I disagreed about apple being jewelry alone. Microsoft made products that people grumblingly put up with - so they could get the job done and be more productive.

Apple made products that people finally liked to use, and could use it easily enough, and fairly intuitively. When you create a great user experience like this, especially with a very low learning curve, people will adopt and use it in extraordinary ways. Once they feel good about using your products, they will feel special, like it was their private special thing. They will then become your biggest marketing team.

If anything, the industrial design aspect of Apple's products and even high price were side effects. The first was a nice to have, the second not so nice to have. But it didn't change a damn thing. It was always about the core user experience.. And how even most of the third party apps gave you the same sense of familiarity and consistency.

In a cynical way, this is like marketing a drug. You give the first few doses for free and make people realize how easy it is to use the drug and how shiny their world becomes when they use it regularly. Then step back and enjoy the fun. Apple gave people a tiny little pill yto swallow and even gave them little travel packs. Microsoft made people goto the doctor and get the drug injected up their backsides.

"8GB was something acceptable back in 2008... but a laptop should be at 16, if not 32 gigs of RAM."

On what basis are you saying that? What are these deal-breaker applications that will need 32 or 16 gigs of RAM? Mind you, this post is about an ultra portable 13" laptop - I would assume that no one in their right mind would want to use this as a full blown workstation. I would imagine most users would use a laptop like this for standard stuff like browsing, Office apps, for presentations, etc.

Maybe a few would run Photoshop or Visual Studio or Eclipse. Is 8GB not enough for Photoshop or Eclipse anymore?? And I do feel that with HD 5500, 8GB RAM, and a speedy SSD, Photoshop would run just fine.

And back in 2008, Windows XP 64 bit had barely come out and almost no one was using 64 bit apps. From what I remember, almost everyone had between 2GB - 4GB RAM in standard laptop builds. Much less 8GB.

I'm honestly scratching my head to try and imagine why 32 GB or 16GB would be considered bare minimum for an ultraportable laptop.

Many posts suggest doing away with the cable by putting the motor on the elevator car; but this overlooks the fact that the elevator needs to be connected to a counterweight for efficiency reasons.

However, here's a thought: you put motors on the elevator *and* the counterweight. As the elevator goes up, the counterweight goes down and uses its motors as generators to partly power the elevator's motors. And vice versa.

Sure, you're not going to break even due to electrical losses; but it'll be a damn sight better than no counterweight.

And how do you handle the counterweight? What's that? You don't actually understand how an elevator works?

Especially while listening to urea heap.

That is great service support indeed. And I can see why you wouldn't let go of this model.

P.S. I wasn't aware of black macbooks (but I have never owned a mac) - and saw an opportunity to sneak in some stinkpad love.

On a side note, check out the new XPS 13. Those near zero bezels look mighty nice.

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-1...

Like the Sharp Aquos phone that is near bezel-less.

http://www.sharpusa.com/ForHom...

(Sorry for the OT - got carried away a bit)

"vintage Black MacBook" - Sorry, I am not a Mac person - what's a black Macbook? Or wait a minute... Did you stick an Apple logo on a Thinkpad? :-D

Bingo. I'd love for Anita to debate someone with even half a brain, and be exposed as merely a mouthpiece for a white, cishet man.

Not a hard pick for me, given that Sarkeesian is (i) a fraud who has no interest in gaming for its own sake, (ii) a serial plagiarist, and (iii) simply in it for the money.

Any study is valid if its peer reviewed. So first of all you need to apply this filter. You are not qualified to believe in a study. So people like you and me look for peer reviewed studies.

Secondly, you have to understand that a study is one study.
So if 20 sites quote Study X
and 2 sites quote study Y
It does not mean there are 2 studies Y and 20 studies X

Many times, these denier sites all quote one study, and in the cacophony confusion arises.

So whenever you find something, see if you can follow the breadcrumbs to the source paper.
Find if its peer reviewed.

Then store it.

Collect a few such papers. You will realize that the papers supporting human cause will vastly outnumber those opposing it.

Humans are 100% responsible is a claim which makes headlines.
But have you read actual research.

It says, there is enough evidence to prove that most of the warming can be linked to human activities.

Science looks at evidence, and then presents a hypothesis. This is how it has been in the scientific method. When an evidence is discounted science looks at new evidence.

Science is never always right. Scientists make mistakes. And that is why its science. For example, some hypothesis about climate change was proved wrong. Does it mean that entire climate change argument is wrong?
Scientists will update their models, gather more evidence and then present the findings again. Being wrong does not discredit science. It merely improves it.

The problem is, people view science as they have viewed faith. There is no room for error or mistakes. So any process which makes mistakes is ridiculed. IPCC has made mistakes, so have other climate scientists. Some evidence may not be relevant or nonferrous. But it does not matter. We just move on.

There are some things about climate we do not understand. That is also acceptable. Sure, faith based systems have all the answers, but that is not science. You first have to understand what is science, and once you do, you will figure it all out.

Do not fear science. Embibe it. Question. But not because somebody told you to, or some rich publication says so. Question on your own merit. If you do not believe something to be true, instead of ridiculing and pointing to some site on the internet which says its wrong, ask the question.

What site X says, is it true? If not, why? You will find answers to all of it if you start looking for it.

But if you let your faith cloud your judgement, you will never understand. If you want to understand, question. Now ridicule.

The Cosmos season one Episode 13 explains it quite a bit. And earth is getting warmer since the industrial revolution in the absence of other factors. Most of the debate comes from industries who stand to loose from climate based taxes.

Think of it as the lead debacle.

Perhaps what is "sensible" or not depends on usage patterns. It could very well be that Asians want a bigger phone because they use their device more and hence want something closer to a tablet. During train and public transit. As opposed to Americans who are mostly driving to work and are thus not using their phone as much every day.

+1

*That* is the real reason to have music in Flac. Please put aside the endless music format and abx testing debate where no one is going anywhere anytime soon (and throw Hi Res into the picture).

Buy if you want to buy a song or store it, you would obviously want a lossless format, and flac would be the obvious choice. You can always covert flac into a lossy compressed format and based on your storage constraint (in say your portable media device or phone), figure out how much audio quality you want to lose. But you cannot do it the other way around.

And if you dig deeper into the code and get down to the electrical level, you start hearing the sound of the universe.

Ohmmmm.