It'd be nice if their latest ridiculously-thin laptop had more than two ports on it, and one of them for headphones.

You get one port, and it's used for charging as well as USB. Want to plug in a USB device? You've got as long as the batteries last.

They succeeded in making an ultra-super-thin laptop - but at the cost of expecting people to fit a USB3 hub in their bag as well.

MIDI has a few surprising applications. Fireworks, for example. Running a firework show is really a matter of setting of lots of igniters with precise timing over the course of an event - and that's exactly the sort of thing MIDI does well. As far as software is concerned, it's just a strange type of music where every note gets played only once.

Inefficient, high-maintenance. Though compact DC motor-generator units were made for one niche application: Generating high voltages for car radios.

You could go smaller. P-orbitals are largely independant: You might be able to get one atom to be part of three diodes at once, with the individual orbitals becoming components. It'd be silly-unstable though, you'd have to keep the thing on helium cooling and try not to whisper too loudly nearby.

One nice thing about DC-DC converters: Switch modes have a really wide input voltage range.9V-30V is not uncommon. The higher the voltage, the less the current they will need.

Efficiency? Yes, especially if you're running of batteries or solar.

There are costs though. Low voltage means more current, which means lots of expensive copper.

With modifications. A lot of things like those motors and LED lighting depends upon inductive current limiting. Give them DC at what seems the right voltage and they'll probably catch fire.

Batteries are intrinsically DC. It's fundamental to how they work.

Designing better inverters is easy. Giving manufacturers a reason to use them is another matter. Very few customers are going to look up the efficiency of their appliance power supply before purchase, so why waste dollars on it?

AC was the only way to send electricity any distance at the time. There were no DC-DC converters back then.

No, tension. While the building as a whole was under compression, parts of the structure were still under tension. The failure points were in the horizontal struts - this can be seen in images of the burning towers in the form of a significant bulging around the impact site. As the struts failed, the structural outer walls bent outwards until eventually reaching the point of failure and collapsing.

Collecting rainwater is illegal in several states. The state can sell exclusive collection rights to a water utility company - they have the sole right to any water that falls on that area, and your container in the rain is stealing their water.

Because the carbon tax was politically unviable: There was too much well-funded opposition, plus it would likely drive business elsewhere. If you get taxed for pollution in one state, and don't get taxed in another, it might work out cheaper to just build your new factory in the second.

Cap-and-trade was hard enough to get legislated, and that only got through because it is much easier to dodge.

The US government takes contradictory positions on many issues - because of the way their government is structured it's quite common for federal, state and city governments to not only be working towards different ends, but actively trying to subvert one another.

By most accounts Opus is superior - but it's also more recent, so there's a lot of content already in Vorbis format. IE supports neither.