Camera goes crazy on shots of Evan – 1 finger

The bad music (you know the one, the one that goes der der der der der der der) plays during a pitch – 1 finger

Pitch involves any form of costume – 1 finger

Close up shot of piles of money on a table – 1 finger

Pitcher stutters or otherwise displays nerves or becomes flustered at any point during the pitch or questioning – 1 finger

Pitcher has sold their home, re mortgaged, given up work or otherwise placed their entire future security at risk to pursue their idea – 1 finger

A dragon offers to buy someones product – 1 finger

Peter Jones says “hi I’m Peter” despite the fact that if people didn’t know who he was they wouldn’t be on the show – 1 finger

Theo refers to Mrs P or his kids inheritance – 1 finger

Shot of Duncan looking miserable or bored – 1 finger

Shot of any dragon looking confused or puzzled – 1 finger

Deborah says she likes something – 1 finger

Duncan is the first dragon out – 1 finger

James is the last dragon out – 1 finger

James makes an offer – 1 finger

Two or more of the dragons combine to make an offer – 1 finger

Bad music plays in a pitch even though nothing bad has happened – 2 fingers

An invention fails to work – 2 fingers

Theo breaks an invention – 2 fingers

Duncan gets out of his chair to try out an invention – 2 fingers

Two or more rival dragons or groups of dragons make an offer – 2 fingers

An inventor gets their figures wrong – 2 fingers

An inventor is forced to call their business partner/friend/mum from downstairs to save them – 2 fingers

A pitcher rejects all offers on the table – 2 fingers

Any dragon makes an offer for more than double the equity originally offered – 2 fingers

Any dragon undercuts another dragon – 2 fingers

A previously rejected inventor turns up with a new invention which is also rejected – 2 fingers

A previously rejected inventor turns up with a new invention and walks out with an investment – 3 fingers

Duncan makes an offer – 3 fingers

All 5 dragons make an offer (in teams or solo) – 4 fingers

Duncan makes an offer in partnership with James – down any remaining drinks

A pitcher leaves with the exact amount of money they asked for giving up the exact amount of equity they originally wanted to – down any drinks you can lay your eyes on

One of the dragons actually breathes fire – drink some coffee and sober up quick

Enjoy and remember please drink responsibly

The rumoured £20 per month remaining of contract to upgrade looks good on paper sure. Most iPhone customers are on tariffs ranging from £25 to £75 per month so this is great no? NO it’s not great!!!

Most iPhone customers probably believe the iPhone tariffs are the full range of tariffs available to them. They aren’t. I changed 2 months ago from an iPhone tariff over to the standard set of tariffs as I was starting to use my iPhone sim in a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. And being on the standard tariffs makes me aware of two more additional tariffs below the £25 level priced at £15 and £10.

So I will be on the £25 a month tariff with 12 months left to run when the iPhone 4 comes out. So assuming this taken with a pinch of salt report is correct upgrading to the iPhone 4 using the early upgrade offer will cost me £240.

Alternatively I can either try and get an additional contract or if that fails I’ll have to wait 2 months, downgrade to £15 and then to £10 a month and then pay off my contract. That will cost me £25 for the first month, £15 for the second and then £10 months at £10 which is a total of £140 saving £100.

If the report does turn out to be accurate and that really is the O2 upgrade “offer” I’d strongly suggest people take a good hard look at it and work out if it will be significantly less expensive to do it another way

EDIT – The details are now up on the O2 website regarding the early upgrade offer and as feared its the fantastic £20 a month offer that works out more expensive than dropping down to the lowest tariff and then buying out the remaining months of the contract. Nice one O2

Since the announcement, what have the UK mobile networks done and what information have they released to their (potential) customers? Well the answer to that is not much. Each network have come out and said they will be selling it (in the order O2, Vodafone, Orange and new to the iPhone T-Mobile). O2 have also come out and said existing customers would be able to upgrade onto it but provided no solid details on if that is all existing customers, selected existing customers, a few customers drawn out of a hat or what.

