It's fun to see all these discussions and allegations for a phone that's not even launched yet and therefore you have no clue what connector it actually uses. True, it's likely it'll be a proprietary one again, but still, shouldn't we wait until Sept 12th at least before starting the accusations...

I think Sir you missed my point :P

I was saying I don't see how Apple suing Google could be the end of Apple.

And the more iDevices Apple sells with Siri etc that perform searches bypassing Google, the more they erode the search monopoly. I don't think it's as trivial as people only go to google for Apple info. That's more a word of mouth and experience thing. Google couldn't possibly turn that channel off :)

Flaimbait :D lol, seems sarcasm understanding is in short supply these days on /.

Nah, I just started trading options. Way cheaper than buying full shares and relative winnings are orders of magnitude higher. I'm even in a play for the pre-iPhone launch runup (bought september 640 calls, sold 650 calls when AAPL was around 625 a week or two back) with maximum risk around half of a share and maximum gain over 100%. Right now both are fully in the money and the implied profit is already around 80% but I'll probably allow time decay to widen it further until around end of next week or around 10th of September even. Probably will close it before the phone announcement as Apple stock always slumps during the announcement and recovers after it :) Might even play that with a put before the event that I turn around at the end of the event.

Why would that be the case? Apple has pretty decent grounds to defeating Google. Eric Schmidt was on Apple board during the iPhone and iPad development and saw the prototypes. He then launched the Android effort in Google in preparation to take part in the game change in the industry.

Financially there's noone more powerful than Apple in corporate side. Not only have they the largest market cap, they also have the largest war chest. $117B is tough match for anyone. Google's no pushover, but I don't see how that could be end of Apple.

Odd, I'll always have the pinch-and-zoom feature. Ah, you must be someone who's not using an iPhone. Sorry then mate, but time to start using it, iPhone 5's coming out in a few weeks, now's your chance :P

Did that a year ago when everyone was crying fool :P now, a year later and 80% higher valuation they still keep crying, some still that I'm a fool for holding, some just cry that they didn't come along :P Even now Apple's still a bargain stock wise if you take money flow etc. It's sure as hell not a bargain actual stock price wise as most people will be hard pressed to buy even one share :) Wouldn't mind a 10-for-1 split, could buy Apple every month then :)

You do know what constitutes monopoly, right? The only possible market where Apple could be possibly labeled that is the tablet market (I actually typed iPad market, then corrected, kinda shows how dominant it is). In the phone market they make up below 50% market share, same for laptops etc. Even iOS wise they don't have majority so there's no way anyone could bring monopoly charges against them. They do reap 80% of the profit, but that's not something you can hold against them as market influence is based on market share. If indeed Google were to drop dead and all the Android based smartphones disappeared because of Apple, then indeed you might have a case.

Odd, in most places where I'm at I'm only seeing increase in Apple usage and the actual real life experience of most people that I know is that whoever has tried both Apple products and Android based products heavily lean towards Apple products because of the real life usage (battery, ease of use, integration). Can't say much about developer side, don't work in that sector anymore, but outside of pure IT, where people use IT products to do more useful things Apple is gaining more and more traction. And I'm not surprised that techies might somewhat lean away from Apple because Apple caters for the wider market and prefers to take charge of things that people are at times too lazy to do themselves, but that benefit the platform overall (like sandboxing that's been coming a long time, though I somewhat understand both sides there with Apple not giving enough entitlements for all scenarios).

I think that's one of the cleanest statements about why some people don't like Apple. Things cost. You can't have everything for cheap and free so you whine about it. Well I've learned over the years that the fact that things cost is not such a bad thing. Most things cost little enough that it won't have a high impact on your life (majority of apps on iTunes Store are between $0.99 and $2.99, if that's a hard bargain for you, then you really are in a crap situation anyway and can go and hack linux boxes further until you get a real job as then it's mandated by real need for you to do it). However the fact that things cost usually means that they are beneficial to the developer and therefore they keep supporting it. I've seen so many things in Linux die because of lack of interest and constant change in the underlying OS that makes it harder and harder to keep up. Watching movies legally for just $3.99 - $4.99 on Apple TV is far preferred for me to searching for the torrent downloading it and checking the quality etc. I can browse the store and start watching.

I used to be an utter linux affionado in the 90's, even managed one of the local computer companies here in Estonia to start selling machines with Linux pre-installed (it was an extended distro made by me that added loads of needed stuff that wasn't part of the distros at the time, but needed for by users to really adapt). I advocated linux everywhere and had extremely customized installations for myself. I used to support large servers and linux provided an excellent work laptop config to do that at a customer location, but I have to say fiddling and making everything work took a good quarter of my total work time in the early 2000's. I then moved to high energy physics and tuning the laptop became a hinderance to work, not as a fun pastime so I finally had the institute fork over the money to buy an iBook just to see if the stories were true and after the first two weeks of feeling like my arm had been chopped off because I first of all didn't know how to tune things and possibly even couldn't I discovered that I was doing a lot more work and that in fact the things I was used to tune most operated quite satisfactorily already on the default settings. Some things blew me away utterly like the instant suspend and resume that actually worked (at the time I had been hacking for months on swsusp on linux kernels with about 80% probability of recovering work and 20% kernel panic) to make it also auto-detect lid closing and opening, but it was nowhere close in the speed. So ever since then I've lived the Apple life and to be fair I'd not say things cost that much more than they would have cost living on Linux and related hardware. Yes, Apple products tend to be a bit more expensive, but that's only if you compare to the lowest of offerings. To get the same build (and I don't mean GHz, GB only) you need to look at higher end models from the competitors. For me at least the weight, battery life, screen quality, large trackpad, strong rigid case make up far more on the choice of laptop than wether I get 2.1GHz or 2.5GHz CPU (RAM you can get plenty, disk you get plenty). And OS X is in my opinion far superior to any Linux flavor for laptop use. No matter that the best VNC client cost me a whopping $4.99, there were free alternatives, but this client is 10+ times faster, I've never seen anything even close to that on any platform, you're working over semi-reasonable network you don't feel any lag at all. So things are worth buying if they are good and I don't mind paying for things as long as it's reasonably priced. Major OS upgrades for $20 is cheap and doable, reasonable office packages for $79 is reasonable etc etc.

