Yes. Mark my words. You will never see Larry speak out against Steve on this one. I guarantee that they discussed this off-the-record before Steve started mouthing off (as he seems to be doing quite often these days, but as I'm sure, no less calculatedly ;) *They* have a plan, and in this case the plan is probably that Oracle will take over releasing and supporting Java for OS X. If anything else happens or this turns into a public falling out between the two of them, I will be very surprised.

If this is true and they do decide to make the Launchpad available only to Mac App Store apps, Redmond shall be very pleased. Very pleased, indeed.

Let me preface this by saying that I am against the one-company-to-rule-them-all model that Apple seems to adore. And one of the reasons is exactly the point you bring up above. However, I think there is something to be said about the user experience brought about by having one company (in this case, the platform and hardware developer, Apple) whose feet are ultimately held to fire for the quality of the applications that are available to end-users on their platform (yes this does and WILL apply to Apple).

To illustrate, let me reference the well-known fall of the great Atari, which began the Atari 2600 games market fiasco. This was a great piece of hardware destroyed by reams of shitty games on store shelves (see for yourself, look up ET for the 2600). The Nintendo NES that followed about 2 or 3 years later in 1985 (after most of the North American gaming industry had imploded) was well-known for its third-party licensing agreements which helped (while obviously not perfect) to ensure some quality games on store shelves. As a result, the NES was super successful and the gaming industry was reborn.

If Apple is to the Nintendo and the NES, what Microsoft is to that shit that was allowed to happen with 2600 (note, that I do think Atari was an innovator for having introducing home gaming to NA in the first place!), then I think we have an idea of what Apple's future might be if they decide to lock down their platforms. That is, there will enjoy probably another 10 or 15 years of success and astounding revenue, but they can definitely expect some tremendous and very unlikely competitors down the road.

To take it private, yes. But even then, they might be able to do a sort of hostile takeover if enough of the other investors agree the purchase would be in the company's best interest. I'm pretty sure that one of the conditions that was made on stock issuance was that no one other than zuck could veto a move to take the company public, or sell it as a whole to another company to be privitized.

One of the other heroes of the story is good, old-fashioned dynamite, at least for certain sections of the tunnel. Of course, I'm sure there's nothing old-fashioned about the way they deploy and detonate it, these days.

And this is why patent laws, if not completely thrown out one day, should be amended to make it no easier nor harder to defend a suit by a "troll" / IP owner that has previously licensed or won suits against other companies. Each case should be equally costly for the plaintiff (as it will be costly for the defendant). Then, let's see what happens to patent suits over the next 10, 20, 50 years.

btw, IANAL.

As a potential customer for an Android smartphone, I have to admit that the one thing that is holding me off buy an expensive (and thus likely more profitable for its manufacturer) phone is the fragmentation issue with Android. This is a very real problem that is the source of many if not most of the problems with Windows. A fragmented platform is one that is more costly to test on. Pure and simple. I don't want to buy a $400 phone today and discover a year from now that I can't run an app that my phone should support hardware-wise, but simply doesn't work because that phone no longer supported by its developer. This is a problem that Google has to address very soon. And, no they haven't adequately addressed it yet, even though Android is selling so well.

While I don't like the "uniformity" of iPhone, testing is going to be cheaper and thus more likely to occur on that platform as opposed to Android.

I think the NYT is going to work doubly hard, even triply hard to gain some sort of competitive advantage in their quality of journalism. Yes, they have some great stories. But to be totally honest, most of what they write about or offer opinions on is stuff that can be found somewhere else on the Net nowadays. I'd say they are not much worse, but also not much better than a lot of other news sites out there. Good luck to them if they create a stupid pay wall.

Here's my two cents. What's happening in the tech industry right now is akin to geopolitics pre-WWI. By that, I mean there is a alignment and re-alignment of companies with overlapping or even mutually-exclusive interests. To illustrate, you could put Google, HTC, Adobe and Motorola in one camp. In another, you might find Apple and Oracle. Apple and Oracle don't have many if any overlapping markets but I would say they are quite clearly aligned against Google. Ellison is a former Apple director and a fan of Mr. Jobs. He recently said that the firing of HP's Hurd by that company's board was 'the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs..." I would not be surprised there is some unwritten, non-binding alliance between Apple and Oracle and that this was one of the major objectives in the Sun acquisition.

In the age of public awareness of anti-trust laws, monopolized markets, and patent trolling and lawsuits, the best way to wage war on your competitor is to not. Get your buddies to do it for you. Dare I say, perhaps this is a kind of Cold War of sorts in the tech sector. Facebook's allegiance is still a prize to be one by either Google or Apple. What effect will Microsoft have on all of this is still yet to be seen... but I'd say they appear to be on Apple's side so far to the benefit perhaps of Office on the iPhone (one day??), but at the expense of their mobile division (good luck to Win Phone 7).

I am become J. Robert Oppenheimer, the destroyer of the English language.

IANAL, but you'd probably end up with getting charged with obstruction of justice or its equivalent in your jurisdiction. That may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you were being charged with in the first place.

Citation, please? I think he worked there and was probably their most famous programmer. But besides that I don't think he held an executive position at that lab.

I think the GP has a point. QNX was only bought off in April, so it didn't really leave a lot of time for RIM to "make the switch" for their smartphones. But, I'm pretty sure that they plan to bring QNX goods to their smartphones, which need a big boost IMHO.

On a side note, I think RIM has more to worry from Google than Apple (though I'm sure someone here has already said that, right?). Android is going to eat their lunch in the Enterprise... all it takes is one good, focused competitor (Motorola???) to properly service the Enterprise with Android apps. Apple is going to continue to clean everyone out for the indefinite future in the very profitable high-end consumer segment.

Oh, and sorry to bring it up again for all you RIM lovers, but the RIM CEOs were pretty damned stupid to not have shit their pants when the iPhone came out in summer 2007. It was the beginning of the end of the safe lead they had, and hate to say, squandered by not taking the threat seriously way back then.

You will not be a master, so remain our slave.

No, sorry. Paypal is not dominant in the *micropayment* world. Citation please?