If acupuncture's the benchmark here, then chiropractors are in trouble...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Does chiropractic manipulation also work on rubber limbs?

http://theness.com/neurologica...

As a European who's lived in several wildly different parts of of the US for many years, both now and in the past, I'd have to politely conclude that you probably haven't traveled very much in Europe. The countries really *are* that different: the architecture of the buildings, the languages, the fashions, the cultural and geopolitical histories - the contrast really is stark, often even just within a few miles of the borders. Many Americans who haven't spent a lot of time in Europe, but who are aware of the geographical scales involved, really don't seem to understand this. That's wholly understandable: many European countries are state-sized. However, the cultural distinctions in Europe are much, much older, and hence run much deeper than that.

That's not to say that there aren't significant differences between, say, New York and Hawaii, or Minnesota and Florida. However, there is a US cultural uniformity clearly overlaid on top of the regional variations of all of these places (in the same way that there is, say, a Chilean cultural overlay on the Polynesian culture of Easter Island). Europe doesn't really have a continent-wide equivalent of this (the EU is comparatively recent, and much less obvious as a constant presence). I would therefore indeed have to contend that the US is more homogeneous, at least partly by intent.

And there are many reasons that one might want to learn another language - that goes beyond the scope of this post. One of these, though, might be to gain additional insight into a neighbor's culture and thought processes. I'd submit that a deeper understanding of a different people is never a bad thing.

... there go a lot of junior staff scientist posts.

Most professional scientists don't earn anything close to US$130k, and the institutions that hire them won't be able to afford to pay anything close to that. Such a move won't be good for US-based scientific innovation.

I can't agree with this at all. Apple has arbitrarily changed a bunch of the interfaces for things like printer and networking set-up in recent versions, generally hidden menu options and made the user interfaces less informative and intuitive (iTunes is a prime example of this). On a more basic level, the default scrolling direction was reversed, they changed the way Spotlight looks and works (in my experience, for the worse), and have repeatedly changed the way that Spaces looks and behaves. Default information provided by the Finder has gradually been reduced, scroll bars have been hidden. The look and feel of the default browser and the mail client were changed for no other reason than to more closely mirror their iOS counterparts (despite the fact that the pre-existing layouts were more efficient for my use in a non-touch desktop). And on and on in goes...

Every time I get a new Mac, there are more poor OS X design changes that I have to work to try and undo.

Traditionally in Finland, it's a bundle of sticks.

Sure they could. Just off the top off my head: They could have maybe offered a combination Mac power brick with an Airport Express built in as an option. Give it a couple of USB ports, so that people could also use it to charge their other devices with it as well. With the newer 802.11 protocols, they could have offered the option to wirelessly stream video (as well as just audio) to clients on its network. Mac owners would probably even buy several of these things, so they could build out their wifi networks while also having charge points scattered throughout the house. Maybe include a back-up battery in it, so that it could also recharge devices when there's no wall socket present.

None of the above is even close to impossible these days. If they'd made something like the above work nicely in the old Apple "It Just Works" Jobsian way, & their customers would have loved them. They could have even made it an Apple Store upsell option when the customer is speccing out a laptop order.

FWIW, I just bought my first non-Airport router for several years this year. I did a lot of reading, & ended up getting an Asus one. It wasn't the cheapest option, but then neither were my older Airports. It's actually way more configurable than the Airport it's replaced, & will support VPN connections & all sorts of port & protocol-based filtering. It's really nice, & really quite simple & flexible right out of the box.

I can also hang a USB3 hard drive off it & it'll appear as a network share, so the thing'll work as a NAS too, so it's probably possible to set it up for Time Machine backups (I've never looked into this in detail, though, as I have a QNAP NAS that already does that).

PS: I have no affiliation with Asus, other than I've been really impressed with their hardware+firmware so far for my own personal use.

Still a runner up to this fantastic example from a few years ago, though:

http://dropsafe.crypticide.com...

Maybe they had this sort of thing in mind?

Also, radio-quiet work zones.

Mod parent up.

As a longtime Mac user, one of the things I *loved* about my old 12" Powerbook G4 was that it had *everything* in a small, portable computer in a footprint that'd fit on an Economy-class airliner tray: USB, Firewire, Ethernet, video out, audio jack, separate power socket. Even a DVD burner! Also, a good (non-Chiclet) keyboard. It was so refreshing to use, coming from a thin-&-light Toshiba Portege that required the use of dongles & expansion docks for almost everything.

Of course, it wasn't *thin*, which is apparently The Only Important Thing these days. :-(

... or can ye?

Yeah, I ran into this in a recent Chrysler 200 rental as well. And to make matters worse, they mount it up on the dash, just below the similarly-sized rotary volume control for the stereo. Utterly moronic.

Thanks for that. Hadn't seen the updated aviation policies published before, but after reading your reply, it does indeed look like it's much less of a problem for airlines than previously. Much appreciated!

Mod parent up.

I frequently have to work in radio quiet zones. I also frequently fly on airliners, which don't allow the use of personal digital radio transmitters (e.g. Bluetooth sources) during flight. In addition, I have a pretty nice set of wired Bose noise-cancelling headphones for use during said flights. All of these are good reasons for me to spurn a wireless-only solution. And I'm not the world's only frequent flier that's also a frequent Apple user.

Also, as others have already noted: using the charging port for a wired headphone connection is only inviting an increased risk of critical failure in the charging system, rendering the whole device useless.

Ditching the option of a separate audio port completely would be a stupid idea. Apple didn't even dare to try that one (yet) with the new-style MacBooks.