Terrible analogies run rampant!

But you still bought one, knowing full well that it was locked down beyond your comfort level. Why? I'm totally for the iPhone ecosystem, and also pro-jailbreaking for knowledgeable users. But the fact is that 90% of iPhone users NEED the walled garden approach to keep their phones from being the disaster their pcs are. You can say "but they just need to learn!!". They don't want to, if the last 15 years of rampant malware has taunt us anything on pcs. They don't give a crap. They bought the device to be a phone and run some popular apps from the app store and access Facebook. The last thing we need are cellphone botnets making ATT even slower.

If you can't find a purpose for an Internet device that runs for days without needing to see a wall outlet, is incredibly portable, and can do most things that your average laptop can do, then you don't need one at all. On the other hand, I recently pulled mine out on a camping trip to repair an email server for a client over VNC that was 400 miles away. Made some money and had a great week camping! Really, as a VNC terminal, it has paid itself off. Your purposes may vary, but versatility and portability is king.

I think people need to give more credit to the little guys at Apple that have made and designed the many products that have made apple a success. While Steve led the group, and deserves much credit for his ability to see success in nonexistent or potential markets, Apple as a team made the products work. Tim Cook is likely underrated by the community but, honestly, if Steve didn't think he wasn't a great leader for the company, I doubt he'd be the one handing the reigns over.

I just realized that's the WebMail interface that OS X Lion Server uses! I'm much happier with it over the old squirrelmail. Overall, for this user I might just reccomend OS X Server on a Mac Mini or something of the sort. Once the bugs are worked out in the current version.

Citation? Holy crap just go to microsoft.com. Not like they hide CAL prices. It's painful to look at and you call us fanbois

This is the type of thinking in the GPL community that keeps MS and Apple far above Linux in real usage. If you want great products that are reliably maintained and advanced, people need to be able to make a living off of it. Free stuff is great and free as in speech software is good, though often lacking. I'm not going to starve while the big names in OSS support and licensing profit from my contributions. So I'll develop for a closed platform where I have the potential to keep my kids fed and invest in their college. And the community isn't openly hostile to the idea of me being successful. I just might want to get a new house some day, god forbid! A lot of people think this way and don't say it out loud cause they don't want to piss off the slashdot crowd, but it's true and the people crafting the GPL need to remember these people.

Not to mention how much you save in licensing costs! If you've ever looked into licensing prices for windows servers, a few user licenses cost more than a Mac Mini with unlimited clients.

a mini/mac pro as a fileserver for a small business might not be bonkers, but beyond SOHO use, why would anyone bother with a mac server? OTA iOS device management? Golden-triangle support for mac management in an enterprise? Wiki Server? But you do realize your saying "but beyond it's primary purpose, why would anyone want it?". SOHO is currently their target market for the mini server. It really makes for an awesome server for somebody like me who's self employed and using it for web, email/webmail, calendar, address book, VPN hosting. Setting all this up requires little knowledge of anything underneath the GUI, but a knowledge of DNS is fairly helpful. And most sysadmins, whether they like macs or not, could have one up and running most all services in less than pizza delivery time. IT consultants are expensive, so getting something a child could manage has serious financial rewards for a tiny business.

And the rest of the world has stuff that actually works.

The introduction of the gene requires mating in regards to Neanderthals, whereas it's a little difficult to mate with a virus.

I really, really, Really want to believe.

I'm gonna need you to be at the local tavern about 2AM on friday and saturday nights. Thanks!

You don't NEED money, you don't NEED your hands or feet. But people don't want to be without these things, and will generally take any steps required in order to acquire, protect, or retain them.