While I’m eagerly waiting for the recently-launched HTC Desire to be in stock somewhere, anywhere, unlocked and at a sensible price — and waiting for my bank account to look a bit healthier so I can actually afford the thing — Apple have announced the next version of the iPhone operating system.

Having thoroughly lost faith in Apple, I had absolutely no expectation of OS 4.0 bringing the iPhone up to speed with other smartphones. And that doubt appears to have been well-founded.

Highlights of the new OS:

• Multitasking for third-party apps. Just like other smartphones have had for ages. Except those phones have proper multitasking, while the iPhone will have a tightly-controlled cut-down version, nobly intended to prolong battery life and ignobly intended to hide the iPhone’s lack of processor grunt.
• Advertising. As if screen space isn’t already at a premium on phones, Apple will now provide a ready-rolled advertising system for app developers. Most modern smartphones have 3.7-inch screens with 800 x 480 resolution. The iPhone has a 3.5-inch screen with 480 x 320 resolution. So it’s not exactly customer-centric for Apple to encourage app developers to use those precious pixels for advertising. Apple will take 40% of revenue.
• What about support for modern media-rich web sites? Embedded web apps?  Of course not! Still no Flash. Still no Java.
• Any chance of running apps that haven’t been dragged through the App Store approval process? No. Why? Because according to Apple boss Steve Jobs, that sort of customer choice exposes children to pornography.

So hurrah! Around July sometime we’ll be able to update our iPhones with a new operating system that will still leave Apple’s phone as one of the weakest, most under-featured, most intentionally crippled smartphones on the market.

And by the way it’s now sixteen days and counting since Opera Mini was submitted to the App Store and Apple is still keeping customers waiting.

One of the most limited, locked-down and under-featured gadgets went on sale in the US today. And while lacklustre demand for the iPad will disappoint Apple, people who feel let down by the company's poor iPhone support will likely be chuckling contentedly.

It's a safe bet that most people in the iPad's target audience will already have iPhones — which are also limited, locked-down and under-featured.

When the iPhone 3G first came out, supposedly the best mobile phone in the world, it didn't even have picture messaging or Internet tethering support, which had been standard on other mobiles for many years. Apple had the cheek to announce these as major new features when they were eventually added in a software update. Absurd. They should have been built in to the phone all along.

The iPad will be of greatest appeal to people who are "on the go", yet it has been pushed out the door without 3G support. So if you don't have access to a nearby WiFi spot then you'll be holding what is essentially a disconnected brick with no world awareness. Is this really what the online generation wants?

Personally, while I don't have any sympathy for Apple, if the iPad doesn't sell well then it will be a terrible shame for magazine and newspaper businesses. If their future really is digital then there needs to exist a large-screen hand-held device such as the iPad, and it needs to be widely used. In a way this actually makes me feel more anger towards Apple, because their "screw the customer" business model is now going to hurt other businesses that would be relying on delivery vessels such as the iPhone and iPad for content distribution.

Meanwhile, iPhone users waiting for the Opera Mini web browser to be approved for the App Store have been kept waiting by Apple for eleven days and counting.

I've been following some of the online discussions about Apple's delay in approving Opera, and the expectation that they will eventually reject it. Some people suggest that when Apple does reject it, they'll claim that it's a legitimate customer-oriented decision due to the "duplicate functionality" of Opera, ie: the iPhone already has a built-in web browser, so why would any customer ever want to use a different one?

So I thought it was worth pointing out that dozens of alternative web browsers have already been accepted for the App Store. The crucial difference with Opera, of course, is that it has a good reputation, it's better than the built-in Safari browser, and people actually want it. That will dent Apple's image.

Here's something you might want to keep in mind if you do your banking with the Royal Bank of Scotland. I received this letter from them today:

Now I'll say outright that I don't know for sure what amount was paid in. This was a collection of cheques that had built up over a week, and it was my girlfriend who took them to the bank for me. But it struck me that the two amounts differed by exactly £50 and I thought it was highly unlikely that a bank cashier would be exactly £50 out when adding up a relatively small amount of money. If it had been £100 out then I could have believed that he simply pressed '2' instead of '1' on his computer, but being £50 out doesn't make sense.

So I rang the bank. It was the manager who answered, and I explained the situation to her, which took a long time because she constantly interrupted and I had to keep explaining things over and over again. But when I did finally get to the end of what I needed to say, she said there was nothing that could be done as it was simply a counting error.

I told her that I would have to see some form of proof that there had been a mistake, as I had a receipt for £217.70 being paid in, and as far as I was concerned the receipt proves that the cashier had counted the cheques and confirmed how much they were worth.

Here's the bit you may find interesting:

According to the bank manager, a Royal Bank of Scotland payment receipt is NOT proof of that amount being paid in. Why? Well, according to the manager, it's Royal Bank of Scotland practice that cashiers don't add-up a total amount for cheques — they only ask the customer for the total and then issue a receipt for whatever the customer tells them. (Anyone who has ever paid in cheques at RBS knows this is untrue. The cashiers add up the cheques themselves.)

So, I asked the manager: Doesn't that make RBS receipts irrelevant? What is the point of getting one if it doesn't prove receipt of an amount of money? She dodged that question a few times and promised to get back to me.

Royal Bank of Scotland receipts: Not worth the paper they're written on.

We'll get individual receipts for every single cheque from now on.