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Taoiseach: Brian Cowen
Tánaiste: Brian Lenihan

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food: Billy Kelliher
Minister for Arts, Sports & Tourism: Trevor Sargent
*Minister for Communications & Technology: Conor Lenihan
Minister for Community, Rural & Gaeltacht Affairs: Eamon Ó Cuív
Minister for Defence: Willie O’Dea
Minister for Education & Science: Mary Hanifin
Minister for Energy & Natural Resources: Eamonn Ryan
Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment: Micheál Martin
Minister for the Environment & Local Government: John Gormley
Minister for Finance: Brian Lenihan
Minister for Foreign Affairs: Dermot Ahern
*Minister for Heritage & Culture: Seán Haughey
**Minister for Health & Children: Dr. James Reilly
Minister for Justice, Equality & Law Reform: Mary Couglan
Minister for Social & Family Affairs: Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher
Minister for Transport & the Marine: Noel Dempsey

* New Portfolios
** Crossing the floor to poach from Fine Gael

I propose two new portfolios for the Government. These limit the powers of conflict from the Green Party and gives them a third Portfolio to soften the blow. Those losing out include: Séamus Brennan, Mary Harney and Martin Cullen. (Expect offers of Junior Ministries for Mary Harney if she doesn’t reisgn, and an offer to join Fianna Fáil to Noel Grealish.)

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Overall though, everyone was doing the same as they’d done before. Pat the Plank even had sports ‘pundit’ Eamonn on to do some gaffs about how he thought Bertie measured up to Dunphy’s unquestionable standards (he failed on that note). John Waters was there too, although he failed to make a single point worth noting.

And throughout the weekend, everyone was gearing up for the spectacle of Enda making a piss-poor attempt at leading an opposition attack on the Taoiseach on Wednesday as the Dáil came back to work. But Bertie was busy in background. The master strategist had one ace in the hole that no one, including Bertie, could believe.

I was busy that morning. It was a damp morning as April began to test my patience with the weather. I’d just started to re-install a Microsoft Windows PC (what’s new there then!) when I heard the phone beeping in my pocket. “Bertie’s gonna resign - press conference called” came through. It wasn’t the only text I got, but the same line was apparent in all. Within minutes, several people in the office where I was working came in to say the same. My heart sank. I lost track of what I was doing and ignored the risk of viruses and spyware and went on the internet without protection to find out about this.

But it was too late. By the time I hit the refresh button a second time, the pigeons in RTÉ had spread the word. The greatest politician in living memory was resigning, giving his month’s notice to his boss, the people of Ireland. In what I have only seen parts of (as I’d be too emotional to watch the full speech) it was said that the Bert was very moved and emotional when addressing his critics and vowing to set the record straight on his messy affairs of some 15 years ago. I sat in the chair motionless. I was sad. I was depressed. I was sympathetic. I was angry.

For years I’ve been a staunch defender of Fianna Fáil. I first met Bertie Ahern at the age of 13 when he came to officiate at the opening of my local supermarket, where I was employed. I was the third person in the row inside the ribbon-clad door. He was a newly-elected Taoiseach and I was an impressionable young man. The warmth of his presence resonated with all the staff as he breezed through the civic duties and went on his way as quickly as he’d arrived. That was 1997. It would be a full 5 years before I’d meet this man again.

In the meantime I’d met Charlie Haughey who frequented my subsequent workplace several times. Although then he was in a frail state, the man was none-the-less a presence. When the time came again to meet and greet the Taoiseach, the white FAI shell-suit didn’t detract from the leader of the Irish Republic’s impression on me. Here was a man few tourists recognised, who slipped without cortège through the hotel and within hours was mingling with the townsfolk. When a group of American tourists asked me who the “popular guy in the sweat-suit in the bar” was, they found it incredible to believe that this was the Prime Minister of Ireland. “He’s so real” they gasped as they returned for a better look at him. Sure enough, Bertie was enjoying his pint of Bass from the freshly installed barrel fitted earlier that morning as he laughed and joked with the locals.

