Yep, the article you linked to refers you to Apple's battery page here:
http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/service/battery/

That clearly states that it's $199 for a new battery via Apple. Not saying it's ideal, or the right thing to do, but it does save weight/size on the laptop, which is what Apple is after. And there is obviously a market of people that don't care, or Apple wouldn't continue making these.

I can say that the market that doesn't care likely includes my parents - on a previous laptop, they continued using it for years with a battery that wouldn't hold a charge more than a couple of minutes. They just plugged it into the wall. They didn't care, and didn't want to spend the money either for a new battery ("why spend money on a computer I need to replace") or for a new computer ("this one is good enough right now, I can spend money on other things"). Note that they *knew* it needed a new battery, and that a new battery was $60-75. This computer was also 3 years old at that point, and they used it until it was almost 6 years old tethered to a wall and shut it down whenever they weren't using it.

So yes. While you do care (and so do I), there are a large number of people that just *don't*. As much as you may not want to admit it, these people outnumber you and I.

I think what a lot of folks here are doing is jumping on the whole "OMGWTFGOOGLESTOLEMYBASEBALL" bandwagon. The reality is, if google's solution is even marginally good at syncing and sharing files (which it appears to be with my limited usage), it has potentially the missing link of a pretty damned good documents toolbox for text, spreadsheet, and presentations.

But let's back up here for a second. Ever since Google has had a documents platform from January 2010 on, they've been in want of an *easy* way to get your documents there. Sure, you could go in, upload them, and then pull them back out later, but that was cumbersome and annoying. You could email them to yourself, but again - cumbersome and annoying. They FINALLY added this ability - and just took a baby step forward to make it a "cloud drive" for all of your documents. Not that big of a deal for them, but a hell of a lot more useful to the average Joe.

I do understand that Dropbox has been around for a while - since 2007 in fact. But they never really picked up until the 2009 timeframe for the average user, and while they've been pretty innovative on the synchronizing front, they've not really expanded out very far. Not to mention, they have a bit of a strange market - They tout themselves as a sort of sharing and backup solution. However, the only reason there even needs to be a "sharing" solution is because emailing larger files can be inconsistent but the means to do so with Dropbox isn't particularly elegant even as they add features to make it easier. And to consider dropbox as a means to "back up" your documents is a bit of a joke when there are far superior services that don't try to get into the "sharing" market (and can therefore create a much better backup solution) that are quite a lot cheaper. I'm looking at you, Crashplan and similar services. Because when I want to back up my computer offsite, I don't want to pick a quite limited-capacity folder to do so.

So really, Dropbox is only particularly better than the competition at sharing files. But as I said, it's not even quite great at that. If Google can step up and put out a product that integrates with email for their millions of users (it does), integrates with Google Docs to persuade people to jump into the cloud documents market (it does), and can not lose your data (Google seems to be pretty good at this) - I'd say that's a *good* thing. Hell, it may even convince Dropbox to continue innovating. And isn't that the idea of free enterprise in the first place?

Covering up the parts of the world that make you uncomfortable is not parenting. Your kids will be exposed to that stuff whether you like it or not, so your job as a parent is to give them the knowledge and skills they need to understand it in context.

Economic benefits in tandem with deflationary currency? Cite, please. I think quite a few Japanese people (not to mention the world's economists!) would be surprised to hear that.

Funny, because banks make money hand over fist by doing exactly that.

That's the point! Inflation discourages keeping your wealth in the form of cash, and encourages converting it to something else: lending it to a bank, buying stocks, real estate, or consumer goods, etc. Economic growth depends on people being willing to exchange their cash.

obvious for whom = temple of doom = Indiana Jones