In case you were wondering: with VAT now at 20%, the Apple British Coefficient becomes 1.32, which, at current exchange rates, works out to about three or four quid more than the actual iPad 2 prices announced by Apple. (They’re rounding down these days, to the nearest odd-number-9.)
This is not investment advice regarding the exchange rate trend for the next year, but it’s not divorced from the topic either.
There is, in north-central London, a place indicating where one might pass into a secret world and take an unusual train to a magical destination. And there is St Pancras International.
Gruber’s latest reminds me that Loosemore’s law has reached a point of transmutation, or at least qualification: given sufficiently fast connectivity, intolerance of delay continues to increase in inverse proportion to the complexity of the user interface.
It’s not simply that iOS (or Android) devices run on pretty fast hardware; it’s that the immediacy of the UI demands immediacy in return. The computer is now judged against the feedback loop of the telephone.