O2’s been criticised for treating iPhone users with contracts like everyone else and forcing them to honour said contracts or buy them out. With O2 having set a precedent on the move from the original iPhone to 3G, I have some sympathy with user expectations not being met, but understand O2’s reasoning. However, my experience over the last week in the Pay & Go space (and, frankly, O2’s now very regular network outages) has removed any lingering doubt that the company needs a slap.

My story begins last year, and ends with some ‘O2 stupid’. Last year, I bought a 3G iPhone on Pay & Go, because I make few calls via mobile and figured it’d be cheaper in the long run. Prior to the Pay & Go pricing becoming official, I noted how it went up by £60, but O2 added an extra six months of internet bolt-on. Essentially, O2 got more money up front and presumably hoped you’d not use the bolt-on that much, thereby generating more profits per Pay & Go device. As a consumer, this made no odds to me, since I’d be buying the bolt-on anyway. However, I had, as far as I was concerned, paid up front for 12 months of usage.

Clearly, though, I’m a total idiot. I assumed I’d be able to retain remaining bolt-on time in some manner when transferring the phone. I’m in the market for a Pay & Go 3GS and plan to give the 3G to my wife. Surely, I thought, I’d get to keep my remaining time or transfer it?

My first email to O2 revealed that bolt-ons are tied directly to SIM cards. I was told that I could buy a 3GS and my wife would have my remaining internet time on the 3G. Something in the curt nature of the email started alarm bells ringing, and so I asked for further clarification regarding transferring numbers, and a rather large snag became apparent:

“If you buy a new iPhone and transfer your existing number on the new SIM card your current SIM card will be permanently disconnected,” said O2. “If this happens we won’t be able to transfer the free Bolt On to your new SIM card. Also you wife won’t be able to transfer her number to this SIM card.”

O2’s wonderful suggestion to me is this:

“I would suggest that you wait until the free Bolt On gets ended and then buy the new iPhone.”

It seems O2 is treating the bolt-on as a freebie that the company gives you when you buy an iPhone because O2 is made of fluffy bunnies, and not because it’s bundled into the device’s price, and not because you’ve actually paid real cash money for it. My assumption is also that I’ll have to—for no good reason—buy a new SIM for the 3G so that my wife can use it, or just jailbreak the phone (which I don’t want to do).

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.

Stuart Dredge’s iPhone Games Bulletin just ran a story on Edge magazine once again placing itself firmly in bizarre-o-land. Despite its constant claims at being at the forefront of gaming, it’s made a bunch of stunning screw-ups over the years, the most obvious perhaps being an off-hand dismissal of WarioWare (which got 7/10, a rating Edge has tried ever since to remove from the history books, both by arguing that the review was written by a poor widdle overworked freelancer, and by running 46-page articles on why Made in Wario—the Japanese name for the game that Edge insists on using over the localised one—is so good).

Gosh, that was a long sentence, wasn’t it? Almost as long as one from Edge. Anyway, anyone who’s been keeping tabs on my work will know that I’ve become a total iPod gaming fan-boy of late. The reason isn’t some insane, misguided love for Apple, but the simple fact that iPod (as in touch, or the iPhone) is the only gaming platform that matters.

Ignoring for a second the problems surrounding the App Store (most of which don’t concern the general public), not least the rush to 59p/99 cents that every publisher seems to be taking part in, the simple fact is that since I got an iPhone, I’ve barely used any other games console. The App Store offers thousands of games, most of which are by independent developers, offering highly individual takes on gaming. Because of the nature of Apple handhelds—touchscreen; accelerometer; no tactile buttons—you can’t easily port stuff over from other platforms, and the best games therefore take direct advantage of the system.

To a great extent, iPod gaming is like a return to the 1980s, but with modern technology. Independent developers can make and sell a game, without pandering to the needs of focus groups. These games are then easily accessible (simply download from the App Store), affordable (even ‘expensive’ iPod games are about six quid) and often innovative. Games like Eliss are genuinely doing something new, and I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a videogames system.

This is why it’s so galling—so hugely irritating—that Future’s supposedly forward-thinking industry bible has once again got it wrong. In its Edge Award For Interactive Innovation 2009 Shortlist, you’d think at least one iPod game would make the cut. You’d think that the magazine, despite its inexplicably tiny amount of iPod gaming coverage, would notice one of the genuine futures of gaming, and champion it, shouting from the rooftops.

