Way to move the goalposts, there. Your original statement was that Apple was "not contributing anything back to the community", and that's clearly not the case.

Apropos of this discussion, look at one of the lists and see what sorts of licenses those projects are licensed under. The majority are APSL, which means that they're Apple-developed code which was released to the wider community without any requirement to do so. Of the remaining, about one third are BSD licensed, a third are GPL, and the rest are a variety of other licenses.

Note that the BSD-licensed code doesn't carry any requirement for Apple to release their source code, either. You might wish that Apple would release more of their code under an Open Source license, but that doesn't mean they're benefitting from Open Source without contributing back.

You can make this work if you do what the game console makers have historically done - get commitments from parts suppliers on price reductions over the expected lifetime of the product (due to Moore's law, etc) and aggressively plan as much cost-reduction as possible. You then sell the product for what it *should* cost when the product is mature. You lose a fortune on the first units, but the bleeding stops and eventually you can sell them at a profit.

Of course, if you mis-estimate the lifecycle, or fail to get the expected volumes, this is *really* risky. It's also not really clear what the expected lifetime of a tablet is, yet. The market's just not as mature as the video game console market.

If your operating system comes with an encryption solution that provides safety for you in the case that someone steals your laptop, then everyone with sense will use it. The number of people that would bother to look for something other than what's already provided will be vanishingly small. The major reason anybody goes looking for the third-party solutions that are currently available is because their OS didn't come with a built-in solution.

> (I have an iPad and like it, but the fact that I can't do shortcuts on the keyboard and can't run an interpreter on it or fork subprocesses means that it is much less useful to me than it could be)

For what it's worth, webOS is lacking in the keyboard shortcuts department, but otherwise meets those requirements. and you can install any software you want on it, without getting anybody else's permission first.

I'm really enjoying my Touchpad. I'm biased, of course, having helped write the software, but I think the usability of webOS is superior to iOS 4, and at least the current version of Android. The app catalog is a bit thin, but the apps we have are pretty great, and some of the features built into the platform make it so we don't need "an app" for every little thing (Synergy sync, in particular).

Whether the usability, lack of tight-fisted control over the platform, and our unique features will be enough to push it into the "success" column will be determined by whether we hit a "sweet spot" for developers and users.

I'm really enjoying my Touchpad. I'm biased, of course, having helped write the software, but I think the usability of webOS is superior to iOS 4, at least. Whether the usability, lack of tight-fisted control over the platform, and our unique features will be enough to push into the "success" column will be determined by whether we hit a "sweet spot" for developers and users.

Works the same as other App Store purchases. Buy once, install on all your machines.

I wonder what happens to your ability to sync/listen to those songs if you stop paying? My guess is that all those legal copies will just disappear from all of your Apple devices at that point.

I'm having trouble figuring out how the least-dense substance known can "pool" anywhere. Under any normal situation, it's just going to escape into the air. Yes, it's flammable, yes, it can ignite easily in air. But the real danger with substances like gasoline is that the vapors are heavier than air, and can travel horizontally to an ignition source.

> Let's say you do pay full price for a phone... why is your monthly rate the same as someone who buys a subsidized phone?

Because they can, and because consumers don't understand how the subsidy works. I have known people to hold onto their old, broken, held together with duct tape phones for years after they were eligible for a free replacement.

It's just a CYA move for them. I believe they have the authority to just go ahead and do it, but they reasonably fear lawsuits. If someone gives permission, with the appropriate disclaimer, they're safe from the consequences.

It's not just that they will inevitably disable some number of the infected PCs by accident due to unexpected interactions with other software on the systems, either. Just the fact that they "accessed my computer without permission" would motivate some number of lawsuits, as well as the fact that out of a few million targets, some non-trivial number of them will happen to have hardware failure right after being "disinfected", which the users will then blame them for.

Some time around 1917 or so.

> I would be very surprised if the write speed of phase-change memory could ever exceed that of DRAM

You might very well be surprised. Individual memory cell write time is not all there is to write speed. There are addressing delays, amplifier settling time, etc. Depending on the design of the memory cells, some of these effects could be a lot lower for phase change memory.

Intuitively, shuffling some electrons into and out of a capacitor seems like it would have to be faster than heating up a bit of crystal enough to change its structure. Of course, if the bit of crystal is small enough, the amount of energy required could well be less than for charging or discharging a DRAM cell. If the total energy requirement is similar, then the write speed is limited by the amount of current flow the drivers can provide.