Heads-up

The Apple Vision Pro announcement intrigues me. When you look at the launch video, it looks excitingly like all those heads-up display things we’ve been seeing in the new Star Trek series.

But then you realise that you’re watching those Star Trek shows while looking at a flat screen telly with someone sitting next to you on the sofa watching the same telly. And the Star Trek displays manifest in the room without other viewing technology. Whereas the Vision Pro wraps your head in a just-for-you headset display.

And it’s eyewateringly expensive. Though this Mashable article is an interesting bit of speculation about entry-level price points.

For all the chat about it, I’ve yet to see compelling examples of use cases for this new tech. The examples are about step changes in user interactions with existing interactions or activities: “operate all these familiar apps, but with your eyes!” and “read web pages and play your existing videos and games on a huge screen of any size!”

Most strangely of all, the Apple video celebrates what appears to be a dad taking 3D images of his playing children while he has his head in the device, thus experiencing the moment at not-quite-first-hand. It’s even worse than being totally absorbed, hidden behind your iPhone screen as you take landscape photos; lift your head up and you could instead enjoy the beauty of the scene with your own eyes. Or, in this case, look at your kids with your own eyes.

The advertising and press hype seems to be about the number of patents and the cleverness of the hardware, rather than examples of how it transforms or replaces things in everyday life or business or introduces completely new things. But perhaps I’m reading the wrong articles.

Most of all, though, this “new era of spacial computing” reverts to the individual experience, rather than the shared or collaborative one. This “profound new way to be together” advocates telepresence at the expense of literal presence.

Because you are enclosed and immersed in the device, it has to play back to you a version of the world beyond, via its cameras. And it also has to play back a version of you to others beyond it, whether it’s your eyes displayed to someone in the same room as you, or an uncanny valley avatar of you to the people with whom you’re on a Facetime call. The ingenuity of creating a scanned replica of you springs specifically from a new inhibitor that the device itself introduces, which is that your head is encased and obscured by the device.

I look forward to seeing a rather more compelling use case for it. Making it available to a development ecosystem, and priming the channel with access to existing apps, may mean that the “killer app” or use case will appear, and someone will make it so. For the moment, it looks to me like my Star Trek world will have to wait a bit longer before I decide to engage.

Yahoo! BooHoo!

The successor to Yahoo! has failed to fix my problem or respond in a timely manner, and I have therefore decided to aabandon Aabaco completely. What a shame they seem so uninterested.

They are not to be confused with Aabaco Environmental, who are apparently “well known for being a leader in providing bio-remediation products for hydro carbon spills.” I am led to believe they are also very popular with carpet care professionals. Who knew?

Anyway, you should find that anghelides.org and contact e-mails now work again, because my new domain services company was able to (a) handle the transfer promptly and without fuss and (b) respond to two phone call inquiries immediately.

So I commend GoDaddy to you instead.

EDF WTF?

If you add together the number of different UK tariffs for gas, electric, and mobile phones, you get a number greater than the atoms in the known universe. It took a while for me just to decode one of them, based on a letter from EDF describing changes to my “dual fuel deal”. Their explanatory leaflet is called “Everything you need to know about the changes to our discount structure”. What it gains from clear English it loses with incomplete detail.

Looks to me that the changes benefit EDF’s larger consumers at the expense of their smaller consumers.

The explanatory leaflet provides a couple of optimistic examples, and describes the changes in general terms based on “a typical customer”. But what does it really mean for their consumers? Well, let’s use the figures that EDF define as “a typical customer”. (There is some maths involved, but don’t panic, I won’t be setting a test this semester.)

At first glance, it looks like EDF hoiked their prices by an eye-watering 32%. Before VAT, the gas charge increases from 14.18p per kWh to 18.67p. Electricity increases from 5.3p per kWh to 7.0p.

