Lots of reasons.

Time.
Convenience.
Not everyone gets a boner at the thought of building a PC.
Most home-builds look... well, home-built.

I can build my own but choose not to, for these and many other reasons.

There's still a 32-bit Windows?

People may buy this product if it is better or at least as good as what's currently on offer. That means offering solid software, solid hardware, and solid services.

It will be interesting to see if Mozilla can succeed here. They don't have a track record of releasing hits; only the Firefox browser really took off and that's because it was an excellent and better alternative to its competition at the time.

I just hope for their sake that they don't go with the "it's better because it's open" line. Being open is not what made a bunch of people download Firefox, and it won't make a bunch of people buy a phone.

You're right, it doesn't do so on the iPhone, it's just the iPad and Mac versions, which is interesting. My mistake. It looks like it's just the Reminders and Notes apps that share a similar design across platforms.

You could, but the point I was making is that by sharing a design theme, it becomes more obvious that data is shared between the apps. It's essentially making the point "this is the same app". Sure you could do that without using stitched leather, but you'd need some other way of visually tying the apps together. It just happens that Apple went with stitched leather.

We disagree ;^)

I think there's such a thing a 'over-skeumorphing', but I do find it serves a purpose. Those shelves might not be real shelves, but it emphasises that those icons are books, not apps or games or anything else. And by using the same stitched leather across the iPhone, iPad and Mac version of the calendar app, it emphasises that the data you put in is shared between these apps. Same for the Reminders app. And the Notes app.

I also think that having a strong visual identity for an app can make it more fun to look at and use, if that's your thing.

I admire the slickness of Windows Phone, but it just feels a bit too depressing, bland and clinical for my liking. I don't feel like I'm supposed to have fun when I'm using a Windows Phone.

This is not fragmentation, this is product differentiation.

Fragmentation on Android is having a user base on a ton of different OS and hardware versions with wildy different feature sets and not being able to target software to run on all of them. As a result app developers focus on the majority device/OS target, often an ancient version of Android, which renders all the latest APIs Google has released pretty much useless.

With the majority of iOS devices in use able to upgrade to the latest OS version this developer headache just doesn't exist for Apple. It's easier to target the majority of devices, even rolling 'hybrid' apps that can selectively take advantage of newer features e.g. Retina display and the taller screen.

Choosing to deploy new features on new devices isn't fragmentation, it's a way of differentiating within a product line up.

And the last time I checked iOS 6 will be supported on the iPhone 3GS. A *three year* old phone.

In a sense, although Windows 8 RT still has a desktop app and still runs the new Metro-and-classic enabled Office, so I'd argue that even the ARM-flavoured tablets are attempting to be all things to all people.

I don't mind Twitter being an ad-funded free-to-the-user experience.

I just want to be able to pay Twitter some money to opt out of the ads.

I don't see why Twitter can't remain free for the users who don't mid ads and at the same time offer an ad-free timeline to those who want to pay.

10,000 people just paid $50 for an ad-free experience on an as-yet unproven twitter-clone. Imagine how many people would pay for the already-established Twitter.

Do desktop operating system marketshare comparisons even matter now? It's a declining market. The bigger shareholder is hardly in a position to set trends in the industry.

It's like trying to work out who sells more portable CD players. Move on.

The only thing worth figuring out now is which tablet player has the right strategy: Apple with their seperate-from-a-laptop-and-purposefully-limited-to-make-it-easier device or Microsoft with their no-compromises-it's-a-tablet-and-a-laptop-in-one device.

He can indeed copy those songs onto a hard drive and hand them to his daughter. There's nothing technical stopping him from doing that.

The terms of service don't permit it however. That's why he's suing; it's the principle he's arguing over.

Sorry for being a pedant, (and this doesn't counter the point you are making) but he isn't wanted on rape charges; no charge has been made against him.

He is wanted for questioning, and has offered to be questioned for the last 18 months whilst in London. An offer which has been rejected.

As it stands right now, he does not have a case to answer as no charge has been presented to him.

$500 for private individuals. 10% of global turnover for incorporated companies. Seems fair.

Nokia. RIM. Microsoft. Vodafone. AT&T. Telefonica. Motorola. Verizon. Orange. Asus. Dell. Samsung.

All these companies. All those years of experience. All that cash. All that potential.

And yet between them all, they couldn't come up with a standard messaging system that worked between their phones, tablets and computers.

Many, many years later, Apple did. And they should give that away for free?

Pah.

It's a feature designed to enhance privacy by encouraging the user to change their password more often.

Specifically, at each login. And logout. And several times in between. Quick! Keep changing it!

Instead of blaming the user, perhaps the *biggest and most successful software company in the world* can do something to help.

1) Bake-in a password-generator tool into IE (along the lines of 1Password).

2) Don't make the software update system suck balls so people want to turn it off.

On the former point, I know this isn't a magic bullet solution. You still need to remember a password. But it's one password, not 37. It at least makes it easier.

On the latter point, I have automatic updates turned on. Two things happen: the updates don't always download and install automatically (I am often bugged by security center telling me there are critical updates available - sometimes they just don't install automatically) and I often have to wait at log off and logon while updates are configured. That's beyond annoying.

I know 1 & 2 above won't solve the issue for everyone, but. The biggest software company in the world. C'mon. You can do better. Try harder. If we still suck at computers after that then fine, blame the user.