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Recently in Apple Category

iPhone 3.0.1 Jailbreak

I decided to spend a bit of time last night jailbreaking my iPhone, using this tutorial on the Gizmodo website - and it all worked perfectly (although one bit missing in the instrucutions is that when the phone says it is “waiting for restart”, you may need to unplug and replug the cable to prompt it onto the next step).

It’s not that I’m particularly interested in installing dozens of unauthorised applications. Indeed, I’m quite happy with all the legit applications I’ve downloaded from the iTunes store. I did the jailbreak in order to unlock the phone and allow me to use another network’s SIM, ahead of an upcoming trip to the UK.

I’ve been stung quite badly in the past by data roaming charges. In one case last year, I had a similar trip to the UK for a week, and while there made only light use of the phone, but still managed to run up a staggering €160 of data roaming charges - based upon a cost of about €5 per megabyte. And although O2 Ireland have improved things slightly since then (you now only get charged for the first 4 megabytes each day while roaming - but still at €5 per megabyte - so a potential of €20 a day), I was still looking at a potential bill of well over €100 worth of data charges if I wanted to use data.

This is in contrast to the domestic data charges of an operator such as Orange, who charge a maximum of £2 per day for up to 25 megabytes usage - and that’s on their prepaid tariff.

And so it was pretty-much a no-brainer, in term of deciding whether or not to get my iPhone unlocked. I’m going to be saving a fortune while I’m away - and as I’ll have my UK SIM in the iPhone, I’ll not have to carry two phones around with me.

August 18, 2009     0 comments     Apple, Mobile Phones, O2

Black Friday

For one day only, Apple are having a sale in their Irish online store, with various offers, including €100 off a MacBook, and €11 off an iPod Nano. If you were planning to buy any Apple kit, then today might be a good day to do it, as it’s not common to find discounted Apple products.

The day after Thanksgiving (today) in the United States is commonly known as Black Friday, and many retailers have one day sales. It’s not so common, however, for the Black Friday sales to apply outside of the US.

November 28, 2008     0 comments     Apple, Shopping