When I penned my original blog about iphone, iphone me bollocks ,this piece of technical crap was'nt available in Ireland yet, well come March 14th all that will change.

Please follow the link below as Pat Phelan articulates these points much better than me. If you decide to buy one of these phones after reading his blog God help you.

I will never buy an Apple product because I refuse to be so transparently manipulated by a marketing company. I do not agree with reinforcing or exaggerating negative stereotypes of people based upon their appearance, particularly as we the consumers are unwittingly supporting and paying for it when we buy Apple. Our society has enough people with eating disorders and negative self images without public companies using these weaknesses to sell more products. This current Apple advertising campaign really puts everything down to "looks". I don't know about you but I buy a computer on the basis of what it can do rather than wanting to be "cool".

Being completely anti Apple I don't know why I downloaded iTunes. Well, yes I do, it was recommended to me.

At first it was a love affair. Finally I was able to get my hands on the U2 cover versions of Endless Love and Unchained Melody, but that was about it.

Soon I began to appreciate the iTunes library didn't contain much of the songs I was looking for (like Waterloo Sunset and Eve of Destruction) or almost worse, all it would have is a crumby live version.  However, I persisted. I downloaded Bobby Sinclairs Love Generation as it reminded me of taking a bus ride over the Andes. I downloaded about nine songs in all, and now they're completely stuck in my computer.

I don't have an iPod. I will never buy an iPod. If I were to receive one as a gift i would put it straight on eBay. When I'm in the car and not listening to LBC 97.3 I like to listen to my CD's but of course these ridiculous m4p files from Apple won't let me that.

The only solution it would seem is to use a crack program to convert them into something useable, something that I can listen to, i did buy them after all. Had i known the limitations I would have concluded the unit price per song was actually too much.

Note to self: next time buy the CD