Unlike many gamers and techno addicts I am of the character that if I see something I want, I wait and wait, primarily for the product to fall in price, before I go out and purchase it. So it would come at no surprise that I have spent months and months debating whether I should get myself an iPhone.
However, my biggest holdback has been focussed on the fact that I already pay for a home Wi-Fi package and thus can not justify paying out a £35+/month fee on top of that, just so I can join the masses of constantly checking my social media apps etc...
So it came as a big surprise when Santa kindly brought me an iTouch. It apparently is everything the iPhone is but without the phone connection. The best bit is I can connect to my home Wi-Fi and ~cough~ join the masses as I randomly download every free app I can get my hands on.
Now many of you with small children are probably pestered regularly by them to play a game on your new gadget – which is great, as it keeps them quiet for a while after all... but be warned! When my four year old niece begged me to let her play on my iTouch, that was fine - I mean, what harm could it do?
Anyways, I'd downloaded a free Smurfs game, which brought back floods of childhood memories. I pass the iTouch to my niece and sit beside her as she happily plays the game.
After a while I notice she's getting a little frustrated and at this point she hands it back to me. To my horror I see that she has entered a ‘Smurf shop’ and is about to buy – yes buy - £59.99 of Smurfberries! I quickly press the cancel button but to my horror a message appears thanking me for my purchase. WHAT!?!?! What purchase? How? This is meant to be a free app!
After a lot of hassle getting my laptop out and trying to sign into my iTunes account, I see that she has bought (unbeknown to her) only a £3.99 bucket of Smurfberries – thank god it was only for that amount. I am really hoping that the iTunes account was up to date and that there aren’t more payment transactions to come.
What really annoyed me is there was nothing stopping her from hitting the buy button over and over – and I seriously can’t believe that it didn’t even ask for a password before letting you buy something.
Overall, it really put a dampener on the whole iTouch thing, to the point that I am now freaking out if there are going to be any hidden charges on any of the apps that I have already downloaded.
Still, teething troubles aside, the smart-looking iTouch does appear to have a great number of applications and uses – so let’s finish this on a positive note and highlight the 10 apps that I've downloaded and so far really love (NB: list does not include anything Smurf related!)
(1) Twitter – I never have time to check Twitter usually, but in this handy format I certainly will be able to dip into it a little more frequent than I have been doing;
(2) Sky News – speaks for itself but I am a news addict so it really suits me;
(3) Met Office – like many Brits I have an OTT interest in the weather, so again ideal for me;
(4) LinkedIn – Great app lets me keep in touch with lots of people on a work basis;
(5) Bar Code Scanner (not free) – really is a dream app for any shopping addict – you can hold it over the bar code of many products and find out how much it cost (great for seeing how miserly anyone may have been with your Xmas present this year);
(6) Argos – really quick and easy way of ordering something and checking if it is in stock;
(7) Bubble Shooter – I am totally addicted and just can't stop playing it – haven’t been this bad since Tetris on the Gameboy;
(8) Mood Finger Scan – simple things as they say - apparently today I am ‘Happy’;
(9) Paper Toss – again another fun addictive game;
(10) Talking Tom Cat – A pet cat that repeats everything you say and the plus is it kept my Niece and I amused for 5 minutes.
As you can see I haven’t downloaded many games yet – so any suggestions and tips are most welcome…
(Photo credit: Apple)