Just about every comment from people who hate touchscreen laptops (as opposed to those who merely say "eh, not for me") confuses me. It seems that the haters think you have to use the touchscreen for everything... lots of comments about what touch is bad for, lots indicating that a mouse and keyboard are better for lots of things.

And all I can think is exactly. The whole point of having a touchscreen laptop as opposed to a tablet is to use traditional inputs for things they're good for (writing, precision work, etc.) and touch for things touch is good for (reading, certain game interactions, composing drafts of some kinds of visual media, etc.).

I had a touchscreen laptop for work for a while. It was wonderful. About 80% of the time, it was a traditional laptop. When I was drafting a presentation (mostly images, very little text), touch was a godsend. When I was reviewing large reports, "tablet mode" with touch was much better than reading on a normal laptop configuration.

They may not be for everyone, but I submit that most people who hate them have never used one for more than a few minutes.

Ok, not "no reason"... "limited use". The uses aren't limited -- there are more uses for lossy compression than for lossless. FLAC has one solid use case: archival. Lossy formats have hundreds of use cases.

Where did I say you shouldn't use FLAC at all? The OP was saying there was no reason to ever use a lossy format. There are.

So your criteria for "it's a good idea, make it a law" is actually not just good ideas. It's good ideas that affect life and personal safety? Because putting my life at risk affects other people?

Ok, cool, then we ought to ban driving all together considering it's one of the most dangerous things people routinely do. Or perhaps that's unreasonable and we should only ban "unnecessary" driving?

What's fantastically short sighted is the notion that, in a society that puts an extremely high value on cooperation and interdependence, putting your life at risk in any circumstance only affects yourself.

That's a lovely strawman you've constructed there. Of course it affects other people -- everything we do affects other people. It doesn't affect anyone else's rights. The difference is important: if we can make laws just because other people are "affected", then there is nothing that's off-limits... and that's such a bullshit position that I can't imagine you actually think that. I'm assuming you just didn't think about what you said.

Everyone wearing their seatbelt is a good idea.

Indeed it is. The question is whether good ideas ought to have the force of law. Because when you make it a law, you're effectively saying "I am OK with using violence to enforce this behavior." The key question for me is this: if I choose not to wear a seatbelt (thus increasing my risk of death or injury should I get in a crash), whose rights am I infringing?

But now, with multi-terabyte HDs and the proliferation of NAS appliances, there is a limited need for this or any other 'compressed' music file format.

Yep, because audio files are never:

1. Streamed over low-bandwidth data connections (e.g. cellular or crappy public APs)
2. Stored on small, portable devices with limited storage space, like Phones, solid-state media players, Chromebooks and tablets.
3. Backed up to remote locations where storage is more expensive

I can't imagine anyone having a need for those things. *eyeroll*

He's not as new as you appear to be. (He says while eyeing user ID numbers).

there will be more mobile phones and tablets in use in four years' time than there are people on the planet... will we be using them or will they be controlling us?

Right this moment, there are more ears of corn in use than there are people on the planet. Will we be eating them, or will they be eating us?

Seriously... having lots of something doesn't automatically change its nature.

What is it with Slashdot readers who don't know what the fuck the logical fallacies are and can't be bothered to do a simple web search to find out?

Argumentum ad populum is when you argue that a proposition is true because it is believed by many people. The quintessential form is "can millions of people be wrong about X?"

"It's for hipsters and hipsters don't drive" is an unsupported premise, nothing more. No actual argument is being offered, just an assertion made without support.

If it's a good idea to wear a seatbelt its just a good fucking idea to wear a seatbelt, make it a law and move on

That's... fantastically short-sighted of you. The government should have the power to enforce "good ideas" with the force of law? Well:

• it's a very good idea not to have a child until you're out of college. Let's make it a law and move on.
• it's a very good idea to live less than 15 miles from where you work. Let's make it a law and move on.
• it's a very good idea not to drive at all, and instead rely on public transit (it's safer *and* better for the environment). Let's make that a law and move on.

In short, we don't make things the law because they are "good ideas". We make laws because we as a society are willing to force people to do (or not do) something, and we care enough about it that we're willing to point a gun at them if that's what it takes to achieve compliance.

Now, I don't buy into the Libertarian extreme on this, but I do think that the rest of society doesn't have the right to tell me what to do unless what I do puts their rights at risk. That means I'm ok with the government telling car companies they have to at least include a seatbelt that meet certain standards in all cars they sell -- it seems reasonable to make sure that people have the option to protect themselves. (Though frankly I'd prefer it was done through creation of liability rather than an absolute mandate...).

But when society decides to tell me -- not through social force, but by means of a government that I must obey under peril of imprisonment -- that I must decide to manage my risk in a particular way, that's inappropriate. That's the majority telling me how to live my private life, and that's not any of government's business, plain and simple. Now, I agree that wearing a seatbelt is a great idea -- I won't move my car until everyone in it is belted in, because I'm responsible for their safety while they're in my car. But I balk at being told that I must, because the risk is mine to take.

I wont pretend to be a "creative person", whatever that means. But this:

The file system restrictions alone make it unsuitable for all but the most casual of casual users. No, iCloud is in no way an adequate replacement -- not even close.