This was a man without heirs and graces. As an indifferent child of the 80s and early 90s, I had little to inspire me by way of politics. It was a polarised time, and the staunch support for Fianna Fáil in Kerry at the time was nothing by way of inspiring. But the chance encounters with this man made me realise that there was someone who could wrestle with the Unions by day, and drink with the people by night.

In the years to come, as I became more supportive of his fascinating régime, I would conclude, that it would be no challenge whatsoever for any citizen to wake up one morning, decide that in that day they would see the Taoiseach and fulfil that ambition without hindrance. Ireland has one of the most open political establishments in the world. Countless stories of how people met Bertie on nights out have been told and retold many times. He was genuinely a man of the people. Of course, the odd plain-clothes Garda was present at all occasions, but Bertie was free to move throughout the cities and towns throughout the lands in a way no politician in the world could enjoy. Friend and foe alike lined the streets and the bars when he came to town. There was always a magic. An enigma. A curiosity. A yearning for a glimpse of the man who gave us so much.

But on Wednesday last, all I felt was anger. We had betrayed him. Despite the allegations and the circumstantial evidence, it was the testimony and torture which Gráinne Carruth gave and received in the Tribunal that caused a stir in Bertie’s heart. As he pondered the anniversaries of peace approaching fast and the trip to America to speak to Congress, he decided he’d had enough. And on the steps of Government Buildings on Wednesday morning at 10:46am on the second day of April 2008, Patrick Bartholomew Ahern tendered his resignation to the people.

I felt sick. We have lost a great and truly magnificent leader.

Within minutes, Enda Kenny was on the steps of the Oireachtas calling for an election, flanked by his mob of gombeen-men. A vision that could only be described as the sorriest bunch of low-life scum in Ireland today. Kenny called for a ‘new mandate’ from the people of Ireland. This wasn’t just foolish - this was representative of exactly what is at the core of Fine Gael - no fucking heart. I rarely curse on this blog, but this time I feel I must make an exception. Right across the country, people who voiced their support for Fine Gael in the past were aghast at the Mayo man’s gaff outside Government Buildings. He nailed his colours to the cross, and looked like a failed and stupid man in doing so. At least Gilmore the Great had some kind words for the man who has been wronged and wronged badly.

As the country mourns the loss and the body-blow suffered by Bertie’s surprise resignation, let us hope that a candle will be held to the shadowy figures who plotted his demise. Editors and Blueshirts beware. The tide is out and now we see you. And as Bertie prepares to round off 11 years of Fianna Fáil unity and coalition government in a flurry of pomp and historic ceremony, I can only hope that the evil and sour bastards in the media and opposition are found out. Kenny’s card isn’t the only one marked and marred by this past 7 day’s events. It’s time to call time on these doom-sayers and bring Ireland back to the mighty country it once was. A place where people were inspired by politics and not disgusted by it. A time when true leadership went un-noticed amid our success. We’ll notice it now. And we will regret what we have done.

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Background checks are common in all facets of modern living, but the internet provides the one true means of freedom through expression. The downside is, with masters of search such as Google caching everything as you go, you end up with a digital footprint that even Bigfoot would be proud of. These days you can’t be too careful and the online world is certainly no exception. I know of many people who were refused interviews for positions in companies based on what they wrote online. It’s sad, because in my opinion, individuality is the greatest source of strength in a business.

Opinion, assertiveness, leadership and personal growth seem to be the most hated of weapons in an employee’s arsenal when reviewed by the human resources ‘managers’ of this world. It is indeed a difficult job, compounded by fractious laws and tort which solicitors, lawyers and attorneys love to exercise our memories leading class action suits, libel cases and other such maddening weirdness.

‘Teamwork’ seems to be the buzz word of the last few years. But teamwork is a fallacy. Human beings are unique creatures. We all have differentiating characteristics. Together we can make a difference, but the majority of global progression can be lead to a few individuals - Alexander Graham Bell, John Logie Baird, Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Frank Lloyd Wright and Steve Jobs. Sure, others were involved, but the driving enthusiasm and passion for exploration of human abilities is what forced changes throughout the world.

Today’s corporations pride themselves on competitive advantage and ‘leveraging’ and all those other words. But the real innovation, the real progression, comes from people, not collective groups of individuals labelled ‘teams’ in which inevitably, one or two members do all the work!

