If I don't think I have a damn thing to apologise for, then I'll say so.

But what if you genuinely regret that your best intended actions upset someone?

After all, it might be someone you like, or want to be liked by.

To be sorry can mean to apologise, but it can also mean to sympathise. To be sorrowful is to be regretful. If a statement that is spoken in truth and honesty offends someone else, then the latter meaning may be entirely appropriate.

I don't regret my words, but I do regret your taking offence at what I say. I'm sorry, but I stand by what I'm saying.

But in the real world, not even Helen Clark's best teflon survived that defense.

Tee hee - the box the box, the protective armor, the timber weapon ... all makes him look more like a spiritual terrorist leader.

WTF is the Herald on?

Weird stuff. Feeling almost sanctimonious. Who are the people who don't read or talk to their kids, or who don't listen to them, or eat with them? People without books, time or food I guess. Enslaved to the salary as I am, I seldom eat with the 3 year old outside of weekends. I guess that gives me a score of 2 out of 3, which if it ain't bad, is exactly not in the top third either.

iPhone will be a pretty niche player. It may be a large niche but that's it.

The people that read columns like this and a moneyed few will be interested but most of the rest of the planet won't even know it exists.

Hmmm. Like, Apple know nothing about being the second mover in pre-established markets? Don't think so. My neice (10) doesn't want an mp3 player, she wants an ipod.

Apple's entire history consists of taking pre-existing technology, making it better (generally simpler) and then embuing it with the emotional appeal only advertising and packaging can supply.

True, it didn't work for the Newton, so it hasn't always worked for them.

I guess it depends what you mean by 'the moneyed few'. With [insert big number here]% of the world without any kind of phone at all, that's pretty comfortable bet-hedging.

With a self imposed target of 1% of the market in 12 months, it'll be interesting to see. I would have thought that at the very least, making a serious mp3 player networkable would give it a significant advantage, removing all sort of links in the increasingly convoluted media chain.

Add to that the various legions of Mac addicts and habitual tech adopters ... and people who actually just want a decent phone ... and Macintosh's history of starting at the top and trickling down to the kids ... I guess the point is that if a fraction of 'the moneyed few and people who read this collumn' end up toting iphones, it'll have done it's thing.

So, any celebs here on the list for a show-pony freebie?

I remember one of the panellists at the Hopetoun Alpha P.A. Live do: "you call it TVNZ Interactive, but where's the interactivity!?"

Heartbreaking stuff.

TV in this country seems likely to go the way of fine arts: an obscure dalliance for the eccentrically bored.

Showing the age: I caught U2 at the Logan Concrete Bunker in 1984. Four Irish guys rocking out on stage with nothing but a PA and a few parcans.

I remember 3 things. They wore black jeans, and still do. Bono's sole fell off his boot, and he needed a roadie to gaffer it back together in the middle of "I will follow". And the show ended with the audience singing along with the chorus "Hhhooowww lllooonngg, sssinng thiiis soooong". One by one the the musos all left the stage, leaving the audience looking pretty bloody stupid singing afore said chorus.

Put me off them for life, that did. Still, sounded like they redeemed themselves at Mt Smart.

Relating this to a 20something colleague she was appropriately impressed that I could stand just 2m away from bono hisself. What I wonder now is: if U2 are the new Stones, who will be the next U2? Franz Ferdinand? Arctic Monkeys? Or some yankee emo croud?