Go onto most of the mobile phone network websites and you’ll find naff all actual information apart from harvesting e-mail addresses with the promise of being the first to find out. But the information we need such as cost and details of O2′s early upgrade scheme are nowhere to be seen. And it’s starting to thoroughly pee me and some other people off. It’s not like this has come as a surprise to the networks, they must have known about the impending announcement probably long before anyone else did. So all the information their customers need should have been ready to go the second Steve Jobs stopped talking.

If you look on the twitter feeds for some of the UK networks HERE and HERE its just full of people asking the same question that should have been answered on Monday night “how much will it cost” or in O2′s case “will I be able to upgrade and how much will it cost” and its getting ridiculous. The only reason I can think of why not one of the networks has come forward and revealed their pricing is they don’t want to be first and risk the other 3 undercutting them. Now that is fair enough but they need to realise that keeping their current and potential customers in the dark is going to thoroughly pee them off possibly to the point where they will just go to the first network to announce the prices even if the others are slightly cheaper.

Last year O2 made a right mess of the 3GS launch by refusing to listen to their customers and not allowing any kind of upgrade path without paying unlawful penalty charges, buying the device at full cost on PAYG or taking out additional contracts. This was responsible for the #o2fail tag to appear on twitter and it has had one or two mentions again this year as has my hashtag #tellushowmuchnow (which hasn’t taken off as yet).  This year 4 networks are bustling for our custom but are making an even bigger pigs ear of things by keeping (potential) customers in the dark and not giving people the information they need. Who knows, perhaps by the time iPhone 5 is announced we might know how much iPhone 4 is going to cost!

Before we reveal them lets just take another look at our expected prices. These were calculated using the exchange rate between US$ and GB£ at the time of the 4 iPod Touch’s glued together announcement.

Now in fairness the exchange rate has changed since they were published so lets update them for todays exchange rate

Now let’s put in the figures Apple got from their calculator

Steve, the calculator is in the post!

New customers get a free sky+HD box with free standard installation and 6 months free HD pack (saving £10 a month for 6 months)

Existing (but not existing skyHD) customers get the above if they also take multiroom

Comment on this post with your name and e-mail address if you want to be referred

Aim One

Aim one is to adopt the apple way of thinking by developing a new product that isn’t just 4 other products glued together, take the prototype out to a pub, leave it in the pub and then get the bloke who very kindly returned it to me arrested

Aim Two

Aim two is to retrain every single pilot flying in and out of Great Britain and teach them how to fly their planes away from or around obstacles rather than sitting on their bums for week because they can’t be bothered

Aim Three

Aim three is to allow voting for the UK general election by Twitter, thereby granting the Liberal Democrats a landslide victory

Aim Four

Aim four is to force Gordon Brown to enter the big brother house where we can see him insult the electorate without realising he has a mic 24 hours a day

Aim Five

Aim five is to plaster a giant picture of Graham Norton all over BBC Television Centre and see how they like it (though thankfully any BBC employees with BBCHD will be immune)

Summer is here (least for another week or so) so lets see how Nostradamus did with last months predictions

Prediction One was “Apple will release a brand new iPhone that isn’t just 4 iPhones glued together”…….. and its a no, though as they will probably just leave it in a bar that’s probably a blessing

Prediction Two was “Gordon Brown will place a booking for a removal van on a date early in May” and indeed he has (or probably has), after insulting the electorate on a microphone even Gordon can’t be deluded enough to believe he wont be needing to move house in the next few days

Prediction Three was “The Lord will bring on the full fury of his wrath burning the earth to a cinder and then it will rain fish”…. Earth not a cinder….. no fish…. WRONG!

Here are next months predictions

Prediction One

Nick Clegg will be the next UK prime minister

Prediction Two

Iceland supermarkets will be forced into liquidation following the disruption caused by the ash cloud originating from them

Prediction Three

The British Aviation Authority will admit that flying around or away from things is preferable to sitting on their bums for a week

Just two out of three needed and Nosty will finally win the barbecue

So what did Apple announce in their software update. Well the following 7 things to be precise

Multitasking

I went into some depth as to just why I feel this unnecessary when I talked about the oversized iPod touch and basically my feelings were (and still are) that there is simply no need to have multiple open tasks on a mobile phone. Mail polls in the background, the iPod continues to play in the background and calls and texts still come through in the background. On a mobile phone that is more than sufficient