But no. Instead, the publication specifically singles out iPod gaming, stating “the games made for these environments are still nascent” (And why is that a bad thing? I seem to recall arcade games development was once ‘nascent’, but we still hail Defender, Robotron and Missile Command as classics) and “It’s difficult to think of an iPhone game that truly exemplifies the singular abilities of its host”. Really? I can think of at least a dozen, but perhaps this merely shows how Edge is stuck in the past rather than the future, if it’d rather showcase the likes of Far Cry 2—an impressive but incremental update on the FPS genre—over products that genuinely innovate.

Many gaming platforms are suddenly finding themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant as new formats take hold. It seems Edge is going the same way.

UPDATE: Phil Schiller Responds on Daring Fireball regarding dictionary app Ninjawords and the App Store.

The iPhone and iPod touch are nothing special from a hardware standpoint. In fact, they are in some ways (such as the iPhone camera) inferior to the competition. However, a combination of a fantastic UI and the App Store ensured both devices became top sellers. But the environment is changing fast, and Apple’s doing little to help.

In terms of UI, others are playing catch-up, and this is—bar flinging lawsuits around—something Apple can’t really guard against. It’s long been an R&D department for less able companies, and that will continue. But Apple’s handling of the App Store has gone from the worrisome to the surprising to the outright absurd.

Initially, one could argue that the App Store was new and surprisingly successful, and so the submissions reviewers were caught off guard and made the odd mistake. This was usually rectified via a combination of public pressure and explanation from developers. Now, though, it seems Apple’s being at once systematically destructive, puritanical and utterly stupid.

I reported yesterday on TechRadar about Apple censoring a dictionary, a story initially broke by Daring Fireball. Today, TUAW claims Apple’s about to start removing eBook apps, under the guise of copyright concerns (something Apple doesn’t seem terribly concerned about when it comes to gaming, judging by the number of IP breaches littering the store).

I sincerely hope there’s little truth to this story, but the report claims Apple’s now even rejecting eBook apps from developers who can prove they own rights to the content. If that’s the case, we’ll presumably soon see the likes of Classics, Eucalyptus and Stanza removed from the store, smashing the App Store’s credibility to dust and removing the ability for Apple handhelds to act as eReaders.

In the aforementioned Daring Fireball piece, John Gruber said: “Every time I think I’ve seen the most outrageous App Store rejection, I’m soon proven wrong. I can’t imagine what it will take to top this one.” I think the removal of eBooks and readers would just about do it.

As a writer myself, I understand the temptation in having a point you want to get across, interviewing a bunch of people and then cherry-picking the responses to support your agenda. However, good journalism shouldn’t have to resort to such tactics (and, to the best of my knowledge, it’s not something I’ve done myself in any articles that have seen print), and certainly not when the resulting article not only takes comments entirely out of context but also ends up borderline libelling those interviewed.

The new offenders of standup comedy by Brian Logan in the Guardian escaped me on publication, but came to my attention today via Twitter. Logan essentially paints Richard Herring and his latest show as utterly racist when it is in fact the opposite. Those people who’ve not seen this material but who’ve no inclination to research further—And why should they? After all, this is an article from a supposedly reputable publication!—will no doubt avoid a show that, ironically, would ideally suit them.

This isn’t nearly the first time the Guardian’s resolved to such hackery, but this is nonetheless a dangerous example, and with a suitably ironic strap: How did things get so nasty? One might ask the same question of Guardian ‘journalism’.

The paper should either apologise or give Herring the right to reply. If it doesn’t, it pretty much proves the point that it’d rather pander to the bullshit brigade than entertain the possibility of good journalism and proper representation, and while one might expect that from current and former red-tops, or the likes of the Mail, that really shouldn’t be the case regarding the Guardian—or perhaps my rose-tinted spectacles need painting a clearer and less nostalgic shade.

Herring himself responds on his blog as does Dave Gorman.

You know what? You can keep your Spotlight, your Cut, Copy & Paste, your MMS and your landscape keyboards, your improved calendar and your Voice Memos* app. With Apple’s latest iPhone OS update, it was a much smaller new feature that made me happy.

Buried in Settings > Phone is a shiny new field: ‘My Number’. For many iPhone owners, this won’t make any odds, but I bought a Pay and Go model, and transferred a number from my old T-Mobile account. Although the transfer was eventually fine, my iPhone resolutely decided that my number (accessible via the Phone app) was the one on the iPhone SIM card, not the one that had been transferred.

As someone notoriously bad at remembering my phone number, this wasn’t great. However, the aforementioned new feature means my Swiss-Cheese memory won’t have the problem again. (And, yeah, I know many other phones have been able to do this for ages—yada yada—but my phone couldn’t.)

* In fact, you really can keep that one, Apple, because I don’t use it, and it’s getting really annoying that you can’t get rid of the default apps. Do we really need Stocks ‘forced’ on us? Gnh.