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But this is merely the sheep’s clothing of the issue that people are waking up to. Like the hangovers of years gone by, this headache we’re collectively nurturing is painful and sore. But what’s different about this one is the fact that there is no forgetting what caused it. We’re all guilty of the perils of riches – spending. I’ve done it, and you’ve probably done it too. We had it so good. We had a great 10 years of it, thanks in part to stable government and a favourable global economic climate. But the clouds have been here for a while now, and it’s starting to rain – quite heavily.

Make no bones about it, we’re headed for a monsoon of bad news in 2008 as a torrent of workers are left behind in the wake of the mass exodus of our biggest employers as they transport themselves in this ‘mobile’ economy to warmer climes and subsequently cheaper workforces. Today, Costa Rica, Mumbai and Shanghai are the Ireland’s of the 21st century. We’ve become a casualty of our own foolish belief that it would never end. Sadly it has, and we’re paying for it big-time.

HOUSING

We’ve long since known that our housing market was the driving force between our recent economic growth. In the early days of the Celtic Tiger (see the references to ‘Síbín’ as I call her on DDN) the focus was on industrial property. This lead to masses of employment and the steady rise in perceived wealth by our nation’s brightest of offspring – the college dropout. These people saw fit to pack it up and go off working in the building trade and reap the massive rewards that existed for the fortunate few who could make it on their own. Now, the teat has dried up and the sucklers of constructions are suckers for sure, as they find themselves out in the cold, looking for work in a bearish market of torturous proportions.

The graduate doesn’t escape lightly here either though. If you had the misguided misfortune to go to college to pursue something like Information Technology or Commerce in the last 10 years, and then shot yourself in both feet by staying here on some two-bit Graduate Trainee Programme, congratulations on falling for the modern equivalent of slave labour. I know your pain.

If on the other hand, you left Ireland and came back for the boom, you’re probably thinking of where you were and wondering why you bothered coming home.

EXPENSE

We really blew it. How many people went out in the last 5-10 years and bought a house in a newly developed estate built by companies they never heard of in places promised to be ‘tranquil but with all the facilities of a modern town’ and are now sitting on nothing more than a shell of badly built quality, built by the lowest bidder on ground that was probably reclaimed from boggy marshland in an area you now wouldn’t stray into without some form of blunt instrument for protection after dark. The answer is thousands. And now, those people who when they eagerly battled for the reasonably priced speculative 2-bed apartment and signed their lives away on 100% mortgages are living with the realities of negative equity, life-long repayments and the prospect of selling up just to get out of debt. They’ve been screwed by the unscrupulous oligopoly that their builder, solicitor, bank manager and developer all operated to maximize profit and minimize effort. And now they’re just living to scrape together enough money to pay huge service fees, interest repayments and loan agreements.

I’m not guilty of this in a roundabout way. I bought a car – ok, a modest price of €10,000 two years ago. Now, a college graduate with an honours degree in nothing, working 40 hours a week on less than the average industrial wage, I’m faced with the prospect of never being able to buy a house without drastic action somewhere along the line.

PUKE

We’re all suffering. The cocktail of our economic prowess however has a bitter aftertaste and we’re no better for buying into it. It made us feel powerful and garnered glances of envy from every corner of the globe. And as we drank it, we like its tingling impulses and warm fuzzy liquidity. But as we get to the bottom of the glass, we’ve realised that the things we’ve tried to avoid are now sliding down our throat. The bits of sediment that we didn’t realise were there until it was too late. And as we look at the Martini glass in which this cocktail of money and credit was served upon us, we realise that it sits on a very narrow foundation that could snap at any given moment.

AWAKE

Unfortunately, we’re still not actually awake from this nightmare binge session. We’re still being peddaled the lies about how the property bonanza is just resting for a while, and that now is a good time to buy. We’re being told that while you can’t have a 100% mortgage, you can have a mortgage intermediary take control of your house for a modest rate in excess of the legal blood-alcohol rate. We’re being screwed and squeezed for every cent we’ve got, until the companies who’ve wrung the towel dry move on to greener pastures.

