Story of Apple talking to Entertainment/Hollywood/TV executives re monthly subscription fee....
This is the most likely scenario for their intent.
This would fit both the desktop and mobile devices.

I was public school teacher for several years in Maruland, and there where no canned lessons plans made available.
I was teaching students math ( Algebra to Calculus) and Pascal. On the math side I thought it idiotic that I ( or other teachers ) had to reinvent the wheel just about every day in terms of lesson plans or ideas in how to present certain topics. I would have loved to have access plans and ideas to take as a base and adjust them to the people in my classes.
The only time there was real access to presentation ideas of certain topics was on one professional development day. That one day of presenting successful strategies for teaching certain mathematical topics was the only time such a resource was ever available in the 3 years I taught ( other professional development days had little or nothing in terms of this kind of topic).
These days I see my kids make use of resources on the Internet for supplemental material that would have been very useful to me back then. It seems to me that schools and teacher unions missed an opportunity in utilizing the Internet to make starting teachers more effective sooner.
So, I suppose that these teachers selling their knowledge is the first step in doing that in a capitalist way.

I agree, it would be nice if the iPhone/touch does it. Sometimes I do get lost in trying to find one of he 60 or so apps I currently have. Other than my first screen with most frequent apps, i tend to search for them, but I do know all the games are in the last 2 screens.

But then my Android phone does not do any categorization out of the box either, as far as I can see.

not the storm, no.
but on my wife's blackerry 8900, every time i press on a button something happens real quick - even if it is only a progress indicator.
But doing anything besides making calls and managing them ( search, history) pretty much sucks on the blackberry. managing contacts sucks compared to Android and iphone. I really don't get.

I suppose then that Android's success depends on the Droid. Mainstream users expect at least as smooth an experience as iPhone or Blackberry.

I have an iPod touch and and HTC Magic ( T-Mobuile version - myTOuch).

The real difference is the design of the UI and the functionality of they UI and the smoothness of the UI interaction with the hardware. The Android needs to come with better UI widgets. Maybe there are better ones, but even Google's own apps suffer from lousy design use widgets. Not just lousily implemented functionality, but also look. I have seen way better from Google than what I see in 1.6.

Android 1.6 reminds of the linux distros from a few years ago and to some extent even now. The UI has a noticeable lag in 90% of the circumstances and often does not provide feedback that there may be activity in the app. The on-screen keyboard is too cramped and successful key-hit recognition is way lower than on the Touch/iPhone ( and I actually prefer the on-screen keyboard over a physical keyboard.)
The browser is pretty much useless on the Android as compared to Safari.
I haven't seen an advantage of being able to run multiple applications on the Android. after more than 4 or 5 apps running, it gets even more laggy. The iPod touch has never asked me if I should force quit an app or wait because it takes to long to get to the home screen, when quiting an app ( I always try to quit apps now ( but how to is not always apparent) - otherwise one has to frequently use very popular utilities like Taskman or TasKiller).

In general I like Google and use many of their apps on the net and on the PC. But the Android has left me underwhelmed.

Well as a newbie to Android I can use all the pointers for better usage I can.

Interestingly enough when I first went onto the Market under 1.5 amongst the top 5 apps listed on the first screen where Appmanager (free) and TaskManager.
I took the hint and downloaded those 2 utilities first. Never needed something like that on the iphone. I did have something like that on Windows mobile.

But I took your advice and ran taskmanager and sure enough there where plenty off apps running. Not sure why most of those apps stay resident ( why would market or the browser of google maps stay active? It is not clear to me how to exit an application without it staying as an active task) But, only 5 apps are active now: gmail, home, phone, messaging, task manager ( However it does not seem to show the executing widgets ( wifi toggle, a calendar widget and of course the google search widget).

Usually apps open quickly enough, however when in gmail on selecting a particular item on the list result in a delaybefore the message is displayed.
In a side by side comparion on my touch and the android, the difference has been very noticeable.
But now that I have cleaned house, here is my reactivity test now:
Click on gmail. it opens up, presents a list of e-mails. click on a message - and... ok, the response time has noticeably improved. The lag between click and response has been reduced significantly.

