Fair enough I suppose, but the reality is that you can break out of the walled garden if you ever feel like it, and it is fairly easy. I did and ended up going back (jailbreak and un-jailbreak). I still think that a MBP is the finest windows laptop money can buy if you are into the whole windows thing. Likewise, I don't hear people complain about the Kindle's lack of video or app support. The iPad is a device not dissimilar in purpose to the Kindle, it just does a lot more in a better way (opinion, I own both). If you buy into it as an overpowered media device rather than a limited computer you will be happier with it. It truly is far better than anything that claims to compete with it, and some things it doesn't try to compete with for some tasks (laptops).

Finally!!!! Someone makes an objective observation and posts it to an Apple post on /. Long live science.

I couldn't agree more. Add to that the belief that no one who really knows computers would ever buy one mentality and you really do have a bunch of third graders. The maturity level is astounding. I imagine that whatever cool factor anyone gets from a mac is offset by the people who continually tell them how stupid they are for having bought it.

Webkit on a mobile phone is what prompted me to buy my first smartphone, and I couldn't be happier that I did. Webkit is the rendering engine on the iphone. Almost every other smartphone has followed suit and is now using webkit. Tell me how this isn't innovation? Yes it is worth $700 and the data plan to go with it.

Having both a netbook and an iPad I can say that I have not turned my netbook back on since I got the ipad (and my laptop has spent a substantial amount of time turned off). It is the most natural media device ever built, substantially smaller than my netbook, with a better display and better battery life. It does what it is built for better than anything else on the market.

This is exactly what a normal person would do I would hope. Then again not everyone cares for anything more than themselves. Who knows, maybe the guy thought he would keep it until he realized it wouldn't restore in itunes.

Regardless of what people think off the top of their heads. When you find a phone in a bar, store etc. you ask if the place has a "lost and found" and turn it in. It's likely the owner will come back for it. You don't take it home and play with it. Also selling it to a website is not particularly ethical, knowing that it is a prototype. On Gizmodo's side, they didn't know that the phone was not stolen and took the seller at his word, then went ahead and instead of calling Apple to return what didn't belong to the original guy, or them, they took it apart and reported on it. It's always fun to read about these 'leaks,' but in this case there were clearly some unethical things done. This hurts everyone except Gizmodo and the seller. It was selfish on both Gizmodo and the sellers part to put the report and pictures online. I did go look at the pictures though, and now I feel badly for supporting Gizmodo by checking it out and adding to the page count.

This is what drove me out of Journalism classes. It was boring to write news, and even editorials without using adjectives. I do however have a great appreciation for those that actually do this work, it's just that no one does it well. When I see brief, informative articles that cite sources I always find it pretty refreshing. I agree that this is the way it needs to be done, but unfortunately it also drives away a lot of potential journalists. It seems that in the press this style is fading from popularity, which is too bad. Maybe an influx of journalists will fix the problem.

I've already put my order in for two if them. We need a test machine to deploy our upgrade to Snow Leopard Server (on an xserve), and this is the perfect candidate. I may also use them as hot swappable backup servers if they will boot the server images we have. In the past we have not done this due to expense. I had a PPC xserve die a few years ago due to a big surge at our data center and was able to recover using an old imac for a few weeks while we sorted out the mess. Transparent to our users except in performance, but mostly unnoticed. To have a hot swappable server that can be powered on with the touch of a button if something in your main server fails is awesome. Also this allows us to safely tweak our sites and services in a test environment that was cost prohibitive before. The ability to set up and deploy directory services, a web site, etc. for under 1k is pretty damn cool.

Actually there really is something to be said for this approach. When I had two servers fail in one night, they rocked. Also you will be surprised by how many "joe@apple.com" types will get back to you. Guys who have been there a few days...

Here is an excellent resource (at least last time I checked and it has been awhile, they used to be called macosxlabs.org). http://www.macenterprise.org/ As far as tools, the built in tools are very good. A third party tool that can be very useful for bootable drive images is Carbon Copy Cloner. When you say large, do you mean hundreds or thousands, or less? It will definitely change things for you. I think that you will be surprised by both the ease of the transition, and the things that should be easy that are not. Really I don't know how we can help you unless you have specific areas where you are interested in learning solutions (and I don't say that to be a jerk, I'll try to answer questions where I can). How many servers? Directory Server? File Sharing? Exchange Server/POP/IMAP? Calendaring? Centralized home directories? Budget per user? Of course there are cool things that cost money and are not really needed, and hard things that are cheap but work well once set up etc. I would help more, but I don't know where to start... take a look at the link above, and ask questions as you get a better idea of he scope

I find posts on using Solar power interesting. If only because I grew up about 21 miles from the nearest town and power lines were not available. It is amazing how people's lives adjust. There are a lot of ways to save energy that are not even thought of in a normal home. Solar water heaters (need to be drained in the winter), wood stoves etc. that are all just part of life in some parts of the country. We needed to use a generator in the winter months about twice a month to charge our battery back. Now most folks are using the grid as a battery bank and just selling power back to the utility when they have extra. I think the problem with this method is that people are not forced to cut back and don't realize how easy some cut backs can be. In any case it is interesting.