Apple and Vodafone work together in Spain

I am just back from ENASE 2009 in Milan, Italy. The good thing for a Spaniard like me about travelling to Italy is that you get to taste yummy Italian food. And you get to see beautiful landscapes and monuments. And you get to practice your Italian. Oh, and yes. The iPhone.

See, I think it’s pathetic that Apple sells the iPhone in Spain exclusively through Telefonica, one of the carriers here, so that you either sign up with Telefonica, pay them outrageous fees and sign in blood that you won’t leave them before two years… or you, well, get yourself a cheap imitator of the iPhone.

I have been a customer of Vodafone for ages, and I am not going to switch carriers now. And, if I switch carriers, it will not be to join Telefonica. I am resonably happy with Vodafone; as happy as one can be in a vampiric relationship with a carrier, that is. The only thing that I was missing was an iPhone.

Well done, Apple

I got my new iPod today. Apple received my broken one in the morning and shipped a new one that same afternoon. After a full synch with iTunes, it’s up and running again.

Linda was right: they have delivered. 🙂

OMG! My iPod is broken!

I am sad.

The other day I was on the bus watching a TED talk video on my iPod Touch when, out of the blue, the screen went white. Well, not exactly white. It started displaying some weird kind of horizontal white stripes that made things really hard to see or read. It looked milky.

So I dived into the web and engaged Apple’s customer service. In a couple of days they sent a UPS return package for me to send them my iPod. I am expected to live without it for a few days (I hope it’s not longer than that!) until they fix it.

How did I manage to survive before?

Wrong priorities?

My Nokia 6288 has been acting up for some time now. It resets randomly a few times a day, which is quite annoying if you happen to be in the middle of a conversation or typing a text message.

So, when Vodafone came up with the BlackBerry Storm, I thought I would have a look at it. It starts at 19 € if you sign up for the top flat rate voice and data contract, which may be a bit over the top for me. But I am still willing to pay a bit more for the machine if I like it. What I would really like to own is an iPhone, but there are two reasons why I can’t: first, only Telefónica sells the iPhone in Spain, and I will not enter into business with Telefónica under any circumstances (well, maybe I would if my life and the life of my loved ones’ were depending on it); secondly, my colleague Sara Atán owns one and she says it’s got a few glitches and functionality shortcomings that I am not ready to live with. So, no iPhone for me. Shame. It’s pretty. So Apple.