I seem to have lost a chunk of my 5th paragraph. The end of that paragraph should read:

I don't care about Apple's applications, I've never used them and I probably never will. I do, however, care about their OS, the stability and performance of which has been degrading steadily since the loss of Jobs. I'm willing to bet most Mac users care about the OS, and that it is stable, even if most don't necessarily need to eek every possible bit of performance out of their machine. Issues like the keyboard and trackpad freezing (external inputs still work; Apple's "fix" is to sleep the computer for a couple minutes, which works about 10% of the time), Messages (which is now part of the OS) using over 2GB of RAM for its own process while making use of another kernel-level process that manages to eat 5GB (watching kernel_task go from over 6GB of RAM to 1.1GB just by closing Messages is freaking silly), that's one hell of a memory leak and there are apparently no plans to fix it. Since Lion, most of the time my mouse cursor disappears after playing a fullscreen video, until I CMD+TAB a few times and I'm not the only one. Still an issue as of Yosemite.

I experienced none of these issues in any version of OS X released while Jobs was active within the company. Lion was released while he was still alive, but his condition had become such that he was no more than a figurehead at that point.

You're absolutely right, though, that Apple's current momentum is coming from Cook. As I said, we're seeing the loss of the last of Jobs' momentum right now. My Jobs-era 17" MBP is absolutely brilliant, despite the GPU defect I had to repair (yes, I work on these machines at that level, so I literally know them inside and out) which is the result of AMD supplying a faulty part. It was even better running Snow Leopard, because if was fast and stable. It has since been replaced as my primary machine, by a 15" MBP Retina, but it's still very much in active use and, upgraded to 16GB or RAM and an SSD, still quite a performant machine. I wish Apple still offered a 17" line, screen real-estate is king for developers and graphic artists. That machine still has better battery life than most mid to mid-high end PC laptops today.

Care to give any examples of what was un-balanced about Apple's machines under Jobs?

As for the iPhone beating Android... 2nd or 3rd in every category isn't beating Android. The players are iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. Blackberry isn't winning in any of those categories, so placing 3rd means placing behind Android and Windows. Windows isn't pacing ahead of Android anywhere, so placing 2nd means placing behind Android. As for screen quality, Apple hasn't lead that metric for the past 3 years. Yeah, they're winning in thinness (bendability) and weight, for those who like having to check their pocket every couple minutes to make sure they didn't lose their phone; personally, I've switched from lighter prones to heavier ones for that reason. If a weight difference of less than 2 ounces is making your arm tire out any faster, you should go get checked out. Also, really, the extra
The point I'd really like to drive home, though, is this:

Of course! That's why the OS is rapidly becoming slow and unstable, and major apps that exist on both platforms (like Adobe's suite) are routinely found to perform better on Windows. Wait, no, that's a problem for the kind of user who buys Apple products for what we both agree is the most important reason.

This is what Jobs did for Apple and what Cook is throwing away. As I said earlier, we're losing the all-around experience that people buy Apple for and seeing it replaced with "ooh look, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiny"! We disagree on why that's a good thing; I think it's great that I'll have another chance to buy cheap Apple stock in a few years, since I missed out a decade ago.

To put it another way:

Or a better OS. Or better hardware. Fuck the logistics, who cares how it's designed and assembled, how it's packaged, how it's sold, and what it looks like; it's no better performancewise than anything else out there, no more stable, no more reliable, all it's got going for it to merit the price tg is the "shiny" factor. Yes, it's pretty. Again, users don't spend nearly as much time staring at the shiny as they do using the software, so letting the software slip is a bad thing.

I've just about run out of ways to frame that point, so I'll stop repeating it now. At least, until I think up a few more, since I'm sure I still haven't gotten through to you.

Indeed. That doesn't mean it's not preferable to giving the phone their full attention. Ideally, their phone should have none of their attention, but we're talking about 'murca here.

Excellent point, but I don't think it'd quite be 75%. It would definitely be well above 34% for sure, though.

Handbrake is free and perfectly legal in the US.

Well, yeah if, you decided it was worthwhile to buy into an ecosystem that's locked to a single platform. Personally, while I buy more than a handful of movies each year, the number I (and many others) purchased on iTunes in the two years between then iTunes started selling movies and when Amazon and Google launched their services is a big fat 0. Ripping DVDs has always been an option; and a platform-agnostic and DRM-free option, at that; if you fell into a platform-locked DRM scheme, you should go to the ER and get the gunshot wound in your foot looked at.

I haven't been an AT&T customer for almost 3 years at this point and my wife is the iPhone user so I can only go based on heresay at this point but I'm pretty sure the attwifi network can't be removed.

Also, I'm still on Slashdot, right? I'm asking because there hasn't been any name calling yet. :)

I've seen dongle in a dongle before. Looked painful. And yes, there's a headphone port. That and the USB-C, that's what you get. Did you read the last sentence of my first paragraph, or did you decide you needed to tear that new MacBook apart after my first 12 words? You missed a lot by not reading my whole post, my friend.

I know Why do you think I keep coming back? ;)

Hmm...

34% of users can't tell their iPhones not to connect to a hotspot named attwifi. That sounds like the ability to force connection to a WiFi network to me.

I'll grant you that, 66% is the vast majority. However ...

... 34% is not a small subset.

This I can agree with. It's what lead to the inaccuracy in the summary in the first place.

You're right, 66% does constitute "most cases"; 34% of all iPhones sold in the last 3.5 years (that is to say, realistically, damn near 34% of all iPhones currently in use) still seems like a pretty large victim pool, though.

So yes, perhaps the severity of the flaw was a bit overblown by the team that discovered it, but I think you're trying to let out a bit too much of the air.

It's my submission, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I'm probably not trolling. But, then, that's what a troll would say, isn't it? Cue the next poster who couldn't decide whether to mod me funny or troll, I suppose. :)

Like I said...

As someone who cares more about how a machine works than how it looks, this is what I have a problem with. I spend hours a day using the software, seconds a day looking at the fit and finish of the machine, and minutes, at most, over the lifetime of the machine looking at the packaging and giving a shit about the logistics of how it got to me. Jobs was focused on the whole experience; today's Apple is focused on "ooh look, shiiiiiiiiny". How can you say were not seeing the loss of Jobs' momentum?

We'll have to wait and see what happens over the next few years; no amount of argument between us will matter.

How did it take you that long to read the handful of comments that existed at the time?

That said, I've done it, too. My comment was more a remark about Slashdot's lack of editorial function.

I didn't price myself out of the argument, actually. the price was my argument. Read: