Say what you will about the position Apple is currently in, but they have been screwed over many times by other companies (Microsoft with Office, Adobe with Premiere, IBM with PowerPC @ 3ghz), and they figured that it was critical to their success that they take control of their own destiny.
You could argue that they are currently also being screwed over by Intel, who can't offer an i5 or i7 with decent graphics, hence the ridiculous shenanigans that Apple are doing with graphics processor switching in MacBook Pros, and the lack of i5 or i7 in the latest Mac Mini.
And there you go, proving my point.
According to you, I must be an Apple fanboy, and a "dishonest prick" simply because you don't accept a point of view that I have expressed.
Therefore pretty much proving yourself not to be such a "reasonable" person as you would probably wish to be.
I agree that if you buy an iPod or an iPhone you are likely subject to lock-in. You, as a clearly well-informed person, do not want to get locked in. But you DO want the lovely shinyness, dont you? Otherwise why do you get so angry and start calling people pricks? - I think you protest too much!
Which part is wrong?
Your old P4 is a minimum 3 - 4 times slower at raw CPU tasks than the Athlon X2 (http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448/13). The story about your 512Mb XP machine running faster than the Athlon X2 3Gb machine simply does not ring true. Perhaps you were only playing solitaire on it? No-one is denying that Puppy Linux is fast, or small, or that it fits in memory. Try running Open Office on it with only 30Mb of Ram and then tell me that it is fast.
Maybe the part about HDD caching slowing things down?
YES the part about HDD cacheing slowing things down. HDD cacheing speed things up! Memory Swapping slows things down - which is simply a question of how big your application + operating system's "working set" of memory is (i.e. the memory that simply has to be held in Ram because it is being actively read and written). 3Gb with Windows 7 is plenty for "normal" apps, and it won't be any slower than your 512Mb XP machine running the SAME applications - in fact it'll be a load faster because it won't have to swap as much and the disk is likely faster.
There is no correct answer. The original post I was replying to stated that there was no definition of a netbook which could include an iPad. I merely gave a definition which I think fits. You don't like it? then fine. I don't see anywhere in your ranty hissyness any coherent statement of what a netbook is vs a phone or a desktop PC.
At least I have some logic. You have none apart from the fact that you simply *know* that "Mobile Phones are not netbooks" and then you're off on one that now it's a "Tablet"?
It's not a tablet. I can't swallow it.
So all semi-modern mobile phones are netbooks?
Yes, they achieve these functions. But they are not great for these functions primarily because the screen size is too small, not because they physically lack the functionality. Which brings us back to the iPad as a pretty good merger of the two.
The iPad is not a netbook by ANY definition of netbook. Whether the iPad is easy to use is a matter of perspective.
I define a netbook as an easily carried computing device that I can use to do web browsing and email.
By that definition, the iPad looks like a pretty good Netbook to me.
... The iPhone delivered more functionality than the other phone manufacturers were willing to dole out to us (secretly because phone companies hate their customers).
Except that the iPhone delivered significantly LESS functionality than other phone manufacturers were giving us, and was significantly behind the times (like 4-5 years) compared to actual features in things like Symbian and Windows Mobile. The thing it did was take what functionality they had, and make it really easily accessible - so much so that people like you, apparently, think that it had more functionality than it's contemporaries. That's what puts the iPad in competition with netbooks - it's a netbook that is easy to use, which is where it will find its market.
I don't see a market for this thing and it leaves me puzzled. My question is this: does anyone there actually own something that could be seen as a precursor to this machine?
Fundamentally, I believe that the iPad is positioned to compete with netbooks, with a side-order of e-book reader. The netbook market is well established, and is currently in a cycle of increasing features, speed etc. because actual netbooks are slow and have tiny unusable screens and tiny unusable keyboards. The e-book reader market is small, but is widely believed to be "taking off" with things like the Kindle. I don't think that the iPad is necessarily the ideal platform for a dedicated slashdotter, but it will be: a) Incredibly easy to use. There were *plenty* of smartphones avaialable before the iPhone, but until the iPhone, nobody used any of the features. b) Not Nerdy. There is a larger potential market for non-nerds than there is for nerds (=slashdotters). This market does not care whether they are "locked in" "locked out" or whatever, they just think it's shiny and cool. c) O/S improvements will continue. The original iPhone didn't support 3rd-party installed apps, tethering, or even cut & paste. These were added fairly swiftly and I see this happening with time on the iPad to support things like external cameras, some kind of multitasking etc. Everyone seems to keep going on and on about the lack of "proper" multitasking, but why, really? what you really need is message push so that you can be alerted to switch apps when something happens - e.g. a twitter message.
* Why would they bother to revive us? Again, I covered this in the FAQ. The PCT is under contractual obligation,
I'm struggling to contain a snigger here. How many contractual obligations have been broken during the recent financial crisis? quite a few I'd wager.
If you prefer to disregard basic human empathy entirely, and are looking for a completely economic/rational reason, as technology continues to improve and spread eventually the cost of reviving patients will be less than the cost of maintaining their stasis.
Why should the technology of reviving you improve faster than (or ever become cheaper than) the cryo-sustain technology? And in any case, neither will ever be cheaper than simply turning you off.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce