Totally agree, I have 40 years computing experience so I am used to technologies and operating systems coming and going. I use my iPad maybe 5-6 hours per day, gave away my laptop, have PC dual head station in my office.

Slashdot just gets tedious when discussing Apple or tablets, and it all seems totally rooted in fear of loss of advantage through personal PC skills.

The part I find incredibly depressing is how people happily refer to millions of tablet buyers as fanboys, and totally fail to appreciate the fact that the vast majority of potential users out there are not in IT, don't care about rooting, jailbreaking etc etc. Slashdot these days seems like a board full of Ham Radio fanatics, bewildered at the idea that someone might simply want a radio that they just switch on and use - and patronising and insulting to those that express that view.

Jerry

Moria on VAX/VMS I found to be a great start ;-)

These were around 30 years ago??? Jerry

Windows Phone 7 offers a curated experience, which means Microsoft controls the quality of games appearing on the device. Microsoft curates, whilst Apple stifles ;-) Jerry

These are exactly the incidents which will give chromeos fertile territory to plant in.

Your glib use of concentration camp imagery denigrates the millions who died, this does NOT compare with some restrictions on developers. Please find another way to express yourself.

So am I, when she was an ambassador for Digital/Dec , she would hand out sachets of ground black pepper, the diameter of each piece was approximately the distance a signal travelled in one nanosecond.

Captain Grace Hopper (later Admiral) defined COBOL.

You are like the hideous bugblatter beast of Trall, who, if you couldn't see it thought it couldn't see you.

The iPad already is penetrating the corporate environment, big time, I suggest you find out why instead of spouting drivel.

Well, when I am in a corporate meeting everyone is whipping them out. (too easy, leave it)

Think calendar, email, slides, web + 10 hour battery life.

That's all most people want except techies or specialists

The ibm pc, and thus DOS came about because IBM salesmen were complaining that personal computers were leaking into their client base without them having a response plan.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana.

Ouch ;-) Sorry, when I came across it it was attributed to JA. Jerry

"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" Julian Assange

I wrote my first program in 1970

I have used ICL, Burroughs, IBM, Univac, TI, DEC operating systems, VMS, nix, CP/M, MS DOS, win x, Apple OS etc etc

I have a wintel desktop which I use for devlopment activities, I carry an iPad, I have donated my laptops to nephews and nieces.

If I did not work in the IT 'space' I would happily use just my iPad.

If something better than that comes along I'll move on.

The world moves on, wintel was mainstream, it is becoming niche, I for one, have spent my career in technology because I love the excitement of new things and concepts coming along.

In my experience it is the wintel crowd who seem unable to look forward, and behave as though wintel has some sort of divine right to its previous dominance.

The most important development I have seen in my lifetime has been the internet, connectivity to it, html and the browser. For MOST people, that is how they do most of their computing, oh yes, and lightweight, non bloat, function specific 'apps'. Sadly, I will have to continue to use wintel on a daily basis as I have a server farm, rather than farmville. ;-)

J

In 1973 I had a tobacco tin, a bent piece of foil and a strobe light, airgun and camera. shutter open, fire airgun, shockwave completes circuit, strobe backlights pellet. trial and error found the right spot. The next one I did was a flicker photometer, but it was cool being allowed to bring an airgun into school. Jerry

Life is not a journey to the grave, with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside, totally used up, loudly proclaiming "Wow!, what a ride!"