Me and the new iPhone: just what my fingers have been waiting for

How much more enslaved to technology can I be? I am about to find out...

The new iPhone 5S with fingerprint technology.

The new gold iPhone 5s with fingerprint sensor which allows the user to log into the phone and purchase more Apple products was unveiled this week. You might have been alerted by the thundering of a million Apple lemmings, myself included, checking bank balances and rushing towards the Apple Store bearing foldaway camping stools and a swivel-eyes look of purpose.

Actually two iPhones were announced but it’s the 5s with the 64-bit processor I genuinely need. It’s not that my current iPhone doesn’t work. It can make and receive calls, but there is a slowness – admittedly almost imperceptible – with which the Apps load. Sometimes of up to one or two seconds. And that’s a bloody long time to wait for a What’s App conversation about EastEnders to update.

The gross pathetic-ness of any of this doesn’t elude me. Myself and umpteen millions others are in a toxic marriage with their iPhone, and I can’t help thinking that the fingerprint sensor – swiftly, of course, to be copied by a dozen other smartphone competitors – will make this whole terrible craving even more bleak.

The fingerprint sensor, if all goes to plan, could replace the need for the frankly unworkable number of passwords and security codes we’re currently given for banking, bill-paying, shopping, booking an NHS operation, scheduling a garden refuse collection or simply logging into our regular web haunts. “Your password is confidential. Don’t write it down or store it anywhere. Dispose of this piece of paper carefully.”

Sadly, technology moved on and using the web to run every aspect of our lives flourished, but the human brain is still as shonky and still wholly unlikely, under pressure, to remember the name of your grandfather’s pet duck plus the date Sham 69 played The Vortex, which seemed like a really brilliant unforgettable password as you set it, before you forgot it.

Who exactly are the people who, every time they’re given a precious, valuable password to a Visa Access card, gives the slip of paper a glance, rips it to confetti, tapping their head with the raffish cry “All in there! I trust my memory 100 per cent”. Answer: Cyborgs and “people you have to lend £50 to as their card has been swallowed as they stood at the machine jabbing the keys and squinting at their phone address book where the pin code is stored under the ingenious thief proof name: MR MONEY”.

With that in mind the idea of the age of fingerprint technology – an embedded ring at the bottom of your phone that can detect who you are – sounds rather splendid. OK, let’s overlook the notion that anyone wholly hellbent on impersonating you might cut your finger tip off to use it, because at this early stage all we can do with the new iPhone 5s fingerprint ring is purchase iTunes music. I know Will Young fans can be passionate around the time of a new release, but they are not savages.

If phone finger-scanning replaces pass-codes I’ll be blissfully freer yet more burdened by technology than ever – doomed to wander eternity (let’s face it, I’m nearly there already) with a 12cm-long rectangle attached to my hand, jonesing for 3G, fast Wi-Fi and a power-point, with a furrowed brow from scrolling, clicking and texting, plus one very worn fingerprint from shopping and general life administration.

The world will be my oyster. You’ll know, because I’ll totally Instagram it.

Career, travel, cash? Who needs these when you can have a baby?

Womb Watch. As a woman, one’s decision when – or if ever – to become a mum is complex. Luckily I’ve collated recent official findings and have the perfect date.

This week “poverty tsar” Louise Casey said that contraception was one of women’s best tactics to avoid poverty. “Having a baby,” she said, speaking of young, poorer women, “Might not be the best solution, and actually doing something just for themselves like getting a job, getting on a course, getting their health sorted out could be the right thing to do”.

These sounds like sage words but sod them as Newcastle University fetility experts say that us busy-bees and over-planners risk being “haunted” at 35 by being childless.

Haunted is a great word. Scrap the job, forget poverty worries, don’t worry if you’re with the wrong man, or a man who doesn’t want to be a dad, or have no man at all, just find someone who will put sperm in you tout de suite. Think of him like one of the Ghostbusters.

And babies, well, they are magical. They vanish away all other cerebral hauntings, like the ghosts of lost careers, available money, countries unexplored or regrets over having an emergency baby with a man who’s now AWOL.

So, yes, the exact date to ditch your mini-pill and avoid “The Haunting” is right now.

Disclaimer: Babies may impede your ability to exercise and leave the house which is a shame as Imperial College have announced this week that that weight-gain leads to womb cancer. Mazel-tov.

Our young millionaires are lovely, polite and, oh, so dull

Britain has the second youngest average age for both millionaires and multimillionaires in the G8, latest findings on the super-rich show.

Daniel Radcliffe has £54m, Robert Pattinson £45m and Keira Knightley £31m. Adele, Emma Watson, App wizard Nick D’Aloisio and H+M heir Tom Persson are all wealthy beyond our imaginations.

It’s noteworthy that among all these names there’s not one notorious hellraiser, spendthrift or notorious self-destructer. Not one Rolls-Royce crashed into a swimming pool or failed attempts to fund an in-land coup in South America.

Instead, just lovely, mannerly young people and their team of busy accountants. We might in Britain be creating many young millionaires but they’re not half bloody boring.