If by "web browser" you mean something that had trouble rendering basic pages and was generally painful to use, sure.

SD card slot? Oh noes. How's that fingerprint reader on your Android phone working? How's your software support? Technical spec does not define a product's value, it's what you can do with it and how much of a head fuck it is to live with.

I'd say it was actually Nokia that killed Nokia. There was nothing that stopped Nokia from putting out an Android phone. And Nokia's software was horrible.

And power users complained that Apple stuff doesn't meet their needs - yes, that's true. But Apple doesn't cater to the power user niche - they cater to the common user whose needs are fairly simple.

This often comes up, but many of the power users I know (engineers, including network engineers, etc.) use Macs.

This statement is a fallacy propagated by those who haven't spent any significant time with OS X I suspect. OS X looks shiny on the surface, but is extremely powerful underneath if you care to spend a few days exploring it. It marries unix with a friendly UI and some pretty awesome, easy to use automation capabilities (Automator, Applescript). Yes, other platforms have automation tools as well, but they're nowhere near as quick and easy to make use of.

Selling a tablet was an innovation. If you recall when the iPad was first announced, many, many people thought it was pointless, it would never sell, there was no market (possibly because people had tried to sell tablets before and failed).

Apple were first to make a tablet experience that didn't suck.

More to the point, what has anyone else done? It's all well and good to bitch about apple failing to innovate, but other than Google Glass, there's basically nothing else out there from anyone else, either.

When people look at hardware specs and raw capabilities, they're completely missing the point of the Apple products. I think if I could sum up the difference in one word, that would be "polish".

Exactly. Hardware spec sheet does nothing for how the device feels in your hand, what the UI is like, etc. It's hard for people who haven't spent a lot of time with Apple hardware/software to understand as sometimes it takes a while to "get". But my experience since I switched to OS X for example in 2007 is that the more time I spend with the product the more little things I find that make me think "oh, that's cool" - things that let me short cut tasks or get things done more quickly (e.g., folder actions - how simple they are to create and use.),

As opposed to other platforms where the more time I spend with them the more annoyances I discover.

Those sort of things are hard to quantify - because each individual thing may seem so trivial and insignificant. But they all add up.

Since the departure of Steve Jobs, Apple Inc hasn't come up with any new stuff that make sense - all it got is iteration of the same-old-shit, iPad and iPhone, that's all

I think you underestimate the significance of ApplePay and the iWatch.

TouchID on the iPhone is the first fingerprint reader I've used that is actually more convenient than just typing the pin/password. The architecture of ApplePay looks to be secure. They look to have most of the big banks on board with it.

The iWatch, I think will be a hit. Because they've actually thought about the functionality of it (no cameras for example - you already have that on your smartphone), including making pretty fashionable versions of it (because that is part of why people wear a watch). Only nerds want to wear something like a Galaxy Gear S. Other people car about style.

I had a number of those smartphones before the iPhone. They were shit. Doing anything was an exercise in frustration. The browser was nowhere near desktop standard, for example.

The OP (being me) is misunderstood. I never said anything about moving offshore permanently, I was referring to the practice of taxing AU residents who work FIFO in another country, get paid (and taxed in that country) in non-AU dollars and then taxed again by Australia.

Such as FIFO workers who work offshore but are based in Australia. I never said anything about residency.

Or permanent FIFO work when you are living in Austraila and working for an Australian company offshore, but getting paid in non-AUD currency.

Australia also holds that view on personal income for Australian citizens on money earned abroad. I think the key with this proposal (vs. others which are just a pure money grab or in the Australian income tax case, double dipping) is the credit for taxes paid abroad. Presumably, if the company was already taxed at a higher rate, they would be refunded all the tax they paid to the USA. I think it's a good compromise - the company should have to pay taxes somewhere, and this will ensure that they do.

And buses don't generally run 24/7. What's your point?

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