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Apple computer prices are rising in the UK

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Apple has increased the prices of its laptop and desktop computers in the UK by hundreds of pounds.

Last Thursday, Apple unveiled new Macbook Pro laptops, with prices similar to the US after currency conversion and addition of UK VAT.

But the company also increased the prices of its older computer products, including the three-year-old Mac Pro, by hundreds of pounds.

One analyst said consumers should expect further price increases.

“Apple has to recalibrate prices after significant currency fluctuations, and since the EU referendum, UK prices are out of sync with the dollar,” said Patrick O’Brien, analyst at the Verdict Retail consultancy.

“Apple has taken the hit up until now. While price increases won’t look good to the consumer, it’s difficult to blame Apple.

“Once you strip out UK sales tax (VAT) and the currency conversion, the new UK prices could still be viewed as fair.”

A number of technology companies have increased their prices in the UK, reflecting the lower value of the pound.

Apple’s least expensive laptop – the 13in Macbook Air, last updated in March 2015 – now costs £949, up from £849.

Its Mac Pro desktop computer – last updated in December 2013 – now costs £2,999, up from £2,499.

“Apple suggests product prices internationally on the basis of several factors, including currency exchange rates, local import laws, business practices, taxes, and the cost of doing business,” the company told the BBC.

“International prices are not always comparable to US suggested retail prices.”

Rival Microsoft has already announced UK price increases for some of its business services.

Earlier in October, the company said some service prices would go up by 22% in 2017, reflecting the pound’s weakened value against the euro.

“We periodically assess the impact of local pricing of our products and services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across the region and this change is an outcome of this assessment,” the company said.

Mr O’Brien said it was “inevitable” that more companies would increase the prices of products and services.

“Retailers are struggling with increased costs to import goods, and it’s something they cannot afford to swallow themselves,” he told the BBC.

“We will definitely see further price rises, so if people are in the market for big-ticket items such as laptops, it might be a wise idea to buy now rather than later.”

 

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– BBC

How addicted is Britain to Social Media?

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The usage of Social Media is increasing more and more by every year. But to what extent are Brits succumbing to it?

A new survey from BT has revealed just how addicted to social media the UK is, showing that the average Brit spends two hours and 12 minutes on social media every day, usually across three social media accounts.

In fact, BT thinks social media has made us “social needier” – Brits are expecting more and more validation through our social media, and putting a lot of time in to what we post on there… and it’s men who seem needier than women.

Men said they expected 40 likes on a post on average to “feel happy” about it, while for women that figure was 28. That’s much lower, but still pretty high. When we get those likes, the survey says, we feel happy (44%), recognised (29%), and popular (27%).

Then again, given how much time we spend crafting posts in the first place, maybe it’s not totally unreasonable to want something back: we spend an average of nine minutes composing a post (10 minutes for men and eight for women), or eleven minutes to take a picture and share it.

And then, when it’s finally up, men check a post for interaction every minute for a whopping 19 minutes, while women check every minute for 15.

Psychologist Dr Becky Spelman said it was “not surprising” that men show more dependence on social networks than women, since “they often have less well-developed social networks and fewer emotional ties in the real world”… a claim which could probably benefit from a little empirical evidence.

Overall, 68 of survey respondents said that being recognised on social media is “important”, and more than half said they felt envious of people whose posts garnered more likes, shares, and responses.

“Superficial interactions such as ‘liking’ someone’s post are harmless in themselves,” Spelman continued, “but people need to be careful that when they interact with social media they don’t forget real life relationships with friends and family members.”

 

– Kim Stables

Original Source: BT

UK’s Broadband Network Described as ‘Unacceptable’

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The UK’s Business Secretary has called the Country’s business broadband “unacceptable”.

Greg Clark, the business secretary, has said that major broadband upgrades are needed to support the government’s plans for industry. Speaking at the Institute of Directors’ annual conference, he said that the state of UK broadband was “unacceptable” for 2016.

Clark told attendees that he wanted entrepreneurs in the UK to be valued the same way that Olympians and Paralympians are, but that there were significant obstacles preventing British companies for achieving that – including the quality of broadband and mobile.

“We have new infrastructure like Crossrail about to open, but we have roads that are bottlenecked, trains overcrowded, and broadband and mobile coverage that is simply unacceptable in 2016,” said Clark.

“I believe it is time for our country to have an upgrade – an upgrade in our infrastructure so that we have smart and modern connections, physical and electronic.”

The government’s multi-million pound Broadband Delivery UK Fund has been driving fibre rollouts across the country, connecting 91% of the population to faster broadband already. It hopes to reach 95% by the end of next year, but that will still inevitably leave some areas without a decent connection.

