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.

A smart piece by David Barnard, Apps and the Apple TV, starkly showcases how the mouse and other abstract pointing devices are largely on borrowed time—at least for the most part. He talks about how he was using AirPlay to send video to his TV, and his toddler then concluded he could play his favourite iPad game on the same TV.

When handed the iPad, he looked down at it and launched this week’s favorite app, The Monster at the End of This Book. He looked up at the screen and was excited to see Grover on TV. Then he looked down at the book and flipped the page. Then he looked up and was again excited to see Grover on TV. Then he looked down and turned the page. After just 60 seconds the thrill was gone and he was mostly just playing with the iPad, only intermittently looking up to confirm that Grover was still on TV.

After a few minutes he exited the app and looked up to see the icons of all his favorite apps on the TV. He immediately set down the iPad, walked up to the TV, and tried launching an app by touching the TV screen. My wife and I instinctually told him not to touch the TV, but he looked back at us quite puzzled. The thing is, Luke has never used a mouse-like pointing device. Other than using the TV remote to turn the TV on and off, or turning a light switch on and off, he’s never used one object to remotely manipulate another.

Barnard doesn’t go all sensationalist by then arguing that all remote-manipulation and abstract pointing devices are doomed, but instead claims we’re in the midst of a fundamental shift that will see such things become increasingly niche. I think he’s right. And for those who think otherwise, bear in mind your world-view is coloured by your experience. If you don’t believe me, try handing a cassette Walkman to a young teenager and see how well they get on using it.

Around 28:26 in the Steve Jobs closing keynote of WWDC ’97:

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal [said that] in this industry, the only companies doing really well are Intel, Microsoft and perhaps Compaq.

How things change. One thing that doesn’t was Jobs’s response to the question, highlighting how Apple has worked since his return to the company:

I think every good product that I’ve ever seen in this industry […] is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted. They want to use it themselves.

Original link via Daring Fireball.