I know about this, and I use it, it's how I bring up /etc. Still, a royal pain in comparison to say, Windows 95 B.

The thing about these UNIX based system in the modern era - system requirements can actually go down between releases. Draw lines where they need to be, with real specs, not age. I'm running a five year old system at home more powerful than a lot of new stuff, it just takes a little more electricity to run that quad core 64bit Athlon 64 with 8 GB of RAM than if I were to build it today. Apples hardware in the Mac Pro line of the same era had the same type of power my home built system does. Age of hardware makes little to no sense, you're just a fanboy defending your religious icon.

Dare I say it - they could adopt something along the lines of the Windows Score Microsoft has been using. Run the "score card" app on your hardware before upgrading to see if upgrading is for you.

Otherwise regular USB would be "good enough" like it has been for the past decade.

I don't know how you can look at a Mini USB 3.0 and say that. It's nearly as wide as the old style Apple connector, no USB really did need a Thunderbolt or better treatment, and I hope they stick with it for a while.

I use Apple products, but I'm by no means a fanboy, as my signature suggest (fanboys should NEVER have mod-points). I support Apple products at work, use a 27" iMac at work (which I rather like, and I've put TotalTerminal and other utils on to make it more Linux-like and comfortable for me), and I've got a work iPad 2, all of which I like.

I'm actually a Linux/Android guy.

Why I like Apple better under cook:

Less lawsuits. They're slowly settling/arbitrating old ones and filing less new ones. I developed a deep hatred of Apple under Jobs due to his temper-tantrums and deep ingrained need to shit in everyone else's punch bowls.

I'm seeing less new intenentional handicaps of their own products, and some of the old ones are getting less rigid (iOS is becoming slightly less user-hostile).

They've finally declared hardware the source of their profits and allowed free upgrades to the OS. (I refuse to use the nomenclature of "Free Operating System" that's been used here on Slashdot too damned many time to describe Mavericks since it's still tied to a mandatory purchase to run it)

What Apple still needs to work on:

Drop all user hostility - make so people can release source code for iOS apps they write. Stop attempting to strong-arm exclusivity out of the iOS platform.

ADOPT FRIGGIN NORMAL CABLES FOR YOUR IOS DEVICES
USB-C connectors are on their way, go with those. All the advantages of your Lightning cables but not "just ours".

Give me an editable path bar I can enable (it can be off by default) like every other OS. As a tech moving around yoru file system is more of a pain than it's worth. Don't spout anything at me about using muCommander or something, I'm a tech, I support other peoples stuff and I don't want to install crap or run utilities that have to be imported somehow every time I sit at a different system.

Drop the artificial restrictions on OS updates "when it was manufactured" isn't a good yard-stick for install eligibility and everyone knows it. Those Mac Pros that are six months too old to run Mavericks are more than capable of doing so and everyone knows it, it just makes you look like a bunch of pricks by barring install.

IE hides a lot of its memory use in the operating system by being always on.

This isn't a tech report, it's political propaganda. There's plenty of awesome U.S. techs to do the jobs that are out of them, just as good as the imports, they just want U.S. wages.

and of course the browser will be

INTERNET EXPLORER

Off and on, right now I'm sort of stuck in ROM support hell, my phone isn't well supported by AOSP base, which everything seems to want to use these days (the ROMs work but the phone functionality sucks) so I have to run a dated Sense ROM to keep everything working right. I'm just in a holding pattern until I can get a new phone.

Intriguing. I really liked what I saw, it's one of those "out there" things that may be worth learning. I've always been tempted to buy a one-handed keyboard and other things along those lines, with the fear that much like my old ergo keyboards I learn them, love them, wear them out and not be able to replace them.

I like Swift Key, but it's not the answer to everything. For instance I couldn't even type in a user name in Plants Vs. Zombies while it was active, the built in email program on my phone is nearly impossible to use with Swift key - it moves the cursor in an unpredictable manner, and it still isn't a "real" keyboard. While I hope those software issues are alleviated for Swiftkey, there isn't a modern phone around that even compares to my more than 10 years ago Motorola T900 pager.

A case isn't always a good answer either, most of those use Bluetooth to communicate with a phone and I know people who've demonstrated hooking Wireshark up to Bluetooth and capturing every letter typed on a keyboard they weren't even paired with.

each of them over ten years old.

I'm not a Mini-van fan, but those things, even at 10+ years are nice on the inside and you can't kill them. They just keep going. Also, the years they were built they were more American than the Mustang of the same year model, actually passing it up in parts manufactured in the U.S./ Canada. I don't know if the whole "Sienna is more American than the Mustang" thing is still true or not, but a little over ten years ago it was.

I can't stand the whole "pay money to get to the next" level thing, it's like you're not really playing a game anymore. On the other hand I find the game DLC to be strangely inviting.

Yummy, golden egg laying goose with duck sauce!

I mostly see people mad that they aren't getting a financial cut and people mad because someone other than them is regulating speach on their page. It amazes me how many people want to regulate speach.

If it's nothing but a vandal wall people will ignore it. If it's something great people will use it. Low tollerance people will cry to regulate it, I'm a little tired of people crying until they get regulations on things they don't like. If someone wants to side Wiki let them, I don't care if they're huge right now or not, I found it to be quite ignorable, rarely did I find any comments worth viewing on it.

What I want to know is why it's fine for me to make my own, but it's not okay for Google, or in this case Firefox? It's not like it was on by default, you had to download it from Google Labs. I really don't care if it exist or not, I thought it was interesting, I installed it, but I wound up ignoring it like I do most bells and whistles.