iTunes does this - it is stored as "Artist/Album/discid-trackid track name" on the file system. However, the user interface exposes many attributes that are not visible when basing yourself on the filesystem as the interface: Genre, playlists, composer/director/artist, bpm and more. It also makes it easier to find tracks by individual artists on compilation albums.

Of course, the files are still independent on the device even if itunes are used on top...

Unless your Android is the primary storage mechanism - where you keep all your audio files, and everywhere else is just copies - no, it isn't. Because you need to get a selection of it there.

Building a library based on metadata in tags is just what iTunes does - and fairly well, in my experience on a Mac. This allows me control what I listen to and transfer based on things like genre, certain attributes (orchestra, director, composer), artists, playlists etc much easier than a purely file system based system.

Don't get me wrong, building such a database on the device - and making it easier/possible for such apps on the computer to synchronize with the phone - is good. I'm just questioning the "it is so much better to manually manage my music on the file system and transfer what I want to listen to via drag and drop"-statement.

Complaining about the materials in an unannounced product that been rumoured for years, but never appeared - and is completely contrary to the Apple DNA ("we build premium products only, screw the rest of the market") - is a bit early.

Comparing memory and CPU of an Android phone with an Apple phone makes little sense - from the reviews I read, phones with similar or equal specs to Apple's then top of the line often run sluggishly. Android needs more memory to run. Personally, I think being able to use Java and using more memory is a trade off well worth taking - but it means you don't compare oranges to oranges in this area.

Android's great strength is it's flexibility - you want a phone that's way too big to be practical? Check. Got a small, nice one that fits in your pocket? Check. Got a rugged, water tight phone? Check. Want a really cheap phone that's basically a feature phone? Check. Apple has decided on what is the best form factor - and I'm inclined to agree that it's the best single one. But Android has that, and every other base covered....

"See that folder music? Put it in there" is an absolutely horrible way to deal with music, unless all you have is one album. The overview and management of a tool like iTunes is indispensable when you have a large music library... I have 24 k items, mostly lossless audio, after all of my non-SACDs discs have been moved into the basement. Folders just don't cut it, and "put it in the music folder" don't scale at all.

The good thing about a folder interface is that someone else can recreate their vision of iTunes and use that to achieve the same thing. Not that you can do it yourself, that's masochism.

As a side note, spotify and others of that ilk are making this less and less necessary.

The Keychain on Macand GNOME Keyring store the passwords encrypted - e.g. by the default, the Mac keychain is encrypted with the login password. If you read it, you can't use it. If you reset the user password, the passwords are still not accessible.

Of course, against a really determined admin attacker this won't be enough (provide custom system binaries), but it will raise the bar. And for many attacks, that will be enough. NSA or business espionage? No. Most jeaulous SOs or peeping siblings? Yes.

If the constitution wasn't a living, breathing document it would still allow slavery and it wouldn't include women's right to vote. The constitution of a country is a set of fundamental rules other laws are built on, and while there are less frequent need to update them than other laws there is still a need to do so.

PS: I'm not unhappy about the removal of part in the Norwegian constitution forbidding the entry of Jews, Jesuits and monastic orders into the realm.

It's logical, but the problem with Apple's MFN - as I see it - is that they apply the MFN price to the end price, including their cut. So if Amazon offered to sell at 20% commission - instead of Apple's 30% - they still couldn't sell at a lower price without Apple lowering their price (and thus the payment to the publisher).

The publishers weren't selling at a loss - but Amazon sold at a loss. When Amazon sells a copy, they pay an amount per book to the publisher. If the price is below this amount, they lose money. For the publisher, something similar could potentially apply - e.g. if the royalty is a fixed amount per book.

Also, it's important to know that paper doesn't cost that much. The dominant costs are fixed costs ("running the company", with all that entails of reviewing, editing, marketing, author advances), royalties etc. The same applies to e-books.

I disagree. In this market, you had en extremely dominant player with 80-90% market share selling products at a loss. One of the benefits of this was extending and maintaining the market share of the Kindle eco system, thus raising the barrier to entry to the market. Another was to train customers into a certain price range. Combining these, it is likely that they could later impose these prices on the suppliers.

Apple entering this unstable market gave the unhappy suppliers an option, which they took advantage of. A new player entering a previously almost monopolized market, and still being a by far smaller player - Kindle still has 50-60% of the market - and being hit by anti-trust laws sounds strange to me. Sure, they probably guessed that prices would increase but that was caused by the intrinsics of this specific market with the 800 lb gorilla selling at a loss. While I think Apple's MFN tactic should be disallowed - at least as far as MFN being applied to the customer price, rather that what Apple would be paying - Amazon also had MFNs in their contracts.

Red Hat had a stock value of 140 before the dot-com crash.... with the amount of stock then in circulation, this was utterly insane and it fell to 2-3 dollars before going up to the 10-20 range a couple of years later. Lately, it's been 50-60 so still needs more than a doubling to reach the old top.

The pricing back then was utterly insane, though...

From a European point of view, the entire American culture glorifies guns and violence. While a second of a covered nipple causes immediate outrage, violence causes no such reactions.

Netflix' computer solution is based on Silverlight, which is not available for platforms other than Windows and OSX. A plugin would be much simpler in scope.

That is no direct quote from Bolden at all - that is a myth.

This is not allowed. What is allowed, and many companies do, is that you sign up on their web site and can then access the service on iOS. Or you get free access if you already have the service, the IOS app is just another delivery mechanism - e.g. you get The Economist free on the iPad if you subscribe on paper.