Ireland needs to wake up, sit on the toilet for a good think and smell the coffee. We live in the second-most expensive country in Europe, relying on foreign direct investment from the USA, competing on nothing but an ideal against countries who can offer the cost-savings that companies want, and being asked to pay more for a litre of water from the local valley than a litre of petrol from the Gulf.

Emigration is now our only option. Let’s hope the Jihadist’s don’t turn us into Britain while we’re gone.

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To be frank, the iPhone is a nirvana-esque type of device. It is without doubt the most beautiful embodiment of that holy grail of the mobile communications device that so many actors in the technology field have spent 10 years trying to bring to market. Combining the phenomenally successful iPod platform, with a cellular telephone, WiFi-capable device with full and unbridled internet abilities and an email client that brings email to the masses in a way people can understand is amazing. Giving the opportunity to people to ‘touch’ their email and music is also a huge achievement for metaphor. But the device, while revolutionary in its abilities, is a bit of a lame duck in the hands of Europeans.

While it’s certainly not the case in Ireland (where we pay the highest prices for mobile phones and services in Europe), the UK has a thriving and highly-competitive cellular phone industry. With a population of almost 80 million alone in the UK, the phone market there reached saturation some years ago – yet people continue to adopt the latest phones for the best prices. When visiting Cardiff a few years ago, I was shocked to see the latest models being flogged by mainstream carriers for almost nothing (and some at £0). But the reason is simple – competition has driven down the price of the devices and the marginal profits gained from the competitive advantage on contracts yields massive revenues for the companies involved.

Contrast this with the Apple iPhone – a device which combines so much into a device that it does indeed warrant a high-price, and people will run like hell from it. The simple fact is the iPhone is just too expensive. It’s irrelevant whether it has an iPod or email in it, for the average consumer is concerned with things like ‘What kind of camera is in it?’ and ‘How easy is it to text with?’ and ‘Is the battery good?’. The consumer isn’t going to pay top dollar for a product that they perceive to be just a phone with an iPod stuck on. However, the iPhone is more iPod than phone. It was designed as an iPod, and phone features were added to the mix in order to consolidate a user’s physical digital footprint into one single device.

The main reason therefore that the iPhone is failing in the UK (and Europe too) is its price. And as we enter a huge recession in the EU, the iPhone’s luxury must-have appeal will be sacrificed due to its costly yield. Which is a dramatic change from the years when phones such as the Nokia 8800 was the must-have device because it was more expensive than the rest (and was a crap phone to boot). Now people want functionality over form, reliability over ergonomics. And while the iPhone is a revolutionary product, it will suffer from its futuristic design.

Europeans, and none more-so than the Irish, are a text-loving breed. On average, I send over 100 SMS messages per day. This is not uncommon in Ireland, and given that I’m a man, you can imagine that the number of text messages sent by women is a multiple of that. In fact, we’re so good at ‘texting’ each other here that we can type better on our phone’s twelve-key layout, than on a 105-key keyboard. The iPhone lacks this fundamental feature of tactile touch and connection with the phone. It has a beautiful and extremely clever QWERTY keyboard. But the problem is that this keyboard is a touch-screen keyboard, which relies on super-human hand-eye co-ordination to hit each key every time. This is no good to people raised on a diet of 4-3-5-5-6 (H-E-L-L-O) keystrokes. I’ve frequently sent text messages to people in my pocket while not looking at the keys. It’s great when you’re at a funeral and someone has a funny story to tell you right at that moment. It’s not that it doesn’t happen! So imagine remembering the x-y co-ordinates of the letter ‘M’ on your iPhone keyboard when it’s in your pocket on a freezing wet November day? It’s not going to happen. The fact is, we need keys to feel our way around. Most people here text without even thinking about which buttons to press, similar to how we now type on our keyboards at work. In fact, some of the stupidest people I’ve ever met who can’t type their name on a keyboard without looking, could write a 160-character text message faster than you could say ‘What kind of phone do you have?’.