Is the dumbest thing I've read in this thread. Sandboxes still allow for interoperation and file/data sharing between apps. Without iCloud. They just require handlers to register and receive permission. There may be certain things that are harder on the iPad for creative work, but it's certainly possible, because people are doing it

Besides, you seem to be missing the original point -- no one is arguing that the iPad should replace the PC for everyone. No one is trying to "kill" the PC. Apple realized that most people don't even like to use the computer, but they put up with it because what they get (access to entertainment, communication with anyone on earth, and the sum of human knowledge) is valuable. They provided a better interface for those people to use.

I make stuff. Mostly software. I work mostly on a combination of a Linux box I built myself and a Macbook Pro (and, sometimes, a Chromebook). But I find the iPad indispensable all the same, because anyone who creates knows that being a good creator means consuming a lot, and the iPad is an outstanding way to brainstorm, research, and do rudimentary design.

So Apple is the "lowest common denominator" brand now then? It's not for serious users or professionals or geeks or anyone that's the least bit creative?

"Apple" isn't only iOS devices. Apple's understanding that there are people who don't need a workstation at all, and the iPad is really the first stab at being a workstation replacement for those folks. And it's pretty good at that -- I know plenty of people who only own an iPad as a computing device. They still use a workstation at work, but for their home needs, it's enough.

Apple still makes higher-end laptops, for example, for the "power user" set.

The problem with the Apple approach is it lowers the bar for geeky.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. If lots of people want to be geeky, I don't see that as a problem. There will always be power users and massive creators... and they will increasingly use systems where most of the compute power isn't in their hands, but distributed elsewhere (through the annoyingly-named "cloud computing" model or some other networked distribution). And you know what? A lot of those people will use something like an iPad as one of many windows to their work.

If they do manage to have a creative idea, they will be shouted down by the hive mind.

Right, because Apple is a "hive mind", not a company whose best interests are to promote creativity and profit from it. Apple's by no means perfect, and there are many problems with their business model. But this whole attitude that they're killing creativity is provably asinine -- I and many others have managed to create extensively using an iPad as our window to our work. I've written entire apps using the iPad and one of it's text editors combined with an SSH terminal (for remote execution), Safari, and a bluetooth keyboard. The tools are immature, but they exist, and I didn't find significant limitations.

That said, I wouldn't choose an iPad as my primary device. But I know many people who create things and only have an iPad -- it's just that they aren't creating digital things. Creativity is not only online, and while the iPad certainly puts some limits in place that make some kinds of creativity harder, it's certainly not designed to prevent creativity -- that's just pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Honestly, never mind OS X Server. OS X doesn't cut it in the Enterprise desktop space either because it's an absolute pain to manage them at any kind of scale, or with anywhere near the level of granularity of Windows. Windows just outright wins for that case.

I think he was trying to be clever by saying "taken over the desktop" as in "taken over the use cases that you used to use a desktop for", by replacing the "desktop PC" for a large number of users.

A couple of things:

1. Apple's Mac sales are declining. Their overall sales are continuing to climb.
2. Quarter-to-quarter comparisons in retail are useless; the numbers used by the retailers themselves are always "vs. year-ago quarter". By that measure, Apple's sales are down 7.5%. Clearly, Apple is losing ground and we should be scared. Except that the rest of the PC industry's sales declined by 15% on the same basis..

If you look at the quarter-to-quarter numbers you'll see the same basic story -- the market for new PCs is eroding, and Apple's bit of it is eroding a little more slowly than the rest. The PC is slowly becoming a niche device, useful only to those for whom a tablet and/or smartphone doesn't cut it. And thanks to so many services and resources moving to web applications (i.e. "to the cloud"), older PCs don't need replacing as quickly. Lots of people find them "just fine", especially if they also have a tablet and/or smartphone.

That said, I don't think Apple needs to "go after" MS. The Microsoft folks are doing a fine job of going after their own throats...

Where are you getting the idea that Apple... or any of Apple's fans... think that tablets will completely replace PCs? Apple's "post-PC era" commentary has almost entirely been focused on the idea that most people neither need nor want a "Home PC", and that a combination of tablet and phone will suit most people's needs (read: consuming media, writing the occasional letter or email message, etc.) admirably.

Most commentary I've seen points out that a more traditional PC is well-suited to creation-heavy tasks, but that the convenience, relatively low cost, portability, and low learning-curve of touch-based computing will tend to relegate PC's to a niche market -- certain classes of business users and the "high-power" users (developers, scientists, etc.).

FWIW, I think Apple is probably right. And the general idea -- most people need an "appliance", not a PC -- is a pretty good one that brings to life the dream of truly accessible computing. What scares me about it is that the major player in the space (Apple) is choosing to lock the general-purposeness of their devices away; and that others entering the market are following suit to some extent (Android manufacturers ship locked to their own app store in many cases, MS is pushing the App Store model for Metro [I refuse to stop calling it that], etc.).

I think that path will make it a lot harder for the sort of serendipitous discovery of computing, development, and related things to occur. If I'd only had an iPad as a kid, instead of an 8088 with a compiler, I'm not sure I'd be a developer today.