You cared enough to type four sentences on your tedious rant.

I thought these arguments disappeared in the early noughties, but clearly there are those that want to wallow in nostalgia. While I've always lived in the Apple/Mac world, I've never been one to indulge in this, even when it was slightly fashionable, which it most certainly isn't these days. However, I've had reason to engage with numerous Windows computers this week for the first time in ages, over a range of versions from XP to 8, and I have to say that in every case it was a reminder that even now, fifteen years on from when those arguments raged, it still sucks. My assumption has been for the last, ooh, eight years-ish, that basically there was no argument, the differences were just quirks and it was whatever you're used to, and for the price you pay extra to be on the Mac side of things, it wasn't worth it. Maybe that's true for a lot of people, but the frustration, general bad temper inducing, sheer passive-aggressive baulkiness of the damn thing made me very glad I don't have to deal with it regularly. And that whatever I pay extra, if I do (meh, my company pays for my hardware, so I don't give a shit how much it costs, personally), is worth every single penny.

Point is, a lot of people like Windows for some reason, and lots of other people like Apple stuff, for some reason. Maybe there will never be much understanding either way, but the silly finger-pointing name-calling from one camp to the other is childish, tribal and idiotic. No matter how sincerely the sentiment is meant.

Still no SDK for the Apple TV? What a missed opportunity that is, and easily two years overdue. If it had apps that anyone could develop, it would be the ONLY STB device of its kind by now.

I still have all of the original Inside Macintosh manuals and SpinCursor isn't a system API listed in any of them - that's up to volume VI which covered System 7. I don't have the later reorganised Inside Macintosh that was 'horizontally ' organised rather than the 'vertically' organised original series. SpinCursor() rings a vague bell though, maybe it was something that came in with System 7.1 or later.

I do know that while the spinning watch hands and 'target' cursors were commonly seen pre-System 7, you had to roll your own solution using either a vertical interrupt handler or simply periodically going to a new cursor frame. It's likely that the code for doing that was widely shared and copied among developers and it could well have been called SpinCursor(). Since System 7 was cutting edge in 1990, hopefully if my memory has gone a bit dim on the complete API it offered I'll be forgiven.

The original Mac didn't have a spinning anything. Animated cursors were something you had to write the code for yourself if you wanted them - involving messy and tricky vertical refresh interrupt handlers if I recall correctly. Later versions of the classic Mac added colour cursors, but no standard support for animation (though there was a standard resource type for a series of cursor animation frames, just nothing as standard that understood it - rather odd really, I'm guessing that was a MacApp (Apple's Application framework) thing).

Mac OS X introduced the "spinning pizza of death", I think inherited from NeXTSTEP. But a lot of people misunderstand what it is. It's not an indication of a crash, it's an indication that the main run loop has been executing user code for longer than a preset interval. In other words, the run loop has to be entered often enough to stop the system automatically showing the SPOD - a bit like how a watchdog works in embedded systems. So if your code takes too long or hangs, you see the SPOD.

it's so fractional, it doesn't even make up for it's own extra weight, it's own extra cost, it's own extra maintenance

Or its own extra apostrophes.

Goodness knows why this has been modded up as insightful. There is no analogy between guns and flowers, and FedEx are not concerned with the identity of the recipient, so adding in the false conflation of "gay man" and "gun loving" is your invention. I fully applaud FedEx's stance - the one thing the USA does not need any more of is guns. Besides, Cody Wilson is a grade-A twat.

I see terrible design all the time - washing machines, TVs, PVRs and of course cars. It's getting worse - the rush to put a touch screen in every Holden (GM's Australian arm) and execrable crap like BMWs iDrive and Ford's whateveritscalled convoluted garbage. It needs taking by the scruff of the neck and kicking into touch, and if anyone is in a position to do it, it's Apple. While their approach is not perfect, it's usually somewhat better than most alternatives. When I hit yet another irritating and apparently arbitrary snag point in the software system of my PVR for example, I often wish Apple would make one just to show them where they've gone wrong (it's a Topfield if you're interested). As long as they make their in-car system solid and secure along with sensible usability (hint: for a car that means NOT a touch screen) they'll have a winner on their hands. As of the 2015 model year, the only way is up.