Clark said that, while different parts of the country have different needs, government policy has treated everywhere as if it was the same.

Clark said: “It seems to me that helping Cornwall make the best of its future is as vital to a comprehensive national success as helping Birmingham – but what is needed in each place is different, and our strategy must reflect that.

“Many of the policies and decisions that form our industrial strategy will not be about particular industries or sectors, but will be cross-cutting.”

Clark likely found a receptive audience to his criticisms – the Institute of Directors has indicated that it wants a 10Gb broadband available to all businesses by 2030. Meanwhile, the government’s incoming Digital Economy Bill includes a universal service obligation of just 10Mb.

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– Duncan Heaney

UK Government shows interest in ‘Ultraspeed’ Transport

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The UK government has expressed its interest in hyperloop transport technology which would make a journey from London to Manchester just 18 minutes

Hyperloop One states it has held conversations with the government and private companies about potential UK transport routes and “there’s been quite a strong response” from the government. UK government representatives also attended Hyperloop One’s much-publicised propulsion test in Nevada, in May 2016.

The comments were made by Alan James, global VP of business development at Hyperloop One, who previously lobbied for UK Ultraspeed before joining the company.

“Innovate UK has taken the lead on that. It is joining together the department of Business, Innovation and Skills, and DFT (Department For Transport), to produce a coordinated response to the Hyperloop opportunity.”

“It’s very early stages,” a spokesperson for Innovate UK confirmed to WIRED. “This is a really exciting technology and we’re following it with interest.”

The company has also held conversations with the Peel Group, which owns the Manchester Canal route, about a Manchester-Liverpool route.

“Hyperloop could connect all the great cities of the English north not just to London, but to each other,” said James. “Making Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, effectively a single city, for instance.”

He also suggests hyperloop would be a cheaper and faster alternative to HS2, “which is currently, I believe, the most expensive railway project humanity has ever undertaken, on a per-kilometre basis. ”

“To take a UK example, London to Manchester would be 18 minutes. With High Speed Rail, we could reduce the journey time from London to Stoke from one hour 24 minutes to around one hour. With Hyperloop, we can reduce it to around 14 minutes.”

Elsewhere, the engineering giant ARUP, which has partnered with Hyperloop One, is consulting with the company over potential UK routes, including the use of tunnels instead of raised pylons.

“You could anticipate it could be quite cost effective,” said John Miles, an engineer at ARUP. “Our angle is looking at: what if we could build the first of its kind development here in the UK? What would the routes look like? I think Hyperloop has the potential to bring the London Underground experience to the national picture.”

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, the other LA-based startup attempting to build the first hyperloop, also said it had been in contact with the UK government.

“I met David Cameron. He was talking about £50million that he can give us through Innovate UK,” says Bibop Gresta, HTT’s chief operating officer, chairman, and ‘chief bibop officer’. (10 Downing Street declined to comment for this story.)

Hyperloop One currently has feasibility studies underway or completed in Russia, Dubai and the Nordics. HTT, meanwhile, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Slovakia to explore potential routes in the country.

Of course, all of these statements should be taken with an enormous spoonful of salt: while Hyperloop One is building a prototype in Nevada, no working hyperloop prototype has yet been built. Some engineers doubt that it would work, and dispute the idea’s projected engineering costs.

And, as investigations revealed, both Hyperloop startups are having their own issues – from the $250million lawsuit between Hyperloop One’s co-founders, to doubts over the legitimacy of HTT’s public claims.

Experts stated that any passenger routes would likely take years, if not decades, due to the regulatory requirements, the cost of acquiring land, and other complex procedures inherent to large infrastructure projects. “This is a technology that is so unproven,” said Dan Sperling, founding director of the Institute Of Transportation Studies at the university of California. “They need to demonstrate that it works at scale.”

“There’s some real challenges in there, and they shouldn’t be trivialized,” added Miles. “It will take years to engineer a system that works.”

– Oliver Franklin-Wallis

Oculus Rift to Launch in UK

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Facebook has finally unveiled the UK launch date and price for its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset

Oculus Rift, the Facebook-owned virtual reality headset for gamers, is finally coming to the UK next month.

After launching in the US in March , Oculus has announced the Rift will go on sale in Europe and Canada on 20 September.

The headset will sell at a recommended retail price of £549 – significantly more than the $599 (£461) it costs in the US.

It is available to pre-order today from a range of retailers, including Amazon.co.uk , John Lewis ,Curry’s PC World , GAME Digital Plc , and the London department store Harrods.

“We’ve seen interest in virtual reality rise dramatically in the last few months, with sales of the Samsung Gear VR, powered by Oculus, headset up 310% in the last six weeks alone,”said Will Jones, Head of Buying for Electricals at John Lewis.

