It’s not my image: the original and some others (I think, I may be mixing things up here) is on Flickr round about here.

Before you ask, yes, definitely. I loathe my current mobile and it’s not even my current mobile: my real current one now just pretends to send texts, recently giving me a tedious hour in a pub while a friend had a tedious hour in a different pub wondering why I’d gone silent. So I swapped back to my previous current phone and the sound quality is bad, the contortions you have to go to just set an alarm, well, the only thing I can say in praise of my previous-current phone is that it’s better than the real-current one in that respect.

So I was looking for a new phone and I have stopped. Don’t care that word is the iPhone will be delayed in the UK until next year, don’t care that nobody knows what operator it will be on. I’ve just told Vodafone that no, thank you, I don’t want to sign up for another year’s contract so at least I won’t get any fee for breaking when I move. Because I’ll move.

I am troubled by the cost but that’s only painful at point of sale. Besides, an expensive phone that works is better than a mildly expensive phone that doesn’t, am I right?  I used to work on PC magazines but even then, when it came to my own cash, I always bought Macintosh because I’m more interested in work than I am in the alchemy that is Windows.

Can’t remember if I’ve said this to you before but you know I do a podcast DVD show? A lot of people seem to like it, which is fantastic, and I have a ball talking to you, writing radio scripts, studying DVD dramas like every writer should. I honestly don’t think I’d have done it if I were on Windows. Since I had a Mac, it was moments from the idea to the first edition and I’ve now done over 100 of them and also got work in BBC local radio out of it.

I don’t know if the iPhone will really be any good, but Apple’s got form for me, I’m saving up.

And this is all on my mind tonight in part because America’s getting all hyped up for the US release of the iPhone but also because tomorrow I’ve promised to help some friends set up their own Mac. They’re devout Windows users but they’ve switched and have lots of questions about configuring this, setting that, adding the other. Angela’s coming too but asked what we’d have to talk about after I say “Switch it on”.

I hope I tell them what they need. I feel as if I got into computers by mistake, that I should really have pursued writing as I subsequently have, but then it’s easy to forget how grounded in ‘puting I used to be and how I still skip back and forth between Macs and PCs without thinking. I know there are things I don’t realise I do so will I be any good at helping them?

Not sure why I just bent your ear about this, but you’ve got that kind of face, I can tell you anything, right?

William