Newsflash: you haven't needed iTunes for about 4 years now. The vast majority of illegal content is available in h.264 anyway. People using tablets for stuff an iPad can not do are a tiny, tiny minority.

For many casual computer users, the iPad is enough - they do not need a computer. It does video calls, it does email, it does internet banking. With home kit, it will be able to control things in your house. It can do minor photo cropping and effects, basic shopping lists, inventory, and with a keyboard be used for basic documents.

For many people (Not tech nerds), this is all they want a personal computer for. Thus, the iPad (or any other tablet type device) can replace it. A smartphone is simply too small to be convenient for a lot of those things.

The flip-side to the things it can not do is the lack of malware, great battery life and silent operation.

.... = smart phone with bigger screen and bigger battery. better for reading on, better for browsing on, better for video calls, just less portable. Can slashdot please try harder at the apple trolling?

Where do you live? I have had zero issues with Apple support, and I have used it via telephone on a few occasions. I am in Australia.

Maybe it is not possible to offer all of those things, and do R&D at the scale apple does at 10% less?

Why isn't Google doing it? Why not Microsoft? They are both companies of similar size, and only 10 years ago Apple was very, very far away from the size they are today. They succeeded because of one major reason: they care about end user experience. Microsoft? Not so much.

What is this "dictated on how you use it", you speak of?

Seriously, i want to know what you think I am unable to do with my devices - or rather, what tasks you think i am unable to perform with them?

There are a few things I know i can't do with iOS, but I'm keen to see what your concerns are, and if they are anything more than petty "in theory" things.

No. They sell a solution to a problem. You buy an iOS device, and a Mac, and you get the benefits of tight integration between the products to get things done with a minimum of fucking around. Transparent sync between them. Transparent phone backups to either the cloud or your machine. Transparent voice calls from your laptop via your phone. Application state shared between devices. Transparent, out of the box encryption. No one else in the market place offers such things without manual fucking about to get it to work.

That is what Apple sells. And a lot of techies will argue "blah i can do that with my Android + Chrome + Linux box just fine!". Good for you. How many hours did you spend setting it up?

Setting all of that up in the Apple ecosystem is merely logging into your AppleID on all your devices. Job done. Move onto something more important.

Also: I just replaced my iPhone 4s. It lasted me 4 years.

Perhaps you should have a whinge about the workers who are manufacturing things for Samsung, Dell, Lenovo, etc.

The free market does work. What you, and a lot of others don't seem to understand is that things like after-sales support, firmware update, cloud services and tight integration with your other devices are worth real money to people. None of those things would exist if apple was operating on the same margins as their competitors.

25% mark up for an OEM is pretty envious, especially in the electronic market where usual retail markup is less than 10%!

And that argument conveniently sidesteps the fact that apple make no claims to operate on lower profit margins. Running on 10% margin means that the company you buy from can not do as much R&D and can not provide the level of support or absorb things like the Nvidia GPU disaster on the MacBooks from a few years back (offering people replacement/repaired hardware well beyond the warranty period - 4+ years), etc.

You get what you pay for. Buy from a company operating on razor thin margins, don't expect them to do you any favours. Apple support is second to none in both the computer and phone markets.

Actually, they're not. You can claim expenses on your tax return if they were incurred to perform your duties at work.

I'm sorry, what? My macbook is a 2011 and in way better condition as far as wear and tear goes, still perfectly serviceable than the MS Surface Pro 3 I have at work. I only recently upgraded from an iPhone 4-s (which is still getting updates) to an iPhone 6. If you want to cry about planned obsolescence and waste then you ought to be looking at DELL and the Android marketplace.

Depends what inflation numbers you are using, i'd say that comparing such things just leads credence to the thinking that the treasury is massively under-reporting real world inflation due to their habit of selectively excluding figures that aren't in-line with their desired reporting.

The actual false conviction rate is unknown, as many of those falsely convicted never get their convictions overturned. Several have been executed based on convictions for crimes that they did not commit, proven by DNA evidence decades later.