見たmorphosis

So Fallout 3 has been refused classification in Australia because of their stupid rating system from the Atari era that doesn’t take into account anything with any more depth than Pac-man. Officially, because of too much drug use. Unfortunately because our local distributors get their stock from Australia, with many games a nasty side effect is that our local stores only get supplies of the censored Australian version of the game, regardless of the game’s legal status here. It’s been that way for a while and until they get their fucking act together, we’ll continue to get fucked along with them. Sad really.

There was a better article on this, but I can’t find it anymore so have this one – The Gamesman bought out by EB/Gamestop. I kept meaning to write about it back when it first broke, but… I’m lazy. It’s kind of a big deal because it means that the only game specialist stores in New Zealand with more than one branch will be EB stores, which are in a strange quantum state of being overpriced yet constantly on sale. I’m a bit surprised by this, because the management of GDE, which ran The Gamesman, seemed pretty anti-EB.

As in, it was not unheard of for staff in the course of a normal trip out to the mall to feel compelled to enter an EB store for the sole purpose of making disparaging comments about the decor, hygiene of the staff and general inferiority of the chain. Sure, the first few times it was amusing, but every single mall trip got to be a bit excessive, and wound up with this writer dragging said staff member out of the store forcibly and trying to avoid future mall visits. Talking to the girlfriend of another staff member dispelled the notion that this was an individual quirk. An entire company full of people who do this seems a bit weird, but I suppose their corporate culture was kinda weird anyway…

Plus there seemed to be a bit of bad blood due to EB’s decision to stock Madman DVDs from Madman Australia rather than the (now formerly) GDE-run Madman NZ, the reason for which was, from what I remember, that they suspected a conflict of interest due to their running of The Gamesman chain. While that’s ancient history due to EB no longer stocking DVDs and GDE no longer distributing Madman, I do wonder how much it cost to get Phil to swallow his pride and accept this offer. I’m also a bit wary that they seem to be setting the online business to compete directly with GP Store, but hey, I’m not telling anyone how to run their business.

The Vodafone iPhone pricing came out and wow, 1GB per month for $250 a month? Mmm, price gouging. There’s little else to say other than “Are you exploiting a monopoly here?” Gah this makes me remember why I hate marketing types.

So tl;dr – Australia fucking us over, America fucking us over, corporations fucking us over. Sucks living in a small country. The answer is always import.

Via Kotaku and video from Campbell Live

Tags: antipodes, apple, bloody australians, bloody yanks, mobile, rant, sucks to be me

Well shit. I went and bought a cellphone for NZ$300 last December, then they have to go and announce this. I could maybe justify buying one with the “I need to replace my 1GB iPod” excuse. Maybe. Hmm.

Strangely enough the “iPhone coming to New Zealand in July” rumour was actually right. Doubly strange because I got it from The New Zealand Herald 2 months ago.

Feature summary:

• US$200 for 8GB model, US$300 for 16GB model (also available in shiny white). US$200 works out to around NZ$260 currently. Which is ridiculous – an 8GB iPod Nano currently retails in NZ for NZ$299. NZ$250 currently buys you one of these:
  
  Admittedly, yes, the US$200 pricetag takes the whole AT&T subsidy into account (then again, the same applied for the previous US$399 price), but at the same time the WWDC Keynote Address (you can watch it here, but it’s a bit cult-like) says it’ll be a maximum of $199 (I assume Steve Jobs means USD).

  Seriously, considering the iPhone is a high end smartphone that competes with the likes of the Nokia N95 (retailing for NZ$999), I can’t see any other scenario than Vodafone massively jacking up the prices (even more than they usually do!) in order force it to fit in with their existing catalogue, which makes me sad. It’ll blow my mind if they actually do sell it here for ~$260.

  But yeah, the price is a big thing for me. As Time Magazine rather sarcastically notes, “Steve Jobs did something never before seen in the history of Apple: He unveiled a cutting-edge product that’s relatively cheap.“

• 3G – yay, catching up to the rest of the world!
• GPS. Or more precisely, GPS + roaming (what with 3G and all) + Google Maps. Fuck yes.
• App store and release of the SDK – because sometimes with Apple product, the best and most useful apps are open source, 3rd party and free. I’m hoping for the best of that sort of development environment growing up around the iPhone somehow in conjuction with something like the iTunes store. I don’t really like the idea of paying for stuff because I’m stingy, but who knows, they may come up with something I like. Basically I’m hoping for a more transparent environment that doesn’t make things difficult for users who simply want to get more out their device.
• Improved battery life – sure, the press release figures are probably in no way relevant to real world use, but that’s the same with all promotional specs released.

Of course, that being said there’s still various flaws. The camera is still 2 megapixel with no flash, and no front camera for video calls. No video recording either, and I use that sometimes. The battery is still non-removable, so if it goes, you’ll be a sad panda. The new iPhone is actually thicker than the old one (but still weighs less, and the difference is in millimetres anyway). No MMS, so no sending or receiving PXTs. Bluetooth is still somewhat crippled, not that I’d really use it for anything other than copying stuff onto and off the phone. Copy and paste is still unavailable also, which I guess is an issue, but not really a dealbreaker for me. Storage is still 8GB and 16GB, with no 32GB iPhone in sight. And the back is plastic compared to the metal casing of the first iPhone, so durability could take a hit.

That said, I kind of want it. My main issue of lack of 3G has been solved and I like the GPS. Certainly the price is attractive. Ideally if it didn’t do what I wanted it to there’d be a 3rd party app to fill that void also, which would be neat. I’m really pleased about the worldwide launch – this is more the iPhone launch version I was expecting, rather than what happened last year. I’m loving the little Aqua country flags on the site. It’s gone a long way towards assuaging my feelings of unease about the original device.

Vodafone NZ is promising data plans to go along with their iPhone launch and so maybe then they’ll stop gouging us for mobile bandwidth. I think that’s about the only thing that would get me off my current Prepay phone plan – the now defunct Motormouth Prepay plan. Supa Prepay does nothing for me personally, and I don’t use my phone enough to warrant a plan. But a good enough data plan may change that. Who knows. I guess it’s time to wait and see, we’ve got a month till the July 11th release anyway.

Via Gizmodo and CNet

Tags: antipodes, apple, fuck yeah, mobile