I was at a restaurant last night, when everyone within heard a loud bang. A guy had abruptly passed out and smacked his head really hard on the door. He was unconscious, and his wife said he’d felt sick and was trying to get some air.

We called an ambulance. We didn’t think about this, didn’t ask the wife if her husband was insured—we just called. The ambulance arrived in 15 minutes and the guy—now conscious, if not entirely with it—was taken to hospital. He will be treated, regardless of what is wrong, and he will never be asked to part with huge sums of money.

Interestingly, we were dining with two people who’d been living on the USA (one Brit, one American), noting, sadly, that many Americans would think twice about the “hundreds of bucks” an ambulance call-out would cost, and that the idea of global healthcare remains largely demonised in the USA, most often by the people it’s designed to help (the non-rich).

From recent events, it’s clear for all David Cameron’s arguments to the contrary, he and the Tories don’t care about the NHS one bit. Mark Britnell, one of Cameron’s senior health advisors, according to Political Scrapbook, recently said:

In future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider not a state deliverer.

Talking to his corporate private health sector chums, he added:

The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years.

This, of course, coincides with the government’s supposed ‘listening exercise’ regarding health reform.

For Tory MPs, the anti-NHS stance is logical for all kinds of reasons, not least the fact most Tories would happily do away with all socialist aspects of government. It’s unlikely many of them use the NHS, preferring to pay for private care; therefore, they neither have the experience of the NHS nor the ability to empathise with those who cannot afford to pay for an insurance-based system. As someone who’s self-employed and therefore wouldn’t be covered by an employer system, I also dread the thought of ‘NHS USA’, and suspect it would wreck UK entrepreneurialism.

But mostly, I think about random guy last night. We could not have gotten him medical care any more swiftly, and as the ambulance left the signs were good. But with a system where you do think and you do hesitate, that could cost vital minutes and lead to a very different result—all to make Conservatives happy about tearing down one of the finest socialist components the UK will ever see.

I love the NHS, despite its faults. It’s not perfect, but it’s there when we need it, universally. If you agree and your MP is Liberal Democrat, write to them and make it extraordinarily clear they won’t get your support in 2015 (or sooner, if the coalition doesn’t last its full term) unless they block this bill. If your MP is Conservative, argue the same (for all the good it will do). And if your MP is from any other party, ask them what they, specifically, are doing to save the NHS, while a spiteful, class-obsessed Tory-led government is doing its level best to tear it down.

Worrying times for iOS indie devs:

James Thomson (PCalc, DragThing):

Just got hit by very worrying threat of patent infringement lawsuit for using in-app purchase in PCalc Lite. Legal docs arrived via fedex.

To be clear, I haven’t been sued yet – I’ve been told that I am infringing their patent, they want me to license it, and I have 21 days.

Patrick McCarron:

Anyone else get a patent threat via FedEx for in-app purchase use in their iOS app? So far @jamesthomson and I got hit.

I think it’s safe to say that these won’t be isolated incidents and some fuckwit patent troll is now going after indie devs, hoping they’ll cough up money rather than risk their business. Of course, going after the enabler of in-app purchases—Apple—is a bit riskier for a troll; it’s much better to threaten guys who can’t afford to fight back.

This reminds me of when muppet ex-games dev Tim Langdell smacked down any iOS developer who had the audacity to use ‘edge’ in a game’s title. (Full story: ChaosEdge.) In that case, EA decided to use its powers for good, ‘protected’ indie devs and fought in part on their behalf (EA itself was also threatened, due to its Mirror’s Edge game, but nonetheless assisted Mobigame and others), eventually winning the day by getting Langell’s marks removed.

For IAP, another champion is needed, who will immediately state they will fight the case on everyone’s behalf. Whether that’s Apple (which would make most sense) or some other huge company with a vested interest in IAPs doesn’t matter: what matters is someone fights this, or it’s game over for a massive chunk of iOS development and its thriving indie community.

Update: The nature of this threat is, according to sources, “wide ranging”, and there’s speculation it could target more than just Apple, but any platform with content downloaded in the same manner as IAP.

Update 2: Cult of Mac claims Lodsys, LLC is the company threatening indie devs, by way of a 2003 patent. MacRumors adds that further developers are revealing that they’ve been threatened.

Update 3: Wired reports that Lodsys are also suing the Pocket God developers.

The Brooks Review:

Android releases are done alphabetically, which is dumb. Why is it dumb? Industry standard is numbers because numbers make sense.

I’m not sure Android’s way is dumb per se, but it sure is yet another example of engineer thinking (this is logical to me, therefore let’s do it) versus thinking for the typical consumer (where numbers do indeed rule, and version 5.4.3 is clearly more recent than 2.5.1).

Gary Marshall over at TechRadar, echoing my thoughts on Google’s Chromebooks:

Given the choice between a netbook that runs Chrome and nothing else and a netbook that costs less, runs Windows 7 and will happily run the Chrome browser—which, so far, seems faster than the Chrome OS does—I’d go for the netbook.

And for people going, “AHA! But the Chromebook is light, quick, with solid-state storage and decent battery life, idiot-face”:

Unfortunately I’ve already dropped four hundred quid on something that boots instantly, is easy to use, delivers better battery life than a Chromebook, looks better than a Chromebook, is more portable than a Chromebook, has solid state storage like a Chromebook and that can, with the right software, take full advantage of the cloud. It’s a tablet.

This.

On the App Store, Apple initially provided two charts for whatever section you were in: top paid apps and top free apps. This was a sensible decision rather than just tallying downloads in a single chart, and ensured great paid apps didn’t get lost in the crowd.

Unfortunately, the best apps subsequently did find themselves buried—under a deluge of 59p/$0.99 specials as users grabbed only the cheapest apps, regardless of quality (bar a few exceptions). Apple’s response to this was the Top Grossing chart, listing apps and games that had made the most money, not merely those that had shifted the most units.

Initially, this chart, while oddly named for some, was actually very useful, providing a means to find the best apps. Higher-priced apps that sold well nested with the true breakout cheapo hits, and all was well in the world. But things haven’t lasted. The Brooks Review offers a quickfire post that links to Neven Mrgan’s summation: Top Grossest Apps. He says that the top-grossing apps are increasingly those that get people hooked on buying in-game currency—games like Texas Poker and Tap Zoo. There’s nothing creative here, and it’s not something that should be rewarded and yet this is entirely Apple’s fault:

Apple added in-app purchases and decided to include those when calculating apps’ earnings for the Top Grossing list. The result? The list is completely dominated by fake-money compulsion engines. The very fact that these are the top grossing apps signals just how good they are at vacuuming money out of pockets. “Games” of this sort make me embarrassed for games as a medium. You can buy a $99.99 dose of fake money in Texas Poker (with no possibility of, uh, winning any money back.) For shame.

Brooks adds:

This change really irks me since Top Grossing used to be where one could easily find excellent apps. Now it is just an extension of the Top 25 Free apps category.

I’d go further than that: the Top Grossing chart is worse than the free apps one. Often, the free apps chart is populated with great titles that are either temporarily free or that have been created by devs that aren’t concerned with making money. By comparison, the top grossing chart always has a layer of shit on the surface, which is getting thicker by the day and suffocating the great apps that once shone in this list.

Mrgan:

You will not see Apple promote these apps; they know very well what the score is. So if Apple wants the Top Grossing list to be at all useful, they’ll change how it’s calculated.

Knowing Apple, that’s a big ‘if’, even more so when you consider that the company would have to find a way to block money-churners but not penalise freemium apps where developers offer a free game but paid-for add-ons in the shape of extra levels.