Folders

The first of many “new features” where Apple have merely jailbroken their iPhones and then decided what are the best ideas they can use. Useful yes. Revolutionary… hardly

Unified Inbox

All your email now in one place. Useful no as I only have one email account set up on my phone and if I did have more than one email account such as for work and personal I would want to keep them separate

iBooks

The book reader announced for iPad (but only available in one country… the USA) comes to iPhone. With a free Winnie the Pooh book. Unfortunately as I don’t live in that one country, this is as much use as a chocolate fireguard

Enterprise

No not the starship but some business features that are as standard on any other business phone. Some people may care…. I don’t!

Game Centre

Social gaming similar to xbox live, PSN or the open feint system (that many games already use) comes to the iPhone. Meh

iAd

Do not get me started on this “feature” of the new OS as if there was ever a reason not to upgrade this is it. Yes I know this site uses ads but in over two years of having them on I have made the net sum of £52 of which I can’t get at £26 until I reach the withdrawal limits with those affiliate networks. However I do not want ads on my mobile phone and there is a damn good reason why I use adblock plus with firefox on any computer I use. There is also a good reason why nearly 800,000 other users download adblock plus every week. Because we don’t want ads!

Sorry Apple but if this is the best you can come up with I really am glad I jumped ship to Android. I’ll end this post with my tweet which sums up my thoughts on this new OS

“So to summarize a load of features ripped straight from jailbroken iPhones and adverts. GET IN!!”

Nice shiny car coming for me now. Shame I don’t drive!

Aim one is to adopt the Apple way of thinking by making a totally new product that is better than a car by gluing four cars together to come up with a revolutionary new method of transport that is four times bigger, more expensive and uses much more petrol

Aim Two

Aim two is to save Gordon Brown the hassle of needing to pack all his stuff ready to move out of 10 Downing Street by getting the voting public to lend him a hand, something they will only be too willing to do

Aim Three

Aim three is to solve the issue of the PS3 phat losing linux capabilities by adopting the apple way of thinking and coming up with a new and revolutionary product that you can play games on and run linux on. Gluing 4 PC’s together should do the trick

Aim Four

Aim four is to solve the problem of internet perverts preying on young innocent(!) impressionable youth by banning all people under the age of 18 from using the internet

Aim Five

Aim five is to come up with a brand new aim that is so much better than the previous four by adopting the Apple way of thinking and gluing the previous aims together

It’s freezing again, but why should that stop resident mystic Nostradamus from giving himself food poisoning on his very own barbecue. Just two out of three predictions correct from last month will do just that

Prediction One was “Alexander Thorp will receive an invisible card and present from a certain member of his family for his birthday for the third year running”….. cracking start as the generosity and love from a certain blood relative on my side of the family for their own Grandchildren continues to know no limits. Possibly would be funny if they weren’t just proving my point and proving me right

Prediction Two was “Ashley Cole will be executed for his crime of cheating on the “nation’s sweetheart””….. nope, though one can assume it’s only a matter of time. Either that or the daft cow will take him back again, blissfully unaware that pretty much every warm blooded male on the planet would be only to happy to take his place

Prediction Three was “Rian from ITV’s “Take Me Out” will be given her own diet series…… afraid not though the sponsorship deal with Mars Bars is due to be signed any day now

So no food poisoning this month. Here are next month’s predictions

Prediction One

Apple will release a brand new iPhone that isn’t just 4 iPhones glued together

Prediction Two

Gordon Brown will place a booking for a removal van on a date early in May

Prediction Three

The Lord will bring on the full fury of his wrath burning the earth to a cinder and then it will rain fish

Brown – £100 – Old Kent Road
Light Blue – Camera – Euston Road
Purple – Wii – Northumberland Avenue
Orange – Home Entertainment System – Marlborough Street
Red – Holiday – Strand
Yellow – Car – Coventry Street
Green – House – Bond Street
Dark Blue – £500k – Mayfair
Stations – months worth of energy from npower (£1200) – Liverpool Street Station

So if you have any of them feel free to post them to me