ROTTEN APPLE

I must confess straight away that I'm not too good with finances. I have to have an adviser to help me manage my savings (must be over £10 in that piggy bank by now). However, I think I have the basic idea of how the market economy works. In essence, someone makes something and offers it for sale, you decide you like it so you buy it. Would you agree with that? Well it ain't necessarily so!

My friends on Twitter convinced me that I should look at buying an Apple iphone. According to them, the iphone is so clever it can help you to manage your life as well as a personal assistant could. They tell me it can even do the ironing and take the dog for a walk! Somehow, I think that might be a slight exaggeration.

My next step was to go online and read the reviews. These were very positive with only a few slight reservations. The bottom line seemed to be that the iphone was the best of its type. Following this I downloaded the Apple video and a very pleasant gentleman called Nelson kindly spent 15 minutes of his time showing me all the features and gizmos on the phone until I was dribbling with desire. I was convinced.

My dear mother, may she rest in peace, earned the nickname of 'Instant Betty'. If she wanted something she had to have it right there and then. Now I am much more patient than that. Having decided I want some thing I can wait 20 minutes for it if necessary. I could even stretch it to an hour if I had to. So it was that at the very first opportunity, I found myself in the Apple shop playing with an iphone. It was love at first sight. I was so attached to it that I wanted to keep holding it while I made my purchase. I caught a sales assistant's eye and he swiftly moved in for the kill.

I didn't exactly play hard to get, but thought I better ask a couple of questions in a pretence of not yet being certain. That done and still fondly caressing the demonstration iphone in my sweaty hand I told him I would buy one. and mentally kissed goodbye to the £550 or so which I was about to spend. He asked me whether I was already with o2, the phone service provider. I said that I was with one of their rivals, Orange. He then explained that I could only buy an iphone to use with o2 since Apple in their infinite wisdom had signed an exclusivity deal with them.

What madness was this? It was like Ford saying you could only buy their cars if you used 'Messo' petrol or Sony telling you that unless you got your electricity supply from 'Sparkytronics' they wouldn't sell you one of their TVs. So Apple, you have a wonderful product but I think you are rotten to deprive me of one.