Ed Sutherland for Cult of Mac:

As the iPhone and iPad take on many of its features, iPod sales are expected to drop another 7.2 percent during the June quarter just ended.

Although Apple still controls more than 70 percent of the iPod player market, many features once exclusive to the MP3 player can be found in the iPhone and iPad. It’s unknown how long the venerable iPod will survive as many Apple customers turn to other devices for their music.

It’s clear iPods aren’t a ‘default’ device these days, but there’s still a huge market for them. Not everyone wants an iPhone, nor can everyone afford one. The same goes for the iPad, which is also significantly less pocketable than Apple’s smaller devices. Some people want a portable web-enabled unit that can play games and shoot video.

Frankly, if Apple made the iPod’s camera halfway decent and added 3G, I’ll bet it would become massively popular as an alternative to a smartphone. As it is, the device is still great for kids, for gamers, for people who want a lightweight device for shooting video, and for many other users besides.

I’m not sure what’s more sad about Steve Silberman’s An Eye-Opening Adventure in Socialized Medicine, the fact that someone from a wealthy, democratic country—the USA—was totally shocked about being treated, essentially for free, in London when he came down with a bad case of conjunctivitis, or that the NHS as we know it is still under threat from aggressive Conservative-led policy.

Silberman’s story highlights a poor aspect of US healthcare and the best of British. Having spent a large number of dollars battling with his US provider (“The Kaiser rep simply repeated her question in a more brittle tone of voice and added, ‘Just answer yes or no.'”), he finally got ‘permission’ to phone a London number for emergency care.

Amazingly, a human being picked up the phone right away — an affable guy with a disarmingly chummy accent and an empathic manner. Yes, yes, of course I should see a doctor right away. Where should they send him?

What? This guy was offering to dispatch someone to examine my eyes immediately in my apartment in the middle of the night?

He then ends up discovering, having heard about the evils of British healthcare, that there weren’t in fact thousands of people fighting for attention in the waiting room, that the staff were generally courteous and efficient, and, eventually, that the entire event cost him under a tenner for the prescription. The consultation was, of course, free.

In the comments, there are notes from people that Silberman only didn’t get charged because it’s too much hassle for the NHS to bother for such a small incident and consultation, but this nonetheless highlights two important things. First, the NHS was willing to spend some resources on a tourist, without any questions over insurance; secondly, that this is the default level of service you can enjoy with the evils of ‘socialised’ healthcare—and it costs a fraction of US healthcare insurance, along with being available to all.

There’s also a second point made, in that the NHS isn’t ‘free’ but ‘free at the point of entry’. But this is still a safety net that surely beats the US model, where you often aren’t even covered if you travel out of state. (Imagine telling a Londoner they’re not covered in Wales… they’d just look at you as though you were bonkers.) It’s strange that in a country that has ‘socialised’ aspects (police forces, benefits, various industries), health is such a sticking point. Why would it be a terrible thing for the USA to set up its own NHS? It’s not like you’d be forced to use it—after all, the UK has additional paid-for tiers—but at least then everyone would be covered and not petrified about losing their healthcare if they should lose their job. And the argument against—Why should I have to subsidise someone else’s healthcare?—makes no sense, given that this is precisely what you’re doing with insurance-based systems anyway. Insurance costs are always based in part around the people who are not insured, which drives premiums up.

The NHS isn’t perfect and I’m sure there are plenty of things that could be done to tighten things up. Yes, waiting lists are sometimes long and there are inconsistencies throughout the service. But the day the NHS is morphed into any kind of privatised service will be very sad indeed.

As MacStories and others have reported, Apple last night adjusted a bunch of App Store prices. Some countries saw price-drops, but others—such as the UK—saw price-rises. Except they sort of didn’t. I’ll explain.

In the UK, the average change in prices has been, according to Tap! magazine, about 17.5%, which some people are complaining is well over the rate of inflation. The thing is, the App Store prices haven’t really changed at all, because they’re all (very lazily) pegged to the US App Store. If you go there, you’ll see that an app that cost 99 cents yesterday still costs 99 cents today. But in the UK, the lowest tier of 59p is now 69p.

So what happened? Apple simply rebalanced its currency conversion across the App Store, for the first time, and, if you check out the value of Sterling over the past five years (Yahoo! Finance), it’s easy to see why. When the App Store was launched, and during the time leading up to it, the exchange rate was almost $2 = £1. Apple therefore did its usual thing of dropping the rate a bit as a cushion and launched the store. And then Sterling tanked. By January 2009, it hit a low of $1.37, and although the currency has recovered a little since then, it’s spent most of its time hovering between $1.50 and $1.60.