So what of the Irish situation. Well, the iPhone still hasn’t beholden itself to being sold here yet. Still no announcement from Apple as to when this might happen, despite everyone and his dog predicting it’ll be in February of 2008. But the problem is, given that there’s only a population of 4 million on this island, and about two-thirds of our population are either too old or too young to adopt the iPhone in their droves, the device will be the target of the adoration of the middle-classes. These are the people who stupidly bought houses in the last 5 years and didn’t sell them when they had the chance. They’re now poor, struggling to make ends meet and not entirely aware of the fact that they’ll spend every day until they’re 90 years old working to pay off the debt they owe to the banks. This narrows the gap to fewer and fewer potential buyers of the iPhone. To be honest, if you take the ratio of 80 million in the UK buying only 200,000 iPhones, that means that in Ireland, Apple could only hope to sell 10,000 iPhones here. At a price tag of about €300 per iPhone, that’s only €3,000,000. Apple takes only 25% of that, meaning the company will make only €750,000 for ploughing iPhones into Ireland. Think about it, how much money will actually make it back to Cupertino? And then wonder why you’re asking yourself why Apple haven’t launched it here yet??

The answer is simple. If it’s not catching on in the UK, it’ll never catch on here.

How do Apple rectify that? They really cannot. While things might work in the US for the iPhone, Europeans want a phone that is easy to text with, can take reasonably good pictures and costs nothing to own or run. The iPhone is the antithesis of this. More is the pity.

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As a now well-seasoned Apple user, I’ve finally decided to plan ahead for 2008 for what I intend to buy. Here’s the list so far:

Apple TV
This product is a definite must have now. Thanks to the software upgrade it got on Tuesday, the Apple TV is now a formidable contender for my movie watching this year and going into the future. Watch out for the review when I get it!

Apple Time Capsule
You can never have enough storage, and if you’re like me and you have a broadband ADSL wireless router, you know that it’s completely crap. Especially if it came from the monopoly in Ireland. The 1 terabyte variety should do nicely. No more USB and noisy HDD case for me!

Apple iMac 24″
I’ve been trying to convince myself that it’s a worth-while investment. So, if things go accordting to plan, I’ll invest in this beauty. To anyone who’s thinking of investing though, be sure not to buy from the so-called ‘Apple Stores’ in Ireland - go straight to Apple.com for the best quality product.

What? No iPhone?? Well I frankly don’t see the point in it yet. It’s too expensive and I got an iPod touch for Christmas so that’ll do pig, that’ll do.

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Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., pulled off an impressive feat of oratorship on Tuesday. He announced software updates and a new notebook computer. And that’s about it. Of the past 4 January keynote speeches I’ve watched from the venerable Jobs, this was the least fluid and exhilarating. Last year’s pitch was indeed a major announcement, with the iPhone turning the world of mobile communications on its head as it struggled to figure out how to compete with this product that would be a major contender for the lucrative all-in-one devices market. This year however, Jobs stopped short on beauty and instead announced a pretty basic lot of software updates. The only other hardware released on Tuesday was the Time Capsule all-in-one backup solution, but even that was met with questionable audience reactions. This speech also had some noticeable mistakes too, with an early reference to ‘Tiger’ from Jobs as opposed to ‘Leopard’ for which he was speaking. Others cropped up too, but what struck me is that it was one of the least prepared speeches I’ve seen the man accomplish in recent years.

At 52, Jobs is not a spring chicken anymore, but he is enthusiastic about Apple, and that must be admired in the man who’s had a pretty turbulent past, including being fired and rehired. But the reaction online and offline to Tuesday’s keynote speech at the Moscone Center in San Francisco has led to a flurry of comments and criticisms of the January flagship product, the MacBook Air. I’ve outlined some of the gripes below so no need to go into detail here.

But the Air did steal some of Jobs’ wind at the announcement (pun intended), resulting in most commentators missing the true great revolution announced. Apple is revolutionizing the video rental market. Among the third act of his speech on Tuesday, Jobs caught my attention when he addressed the fledgling Apple TV product. This was never meant to be a huge seller, but merely an exercise in getting feedback. From that feedback, Apple has tuned the product to one which I personally look forward to purchasing this year.

Apple TV is to be the driving force in the living room behind what is now going to emerge as the most fierce battle yet for our traditions. If it works according to plan, Apple will see off yet more bricks-and-mortar business than ever before. The video rental stores. Apple have made video rentals simple. As it’s rolled out in the US now and internationally this year, broadband-enabled homes will be able to choose from a huge selection of 10,000 movies right from their living room - but here’s the key that no other competitor can offer at present - it can be done from your TV. The Apple TV product is going to be the next revolution in the coveted race to become the leader in home entertainment.

