Deals

End contract prices when your contract ends

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You signed up for a contract mobile phone and accepted that it was costing you a bit for the service and a bit for the phone. Mobile phones are very expensive and the cost gets subsidised by the carriers so naturally we have to pay them quite a bit while we’re under contract.

But you don’t stay under contract. After two years, say, the contract is up. Yet people keep paying their regular monthly bill anyway.

I went a bit pale this week when friend-of-the-blog Steve Fitzpatrick pointed it out. Fortunately, I think I have always gone from one subsidised phone to another. But not this time.

This time I am just out of contract but I haven’t bought the new iPhone. So on Steve’s advice, I went back to my carrier and changed my deal. Now that my contract is up, I own my iPhone 5 so for now I’m keeping that and only paying Three for the service.

The difference is huge. I used to pay £42/month and as of this week, that’s down to £18. It’s a slightly better deal in terms of texts and phone minutes but who cares? It’s the all-you-can-eat data that I wanted enough to pay £42 for but I now have for £24 less. Per month. That’s a quarter of a hundred pounds less.

So thank you Steve. And if you’re in this position, go change to a new contract. Specifically a SIM-only contract.

Curiously, two reasons led to the conversation with Steve that got me this saving. One is that there are two iPhones out and they’re big. I need to see them in my hands before I can really decide whether they’re too big for me or not. There are reasons to like the new iPhone beside size but the size could put me off. Consequently I didn’t just pre-order or plan to buy on release day today.

But the second is that I couldn’t really make the numbers work. The price of the phone under a two-year contract is fine but no matter how I sliced it or how I considered switching to other providors, I didn’t like the numbers. All you can eat data is important to me and every deal was coming in at £45 or above.

Now I’ve gone SIM-only and own my iPhone 5, I’m suddenly looking at £18 a month I’m actually paying or anything above £45. That’s a big difference. That’s a big enough difference that I might skip this iPhone.

Incidentally, if I don’t skip it, if I go buy one, I am now committed to my SIM-only deal for £18. I couldn’t get a subsidised iPhone 6 from Three without paying some terminations fees. But I could buy one from Apple and pay over Apple Finance to get a monthly fee. That’d mean paying Apple a bit every month for the phone and Three a bit every month for the service.

It works out at pretty much exactly what I’d have been paying if I had gone straight for having Three subsidise me.

So I’m no worse off with my potential decisions but I am much better off with what I’m actually paying. And I go so pale at the thought I might very well have continued to pay my old monthly cost forever. You know people must do this. You know mobile phone companies would let them.

If that’s you, then, go sort it out and thank Steve.

New on the App Store: Bundles of Apps

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We’ve had box sets of films and TV series since there were any boxes to put them in yet it’s taken billions of downloads of a million apps before we’ve had the advantage of bundles of them.

The idea – new to the revamped App Store in iOS 8 – is that you can get four or so apps from the same developer and save a little bit of money over buying them separately. Only a little bit, but.

Go to the App Store today and you’ll see a banner ad for app bundles. Take a look.

But easily the one that leaps out at me is the Omni Group bundle. The Omni Productivity Pack contains:

• OmniFocus 2 for iPad
• OmniOutliner for iPad
• OmniPlan 2 for iPad
• OmniGraffle 2 for iPad

Currently that bundle costs £94.99 as opposed to a total of £111.93 if you bought them separately. So that’s a saving of £16.94 which is not to be ignored. But in each case this gets you the standard edition of the apps and it costs more for the Pro versions.

But look at me: I already own OmniFocus and OmniOutliner. For people like me, Apple’s borrowed its pricing model from TV series: I can “complete my bundle” for £53.01. To buy the apps I haven’t got, OmniPlan and OmniGraffle would otherwise cost me £69.98. So that’s a saving to me of £16.97.

I don’t need either OmniPlan yet or OmniGraffle maybe ever, but these are the kinds of savings the new idea brings and that’s got to be good.

Get this right now, right now: 1Password for iOS goes free

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I believe this is unheard of and I believe you should be getting it now rather than reading this. Get it now. Hurry.

1Password-4-LogoLook, I got my copy in a sale several years ago and it was a bargain price but it was still a price. When I learnt that it was free, I actually didn’t believe it. You know how the App Store doesn’t show you a price after you’ve bought something? It only and forever shows the word ‘Open’? Often I like that, especially if the app was expensive and has now dropped a lot in price. But it means it’s quite difficult to check these things out to be sure that they’re true.

Listen to me, I sound like I still don’t believe it. To put this in one perspective, free is just a £6.99 drop. But to put it in another, I’ve used 1Password a minimum of once every single day – every single day – since I got it around 2009.

It’s a password manager that creates strong passwords and then securely enters them for you. So on the one hand you’re never going to use ‘123456789’ as your password. And on the other, going to websites and logging in to them is now very fast. One tap and I’m at the BBC Radio Previews website, 1Password is popping my username and password in, and I’m off to the races.

That’s a feature that is going to get even better in iOS 8, which arrives today, and the new version of 1Password which will arrive at about the same time. That’s going to be a free upgrade for me, as an existing user, and it will be a free upgrade for you as an existing user – if you go get this bizarre free offer while it lasts.

Final Draft on sale (pretty briefly)

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You’ve got until 19 September to get Final Draft version 9 for $149.99 US, approximately 40% off, from the official site here.

