Are you willing to apply that same methodology to other annoying things, such as bullhorns, sound camps, shirtcockers and DPW?

unless you're still harboring that false "nature/civilization" dichotomy, but even then - hello, town full of people, it ain't disconnected from civilization...

That dichotomy is exceptionally annoying. I previously sold camping goods at REI and would occasionally get the customer who would turn their nose up at "technology" (like water filters) because it got them "away from nature." Never mind the fact that they were wearing clothing made from synthetics and if they got giardiasis, they'd be using "modern antibiotics".

I've had the pleasure of going to Burning Man in 2003 and am returning this year. I, for one, rejoice at the ability to occasionally text message to find someone, affording a bit more spontaneity when meeting up with new and old friends.

We need to stop conferring all sorts of power to technology: attendees DO NOT have to use their phones if they don't want to, just as they have the choice to use or avoid mind-altering anything, generators, glowsticks, or fursuits. I agree that there's a level of mano a mano, intimate communication at the Burn that's really wonderful--and think that if things like cell phones will "ruin" the Burn, that sort of tells me that it was ruined to begin with.

If we cannot trust the ethos of the majority of Burner participants, we cannot trust the continued existence of the Burn.

Many CEOs of Fortune 100 or 500 companies are compensated heavily in stock options. Proponents of this theorize that this ties company performance more closely to CEO compensation.

I theorize that, structured wrong, this causes CEOs to engage in focusing on near-term benefit rather than long-term stability and sustainability.

I think both Warren Buffett and Peter Drucker (ostensibly, two luminaries in the business world) have both railed against excessive executive compensation.

Warren Buffett was even booted off of several executive comp committees a few years ago for having this nebulous value.

I'm going to replace a few words from the OP, using a little story from 1977:

Unfortunately IBM's power is in that everyone uses it, and that is what Big Blue uses to get new users too. Personal computers are a humble goal, but especially with centralized computing you are quite much locked in to a single computing architecture just because everyone else you know uses it, and they in turn use it because you use it too.

Interestingly creating personal computing means you have convince everyone to forget about IBM and move to this platform. Even if it would become successful, once these Two Steves have millions of end users, they most likely will change it the same way that IBM did. Remember that transistors also was a hobby project made by somebody.

I just want to see some form of proof that we need this law/rule/ban in any shape or form.

Before planes, let's start with a form of transportation that A) kills far more people than flying and B) has demonstrated clear and present dangers related to distration.

Please join me in banning ALL forms of distraction in your automobile, including talk radio, music, the bobble hula-girl you've got on your dash and, above all, naughty children.

KILL IT WITH FIRE!!1! :-)

Even if you give Apple credit for any of the above, how does one rule out the possibility that soon after another player wouldn't have stepped up to fill the vacuum with another tool or technology that would better suit us today in openness, quality or usability?

One cannot rule out that possibility, but you seem to imply that innovators don't deserve some modicum of respect.

I guess Newton wasn't all that cool since "someone else would have discovered gravity," and Einstein is a yawner because "the theory of General Relativity would have eventually been worked out."

I'll bite: I have owned precisely two Mac computers, both during the period between 1987 and 1993. And, the next time I've purchased an Apple product was a used iPhone from my friend about three months ago. I'm hardly what you'd call a loyal customer.

That said, I'm going to hazard a suspicion as to why we're crediting Apple for hard drives and use of USB: it'd be early adoption in the consumer market. Yes, hard drives have been around for a very very long time, but Apple likely deserves a lot of credit for packaging and integrating in a way that it had broad appeal.

Please keep in mind that this was in an era where some outfit named IBM questioned the need for a personal computer.

I only recently purchased an iPhone (for overseas travel)--and am completely sick and tired of the Apple bashing, primarily for reasons that it doesn't work "for me" and therefore must not be good for anyone else.

I'd also note that if it wasn't for Apple, there would be a lot less pressure on Motorola, Nokia and Samsung to produce phones with a better user experience.

Apple is not the end-all, be-all of technology--but I personally have much to be grateful for.

I didn't know that making $35K/year was license to lie. Which is what happened here.

You absolutely nailed it!

Reason: Exchangable batteries ;) No apple product will ever come anywhere close, because they are intentionally cripled.

This is like saying that an apple is inferior to an orange because... it's not an orange.

Personally, I like the iPad design: relatively small and thin, lightweight, and healthy runtime on the _included_ battery. The ThinkPad you mention is precisely none of these things.

I wish folks would stop making false comparisons and embrace the fact that "horses for courses" is a perfectly acceptable mode of decision making when it comes to technology.

I'm having a hard time believing this "Macs aren't built better" statement.

1) 40% of my friends who code (C, HTML, etc.) use Mac laptops. They are all power users, use CLI extensively for coding, and navigate Linux, MacOS, and Windows with ease. They will all also say that they chose Mac strictly for reasons of overall hardware quality, and use MacOS because it just works: very few driver issues, comes out of sleep quite reliably (a big sticking point with Windows), etc. There are times they simply don't want to meddle with their machine.

2) My friend who works for Intel indicated that the build quality of Mac laptops, overall, rivals that of corporate-class offerings--and is frequently cheaper. The Dell Latitude line is both durable (I use one) and pricey.

3) I've yet to see my family or friends get their consumer-grade PCs (Dell Inspiron, etc.) to last much beyond two years. This is frequently due to one of two things:
a) Windows has become so bloated that the performance is abysmal. And they don't have the means or ability to resolve this on their own.
b) The hardware is falling to pieces.
Most of these folks simply buy a new PC: they feel that spending money on a couple of hours of PC tech bench time isn't worth it when they can buy another laptop for $599.

Compare this to family and friends of similar (lacking) tech-savvy and their Macs: the OS does a good job updating itself with few problems, and the hardware holds up quite nicely.

My experience is hardly scientific, but anecdotally, I'm finding that others have similar experiences.

Who makes ExpressCards, anyway? What can you get in them? I remember talk of things like high-end video cards, capture cards, etc. but has any of it materialized/are they any good? And are you going to actually want one in a laptop?

I'm sure there are some perfectly valid niche uses, but I've always felt that PCMCIA and ExpressCard slots were concerning due to the robustness of the connector (number of insertions) and stress on the surrounding components and the card itself because you've got this big lever sticking out...