Altering permissions after install is standard on iOS. And of course there is no bundled spyware.

1) iOS permission request handling is crude, not granular, and accepts as default and not presented certain basics such as net access. As usual, you are stuck with what Apple deigns to expose to the user.

2) As for the latter, what do you call advertising frameworks and analytics?

I tried to install flashlight app but the top 5 or 10 all wanted egregious access to my phonecalls, instant messages, or full network access. I gave up.

Permissions Manager LBE is the kind of thing Apple would never allow on iOS. You can fine-tune any app's permissions *after* install, and even autoblock bundled spyware.

Except that when pancreatic cancer manifests itself, it's already too late.

Except Jobs didn't have a standard "pancreatic cancer", that is, usually an exocrine adenocarcinoma . He had a neuroendocrine insulinoma. That's a quite atypical variant, indolent, localised, and eminently resectable with a much lower probability of mets if caught early when compared with an adenocarcinoma.

you cannot volunteer your technology to become part of a standard and then later hold the industry (or competitors in the industry) to ransom by selectively refusing to license that technology on FRAND terms

You're got it backwards. It's Samsung that has "essential" patents and demanding payment but it's Apple that's refusing to pay anything for them. So ironically, thanks to the US's obvious native-company favouritism, a company with essential patents (like Samsung's) can't get money or redress, while a company with trivial, obvious patents (like Apple with rounded corners, hyperlinks, search bars, etc) can sue, and sue, and sue, and sue till the sun dies. Basically, Apple gets to pirate Samsung's essential patents in the US, thanks to govt protectionism.

Apple wants a royalty rate of $24 per unit from Samsung for its alleged use of Apple's design patent, the notorious tablet shape with rounded corners ... when Samsung asked Apple for a much lower amount per unit that everybody else in the market pays for Samsung's standards patents, Apple refused, offered no counter-offer, and sued instead. To date, it's paid nothing at all for those patents or for the other regular patents Samsung is accusing Apple of infringing. In its trial brief, Apple states in one header:
        To The Extent That Samsung Is Entitled To Any Remedy, its FRAND Damages Cannot Exceed $0.0049 Per Unit for Each Infringed Patent
        Less than a penny should be Samsung's lot for patents that are essential to even be in the mobile phone business, but Apple wants Samsung to pay $24 for rounded corners, plus from $2.02 and up to $3.10 per unit for its utility patents.

The Commission also found that Apple had failed to argue other FRAND-based defenses, such as promissory estoppel, laches or fraud. Finally, the Commission determined that even if Apple had offered evidence of the proper interpretation of ETSI’s IPR policy and had shown that the patents at issue were actually necessary to practice the standard, that the FRAND declaration was a legally enforceable obligation, and that Samsung was required to grant irrevocable licenses under FRAND terms to any party, it still would not have found in Apple’s favor, because the parties’ final offers were sufficiently close to each other that Samsung did not violate its obligation to negotiate in good faith.

"Rome" persisted for 1,500 years after their discovery of concrete, until it's final fall in 1453. Along the way, it saw off the tax-averse Germans that immigrated into the West, Persians, Arabs, Kievan Russians, the Germano-Franks returning again as "Crusaders", and diverted the Mongols into attacking the Slavs and Islam. Not bad, and not really indicative of anything to do with concrete. Or lead.

Android has had a good permission manager for years: LBE.

You can do blanket bans, whitelists, etc or drill down into granular permissions for each app. It can also block abusive texts, etc. You do need root.

It's pretty incredible but sadly predictable that Apple can keep winning over juries in its home county of Santa Clara to award it damages mainly for a patent (pinch to zoom) already declared invalid twice by the USPTO. Thanks however to the US's weird system, Apple can go on appealing until 2017 or 2018 before it finally runs out of people to whine to. I'd like to think that sanity could prevail then, but as recent experience shows, the US President would have no qualms about vetoing any adverse judgement against Apple but would be okay letting it stand against Johnny Foreigner.

The research being conducted with the data collected in MOOCs is one of the most socially valuable results possible since it leads directly to better education for the world.

This scans like marketing newspeak. Astroturf?

Says the Republican

There's not enough space in the world for laughter sigils here.

Again with the labels. You're really into simplifying, aren't you.

everyone but Samsung and the Apple haters agree.

It must be nice to see the entire world split into these tidy categories that define behavior. Very soothing. Very simple.

Your argument seems to rest on drawing a complete comparison between the evils of Apple and the evils of Samsung. As such, given that the two companies are apparently, by your argument, about approximate, then the only quantitative, non-falsifiable difference between them within the parameters of argument is their relative donations to Obama. We then arrive back at our original premise, which is that politicians' behavior is correlated with their relative payment amounts from donors. Congratulations, thanks for backing me up.

Samsung obtained a ban using Standards Essential, FRAND patents

The substance of the original ITC ban on Apple notes that Samsung offered Apple FRAND access via a standard percentage licence fee for the FRAND patents. What is unusual is that Apple refused to pay that licence fee but then did not return with a counter-offer. Apple basically refused to negotiate and continued importing products using the patents but without paying anything. Given Apple's refusal to even begin negotiating that seems evident bad faith, the ITC had no option but to decide against them

Of course, now that Obama vetoed that decision, now you have the absurd position where a hold of patents essential for the operation of a technology is not getting paid for them by a major patent abuser, and now has limited recourse. Whereas the holder of some minor design and questionable methods patents has a new import ban still standing. So thanks to Obama's protectionism, we've entered topsy turvy patent land, where essential patents become worthless, and design patents become coin.

You actually believe Obama made that decision himself?

Well, not entirely. There's also the bipartisan lobbying by Obama's fellow USians. Despite the fact that Apple dodges most of its US tax via the Double Irish, and indirectly Apple employs 700,000 Chinese to make its gadgets (vs 43,000 in the US), it's still marketed as a "United States" corporation. So it plays on the sympathies of its "local" politicians.

But you know, a couple of hundred grand goes a long way. If Samsung had been paying as much, maybe it would have got more consideration.

Obama got $308,081 from Apple in 2012
Obama got $1,000 from Samsung in 2012 (as $250 and $750)

Even disallowing the home team advantage, I really would be surprised if Obama does Samsung the same favour he extended to Apple last week and overturns this ban.

Google spend more than 7 times as much in the same timeframe.

Well, the issue is Obama overturning an ITC ruling favouring not Google but Samsung over Apple. So dragging Google into it is a kind of distraction.

Apple paid Obama $308,081 in 2012
Samsung paid Obama $1,000 in 2012 ( as $250 and $750).

How likely is it, do you think, that Obama will turn around and veto the recent Apple-requested ITC ban on Samsung products?