No.

Not application backwards compatibility. Apple does not control that.

I'm talking about upgrading handsets to new OSes. Who does better than Apple?

"A lot of small publishing/design houses got burned in the transition from OS9 to OSX."

Kay. From my perspective as a user, it was pretty awesome.

Why is this so important to you? Seriously. Why do you care?

Good point. And, for my money, I prefer Apple's approach to Android's. We may get to the point where screens are high enough resolution I don't care about pixel accuracy, but we're not there quite yet.

Isn't it cool that there are several competing options in the market? I think that's a win, don't you?

Which is the phone manufacturer that has a better record of backwards OS compatibility than Apple?

I'm curious.

"it means China and other countries not covered improve their own standard of living (by emitting GHGs like there's no tomorrow) at our expense"

What do you propose to do about that?

I'm sure they built it that huge just for funsies. Surely it didn't occur to them to use smaller rotors, you know, like every single helicopter ever built on Earth. They probably just didn't think of it.

Man, people who do things that have never been done before are so dumb...

"Can i bring my reader to their store and walk out with an ebook loaded?"

I don't really disagree with what you've said, but I have no idea why you would want to go to a specific place to get an ebook. That's a use case I don't understand. Why would that be good?

True...absent monopoly interference.

That's a business decision by one business (who happens to be going out of business). So, yeah, not the same.

Don't forget about the landing fuel you have to tote with you along your whole trip. That is not trivial weight.

You just described the nature of the problem, and tried to say "See? No problem! As designed!" Good jorb?

You know that more than one person expressing different opinions is not, in fact, hypocrisy, right?

And the "intrepid imaginaut" can't imagine a world where people, I don't know, have a different experience?

What makes you think I haven't tried something else? I've got a perfectly good Kindle right here. It's fine...well designed, well made, nice piece of hardware...but I /prefer/

(there's the key word, everybody)

the utility of an LCD (LED OLED whateverthehell) tablet.

The farce here is that one person somewhere thinks they've got some kind of read about Immutable Truths of How Reading Works, and that's just silly. You don't. I don't. GP doesn't. It will be OK.

"the simple reality is that you can't read books or even lengthy texts as easily from a luminescent monitor as from an e-ink display."

Simply not true. I can, and do, and your wishing won't stop me.

"but you didn't have people selling their book collections when laptops became common"

That's a form factor thing, not a backlit screen thing.

eink/epaper is great. I happen to prefer the flexibility of an LCD. Neither preference should get you all hot n' bothered, because it's just that: A preference. For /my/ use case, an LCD is superior. For /your/ use case, do whatever the hell you want. It'll be OK.