I see this a lot among nerds trying to think too hard - they conflate theory with practice.

If surveillance solves problems, then that's it. You don't need to worry about what "might" happen.

Nerds need to figure out that life isn't based on theory. This is why they think the NSA is a bad thing, when most REAL people think they're fine and performing a public service.

The nerds need to go out in the real world more to discover how society behaves, instead of hanging out behind their computers conjecturing on how society is.

Apple prides itself on producing fewer parts and models. They avoid multiple variations of anything.

This supply chain philosophy goes all the way back to their founding and Steve Jobs, and is partly why they ARE successful. Consider how much Steve pared down the Mac line when he returned to Apple.

The fewer "options" you offer to the customer, the easier it is for them to make a purchase decision to buy. Adding more options just gives a customer more reason to delay their purchase decision.

The iPad isn't used for number-crunching.

I think they're moving towards the iPad as a content-creation platform, which needs CPU power.

There are a lot of music production software, photo editors, video editors (see the iPad keynote), and even 3-D modeling tools coming out for the iPad now. The significant difference between the iPad and a laptop would be the touch interface. That touch interface has its own set of advantages useful for higher-end tools that may make them more efficient than the mouse and keyboard UI design. Touch interfaces may not work for word-processing, text-file editing, or spreadsheets, but it's great for music/photo/video editing. (and you can always add a keyboard to an iPad anyways)

At this point the iPad has gone way beyond the content-consumption use model. Apple is building the high-end tablet, clearing the way for the rest of the pro content-creation tools to arrive.

It wouldn't surprise me to see an iPad pro device with a larger 12" display coming soon for that purpose. Maybe Final Cut Pro or AutoCad eventually on the iPad.

No. MacOS is still very much a second rate platform for "buying things". All of the hype didn't change the fact that MacOS is still a marginalized minority platform.

Have you visited a college campus recently?

Everybody uses Macs.

Nobody buys PCs anymore. They're relegated to third-world countries without money and businesses looking to make sure nobody steals their PCs because nobody wants a PC anymore.

At this point the PC industry has no reason to exist, since Apple won the industry. There is no advantage of a PC over a Mac.

And of course, the WORST are Linux. If you want Unix, get a REAL Unix machine via a Mac. Don't try to hack together a fake Unix system with Linux. There's no point in using Linux at all. Linux is worst of all worlds.

Additionally: People want things.

But what do those people offer in return?

Adults should never ask for "pretty windows with 3D icons".

I have never wanted a touch-screen hybrid Mac.

Ever.

Apple sells very specific appliances that are best absolute at what they do. They don't need to sell a toaster-refrigerator. You're better off buying a toaster and a refrigerator separately.

Apple could have made one of those horrible hybrid devices in the last 7 years since they introduced the iPhone. The fact that they had absolutely no desire to do so should tell you everything you need to know about what they think of those types of devices.

The failure of Windows 8 is vindication of that strategy. Apple won.

If you don't want hackers reading your email, you shouldn't use email!

Your email is on the cloud, and any hacker can access it! You only have yourself to blame if you use email!

Remember, what matters is that you feel superior to someone else.

Jobs created the modern personal computer and the modern smartphone. Both of these changed the world.

(and, no, no one else created the modern personal computer.. before Apple, computers were nerdy industrial appliances, ESPECIALLY the Xerox machines. And please don't make the nerd mistake of conflating nerd culture with society in general)

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has yet to create something innovate.

Electric cars? lol, they were around 100+ years ago.

Space-X? You mean like all the rocket companies before his, and in particular, the government funded rocket companies like his?

Solar city? Has that made any useful impact?

Really kids, Elon Musk is a common industrialist. Everything he does is completely expected and completely boring. There is absolutely nothing surprising or risky in what Musk does. It's very straightforward, boring, and clearly obvious nerd-bait - Rockets! electric cars! Solar panels! what common nerd wouldn't go apeshit for that? Nothing he does is actually surprising. He works hard and invests in safe businesses, but guys like Jobs actually changed the world.

Rockets, electric cars, and solar panels are some of the most boring ideas you can think of today. They were done dozens of years ago. Today, they're just sheer boredom, only appealing to geeks with no sense of art or creativitiy. How much of a fucking nerd do you have to be to consider rocketry or electric cars to be interesting still?

How about coming up with something fucking new and interesting instead?

So, you can never compare anything Musk does with something like the iPhone, a complete game changer for society. Just look at its introductory keynote, and you'll see about 100 different ideas that the audience were completely surprised at, like momentum scroll and pinch-to-zoom. Do you even remember smartphones before that? they were garbage.

I'm mostly amused by the fact all you narcissistic libertarian nerds just hate the fact that a guy like him outwitted you at innovation. You dorks totally thought boring crap like electric cars and rockets matter, when the things that ACTUALLY matter are 'overlapping windows', 'pinch-to-zoom', and 'momentum scroll'.

It's as if you had NO idea what innovation actually means.

Hint: innovation isn't something you expect or predict.

Did you predict electric cars? If you did, that means it's not innovative.

That's only for published scientific research in certain peer-reviewed psychological journals - not even all journals.

And you don't need informed consent for marketing purposes at all. I can decide to experiment on anyone if I wish for my own amusement - I'll just walk around with a big red poster board and write down if it causes weird stares. That's for my own personal amusement.

But the real issue is people do not have the right to their own user experience in someone else's products.

You use Facebook? Great.. Facebook gets to control your experience with them, not you. That could mean they could change their website's colors from a calming blue to an angrier red. It's their product.

Life isn't about doing what you want... it's about doing what other people tell you to do.

The world doesn't care about your individual freedom.. it only cares about what you can offer it.

We big-government socialists knew that, not sure why you libertarians didn't?

These days hipsters are all about their flip-phones.

Since when does Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu/ESPN/HBOGo allow you to store your videos locally?

Which is why less chips the better. No need to add a couple more chips in the stack always drawing some current if you don't need it.

And for phones, power reduction is the most important goal.

Additionally, who uses more than a few apps anyways? Most people just stick with their core group of apps they regularly use.

And, it's only 64 GB - 64 GB isn't 100 TB. 100TB would be a completely different use model from 16GB or 64 GB.

For example, movies are always streamed now - you don't store your Netflix movies locally. So you don't need a huge data library.

"Hey guys I'm too lazy to write code that's optimized for each platform! I know.. I'll make it crap on ALL platforms!"

You pussies need to start learning to write software for each and every platform. That's always better in the end.

No pain no gain, you pussy.