Many companies have tried to catch people as they sit watching TV at home with offerings such as the Microsoft Media Center and other products such as movie rentals by post etc. These solutions however called for too much complexity. Now, Apple is changing that. For the first time, users will be able to properly rent movies from their TV via their broadband connection and Apple TV. At prices that will sent shivers down the spine of video rental stores here in Ireland, Apple will corner this market very quickly. At the moment, a video rental from a major store in Ireland will cost you (oddly, depending on its location) about €5. That involves getting to the store on time, choosing from a poor titles list, and depending on the film’s availability at the time, it’ll mean that you could walk away with nothing. If you’re lucky to get the film you want, you have to return to the store to give it back, or face severe penalties.

Apple’s solution is unquestionably the simplest yet. Sit at your TV, browse the titles, press the ‘Rent Movie’ button, wait 30 seconds, and watch it. The title is valid for 24 hours from when you commence viewing and there’s nothing to return. And with a price tag of an estimated €3.00 a title, it’s curtains for the bricks-and-mortar video stores.

I’ve been involved in recent months with a product trial for movie rentals via kiosks in public places. My view of the product is not good - because it’s too complex and involves you going to get the movie, as opposed to the movie coming to you. In an country where we go to the cinema more often than any of our European buddies, that’s a big pain in the butt!

I cannot stress enough how this product is so brilliant. This will do for DVDs what iTunes did for CDs - basically seal their fate. No longer will people suffer the torture of getting half-way through a movie and end up missing a chapter because the disc is scratched, or suffer the indignity of being surrounded by massive shelving of complete and total crap in a video store at 8pm in some awful shopping centre with people fighting for the latest releases because the store has only 10 copies. No longer will you have to get soaked wet walking back from this store, clutching the DVD you didn’t really want to watch and realise that you have to walk back tomorrow to return it. No, this is going to be completely different.

All those people who have late fees on DVDs, say goodbye to the dirty and over-priced video rentals when this product finally unleashes itself on our shores. It will change the way you entertain yourself on a Friday night when you realise that Pat Kenny has no-one worth watching or on Saturday nights when you see that Tubridy has just gone out the back and pulled in Gerry Ryan again because the researchers couldn’t get Bertie in time. So long - so long!

The only saving grace for the XtraVision, Chartbusters and whoever else has these video rental stores, is that broadband isn’t everywhere. So Eamon Ryan, now’s your chance to undo the colossal f**k up John Gormley is doing to the Green Party - buy back the national telephone network, give everyone broadband at high speeds and low costs, and let’s all stay in on a Friday night and watch a movie on our Apple TVs. Who knows, it might even spare some money on Garda resources who won’t have to watch our streets from bored teenagers out on the town because they don’t have a proof of address to get a DVD from a rental outlet. Do our social life some justice, give us broadband, and let Apple bathe us in entertainment heaven!

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The announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday morning in San Francisco heralded Apple entering the Ultra-portable market. While the cat was out of the bag for a while on that note, no one really expected the MacBook Air to be so thin. At it’s slimmest it’s an amazing 0.16 inches thin and blows every other ultra-portable out of the water in terms of its slimline form factor. However, there’s a significant cost to this weight loss.

The weight itself isn’t too impressive. That’s partly thanks to the battery, which most people will find is the heaviest single entity within their laptops. However coming in at a mere 1.5kg (approx) is a great feat for what is essentially a 13-inch laptop.

But the weight of the product isn’t what’s causing the controversy on the blogosphere at the minute. The real dilemma for Mac fans and prospective buyers is the sheer cut-down costs used by Apple to bring this item to market. The hard drive within the MacBook Air (currently at a non-upgradeable 80GB) is shockingly small. While most people wouldn’t have the need for all of this space for their music alone, the fact that a 160GB iPod Classic is available with the exact same hard disk as is in the MacBook Air, begs the question why Apple decided to opt for the smaller 80GB disk.