Does the report suggest any ways to eliminate journeys? I expect not. That's the problem - they assume that journeys are always necessary, and increasingly so. How about putting in place policies that incentivise people to live near their workplaces, don't have to drive to go to a shopping mall, reduce the need for long-distance business travel, etc. Not only would that improve "traffic", but actually make people's lives easier and better as a bonus. Worth a thought, eh?

FTS: "Bill Gates said in an interview that he "couldn't imagine a situation..."

That's all you need to read. Bill Gates has a terrible track record of imagining anything. >640k memory, the Internet, Apple's recovery, etc, etc. Just because he was once a very successful moneymaker despite his inability to predict things should mean you stop asking him to predict things.

45 years, easily the longest continuous run of any aircraft model anywhere ever

Well, there's the B-52 which has been in service far longer than that. Also made by Boeing, and like the proverbial favourite axe, has had its handle and head replaced several times. So your statement is hyperbole, though the point is taken. B-52s may end up being in service for 100 years - that would be pretty cool actually.

Finally! Just what America needs - more and better guns!

How hard is it for people to learn this ultra-simple rule. Sorry to be the grammar nazi, but every time I see this it drives my parser up the wall.

all on it's own.

Aaarrggh!!!!

It's completely automated

Correct. "it's" is a contraction of "it is".

a tiny chip holding up it's little metal finger

Aaaarrrgghh!!!! Doesn't make sense: "...holding up it is little metal finger".

And to address the article itself, who even needs cat litter and all that nastiness in a house? Just let your damn cat out! They will never, ever soil in the house given a choice.

Touchscreens are the worst interface for cars. Stop this madness just because it's fashionable. Switches in cars should be identifiable by feel and position, and give a non-visual feedback (i.e. tactile) when operated. Touchscreens do none of that.

It wasn't Apple being totalitarian, it was the music industry in general. All Real had to do to make their stuff work on the iPod was to remove ALL DRM. However, had they done that, they'd have been the ones in the dock at the behest of the RIAA, et. al. Eventually Apple's power and market dominance gave them enough clout to tell the music industry where to stick their DRM. And yes, that sounds "totalitarian", but actually, it was the consumer who benefited.

Seems to me that people just like to use the existence of the meritless case to push and reinforce their own anti-Apple views. Such views may have some validity, but to use this particular case and the history behind it to push them is ridiculous. We consumers enjoy DRM-free music today because of Apple, make no mistake. Do you really think Real (or Amazon, or whoever) would have managed the same thing if Apple hadn't? Nope - we'd still have crappy DRM-encrusted music from the industry or would be using the hit-and-miss GNUTella method.

Remember that any industry-backed music download service had to compete with free (albeit free with strings attached, in the form of terrible rips, mislabelled files and malware). Apple pulled it off, and they deserved to win this.

If a shitty 3rd party device can't use iTunes, then the consumer may fault Apple for their bad experience

Way back when iTunes was just a reskinned SoundJam, it supported an architecture for supporting arbitrary devices, alongside the visualizer API. The visualizers are still supported and even got some improvements a few years ago, but the device support was dumped very early on, version 3.0 perhaps.

I know this because I wanted to make a plug-in for iTunes that supported one of the early cassette player adapter devices (forget the name, but it was a solid-state music player in a cassette form factor that would work in a standard deck). I got it roughly working just as iTunes got revved and the device API was scotched. It was annoying but as a hobby project not something I was expecting to build a business on. Asking around Apple devs, even then (this was before the iTunes store launched) the consensus was that iTunes was only going to support the iPod from then on, no 3rd party devices, and for precisely the reason stated. The anti-competitive nature wasn't really expressed, and at that time the Mac and the iPod were extremely minority players in the marketplace so it wasn't really seen as anti-competitive. By the time the iPod and the iTunes store started to become huge, everyone had forgotten that iTunes had ever supported a devices plug-in API.