But this also re-iterates the point of mainstream usage. Should I, as a user, really have to worry about these things? That used to be ( and I gather still is on occasion) the problem on the windows ce/mobile platform. The things used to all of a sudden run out of memory - they device would tell you so, then promptly lock up (and this was running nothing more than the standard apps with the device).

If the Android exhibits the same behavior it won't make any inroads in the market. Granted, the Linux underpinnings here will keep this from happening as severely, but it seems it could happen.

Well the other difference between the Dream and the Magic is that the Magic has the better battery out of the box :)... I have gotten used to an on-screen keyboard with the touch, so a physical keyboard is not as important to me ( it was to my wife, another reason she went with the Blackberry instead of the Android).

Can't comment on the Nokia N900 , but i can talk about the iphone, Blackberry and Android platform, since between me, my wife and a coworker we have at least one or more of each. I started out using palms and windows mobile devices, but have given up on them over the years.

The iPhone is not popular because it has a cool factor. It is popular because it just works, works simply and most intuitively out of these 3 platforms. It also has the most wide target audience. Both my wife and I have a iPod Touch and like it for what it does and how it does it. We one Mac and several windows and a Linux machine at home, we only use the iPod Touch(es) with the Mac.

The Blackberry is great for business users. But my wife got it ( the 8900) for personal use because of its responsiveness ( over the myTouch Android platform).

When my wife got the Blackberry, I got the myTouch ( yes we are T-Mobile customers). In comparison to the iPhone and Blackberry platforms, the Android platform has been abysmal. I would have returned the device within the 2 week trial period, but the 1.6 update that downloaded the first nite I had the device, made the myTouch usable.

The Android reminds me a lot of using linux. One clicks and wonder if something is going to happen or not. Both the Blackberry and the iPhone give immediate feed back response.
Too often, going back to the home screen from an application leaves one staring at a black screen for too long ( 15-20 seconds).

In the 2-3 years of owning the ipod touch, accumulating 90+ apps, the device/apps glitched on me less than 5 times. In 5 days of using the Android, I have had more force quits than that.
I don't know if there are any UI guidelines for Android developers for touch screens, but some of the apps that come with the base platforms have poor widget choices for this form factor. Just setting the time for an appointment - incrementing/decrementing in individual minutes, and worse, when using the widget, the value one wants to see gets covered by your fingers.
I do like the Android's spell/word recognition system way better than what is on the ipod. It at least gives me words that I need to use, usually the most obvious choice. I don't know what the iPod uses to figure out what word to present, but it is not base on normal English usage ( and English is my second language).

I will keep the Android. I am a Google fan. I don't want a Blackberry, and I don't want to go to the extra expense of having the family on different carriers ( have 4 lines on a family plan). Could I afford the split I would get and use the iPhone.

Back in the 80s when I was in college we used to get German exchange students getting drivers licenses here in the US, which they then could convert in Germany, without all the lessons.
One of the later years, I vaguely recall that they might not be able to do that anymore. Just curious if that loophole was closed.

Like the Palm's Datebook, or my favorite Palm app from way back when - Iambic's Agendus.
Apple needs to make a single datastore available for this to work. The great thing about the various palm organizers was that they used the same data store, so that you could try out different apps without having to re-enter data or export/import.

I would love to make an appointment for my doctor/kids doctor/plumber by just looking the name up instead of having to type it.

Just saying...

You are starting to show that you may have an inkling as to what the problem is with DRM.

1. Why have DRM at all. Used to be able to play any CD on any CD Player. Then some manufacturers came up with some lame protection ( a from of DRM) that did not allow some players to play the CD.

2. When I pick up a CD/DVD how the hell am I supposed to know what kind of DRM has been embedded on the DVD, and even if it is labeled, am I supposed to remember all the different types I may or may not have available on the player - well more specifically on the OS since we are talking In the Context of Windows in the article. I don't recall the details, but wasn't the Plays for Sure scheme not functional on some MS device ( Zune), much to the chagrin of the people using said device?

3. Hell, if manufacturers can't get their act together and get DRM working harmoniously through something as simple as a cable/connector spec, what chance does a more complex system have when it has to decipher multiple specs.

4. Only active when DRM content is playing... Well, things go wrong often enough that services continue to run purposefully or erroneously. Just the nature of software, unless it is extremely well written. DRM just hasn't got that reputation of quality.