She had to come but not come, bring a gift but not bring a gift and she – being the smart lass – managed to do it. Seems like Apple is trying something like this with the unlocked iPhones in France.

The source – as a lot of times – for me was the Daily Irrelevant, and from there straight to the iPhone Atlas article.

It turns out that the officially (Apple-sanctioned) unlocked iPhone you bought for 649 Euros (about US$965) from Orange in France — which, according to some reports, accounts for up to 20% of total iPhone sales in France — is not really unlocked. It retains a country lock, meaning the device will only allow use of SIM cards for carriers that operate in France. In other words, you can’t take your French, “unlocked” iPhone to Spain, the United States, or anywhere else, pop in a foreign SIM card, and make calls on a local carrier — you’re still stuck paying international roaming fees to your French carrier.

It may seem right to Apple that an unlocked phone should only work in France, but it is the same as if they sold Main, Florida, California only iPhones in the US, which I think would bring a great uproar from the good folks of the United States of America.

The European Union is ONE market, free movement of products AND services, and so on.

When I read Microserfs from Douglas Coupland it was funny to read that Apple and Microsoft essentially have the same mentality. Now it shows true day after day, with each new step of Apple.

It is just plainly telling why I don’t blog so frequently. Time is scarce, and yes, I am lazy at times, plus, when I got a good post idea I am either driving to/from work, out somewhere where I can’t write it down, or working so I simply don’t have time to do it.

And by the time I got home, I am either too tired, or too involved with my friends on secondlife to post here.

The good news about blogs is that they’re very powerful. The bad news is that they’re very time consuming. So no wonder in the last two years we’ve seen so many other kinds of “Cheap, Easy, Global Media” spring up- Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc etc.

I don’t really know about powerful. Probably they are, although I still see the “echo chamber” effect mostly, bloggers oh-ing and ah-ing, techno sites raving and hype-ing, and then they realize that the rest of the world, the actual target does not give a damn about the subject. iPhone introduced in the UK, anyone?
The time consuming yes, that I can attest too. If you write something else than your dinner, you need time. Not just to write the post. If I want to write a little review, or just an opinion about Francis Fukuyama’s book, The Trust, I have to read it first. And not just read it, I have to mark up or note down interesting points and ideas in the book, and then I can start to write the post.

Twitter seems ok, but I need some for that too – unless all I want to ‘twit’about is my lunch, that my chair is uncomfortable, and such mundane, not too interesting things.

I think the main thing I liked in his post was

Whoever said “Blogs are just a fad” back in the early days was missing the point. It was NEVER about blogs. It was about something far more “vast”.

This whole thing is not about blogs, or twitter, or such. It’s about being an exhibitionist, to have the desire to share our opinion – as someone in the hungarian “blogosphere”, one of the “bloggurus” of hungary put it: “to push their boring, uninteresting opinions and lives on the happless readers.”

He missed the point completely. It’s not pushing. It’s displaying. And then if you are interested, you can read it.