5

I would ordinarily be quite happy with the iPhone 5 being available in Portugal only a couple of weeks from today, were it not for the completely shitty situation the country is in right now.

As it turns out, the austerity measures are still unfolding, and the immediate impact is that I’ll lose two months’ worth of income in between an asinine shift in Social Security levies and a (as yet undefined) re-shuffling of income taxes.

To say that people are in shock is an understatement, even though politicians remain merrily aloof (but with appropriately serious visages) and completely miss the point of how badly they’ve fouled this up.

So even though emigrating is not an option I care to consider, folk abroad are now openly wondering if I’m nuts for staying, which, as you may well imagine, is not exactly a conversation starter.

Not that I expect to go to many parties abroad in the coming years, mind you.

Anyway, if I hadn’t sold off some gear a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t even think of replacing my 3GS right now – spending around Eur.700¹ on a new phone is not a trivial decision in this context, to say the least.

But in between settling for something else (like that Galaxy Nexus I’ve been considering, which will have a year’s worth of support at best) and buying something that is likely to last me at least as much as the 3GS (Apple’s multi-year support window makes one hell of a difference), there really isn’t much choice.

And I’m not even factoring in Apple’s ecosystem - but if I add to the tally the moderate amount of money I spent on apps over the past few years, it makes even more sense…

So I’ll be rounding up more of my old hardware (a couple of netbooks, external drives, and maybe those monitors I’ve been holding on to), try to hawk them on mailing-lists, and see how I can make ends meet.

I beg your pardon if you found this post lacking in mindless rejoicing about Apple’s continued (and overwhelming) success, blissful contemplation of infinitesimal design features or competition bashing, but there’s real life outside tech.