Cnet recently asked is the iPhone hurting AT&T’s brand? The reasoning? Network complaints and AT&T’s general incompetence means iPhone owners are getting terribly angry, and because iPhone is very newsworthy hardware, people report these problems with much gusto.

Quick answer, Cnet: no. The iPhone isn’t hurting AT&T’s brand. The only thing hurting AT&T is AT&T.

See also: O2 and iPhone in the UK. Again, some reports have suggested that ‘poor little O2’ has somehow been suckered into taking on iPhone and that those nasty iPhone users have somehow made the wonderful O2 look rubbish. O2 may have been taken by surprise with high data usage, but to blame Apple or its hardware for O2’s shortcomings is just stupid.

Man, sooner or later, people will look at something wonderful like BBC’s iPlayer and somehow suggest that the BBC is somehow at fault for making lots of shoddy ISPs look like the idiots that they are, due to not being able to cope with the traffic the fantastic iPlayer creates.

Oh, right—that’s already happened too.

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.

Ever since videogames crawled, bleary-eyed, from a pond full of pixellated scum soup, mainstream media has had it in for them. Perhaps it’s the threat—when people become hooked on doing something interactive, they seldom return to passive entertainment so regularly. So while many dedicated gamers might consider the sedate life-in-a-PC ‘game’ The Sims to be roughly equivalent to terminal boredom, it’s still a major step up, in terms of keeping your brain alive, from watching the dreary inhabitants of Albert Square go about their mundane and depressing existence. Play something more exciting and evening soaps will be about as appealing as being sanded down.

Non-gamers assume videogaming is just an outlet for teenage boys, whereas the mainstream media considers it a genuinely corrupting influence, with millions of games ‘out there’ that somehow ‘train’ youngsters to mutilate, maim, kill, shoot, KILL, SHOOT, KIL KILL KILLLLLL!!11!!11! But, as Charlie Brooker’s rather wonderful one-off special Gameswipe ably showed last night, that’s just bollocks.

Videogames are like any other genre: mostly full of crud, but with utter gems sprinkled about, and with a suitably diverse array of products to choose from. The resurgence of classic gaming (usually described as ‘retro’ or ‘casual’ gaming) has also reintroduced a range of relatively safe games for wee kiddies that are also simple enough for them to enjoy, leaving the more brutal and violent titles for older gamers. And, as Brooker noted more than once in his show, gaming is all about suitability, just like movies. You wouldn’t let your five-year-old watch Saw, so don’t let them play Kill Death Maim IV; but kids can happily watch cartoons, so let them play Super Mario. (And, like Pixar movies, quality fare suitable for kids can also be enjoyed by adults.)

On Twitter, Brooker says another Gameswipe one-off might happen at some point, and I sincerely hope so. Videogaming has been vilified for too long on the TV, and it’s about time the genre had some intelligent programming dedicated to it. For now, go and watch Gameswipe on iPlayer and then tell the BBC you enjoyed it.

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.