Let the idiots leave. Users love free upgrades and buy lots more software (I do). That way you know the developer isn't going to pull a Microsoft on you where you keep paying just to make it work but it never does.

Lack of interest because Safari works just fine, follows open standards, and is updated regularly. So nobody really cares about other browsers. UI options can be offered by the many apps that use the built-in web kit for rendering.

It really comes down to the founders of the companies. Microsoft has taken on the personality of Bill Gates - lacks imagination, cares more about money than good products, etc. Apple has taken on the personality of Steve Jobs with a little bit of Woz thrown in - obsessive compulsive about solid products with good design, outwardly controlling but hacker friendly at heart. The reason Apple is kicking ass right now is because it does such a good job at constantly producing products that work well, look good, and don't change dramatically all the time. They may not have the highest specs at any given time but the user knows what to expect and that they can expect a pretty good device. When people say Apple is evil it just tells me they don't own any Apple products and know nothing of Apple's history. They're usually wannabe nerds that can barely use anything other than Windows and usually they think their awesome at Linux because they've managed to install the flavor of the month baby distro. They think hacking is taking a device that was expressly made for being hacked and following step by step directions. Probably they have absolutely no sense of taste either - they think their Dell Inspiron One is comparable to an iMac.

I still have my doubts about the claims that an iPhone costs $600 when a comparable iTouch costs $200.. for a 3G antennae and a better camera? And it seems I've read that the better camera doesn't cost very much more and should just be included in the iTouch too.. so how much does that 3G antennae cost?

As somebody that had an unlimited data plan for a couple years.. AT&T already has this down. My unlimited data plan on my iPad, with a solid 3G connection, struggled to pull down data fast enough to pull down a simple web page or email. So when are they going to refund money to people with unlimited plans that didn't get what they paid for?

All the real work takes place on my servers. I only have 12GB of RAM (of 16GB this machine takes) installed so that I don't have to clear my terminals buffer.. besides most my real interfacing takes place via my iPhone and iPad but I didn't think they counted as a PC.

But if it were a PC company they'd have real cops dressed in shiny neon colored sexy cop outfits spouting how their software will finally make your hardware happy. C'mon people, Apple can afford to hire real cops to rough people up. And they'll make sure they look damn good while they do it - not tacky like their PC knockoffs' copycat cops.

Mental retardation? Of course that is explained as they are using a full-size desktop computer like some sort of Walmart shopper. I have a usb dvd drive I use for those rare times I need one.

First Amazon replaced my local bookstores with selection. Amazingly I could actually buy the book I wanted when I wanted it. Then they were substantially cheaper. Then they could deliver within two days with free shipping. And Amazon can offer varied reviews by multiple customers and recommendations based on other customers. Of course iBooks has replaced Amazon for most fiction for me but Amazon is still my resource for non-fiction. More importantly Amazon has replaced Walmart as my goto source for just about everything else. Again because of selection, price, and the useful additional information they provide. Now what I need is a place that recycles delivery boxes.

Maybe he should have read this book.

Why would a vm for the project be annoying? What whole disk? They could look at the OS files installed I guess but there would be nothing belonging to any other project or user on there. If they change something they shouldn't you can roll it back. If you want to write data but not let them read it then write it to an external log server or a write-only disk. Complex security schemes are a lot more annoying than just properly dividing security between services.

I already spend more effort than I like ripping out useless security features. Every project has a virtual machine, or several, and they are isolated from each other. I don't need outdated security features that just get in the way. As it is I'd be more interested in a Linux distro that came with all that crap removed. It's been years since I used groups on a production server, I never found ACLs useful, I usually disable firewalls, filesystem permissions are a hassle far more often than they are useful, etc. Heck, the only time a real person logs into most of my systems is when something goes wrong with permissions or some other protection feature and causes a problem.

Make sure the virtualization servers are up to providing proper security between instances and from the network and then scrap all that stuff in the guest OS.

I used to use fanciful names but anymore I have way to many servers to do that with. So now we get VMHOSTn (VMHOST3, VMHOST55, etc), WEBn, ISCSIn, etc. And usually n represents the last octet of the primary IP address. 10.1.1.1 might be ISCSI1 while 10.4.5.6 might be WEB6.

It's not so much how you put the code together as understanding the way the different components work together. Scratch doesn't hide the details very much - it just provides a graphical representation. Any experienced programmer knows that it doesn't really matter if you use Python, Perl, Java, or C so much as knowing how algorithms work. All that other crud is dealing with your language's syntax and limitations and how the code will be executed.

I've previously made a tool similar to Scratch for writing shell scripts and it was a pretty interesting experiment although I eventually decided the mouse was a slow way to program. I've also done some domain specific languages for games and tools that used a lot of visual components and it can work very well for those.

Recently I've been experimenting with making a tool for programming in a multitouch environment which I think works much better. Right now I'm working on producing JavaScript but thats only because it's easy to use on both iOS and Android. All the normal language features such as defining functions and variables, control statements, etc are simple gestures and instead of naming things with a string the programmer can make a doodle (or type in a string). Existing code is visually expressed and can be edited by touching the area that needs editing. I think the concept is strong although obviously certain details will need tweaking.

Whereas the name iCloud was meant to sound like an Apple product? Anything named in that way is being named to make people connect it with Apple.

I think Apple should be more careful but this is obviously a case where both sides contributed to the problem.