If you absolutely adhore paying people for their work, then of course the Apple way is not for you. If you don't earn enough that 2-3 usd / day is something you can spend on things that you like just so, then probably the economic model is a bit tough for you as well and I can fully understand wanting cheaper alternatives and maximally things for free. But if it's not and I suspect for most people spending below $50 a month possibly on things related to software and content isn't really much and the quality of Apple products usually means they work quite well for quite some time. There's a saying: "I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things". There's a reason things are cheap, shortcuts have been used, cheaper materials, less efficient design etc that you end up paying later or with your time. If that's not worth much to you, then it's ok, if it is and you'd rather be doing something else, then Apple's catering straight for that segment.

Seriously? I usually read in the evenings in bed and usually spend 1-2 hours, but at times if it's an interesting book / close to ending etc I read for 4-6 hours straight without noticing the time pass. In bed the best part is that you can turn the iBooks style to Night and you're reading white on black. This way the light emitted from the display is marginal yet provides a clear image to read and focus on in the dark. The added benefit is that I can prop the iPad against a pillow or use its smart cover as a stand and just read while on my side. I always hated that with books reading for hours your thumb would get cramped from keeping the pages apart and your hand tires. With the iPad I don't have either of the worries.

And the added benefit is that I can also download the newspapers (or well they auto-download in the night so I have the latest newspaper in the morning when I go to the toilet), check e-mail in the morning without getting out of bed or reading up on facebook/slashdot/whatnot without actually having to go anywhere close to my laptop. Only once I need to start doing real work do I move to the laptop for the larger screen and full keyboard as well as capacities that a full OS and hardware provide. Majority of the time I'm hanging around with the iPad though.

And if you're really against the 10" form factor (which I personally love as it's about the size of an A4 page so reasonably decent for PDF's), then the rumors are large that Apple's about to introduce iPad mini on 12th of September, which is just three weeks from now...

I live just a few km outside of the capital in a region that was built only ca 5 years ago and as it is the only missing cable connection is the landline (got gas, electricity and all other utilities). So my only options for network were limited when I moved here 2 years ago so I took WiMax connection that had been here by the previous owners giving me on average 1 Mbit/s down with max possible 6 Mbit/s. Having come from DSL lines and having 10G fiber in the office it was really bad to live on 1Mb.

Then this spring the biggest mobile provider claimed they have a semi decent 4G install base and I discovered my region's covered (benefit of being ~1km of the biggest highway and ~2 km from main airport) so I got the only router that has 4G from them and took the most expensive package (which supposedly has no speed caps so 100Mb down and 50 Mb up max as per 4G specs, and has unlimited data with fair use up to 30GB, but that they claimed they won't enforce unless the usage is bothering others in the region). Costs about 35 eur / month, but when I set it up with external antennas etc I did get about 40-50Mb/s on average. About a month later they came up with a huge campaign that for 3 months you get the service for 1 eur / month and loads of people signed up (including in my region) so now the speed varies between 8-40 Mb/s with average being 20-30Mb/s. So considering I moved up from 1Mb average (with 6 max) to 20-30Mb average (and 8 minimum) I'm hugely satisfied. And the cost of the previous WiMax solution was 27 eur / month so that was ridiculous. So far the mobile provider has kept their word of not throttling as last month I used 101GB and this month I think I've already used about the same amount due to Steam Summer Sale (and I've only installed a few of the games I bought...). I don't think I've had a single month of less than 30GB :) But if they do start throttling I do have the option to upgrade the service to truly unlimited for 100 eur / month, that however will be quite the consideration as 100 eur / month for connection is a lot...

Didn't I just recently hear about the idea to seed iron to fight global warming. Right, it was the Panchaea project in Deus Ex Human Revolution. Well I just hope it works out better than it did in the game though :P

I do :) And I'm only downloading a few, but for example Star Wars Force Unleashed I + II were total something around 36GB :) I've currently postponed those as I've already got a few installed that are in the next playthrough plan, but still completing a game in a few days or a week means I'd still be getting ~4-8 games a month downloaded and with average of ~5GB / game that's 20 - 40GB right there :) Throw in a mix like the SW FU and you're shooting up in the bandwidth use fast (I checked, this month I've already used 66GB so twice the reasonable use limit, no capping still...)

I'd not mind 500GB/month :D For me the fair use is 30GB/month, but so far they've not capped my speed even if I used 110GB... Could it be you meant 500MB/month :)

Well here in Estonia you get 4G with unlimited speed and no bandwidth caps for 100 eur / month. In this case they guarantee that no matter how many GB/TB you transfer they won't bug you or limit you. This is the extreme end of the spectrum. You can have (and I have) the 4G which is "unlimited" for 35 eur / month. There are no speed or bandwidth caps for the first 30GB. After that all bets are off, but there is no immediate slowdown. Last month I used 110 GB (watch a lot of Apple TV movies and downloaded a few Steam games, this month is gonna be a bitch with Steam summer sale though). Even on the last day of the month I was doing nice 30 Mbit/s download speeds (about average I can get at my location due to distance to cell tower) so no caps. When I chose the package I talked to them and they said the clause for reasonable use (i.e. up to 30 GB) is to make sure they have a handle if someone is abusing the network and it starts to impact others in the region. If you don't impact they let you hog as much as you can...