Legitimate apps on iPod touch

Excellent news! When I plugged my iPod Touch in this evening to charge, I saw there were updates available to iTunes (to v7.6) and iPod Touch (to v1.1.3). A brief Google for the change logs revealed very exciting news. For $20 I can have five applications and some other bits. I expected the email app alone will be worth this extravagance. And even better, no need to worry about jail breaking. Happy days!

Then the annoyances started.

I completed the updates using my Mini Mac and all went well. The link to the "iPod touch January Software Update" was displayed prominently on the iTunes Store front page. Following the link and reading some blurb got me as far as the "buy now" button. And next to this button was "£12.99". Yet again Apple Inc. see fit to fleece their UK customers. $19.99 at today's exchange rate is only £10.18. The hardware costs more here, the music costs more here and now I see the "updates" are no different. For what it's worth, earlier this week I decided against the frivolous purchase of the MacBook Air simply because the UK price is a 29% more expensive than the US price tag. £2028 versus $3098 is £450 dearer - unacceptable!

Anyway, I made the purchase and... nothing happened. The transaction appeared in my account history but not on my iPod touch. The £2.81 UK premium seemed more expensive than ever. After a little searching I realised I was not alone. An Apple support page revealed the answer. As I choose to "manually manage my music and videos" I cannot have the update. I have to deselect this option, have all my music, audio books, podcasts and photos deleted, wait for the license to be applied (yes, there's no download, all the apps are already in the 165.5MB v1.1.3 firmware) and then start again from scratch.

To top it all, all new iPod touch devices come with the apps preinstalled with no price premium over the original launch price (16GB for £269 or $399 - don't get me started!). So all the existing owners are being asked to pay an extra £12.99 for Apple Inc. to do no work or incur any other sort of cost. Marvellous! :(