Another of the major complaints wielded against the Air is the complete and total lack of expandability through ports. There are 3 ports on the Air; USB 2.0, Headphones and a mini-DVI port. The lack of Apple’s own FireWire standard is amazing here, considering the 4-pin variety of the IEEE 1394 technology provides much fast real transfer rates than USB 2.0. Although FireWire is clocked at 400Mbps and USB 2.0 at 480Mbps, FireWire is noticeably faster than USB with the same hardware such as an external drive. Having only one USB 2.0 port is also unfathomable as USB is ubiquitous at the moment and any one wanting to connect more than one device to the Air (such as an iPod and a Mouse) will have to sacrifice one connection in favour of another, or buy a powered USB 2.0 hub (which paradoxically makes the Air a wired product by consequence).

My gripe however with the Air is its price. For an ultra-portable computer, one would expect a high price in terms of dollars and cents, but the Air is out of reach of most buyers who would appreciate the Air’s beauty. Students in college would be the best customer and a key growth area for Apple’s install base, however at €1,700 in the Republic of Ireland, it’s beyond most parents’ or students’ budgets. It’s in line with other ultra-portables, but Apple missed a trick here. If the price had been lower or marginally higher than the current MacBook varieties, users would have gravitated to it in their droves, acceptably sacrificing an optical drive for portability and weight. But having it in the higher regions of MacBook varieties seals out those potential masses and closes the market to them completely. After all, if it were coming in at €999, people would forgive its tiny hard drive capacity and un-changeable battery and paid out the money for an amazing feat of design engineering.

However, I’ve noticed this trend in recent years by Apple, and I blame the book-keepers for it. Apple’s products are always perceived to be higher than the competing PC manufacturers, however they make up for it in reliability, design and specifications generally. But the Air is the odd one out in the notebook segment of Apple’s business. It has relatively poor specifications and upgradeability but is priced beyond the reach of its core target users, young adults with a yearning for change in a Microsoft-controlled world of college campuses and businesses. Likewise with the iPhone in the USA. When launched at $500 in July of last year, it was a massive success, but it was also at the same time a massive failure as it priced most people out of the market once the initial savers took the plunge for the anticipated gadget. However from the UK sales, it’s easy to see how Apple got it wrong. Yes, it may be better than most phones on the market now, but it was priced to compete with BlackBerries and Palms, when it should have been priced to compete with Nokias and Samsungs. Therein lies the issue - people who would buy it were priced out. Apple is starting to show signs of being run by the accountants and not the salesmen as the ever-evident drive to maximise every last cent of corporate money is coming to the fore.

Personally, I like the Apple MacBook Air. I love that the design isn’t compromising the form of the notebook, and the fact that yes, for the most part, this is designed as a complement to an existing Apple system - as a mobile version of the desktop for short periods. But in doing so, and in pricing it out of reach of the people who would buy it, Apple is bringing undue pressure upon itself as it tries to increase its install base and subsequent loyalty base. Apple products are among the best designed in the world. While most PC users are ignorant to the benefits of Mac (frightened off by jealous and stupid loyalists to the Windows environment) their pricing strategies are becoming a bit too pretentious of late. Sacrificing users for profit is poor strategy for a company who has seen record growth in sales on the back of the ‘Mac Myth’ (the atmosphere of ‘everything Apple does is cool’). This is now having a kick-back online with many devotees voicing their anger at the company’s over-pricing and creating for the first time in recent years, a negative atmosphere.

Doubtless people will buy the MacBook Air - but I would easily manage to budget for it if it were in reasonable reach of my pocket. Sadly it’s not, and as I contemplate my next purchase from Apple, it will not unfortunately by an Air.

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The app covers Windows XP machines in Vista’s gooey GUI but is still only a small shell for the maximized app. The program is still hideously slow, although login times are better now. Still jam-packed with stupid ads at the bottom of the main window, it’s more of a lateral upgrade than anything new for the ancient messenger.

I must confess to being a GoogleTalker almost full-time now, and it’s strange to fire up the old Messenger and see the contacts I never keep in contact with.

I’d reccommend you hold off on upgrading to be honest. This version is pretty pointless. Then again, so is Microsoft’s whole ‘Live.com’ crap.

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