Jobs left Apple in May 1985. System 7 was released on May 13, 1991. Unless someone wrote down his ideas and preserved them on the infamous "colored note cards" he had zero influence over System 7.

System 7 was 32-bit clean and multitasking on full-time. But it wasn't popular because formerly "high end" 2MB Macs with 20MB hard drives were now the minimum requirements and seemed slow compared to System 6.

Steve Job's only influence so soon after his return on Mac OS 7.7 was to rename to Mac OS 8 and kill clone support. It was a nice evolution of classic Mac OS 7 so people liked it, but rename it Mac OS 8 and viola, no more contractual obligation to the clone makers. A dick move indeed, but irrelevant to the quality of the software itself.

Perhaps you mean the buggy, unstable, defunct System 8 code named Copland which Apple started in March 1994? It was the failed overhaul of System 7 software with a nanokernel, preemptive multitasking, new Finder, and so on. Apple bought NeXT (and brought Steve Jobs back) precisely because they couldn't get it perfected and stable. If anything that sort of supports Steve's philosophy "Real artists ship".

Whether Jobs has evolved into vision-driven designer or whether he's still a bullying brat is irrelevant. These three software releases aren't really examples of anything he had significant influence over.

Linux has been a great win for what people use it for. Developing it to fit the needs of non-developers is a crap shoot; developers aren't casual users. Here are some things I've thought were missing.

Quicken isn't proper double entry book keeping, but it's ease of use wins non-accountants over. It's hard to get that balance right though; even Intuit had to buy Mint when it's attempt to jump start it's Mac version failed to deliver. Other Linux tools have felt like a thin veneer over double entry hell to me. Trust such tools with my financial life? No.

An automated software updater? Cute names probably works against keeping ignorant users up to date. "I know it's been years, but I won't trade in my Karmic Koala for a Natty Narwhal!" Software updates are critical for stability and security, but the Linux update tools I've seen either don't cover enough or they are way too difficult for a casual user to operate. Demanding re-installation basically means sending them back to Windows.

How about training software instead of documentation? Despite the web's illusion otherwise, Mac and Windows users are not very advanced. It's one thing to offer a simple unified interface, but software to train the ignorant bosses of the world how to send email, backup, and print? Of the few such Linux attempts I've seen, some fail by mixing interfaces. But all have failed by going to the command line at some point. Even though they say "just type this, you don't have to understand it", the user's whole experience rides on them NOT making a typo. Way too fragile.

Linux is unparalleled in meeting the needs of it's developers, but without people making apps for their ignorant bosses, middle school kids, and reluctant grandparents, it's audience with (perhaps rightfully) stay self-serving.

I see it similar to the Etude music player on the iPhone. It's a MIDI player that highlights the notes on the sheet music and on a simulation of a piano keyboard as the music is being played.

The Cat in the Hat eBook has several modes, one of which highlights the text as a voice reads the words. Another of which lets the kid touch something in the drawing, says the word and highlights it in the text (if it's in the passage on that page).

Neither replaces an audio performance (like an iTunes song or an audio book), and neither of which replace the physical static medium (like a piece of sheet music or a book), but both make a nice interactive presentation to help the viewer's brain make the connection of these very different sensations.

The iPhone OS is pretty new so it's hard to know what will be found, if investigated. But if based on recent legal precedents, change won't come from US legal action.

At the end of 2008, Apple's Macintosh "walled garden" practices were brought before Judge William Alsup in the Apple vs Psystar case. Psystar filed counterclaims insisting that Apple's EULA was invalid because it was "tying" Mac OS X to Apple hardware. They were basically laughed out of court.

You can read Groklaw's analysis of that ruling, but my armchair lawyering just can't see too much difference between the OS X "walled garden" and the iPhone OS "walled garden" legally.

sopssa wrote: "Open Source: Nobody restricts where you can install the application, and you get the source code too -- the best situation."

No, open source is about "source" code, not the applications or products you build with it. It doesn't guarantee you'll be able to run the compiled products on a platform, since that would also promise open source programmers will fix all the bugs that stop you from running their code on a platform. You've got the source, but that's only half the battle.

sopssa continued: "Proprierary software: You dont get the source code, but nobody is restricting where or if you can install it, as long as its freeware or you have paid for it."

First, proprietary software is not code. Licensing proprietary code or software often demands where you can deploy it in the license, but without that license the law says "nowhere". Heck, even some open source code such as GCC places demands on how the licensed code is deployed; you don't agree with the terms of the license and you again have no freedom to deploy it.

sopossa concludes: "Apple: Not only will you not get the source code and in most cases you have to pay for it, Apple is in total control what applications the user is allowed to install. They dont even give you the option to decide yourself."

