1. On what basis do you say that they suddenly do not have an innovative product pipeline? All of their non-Jobs creative executives are still there (except their retail chief, but he was building Apple Stores not developing products).

2. How are they not acting like a "big boy" company?

1. You are forgetting that Gross Margin != Profit. Given that Apple's profit margin is usually about 40%, the costs for everything besides manufacturing costs (such as salaries for Apple's 60,000+ US employees) would be roughly 15%, so using the figure above, an iPad would actually cost roughly $668 (618 + 50), leaving an 8.5% profit margin, not 15%.

2. Apple hires plenty of US workers who are paid well.

3. Apple used to manufacture in the US, most recently iMacs, and couldn't compete. NeXT also manufactured in the US, and nobody wanted to pay the price premium.

The article sloppily refers to the iBook Store as 'iBooks', so what that sentence is actually saying is: books that are published in the iBook Store must be exclusive to the iBook Store. Which has nothing to do with what you can do with books you write using the iBooks Author software (it is your work, of course you can do whatever you want with it, the same as you can a Word document).

I've read the breakdowns, but I don't buy it. For example, I once ended up with the bangladeshi copy of a $150 physics textbook for $50. It was paperback, printed on newsprint (which is actually less glossy and therefore easier to read under bright lights), black-and-white, and page-for-page identical with the US edition (and from the same company as the original textbook, so not a pirated copy).

I'm sure many students in the US would gladly opt for a much cheaper "economy" edition if it were offered instead of the delux quality hardback, multi-color, super-glossy textbooks that we get to choose from. (Sure, some subjects benefit from color, but for most, especially math and programming, it is an unnecessary luxury. )

Even if no outright price gouging exists, it is much more lucrative to sell luxury textbooks than bare-bones ones (a fixed percentage of $150 is more than the same percentage of $50): this decision may be good for publishers, but it is bad for students.

That's like saying driving in the dark is hard to do without using your car's headlights. Use a debugger to figure things out.

Most of america is also car-illiterate, financially-illiterate, woodworking-illiterate, sewing-illiterate, hunting-illiterate, gardening-illiterate and cooking-illiterate.

I don't think we should ever celebrate ignorance, but there is a big difference between this and acknowledging that people only have so much time/energy/capacity to learn about how the world works and would rather spend their time living their lives.

Basic gardening is also super-easy and is beneficial both financially and health-wise, but most people don't bother with it, the same way most people don't bother spending time understanding their computer.

As we look at how to improve our society, I think concerns about cooking/food-illiteracy and financial-illiteracy are far more pressing than bemoaning that people don't bother to learn how to navigate a directory structure. It is better to discuss making "open" computing simple, easy and relevant rather than berating people for wanting to get on with their lives.

Speculative: They *only* released it because they had to.
Fact: They had to release it.

Fact: Apple has benefited greatly by the proliferation of WebKit. No longer is the Mac a second-class citizen of the internet due to not having IE6.

Speculation: I don't think it is unreasonable to believe that they chose to start with an open-source project partly because it saved development time and also partly because using a widely-adopted engine as a basis for the browser is good for Mac users, which is a goal furthered by releasing the engine as open-source. I think if Konqueror didn't exist, or wasn't used as the basis of the project, Apple may have (I'd say 50/50 chance) still released WebKit as open-source. (It is also quite reasonable to argue they didn't care about the open-source part and just wanted to ship quickly - unless the people who made those decisions state them publicly, it is all speculation).

In most industries the profit margins are pretty similar across businesses that market to the same niche. This is because of competition - if you price your product at a 60% markup and somebody else is happy to sell a similar product for a 30% markup, you aren't going to do well for very long.

So while you are technically correct, usually a company's profit margin stays fixed while prices and costs of doing business fluctuate. Businesses do sometimes bite the bullet during temporary spikes in costs, but the costs of doing business can only increase so much before a price increase is necessary for doing business.

They could have developed their own engine instead. You are working hard to split hairs, and basing it entirely on speculation.

Dude, all federal agencies are run by the President (aka, Executive Branch) as it is that branch's job to execute (carry out) the laws that Congress passes. Federal agencies can make rules only because congress allows them to for the sake of expediency. Congress can always override rules a federal agency comes up with.

Why should the taxpayer pay? Because taxpayers benefit - a hurricane that destroys an unprepared business in Florida is one that reduces orders from its supplier in Georgia and increases unemployment, reducing demand for goods and services from the rest of the country.

Why do we let tiny Caribbean countries use data we are already collecting for ourselves? Because we are far richer than they are and it would be cruel to not share it with them just because they are poor. (The discussion would be different if this were something that say, Canada or Europe would benefit from, that can full well afford to split costs or do it themselves.)

We can afford the weather service as it takes up less than a fraction of a percent of our total budget. Knowing when hurricanes are coming saves thousands of lives a year (which is financially worth doing even without looking at the moral/ethical side of things.)

I agree, it is much too soon to be drawing conclusions. I hadn't thought much about the slow-replacement scenario as an alternative, but that also seems very plausible. Is the key difference if somebody has a PC or not, or is it which they use more? If somebody keeps their old PC around for a few years after they stop using it day-to-day in preference for a tablet, are they slow-replacers until they sell the old PC? Or do they become post-pc once they start using the tablet more often than the PC?

Both scenarios will likely happen, but which becomes more common (if either does) is very much in the air, and will be for the next few years.

Looking at how the "post-floppy disk" era played out, Steve Jobs killed floppy disks in iMacs in 1999, but it wasn't really until a few years later that floppies really started to fall out of favor and iirc, Dell was shipping floppy drives in desktops well into the late 00's. I wouldn't expect a Post-PC shift to take place any faster than that.

Post-PC doesn't mean there will be no more PC's, it just means that consumers are going to shift their primary usage to devices like tablets & smartphones, and many won't bother to even own a PC. It does not mean that PC's will go away nor does it mean that smartphones will become the dominant development stack.

The overall PC market in 2011 has been shrinking, while tablet and smartphone sales are growing rapidly. This trend will have to last longer than a year to be strong evidence of anything, but it does hint that the Post-PC notion might not just be "marketing hype".

For people who do not understand their PCs (most consumers), the simplicity of a tablet is very attractive. After all, functionality that you are afraid to use or avoid because it is too complicated might as well not exist. (And no, all of these people who haven't figured out a PC in the last 20 years are not going to en-masse decide figure it all out.) Anyone who has built their own PC, uses 2+ monitors, professionally requires lots of computing power or is a gamer is not going to give up their PC in a Post-PC world. (So NewEgg will be just fine, as these are their primary customers)

Nobody is arguing that professionals will give up their workstations, or even that that would make any sense. You need a PC to write iOS applications, and I would be very surprised if that changed anytime soon.

I don't understand why some people have such an issue with this. Your legal name should be in sync with the name you want to use. Period.

If you do legally change your name to be the one you want, then faceless, unthinking bureaucracies will have to use it.

But if you insist on using a name that is not your legal name, then faceless, unthinking bureaucracies will give you a hard time and make you use a name you don't like. (Or in Google's case, ban you from using any Google product or service)