I noted how O2 effectively refused to enable me to move my remaining ‘free’ (as in marketed as free but clearly part of the device cost) data to a new device. O2 could have just added three months of data to a Pay & Go 3GS, or given my wife three months extra upon taking over the old phone. This would have been intelligent customer care. Instead, I was told the data would be ‘lost’ and O2 actually recommended I wait until my bolt-on ran out before buying a new device.

At the time, I said: “I’ve got three months left on my bolt-on. I’m now hoping the rumours are true and the announcement of the end of O2’s iPhone monopoly comes around that point, because its Pay & Go attitude strikes me as unbelievably dumb and has really rubbed me up the wrong way.”

Two months to go on that bolt-on—and with Vodaphone today throwing its hat into the ring alongside Orange, ‘two’ is also the number of competing carriers I’ll be fully checking out prior to going anywhere near O2 for my next iPhone.

One of the things that’s angered a lot of potential iPhone customers is the network lock-in. In the US, you have to suffer AT&T; in the UK, you deal with O2, with its penchant for regular network death—it’s always fun when you’re trying to call someone and there’s no network at all, because it’s fallen over like an old drunk with far too much whiskey inside him.

Today’s announcement from Orange (Orange to sell iPhone in UK) doesn’t exactly fill me with joy, though. It’s a bit like being at a packed cinema and someone sitting next to you with shit on their shoe. They get up to leave, and you’re happy about this, but then someone sits next to you with shit on their other shoe. Orange is not a great network, and its packages have gone batshit crazy in recent years (“Let’s use animals to brand them—people like animals! What’s that? We should provide value, flexibility or both? Are you MAD? WE WANT ANIMALS! YOU’RE FIRED!”)

Hope the first: this drives competition, pushing O2 to improve its services and drop its entry price to £25/month with half-decent minutes/texts/data allowances, rather than both companies essentially offering what O2 provides now—and for the same price.

Hope the second: Vodaphone throws its hat into the ring.

Charlie Brooker’s latest column talks about the stunningly awful Microsoft Windows 7 party video (note: watch the clock in the background, to see Microsoft TIME TRAVEL; also, watch Cabel Sasser’s brilliant take on the ad). He comes to the conclusion that he’d rather regularly punch a table, due to laptop frustration, than give in to self-satisfied smug gits that constantly try and convert him to Machood.

Fair enough, but I wonder why it’s Mac users that come up against this issue so much. Switch out a Mac for a great but expensive product in some other product line and you don’t get the same level of vitriol, even when the crusaders are just as mental.