I don't see what's "liberal" about fair use.

I think people should stop trying to shoe-horn every single issue into a liberal/conservative spectrum.

I don't get it; are you trying to be sarcastic? In any case, some Flash games are free, some cost money. But the point is that they are not iPhone-specific and don't tie developers to the iPhone platform. If Flash games become predominant, then iPhone becomes just one of many platforms, and not a very competitive one. And making it easy to port Flash would alienate many of their current developers.

The big advantage iPhone has in many people's minds is that it has many apps that other platforms don't have. That's an advantage Apple wants to preserve. And that means keeping their current developers happy and forcing developers to invest extra money if they want to support platforms other than iPhone as well.

I think the iPhone 4G is going to have 960x640, which is twice the linear resolution of the original iPhone and matches the iFrame video format. Of course, the likely reason is that many iPhone apps aren't resolution independent and Apple wants a simple way of scaling up their existing apps. In that regard, iPhone is catching up with Android (nominally, surpassing it, but whether 960x640 is better than 800x480 on a 3" screen is debatable).

No, notifications haven't changed (I have both). There are lots of other UI problems on the iPhone. But the biggest differences are architecturally: Android makes it much easier to integrate apps. Android apps have barely scratched the surface, but you already see that in things like barcode readers and Facebook uploaders that are automatically consistent between multiple apps.

Actually my main problem with Android is that it uses Dalvik as its VM and not actual Java.

Yes, that does make it slower. But it also has advantages over Apple's use of native code. The differences are going to become unnoticeable as Android gets a JIT and as hardware gets faster.

Our phones are of similar age. His phone is more responsive.

All true, but not a practically relevant difference. In one or two generations, hardware is going to be so fast that this is going to be unnoticeable.

His virtual keyboard works better than mine.

It's faster, but whether it's more usable is debatable. And for Android, you can get third party keyboards, while with iPhone, you're stuck with Apple's fast-but-substandard virtual keyboard.

His selection of apps dwarf mine,

Yes, but many of the iPhone apps are poor clones of each other. And there are entire categories of apps missing from the iPhone store because Apple doesn't approve them.

and one more cool thing about iTunes is that all of the apps he can buy are listed in US dollars,

Yeah, but there are also lots of uncool things about iTunes, like the fact that some things, you simply can't do on the phone without plugging it into iTunes, and then there are the endless "Backing up" messages.

iPhone is like the original Mac: Jobs cut a lot of corners and messed up the architecture, but made it look pretty nonetheless. This time, however, we have a real, technically superior alternative.

You're making the assumption that it actually is "close enough for practical purposes". I don't think it is. Of course, I don't think the multitasking restrictions are technical in nature anyway; Apple is likely doing this to have yet another way of excluding apps they don't like. For example, with true multitasking, I could run things like a webdav server or metadata server in the background that would give users a better way of organizing and exchanging data between applications than Apple is providing. Apple would kill such an app simply because they don't want someone else providing such functionality.

Wishful thinking? Or do you have a 4G now?

You don't have to guess at all; Apple has told us what the 4G has:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/preview-iphone-os/

And the hardware specs on the 4G are pretty clear from Apple's device. It's premium hardware, but likely at a premium price.

What matters is Android approaching the performance levels of Apple iPhone OS on similar hardware.

The reason iPhone OS is fast is because it is limited and old technology: C-based programming language, 20 year old kernel, little application integration, little componentization, limited multitasking. Android is a better, more powerful software architecture with many more features, and that naturally requires a more powerful CPU. Android is never going to be as efficient as iPhone OS because you need to make a tradeoff between features and efficiency. But the iPhone speed advantage is diminishing over time. Android today is about the same speed as a first and second generation iPhone. One more generation of hardware, and it's going to be so fast that it doesn't make a difference anymore even to picky users.

I have an Android phone, and I can't wait for Google to catch up with Apple

Apple needs to catch up with Google, not the other way around. Apple focused on efficiency and simplicity early on, but that matters less and less as hardware is getting more powerful. But software architecture and ease of development are going to matter more and more.

It's the same thing that happened with the original Mac: Apple squeezed every drop of efficiency out of the original hardware in their rush to bring an affordable GUI-based machine to market, they made it look good, but they botched the software architecture in the process. It's what Jobs does.

Believe it or not, some people don't buy a smartphone to compensate for some shortcomings

Seems to me that's exactly what iPhone buyers do.

The leaked iPhone 4G looks like Apple is just trying to catch up with the Nexus One, and not even succeeding at that. People who already have iPhones will go for it, for others, it won't make a big difference.

Same here: Nokias get excellent reception in areas where iPhone doesn't. WiFi is also weird on the iPhone and iPad.

The faulty assumption such a "peace plan" is that the "technical reasons" Apple states are the real reasons. The real reason Apple doesn't want Flash is because there are tons of excellent cross-platform games written in Flash that would kill both their lock-in and their cottage industry of iPhone games, many of which are just imitations of games already available in Flash.

Apple feels strong right now, and they want to leverage that strength as much as they can to kill competition and tie developers to their idiosyncratic platform.

Everything you describe already exists. What possible reason would people have to throw it all out and move to Microsoft't proprietary (and probably patented) standard?

There are plenty of solutions, for example FOAF, FOAF+SSL, and OpenID

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_(software)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openid

objective-c is what c++ could have been had it not turned into an overly complex shitball

They're both shit, and for the same reason: they are based on C. Plain C was fine for what it was: a systems programming language, but you can't turn it into a modern application programming language. Objective-C stagnated and C++ turned into a "shitball" trying to compensate for C's deficiencies. On iPhone, I'm stuck with these losers. On other platforms, I have a choice.

Cocoa is a fantastic framework

Cocoa was a fantastic framework 20 years ago. Now it's obsolete.

That's my point though. How can a apx 515nm wavelength be a fully saturated green if the L cone is also being activated to some degree?

Because all light of a single wavelength is automatically "pure"; it doesn't matter what your cone responses are. The cone responses are just a code to transmit that information to your brain. Your cone responses are such that they overlap (for good reason), but that doesn't keep you from seeing pure colors.

And actually, you perceive color contrast anyway, not absolute RGB values or wavelengths. So, even if you get a group of cones to produce a pure "green" response somehow, that will simply be processed as being part of a strong red/green contrast and result just in a vivid green percept.

If they're Android based, the same knock offs and ports of iPhone apps and iPad apps that the Apple platform already has.

Unlike Gucci handbags, a software knock-off is often better than the original.

Apple apps will outnumber their apps 10:1

There are a few dozen apps on the iPad that are actually worth having, the rest is crap. How do I know? I have an iPad. Add to that the few dozen apps that Apple rejects on the iPad but that are really worth having and Android is already ahead.

Apple apps will be 2nd and 3rd gen

Easy to clone, in particular given that Android developers aren't hamstrung by Objective-C, Cocoa, and silly iPhone OS restrictions.

Until someone delivers a $99 consumer tablet, I put the iPad on top. And who's to say that Apple won't be the one who does?

Apple can barely deliver a VGA dongle for $99, let alone a whole computer.

Why then is the Crunchpad (sorry, JooJoo) $500?

Because it's was designed around the same time as the iPad. There's a new generation of processors and screens in the works.