I don't think that's the real crux. I think that without any sort of proof that the iPad was hers, Apple can't unlock it. My reading of it is that the will divided the estate but did not name the iPad specifically. Without an AppleID or some sort of identifying information, Apple can't know that was her iPad and not someone else's. People probably have used situations like this before to game Apple. So they want a court order that essentially absolves them from deciding that. They'll unlock it when a court tells them to.

A building's provenance is generally more clear as the owner is registered somewhere. If you have an iPad, I can claim it as mine when my grandma died and so Apple has to unlock it without any proof that the iPad was really my grandmas'?

That's not Apple is asking for. Apple really is asking for an order from the court to absolve them from any liability for this iPad. They are putting it on a court so that if they device wasn't really hers they can't be responsible if the real owner starts suing.

You didn't get the parent's point. The children can only prove that they received an iPad when their mother died. They can't prove that the iPad they have is actually hers. How do they do that? Her AppleID would have given them some sort of proof as they can verify that the iPad is locked to an AppleID. But the children don't have the ID or the password. So Apple wants a court to give them an order to absolve them of any liability.

Especially when hardware has not been their strong suit. Apple has done both for a long time and even they have trouble with it at times. The transition won't be overnight. In the meantime, is the world going to pass MS by like it did with the Zune? By the time the Zune came out, it didn't offer many advantages over the iPod ecosystem. Also MS entered the market when it was about to plateau meaning they were already too late.

Which would mean that many companies would not consider them for their employees then. That is large market of the traditional MS market that they are missing out on.

Also getting into hardware isn't a simple as just buying a company. Even though Apple has a long history of hardware they needed to acquire key companies to help them like PA Semi and Intrinsity to help them with chip design. And it took years before these acquisitions bore fruit.

The problem with MS is execution. It's not that they can't, it's that attention to detail isnot part of their ethos. For Apple, they had an authoritarian like Steve Jobs where attention to detail was always enforced. Plugging in an iPod and having it sync right away was not a technical and engineering feat merely an execution problem.

No it's not dead, just renamed. "Surface RT" tablets became "Surface 2" tablets. They offer it at places like Best Buy. There are fewer models these days as Surface RT didn't sell very well so companies are wary to make many of them.

Oh, I don't disagree that Core 2 Duo machines can be upgraded. My contention is that many of them have probably already been upgraded by now. I'm guessing that the majority of XP holdouts are those that can't upgrade for hardware reasons.

And do you realize that you are arguing for a future where you decide what is in the best interest of everyone? You want to install your own software from anywhere? Buy an Android phone. No one is stopping you. You are the only one here advocating against freedom.

The walled garden exists and has been accepted because a major problem with the alternative. Generally, consumers are not tech-savvy; they don't want to hack with their OS. They want it to work. Apple offers that to them.

You do realize that Android is from Google right? And you can choose not to use anything from them. You want a phone completely free of them; start a company and start manufacturing. You don't have millions in capital? Well, that's not on any of them is it?

Then don't use any Apple products for Chrissakes sake. I don't own a tablet because I don't want one. I don't own a Windows PC machine because I chose not to own one. I own a very old Mac because it is the only machine that I can run Windows, OS X, Linux, and BSD all on the same machine.

The main difference between MS in the 90s and Apple today is not stopping me from using other platforms. If you use their platform there are limitations (as there are with any platform. Apple didn't go out of their way to harm their partners and competitors like MS. See Java. See Netscape.

For years (especially under Ballmer), the problem for MS has not been their strategy per se but their execution. Getting people off XP is a good thing; not helping people with it is an execution fail. Of course there are some people that cannot upgrade as their hardware is too old, but acknowledge this. Not recognizing that people dislike the solution (Win 8) is another fail. If they had done this with Win 7, it wouldn't be as big a deal.

We've seen this lack of execution again and again especially in the mobile area. The Zune wasn't a bad idea. It was years late and didn't offer many advantages over the iPod. Buying Danger to get into mobile phone market was a good idea; being 18 months late and releasing a buggy phone that wasn't a smart phone but cost as much as a smart phone was a fail.

If you upgraded to Win 8 Pro version, I think you get automatic downgrade rights to Win 7. Maybe something to consider if you want to stay legal.

I would think that most people who are still running XP can't upgrade to Vista or Win 7 which means they can't upgrade to Win 8 either. Yes there are probably those that can but then the XP UI to Metro UI transition will probably be the death knell.

So you are only talking about iOS and not OS X meaning you've changed the subject as iOS not the same category as Windows XP and Win 8. Okay, l'll bite. One of the main selling points of iOS is that software works as it should and be secure. That's why there is a walled garden. In the same category as iOS was WinMobile where software didn't always work as it should. Web browsers these days are far more complicated than they used to be especially when it comes to scripting. Apple cannot guarantee the security of an alternate web browser with a separate script engine. That's why they have only a superficial shim API to their existing browser. If you don't like it, get an Android phone; however, it was noted that 97% of mobile malware was on the Android platform.