The changes that were made in the software kernel and objective-c are there for a good reason. Blocks, Grand Central Dispatch, LLVM, Clang - all highly non-trivial and important. You do not HAVE to use them if you don't want to. Anyways, the point is that you get amazing tools. Ever since Mac OS X became Unix, we knew we could write lasting software. Mac OS X is not going away anytime soon - hopefully.

Now, the OS upgrades were - are - much easier and safer than, say, your average Linux, where shit broke *all*l the time. The OS upgrade price was much smaller then Windows. All in all, with the top notch hardware, the OS patched up, the reasonably-priced and easy upgrades, Apple proved to be a nice investment in the long run, with good amortized cost.

Because you still got a nice Mac OS X workstation doesn't mean you don't buy new Apple hardware. At least, that's my experience, personal and social. This has to do with Apple aiming for consumers with higher income (meaning individuals and companies). The other hardware vendors have to scramble and figure out who their market is - and that's why they aren't really brands, or no can really figure out why a Dell notebook is better than the HP competitor (in fact, they're both unoriginal and probably one is just as bad as the other).

The fact that Apple kept your OS patched made you respect Apple, because it showed Apple respected and valued its customers. They were there for you in the long run. They didn't just make up shitty policies overnight, like Microsoft. Apple was hassle-free.

Now, with Apple leaving users out in the cold is really shooting itself in the foot. It's a fundamental shift in customers relation, and I predict Apple will pay dearly in the long run - this might be the turning point - maybe it's downhill for Apple, if the perception becomes one of a company that no longer cares about its customers.

possibly prevent people from moving back in to a small city for a while - all effects localized in a single country.

A lot of this water is escaping into the ocean, making this a global problem. At this point, we have the tragedy of the commons.

Right. Early Androids shipped with critical bugs, for instance, serious memory leaks.

This is a fine example of how retarded Google's strategy is.
I mean, does anyone even remember how Google Docs was supposed to be the Microsoft Office killer??? Nowadays, you'd best not lay all your chips on their shit. They might do some "Spring cleaning" or some shit, and your SOHO workflow goes BOOM!

What about XCode? It rocks. Its code analysis rocks. Fuck Java.

You gotta keep the global market in mind. Millions of semi-literate Johns, Huangs and Josés buying their first phone.
The clueless masses - yes, they're pretty real.

True, but that happens A YEAR AFTER you buy an Android phone.
Apple is durable. Hardware is better, to begin with.
Android is a retarded business proposition, when you think about. But retarded and cheap always win, generally speaking.

You mean, won't notice until they do notice, right?
Android has no updates for it.
The Google Play store will leave them dead in the water, sooner or later.
Google hasn't a clue about how to treat customers. Customers are just numbers they crunch on big data. Look how they simply pull out features people used everyday on their products (or how stagnant they are - or is there any other reason Evernote, Dropbox, etc were able to eat away at Google mindshare for niche products ?)
Fact is, Apple will give more return on your investment. That's why people remain loyal to that brand.
There's really only one brand name that you attach to Android (Samsung).
Android sells more because it's cheaper. It's the Windows 95 of mobile phones.

Google never had customer service for non-paying users. And they've been a privacy nightmare for as long as I remember. Do you think a company that hires so many PhDs hasn't thought through the implications of their decisions? The "don't be evil" ship sailed a long time ago.

You thought wrong. Linux was a free software project backed by IBM so Sun Microsystem and HP's Unix and every other proprietary Unix could be put out of business, because IBM sold Big Iron.

And now we're in a much better world because stuff that ran certified Unixen (such as radar and medical equipment) moved on to fucking Windows, because they couldn't trust the no-vendor-is-responsible business motto of the likes of Mr. Torvalds and Mr. Stallman.

Because if that situation, we began to see airports shutting down, because the air traffic optimization software went bezerk, banks and financial transactions that go sunny side up these days during marketing hours, medical emergency systems that hang, and so and so forth. And now, the world's biggest asshole, that Oracle CEO dick head owns Java. Whoopee!

Mass-market Ubuntu, based on Unity ?!

Unity was the single most retarded move in Free Software. People mistakingly complain about Dash, but Dash is the piss-poor implementation of the modeless interface invented by Humanized, which was a good thing they invented (all home Windows machines run Humanized's Enso). And Qt is making C++ viable again for fast development, with its C++11 support - and the KDE guys have stuck with Qt through and through - but they just thought it better to break shit up at Ubuntu and stick with Gnome. Sure, Gnome is nice to have, it's all about C but it's showing its age. Like so many free software products, it is yet another proof that good quality demands a full time staff, and there is none for Gnome.

However, Unity is the piss-poor implementation of the piss-poor Gnome 2, which was the piss-poor implementation of the Mac OS 8 Human Interface Guidelines.

So it's recursively bad. It's just an endless spiral of shit. Ubuntu developers really need to get their heads out of their asses and take a look at the hardware accelerated Windows 8 (I know the UI is seriously broken, but the visual rendering is stunning) or Mac OS X. That is what a mass-market has come to expect, not an orange dock bar with icons in low-res an primary colors Get f*ing real!!

Face it: Linux distros have failed. Everyone of them. Debian crumbled under its own weight (now, official purveyor of royal free software jelly for the Ubuntu Queen), Red Hat once was good, but now they sell per seat licenses and they've fed the deject (known as Fedora - or "bad smell") to the community, SuSE never really was, Mandriva is a stupid distro with a stupid name, Slackware died (it was a one-man show), the other small distros are just orbiting parasites and never get any traction.

The BSD distros are the complete opposite: resilient, tried & true, solid, a no holds bared, no bullshit truly free software, disciplined, community & business oriented, quietly toiling away and perfecting their solutions, and recently offering an edge over Linux, with many technically superior innovations that will never even be ported because of the GPL.

Suck it up, Linux fanboys.

Yeah, what about Altoids Linux?

Rather, what is astounding is the virginity!

Among people like me? Not Ubuntu. Not even Mint. Debian is getting closer.

1998 is calling...Please transfer your call with a hookflash.