Then you notice they have one rate for the first lot of gas/electric you use each quarter, and a different rate (about half) for anything after that. So they’ve raised the former by nearly a third, but left the latter unchanged. And to add to the confusion, they have also changed two other discounts:

• Instead of a flat monthly discount for direct debit payments, they give a 6% discount on your quarterly bill
• They have slashed the “duel fuel” discount by two thirds

The figures that EDF define as a typical customer are “3,300kWh of electricity and 20,500kWh of gas a year”. And the tariff rates before VAT are:

ELECTRICITY:

• First 225kWhs per quarter = 18.67p (was 14.18p in 2009)
• All other kWhs = 10.50p (unchanged)

GAS:

• First 670kWhs per quarter = 7.000p (was 5.300p in 2009)
• All other kWhs = 3.056p (unchanged)

DIRECT DEBIT

• Discount 6% of the total bill (was a flat saving of £24 per year in 2009)

DUAL FUEL

• Discount £8 a year (was £24 per year in 2009)

Here’s how it works out for a standard user. I’ve made the reasonable assumption that in every quarter the average consumer uses at least 225kWhs electricity (3,300/4) and at least 670kWhs gas (20.500/4), even in summer; and that total usage remains the same year-to-year, for the purpose of comparison.

The effect on the average consumer of the changes to EDF’s discount structure is an increase of 5.58% (well above UK inflation).

But someone using half the average sees their bill increase by a whopping 16.18%:

Whereas someone using half as much again as the average sees their bill increase by only 1.84%:

In fact, if you used twice the average, your annual bill would be slightly lower in 2010 than it was in 2009!

Obviously, if customers reduce their use of gas and electricity year-to-year, they will reduce the actual amount they have to pay during 2010. But the rewards for doing that are not equal across their customer base. And with such a cold winter, I think most people will be using more fuel this year anyway.

In short:

• EDF’s changes appear to penalise their smaller (or more prudent) customers more than their larger (or more profligate) customers, whether customers try to reduce consumption or not
• Most customers are unlikely to work this out from the information provided by EDF.
• If it’s as complex and confusing as this for changes to just one tariff for just one supplier, how effective is market competition really?

ELECTRICITY

10.64%

Unbreakable Bond

I used to tease someone because he got irrationally angry about stickers on fruit. He wasn’t daft enough to consume them accidentally, he just resented the placement of them. There was so much more to get cross about, I reasoned. How could he get so upset about labels on fruit, in a world of poverty and injustice and the Daily Express?

Today I  had my own moment of packaging rage. I found myself railing against Blockbuster for putting a price sticker on my shiny new Quantum of Solace DVD. The DVD wasn’t shrink-wrapped in cellophane, so the sticker was glued onto the front slipcover.  Appropriately enough, it was a near-unbreakable bond. Despite my best efforts, one part of the label was left on the box and the other half removed the surface of the slipcase. 

We take good packaging for granted, and only notice when they don’t work with the ease to which we’ve become accustomed. Drinks cans no longer have tear-off ring-pulls that litter or maim. CDs have tear-strips at the bottom to spare your fingernails and temper. You don’t have to lick stamps any more.

So perhaps I’ve come to expect things like those “3 for 2” labels in Waterstones to detach easily. The “out of the box” experience for consumer goods starts when you pick up the item in the shop, and continues throughout the time you carry it home in keen anticipation, unwrap it with eager fingers, and sniff the contents. Maybe the sniffing bit is just me. I may be saying too much now.

Still, there are more important things to get irate about than a torn slipcase. Imagine how cross I’d have been if I were one of those collectors who never wants to remove his special edition Future Sonic Screwdriver from its packaging because that would slash its collectable value. 

Having kids soon cures you of that. My younger son got one of those for his birthday, tore it from its packaging, and played with it so much that he lost the fiddly bit that conceals the hidden “neural relay”. He was entirely phlegmatic about this loss, and still loves the toy.

So I shall try to remember that when I am enjoying Quantum of Solace — keep my eyes on the screen, not on the slipcase.