Given the astounding rises in overall productivity since the 1970s, matched against the relative stagnation of wages over the same period, it's a fair question. Here in Australia we have close to 95% employment, and, quite frankly, you can't tell me that 95% of people of working age are actually able to do their jobs. Keeping in mind Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crud) surely the ideal level of employment for any economy is around 10%, with the remaining 90% just keeping the hell out of the way. Productivity would rise, and in combination with further automation we ought to start respecting those with genuine leisure time rather than demonising them as dole-bludgers or whatever. The issue then becomes how does 10% of the working population afford to pay for the leisure time of the other 90%. Given that the 10% is much more productive without that irritating 90% to mess things up all the time, the idea has merit I feel. If the Government could pay most people to keep well away from serious work, and the remaining 10% strive to push automation to its limits, we'd be approaching the sort of post-scarcity utopia as satirised so well by the likes of Iain M Banks.

Given the astounding rises in overall productivity since the 1970s, matched against the relative stagnation of wages over the same period, it's a fair question. Here in Australia we have close to 95% employment, and, quite frankly, you can't tell me that 95% of people of working age are actually able to do their jobs. Keeping in mind Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crud) surely the ideal level of employment for any economy is around 10%, with the remaining 90% just keeping the hell out of the way. Productivity would rise, and in combination with further automation we ought to start respecting those with genuine leisure time rather than demonising them as dole-bludgers or whatever. The issue then becomes how does 10% of the working population afford to pay for the leisure time of the other 90%. Given that the 10% is much more productive without that irritating 90% to mess things up all the time, the idea has merit I feel. If the Government could pay most people to keep well away from serious work, and the remaining 10% strive to push automation to its limits, we'd be approaching the sort of post-scarcity utopia as satirised so well by the likes of Iain M Banks.

Well because it's stupid, complex and, quite frankly, all Apple need to do is say "And today we'd like to show you the iPhone 5" at an event and brazillions of people will watch it via Quicktime and go buy one. Apple is the most recognised brand on Earth now and they simply don't need to indulge such ridiculous theatrics. Anyone not living under a rock knows there's a new iPhone coming.

seriously, you think Apple would need to go through such ridiculous theatrics to promote the iPhone 5? My tin foil hat awaits you on the grassy knoll, just behind WTC7

i was wondering about that.

I have 4 macs here at home and was not looking forward to having to grab 16Gb of data (okay it's still not that much I agree but here in Australia we have download caps and that would use up a signifiant chunk of most people's cap).

So if I copy the app file to my other macs I assume I can just run that on each one and voila. Or does the app store tag each machine especially?

Same here. There is a massive overlap between my facebook friends and my G+ contacts, and I expect, eventually, to have more contacts in G+ than Facebook, much like I have far more twitter followers than facebook friends. The reason is that I only connect to people I know in Facebook, and the stuff I post there is stuff I share around to my friends for fun. Already there are lots of people who have me in their G+ circles that I don't actually know — that's fine as long as I can filter out the noise.

I really don't see why people think that G+ is somehow a rival to Facebook. This was the reaction people had to Twitter v facebook too. They are different, serve different needs, but have largely the same audience. I'll happily connect my Twitter account to G+ but I'd never dream of connecting it to Facebook.

Facebook's lists take a different, subtractive approach to sharing, where you choose which groups of people to exclude from your posts. G+ circles take an additive approach where you must choose who to push posts to. Twitter's lists are different again in that you can't choose to post a tweet only to some people but not others, but you can choose to focus on posts from smaller groups of people (whether you actually follow them or not).

Post to Twitter to promote something, Post to facebook to share something with friends. What posting to G+ circles is for is yet to be decided but the differences in philosophical basis will mean we will find different, yet complimentary uses for all of them I am sure.

I fail to see how changing the wires can possibly increase the energy density of the battery. Sorry but I'm calling BS on this one.

If they could show some actual examples of their tech in action I'd be more willing to overcome my scepticism.

Okay you sold me.

It's not just "eerily familiar" it's the very same people. see for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/19/ethicalliving.g2

climate sceptics are either paid shills, or nutters. That's not name-calling, that's just stating facts. Anyone who doesn't get that pumping the air full of greenhouse gases is going to warm the planet, (and yes the planet is warming, despite what some shills would have people believe,) and that warming the planet will change the climate (hence global warming is a driver of climate change — they are not the same thing, so no, people have not just switched from saying 'global warming' to 'climate change', refuting one of the many climate-denier lies) simply fails to understand basic physics. Or maths. Indeed it's a wonder such people can even read long words like 'anthropomorphic'.

If the sceptics are right, then what is their explanation for global warming? Just saying "it's not happening" is not enough here when it very clearly is happening. I am all ears for a theory that explains global warming better than the "it's the increase in GHGs released by burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of old-growth forests"

cough — bullshit. Sorry mate but you have just swallowed a massive dose of crap. Try not to spit it out in public, there's a good fellow.

"blows" as in will get down on its knees and put the penises of strangers in its mouth, and not even ask for money. It's another way of saying "sucks", proving yet again the versatility of the English language

The upgrade from 2.8x to 5.x sucks because it's a dreadful update that take up vastly more screen space with its UI, disables some of the old skype's cooler features like being able to screen share only parts of your screen — we use this a lot at work — and a lot of the old drop-and -drag funtionality is no gone, making it much harder to do common things. It's one of the very very few times I have ever downgraded a piece of software (yay for time machine) and, while it does ask me about once per week (starting pre the MS takeover, alas for the conspiracy theorists out there) if I want to upgrade, it doesn't force me to, it lets me tell it to remind me again later.

Skype started to jump the shark a long time ago imho, and I am keen to replace it, but what else does such cheap calls to land-lines internationally?

Steve officially re-dubbed it OS X some years back. Before he went back to Apple, SJ told Wired the first thing he'd do if we were do go back to Apple would be to eliminate the Macintosh. Flash forward a year and hello iMac and the rest is history.