The sale includes both the Mac and Windows editions: for Mac you need OS X version 10.7 or later – that’s better known as OS X Lion – and for Windows you need XP or later.

Final Draft doesn’t exactly stretch your computer: it’s funny how old-fashioned the software looks. I have version 8 and don’t really use it enough now to warrant going to 9 nor can I really see much of a difference in the upgrade: there isn’t a killer must-have feature.

But it’s a solid script-writing word processor and if it has more and better competitors today, it is still true that Final Draft is the nearest thing to an industry standard.

If you are an existing user, by the way, you can upgrade to version 9 for $99.99 on the same official site’s store.

Urgent – Nisus Writer Pro for Mac on sale (briefly)

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This one is important. Nisus Writer is the strangely still little-known and unfortunately a bit little-used word processor for Macs. While every other Mac word processor died in battle against Microsoft Word, this one mostly carried on. It was wounded, it may have had some time in a coma, but it survived and in recent years has been bounding back.

I don’t use it.

But Nisus is special to me because of its history and specifically of how it was the first to introduce features we now depend on. The one that jumped into my head was non-contiguous selection. Cor. That’s a teeshirt phrase. But it means being able to highlight that sentence over there, then that sentence down here, and copying them at the same time. It’s not just a time saver for copying out bits of text you need, it’s a boon at the other end to. When you hit Paste, it all goes there in one go.

I remember using it for repurposing copy from somewhere. Can’t quite recall. Maybe something like a bio where I knew these three or four bits would help in whatever pitch I was doing. Copied those out, pasted them into one new bio and I could’ve just sent the lot off like that but equally I could take some of this reclaimed time and spend it crafting the bits into one good, persuasive whole.

Anyway.

Thanks for reading my reminiscing, now go take a look at the deal. This is a MacUpdate deal, nothing to do with me, and for an extremely limited time it’s got Nisus Writer Pro for 50% off. So that’s $39.50 instead of $79.

I think $79 is a bargain anyway. But don’t be like the colleague of mine who decided to buy Final Draft 9 one day after it was on a half-price sale.

Prototypr for Mac (briefly) free

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You know how when you need something, it seems to be everywhere? I’m going to be working on an app and so everywhere I look I am reminded of this.

Sometimes it’s useful, as in references on various podcasts. Sometimes it isn’t, as in Community season 5, episode 8, “App Development and Condiments”.

Look out for it.

And then there are times when it’s handy. As in tonight, when there’s a Mac app called Prototypr that has briefly gone free. Usually retailing for £6.99, it’s for building a kind of demo version of your app idea: showing the screens and what it will look like without it actually being able to do anything.

It means you can try things quicker and get to the design you need sooner.

Have a look at Prototypr. I’ve not used it, but while we were talking, I was downloading it.

Photo Reminders for iOS (briefly) free

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What is this, sale night?

Actually, what is this? Photo Reminders for iOS is now (say it with me: briefly) reduced to free. But I’m not sure what it does. Maybe you have to be more visually minded than I am to appreciate it. If so, draw me a pitcher some time. Meanwhile, this is what it says it does:

Voice memos + Photos + Text
Ideal application for those who value their time.

“Photo Reminders” is the opportunity to make a reminder quickly and clearly about any event: a meeting, a birthday gift purchase, a concert, an important call or simply an evening walk with your pet.

It’s enough to * Choose the photo from the Photos app, * Make a photo or * Record a voice message”.

“Photo Reminders” enables to create reminders instantly, without spending time for the description of the forthcoming event, which is also convenient while driving.

How does “Photo Reminders” work?
For example, walking around the city, you can pay attention to the poster: premiere of the long-awaited movie. You get the phone, take a picture by the means of this application – at the necessary moment the program will inform you that it is time to buy tickets. The application remembers everything for you!

And here’s where you get it for (briefly) free.

MyScript Smart Note free (briefly)

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That’s script as in handwriting, not script as in coming soon to a cinema near you. MyScript Smart Note is for handwriting on iPads and I’ve no compulsion. Again, I enjoy typing.

But this isn’t really a sale as I think for it to be called that, the maker has to be selling it for something. And at the moment, MyScript Smart Note is free. Take a look on the App Store.

Talk to the Mac: Dragon Dictate on sale (briefly)

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I haven’t used it in centuries but those who do tell me that Dragon Dictate is very, very good. Not only in the way I would’ve imagined – that you can, you know, dictate into it – but also in that you can control it by voice. Nip up a paragraph, skip to the end of a page, right a bit, left a bit, fire.

I’m still not going to get it because I really enjoy typing but if you’ve been thinking about it, go get Dragon Dictate now for half price. Cult of Mac has a deal running where it costs $99.99 instead of $200.

Todoist Premium on special offer (briefly)

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As featured in this week’s email newsletter, you can currently get a free six months subscription to the premium version of Todoist.

The deal is via Appsumo, it’s here and it’s worth looking at – but before you buy, check out the free version. It may well be all you need in which case Premium is a waste of your money. It’s a nice waste, mind: you’d be supporting the firm that makes this To Do app you so like, but still.

When you follow that Appsumo link, scroll down. The front page looks like a big ad for Appsumo but it’s just the top: scroll down for a lot of detail about Todoist.