Again, this conflates source and product, but I get the sense that sopssa's real complaint is about the locked down practices of saying what you can run on your Apple products. Even then you do have options; if it's a personal itch you need to scratch you can jailbreak or become a developer and deploy to a small handful of iProducts. But if you want to make "the next big thing" available to all platform users Apple does demand to play by our rules or go to a different playground.

When viewed as a fledgling platform that's still struggling with performance and security, that's not an unreasonable demand. When viewed as a multi-billion dollar, uber-popular computing platform, it is downright offensive. I vacillate between these perspectives regularly, but fortunately Apple's products are the only computing product around.

If Adobe becomes wildly successful on Android, Apple might change their mind about adoption. But Apple has made it clear they aren't going to be the pioneer with Flash on a mobile platform.

Not saying this is good or bad, unlike the iPad, It looks like two separate computers. The touch screen looks like the weakest part of the implementation, but I like this idea for a smart tablet dock. Your dock has the facility to backup your tablet's data; that seems much simpler than syncing through iTunes.

But in the video the netbook / keyboard base still maintains power when the screen is undocked; I'd think it'd quickly go to sleep instead.

How the base will react if someone else docks their tablet into the wrong base. Will it die? Will it enter a locked security state? Will it switch over to host the new tablet's data without problem?

The quick reloading of the web page is neat, but it is not the same page with local mods. The Flash banner ad at the top of the page doesn't load. And if you were on Slashdot entering your comment when you undocked, you'd lose all the words in your well-constr

The larger bookstore chains in the US all have floor space dedicated to eBook readers. Barnes & Noble (and subsidiaries like WaldenBooks) are all pushing the B&N branded "Nook". Competitors like Borders show off the Sony eReaders and their kin. They typically have a functional unit tethered to a display stand that's loaded with eBooks. Some smaller stores have non-functional display units. And some just have paper flyers.

Though eBook readers are more common to see in airports rather than coffee shops, the segment of the American public that visits bookstores is aware of what they are and what the current versions have to offer. Certainly over Christmas 2009 these things were promoted well beyond stores' capability to deliver them, but whether that was due to low supplies or high demand isn't clear. They did appear to outstrip sales expectations over Christmas.

I'm a long time Mac user. Firefox developers are asking the wrong question of Mac users by focusing this discussion on continued support; of course, everyone wants their platform supported as long as possible.

But if you ask about whether Firefox should feel more like a "native" Mac app, you'd get a lot of Mac faithful saying "ditch Tiger if that's standing in the way". For example, ATSUI is the legacy text engine from the days of OpenDoc and System 7.5; apps that still use it under Mac OS X draw fire from Mac users because it's not integrated as well as CoreText or the Cocoa Text Engine. They don't make this text engine distinction directly, but it's clear they don't consider ATSUI to be Mac-like anymore with the "bugs" they file and complaints they have about lack of integration e.g. "Why doesn't the command-control-d shortcut to look up something in the dictionary work?"

Based on the goals of the Firefox roadmap, 4.0 looks like a "must-reluctantly-kill-Tiger" release just based on its lofty memory isolation goals; that's a feature you do not want to compromise the quality of.

Keep the bug fixes and security updates of the 3.x Firefox platform able to work with Tiger. This helps Mac users. This helps support people. This helps propagate a good standards compliant browser to as many people with legacy hardware as possible. But a major release number like 4.0 is a good end-user aware point for removing significant backwards compatibility.

Scotty, what's going on with the viewscreen?

It's breaking up Cap'n.

Do what you can to hold it together, Mr. Scott! Bones, give him a hand.

Damn it Jim, I'm a Doctor, not an avid media composer!

Spock, what can we do?

We can try routing transporters through the ship's phasers while accelerating to warp speed. Thereby causing a blue shift and broadcasting our image over the heads of our audience.

Can we skip the phasers and just use the transporter?

That wouldn't be logical Captain.

Scotty, I want every available man working on Spock's "blu ray" plan in time for release of the third season.

Aye Aye captain.

You misunderstand; it's the fees that are unlimited rather than the service provided.

A "limited" account would have a cap on how much Verizon could potentially charge you per month.

Gopher servers? That's the last time I recall content taking a complete backseat to presentation.

When a user could properly integrate content from alt.sex.pictures into his hypertext archive of rejected "Penthouse Letters" submissions, the true utility of the html web was clear: the consolidation of location, information, and presentation.

Acid3 loads fine for me. On my G4 laptop it (still) fails speed metrics on Test 26 and 65 but by a much smaller margin than before. On my Intel Mac Pro, it says no failures or performance problems and to check whether it was pixel perfect to the reference rendering. I guess Acid 3 is passing on some of the faster Mac hardware, but it's not quite "universal" yet.