“The Oculus Rift device is a significant progression in virtual reality technology, set to reinvent how we work and play, and we are proud to offer our customers the chance to experience it first.”

The Oculus Rift, which began life as a Kickstarter project in 2012, has been through several pre-production models before being released to the public.

The finished virtual reality headset has an OLED display with a 2,160 x 1,200 resolution and a 110-degree field of view, designed to fully immerse the wearer in whatever they are watching.

It is intended for use with a PC, but the headset requires a lot of processing and graphics power, meaning that not all computers are compatible.

If you want to use it for gaming you’ll need a PC with at least an Nvidia GTX 970 GPU, an Intel i5-4590 processor and 8GB of RAM.

If you want to try Oculus Rift for yourself before buying, there will be demo experiences rolling out across the UK in the coming weeks.

Every Oculus Rift purchased headset ships with a copy of the virtual reality game Lucky’s Tale , along with hundreds of free 3D 360 videos and VR movies.

Users can buy more VR games and films from the Oculus Store, with several new titles being unveiled the Gamescom video game conference in Cologne, Germany, this week – including Dead & Buried , The Unspoken and Ripcoil.

– Sophie Curtis

Ofcom Report: The Change in UK Network Use

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The Network use in the UK is increasing as Brits are spending more time online than ever before, according to Ofcom’s annual Communications Market Report

British consumers are spending more time on the internet network than ever before, so much so that many are actively seeking a so-called “digital detox” from their online lives, according to communications market regulator Ofcom.

In its latest Communications Market Report – an annual survey of British communications and media usage and attitudes – Ofcom reported that 15 million people in the UK have sought time offline to do other things, such as spending time with friends and family, or holidaymaking.

Most of these people found taking a break from the digital world to be a rewarding experience, although some respondents to Ofcom’s survey reported feeling lost and cut-off, or worried that they were missing out.

“The internet has revolutionised our lives for the better, but our love affair with the web is not always plain surfing,” said Ofcom director of market intelligence, Jane Rumble. “Millions of us are taking a fresh look at the role of technology in our lives and going on a digital detox to get a better tech-life balance.”

The 2016 report highlighted the importance of connectivity to the increasingly digitised world. According to Ofcom, 9.2 million broadband connections are now superfast – in the regulator’s view this means capable of delivering speeds of over 30Mbp. This was up from 7.1 million two years ago.

As a result of this growth in superfast connections, total telecoms revenues grew for the first time since 2011, up 0.5% to £37.5bn between 2014 and 2015, as average household spend increased due to the higher costs associated with most superfast packages.

Superfast connections

Rumble said the regulator estimated that nine in 10 premises now had access to a superfast broadband connection, up from 83% last year, which tallies with other assessments of availability.

“We are aiming for 95% by the end of 2017, so availability is growing,” she said. “I think the core questions are now related to those people who aren’t able to get superfast broadband and that is absolutely a priority for Ofcom.”

Rumble also reaffirmed Ofcom’s commitment to the 10Mbps universal service obligation, currently on its way to becoming law. She said the regulator considered a 10Mbps connection adequate for activities such as streaming video on demand (VoD), an activity that has seen a boom in popularity in the UK in the past 12 months at the expense of live television.

Ofcom will release more concrete statistics on broadband take-up in September 2016.

4G popularity still soaring

Meanwhile, 4G connections accounted for 46% of all mobile connections, up from 28% in 2014. Ofcom said 98% of UK premises were now covered by at least one 4G network, and 71% were covered by all four.

Data use is also soaring, with 89% of 16 to 24-year-olds and 25 to 34-year-olds, 77% of 35 to 54-year-olds, 50% of 55 to 64-year-olds, and 21% of over-65s using web and data services on their devices.

The report said 71% of UK adults now owned a smartphone, up from 66% this time last year, which remains the most popular device for getting online.

Ofcom said the popularity of smartphones was giving rise to a number of new social impacts, such as an increase in people bumping into each other on the street because they were absorbed in their phone, and 40% of respondents said they had been “smart-snubbed” by a friend or relative.

The report also revealed a surge in the use of instant messaging, with the proportion of adults using over-the-top services such as WhatsApp at least once a week rising from 28% in 2014 to 43% in 2016, higher among the so-called millennial age group. Photo messaging services such as Snapchat are now used by 21% of adults weekly, up from 14% in 2014.

This growth came largely at the expense of email and, notably, text messaging, which presents a revenue stream problem for mobile operators.

Rumble acknowledged this trend and said Ofcom had seen mobile revenues remain flat over the past year, which suggested operators were responding to this to some degree.

“I think with any business, as behaviors change and shift, we would expect to see different businesses adapt to those shifts in behavior,” she said.

– Alex Scroxton

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