This means that, while Brits won’t be happy about the ‘price rise’, we need to understand that App Store prices have been cheap, relatively speaking, since the App Store was launched. This is even more obvious when you take into account that UK prices include taxes, whereas US ones don’t. Some might call that poetic justice, given the ambitious pricing of TV shows and movies on the UK store. Regardless, the new tiers are likely here to stay for some time, unless the UK economy somehow heats up in a big way. Also, it’s worth noting, in bold, in case you otherwise wouldn’t notice, that iOS apps and games are generally insanely cheap and so a smallish price change doesn’t really matter. If you’ve spent 500 quid on a phone but now won’t buy Super-Duper New Game because it’s just ‘shot up’ in price from £1.79 to £1.99, I really don’t want to talk to you any more.

GigaOM’s Kevin Tofel’s got the wrong end of the stick. In his article Newest iOS 5 beta adds gestures, may replace buttons, he’s located iOS 5’s Assistive Touch option (to aid those users physically unable to use hardware buttons) and said it could signal that future iOS devices will lose the home button (and perhaps other buttons, too).

To me, what this signals is merely that Apple cares about users with disabilities, but nothing more. For people who cannot use the physical buttons on their devices, this extra slice of accessibility is fantastic. For everyone else, it’s sub-optimal. Tofel’s idea brings to mind Jon Bell’s recent, brilliant The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped. Within, he argues that anyone designing a device where they replace an important hardware button with a capacitive button needs a solid kick in the head (I might have paraphrased there). And here’s the reason why:

A button with no physical hardware […] makes no distinction between “I pressed that button because I meant to” and “my finger brushed against the face of the phone, sending me to another screen against my will, sometimes even losing data in the process.”

Imagine Apple decides on a capacitive home button for the iPod touch. You’re playing the super new Sega kart-racing game, and you’re about to win. But, STUPID YOU, you brush against the invisible button! And you’re back at your home screen. Great. And not to mention the simple fact that physical buttons are an accessibility aid in themselves, both to disabled users and everyone else, since you can feel the device and instinctively know which way up it is.

About the only problem I have with the iOS home button is its multi-functional behaviour, which flummoxes new users: click to return to the most recent home screen, except when you’re on said home screen, in which case it returns to your first home screen, unless you’re on that screen, in which case it invokes Spotlight; oh, and double-click to access the multi-tasking tray that most users have no idea exists. But that’s a software problem, not a hardware issue; on the hardware front, I believe Apple’s got things spot-on, and the day the home button becomes virtual is the day something’s gone horribly wrong at Cupertino.

Update: Andrew Durdin offers a frankly frightening How to use the Home Button visual guide.

While it’s clearly a publicity stunt, I’m glad to see Kogan smacking down other companies regarding cable prices:

When you buy a TV from John Lewis, Currys, or countless other high street stores, you will be offered hideously expensive accessories such as HDMI cables. These cables are sold with absolutely ridiculous markups, many multiples of the actual cost of the items.

These stores are trying to trick people into thinking they need an HDMI lead costing over £100 after buying a Full HD TV. This is simply not the case. You shouldn’t be spending more than £4 on an HDMI cable!

An HDMI cable is an HDMI cable. It’s a digital cable. You either get a picture or you don’t. Don’t get conned into buying a “fancy” HDMI cable because it will make no difference!

Amusingly, the company is now offering free cables and shipping to people who buy a TV from John Lewis or Currys; naturally, those companies are pissed off and so Kogan’s also challenging them to a blind test.

Thing is, this is a con that’s been going on for years, and it’s just become more apparent in the digital space (where cables either work or don’t); but even with analogue kit, too many people have been fooled into buying expensive cables. That’s of course mostly down to chains like Currys. Last time I attempted to buy a lead in one, I was ushered towards cables costing about 50 quid for a metre’s worth. I asked for whatever they had that was cheapest and ended up with some dickhead sales guy arguing with me that I’d “ruin my home system” if I plumped for anything other than unicorn-coated expensive-o-cables. I mentioned I’ve worked with sound engineers in the past and used to make my own cables, at which point the sales guy went a bit white and sulked off in a huff.

My advice today is pretty much as per the last sound guy I worked with: look for the cheapest cables you can get and then buy the next one up from that. As long as the connections are reasonably solid, you’ll be fine; and that goes for speaker wire, too—if you’re paying 20 quid per metre, you’re merely fooling yourself, since wiring a system with coat hangers (Consumerist) is often as good as using the most expensive wires.