Wow, you're hilarious.

I know exactly what GCD is, and have worked with it. I just am under this strange belief that there's no magic in software and that computers still succumb to the laws of physics. Better power management comes primarily from hardware... and while GCD is a very good framework for controlling that hardware it's not a magical route to better battery life. Software can help with coordination but you still need the hardware.

While I won't argue the concept and implementation of this framework are good, most of the magical gains you'll hear about because of GCD are marketing numbers and not real-world.

Yet other laptops running Windows get just fine battery life with the same or smaller battery. Simply put; Apple develops their own EFI to manage fans and power states and when the driver doesn't exist or is non-optimal, the hardware runs "hot". Grand Central Dispatch is a nice technology but does NOT magically increase your battery life despite what Apple wants to claim. It merely provides a common framework for addressing the EFI and power management customizations in a way that is pretty nice, but not a magic bullet. As Scotty was fond of saying, "You cannae change the laws of physics, Captain".

The level of ignorance and bias you display are unfortunately all too common. I get it; you're an Apple fan. Just because you read an article on a nice API doesn't mean you know diddly about hardware and power management. I don't claim to be an expert, but after doing embedded systems development for a while in my youth I think I might have some more knowledge of which I speak.

So... during a 2 hour flight (30 minutes of which is spent climbing and descending) there wasn't one person or flight attendant who noticed the guy pushing the person next to him out of their seat to squeeze down in the pitiful space between coach seats to fiddle with the SEB? I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Doesn't matter how familiar you are with the hardware... in order to tamper with it to the extent that you can then plug your laptop into it you can't do that by touch, or quickly. Given all the paranoia about security I imagine he wouldn't have been able to do any of this without someone screaming "Terrorist!!" on the flight... then we'd be reading a very different story.

So what you're saying is that Windows implements logical and useful locking mechanisms whereas OSX implements something bound to break eventually? Wow... what a crime. I've used Mac OS, Windows, Linux, BSD and more flavours of UNIX than you can shake a stick at... I think Windows' file locking semantics are just fine the way they are. Anything else can lead to confusion, corruption and lost files.

Having said that, I do wish Windows would implement a "Can't do this because file is open in (blah).exe" error message instead of "Access denied", which is really dumb.

Actually, PowerShell is really good. I wasn't a believer the first time I used it but once you got the semantics and ideas down in your head it becomes an incredibly powerful tool for systems administration. At my last job I had a folder full of .ps scripts that I used daily to simplify my job, run reporting and generally make myself stand out among my GUI-focused peers on the Windows networks. That standing out helped me get a job where I no longer need them, but that's cool because I like my new job even better. And I still have them if I need them again.

And on Windows you can install Cygwin. I have MobaXTerm installed on all my Windows machines and it's really good; fully functional Cygwin and X-Server environment with a single click of the mouse... compatibility with a lot of my Linux scripts. Awesome.

So what you're saying is that a 14 year old operating system performs better in a suboptimal virtual environment where the programmers have specifically targeted the performance profiles of said OS for about 10 of those years? Stop the freaking presses, mate.

Seriously? Windows 10 isn't final, and QEMU-KVM optimization for Win10 will probably lag at least 6 months to a year after release. Let me know then how it performs given your adjustments. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy but even I can tell you that your test is even more horrendously flawed than the article poster's.

Why? Seriously?

First tool I install on my Windows boxes is MobaXTerm which contains a fully configured and set up cygwin including X Server. Works like a champ for me managing my Linux boxes, and all I had to do was install it. SSH works, remoted X works, and I can run bash scripts even referencing /proc entries from my Linux box and most of them work with no modifications.

What you're seeing here really is driver issues. Apple doesn't put the resources into developing the Boot Camp drivers properly for Windows... they're good enough so they're shipped. Apple doesn't want you to run Windows, or Linux or anything else. They want their beautiful machines running their beautiful OS, to hell with what the end user actually needs. A good set of power management drivers would go a long way to fix Windows on Mac hardware but they're not going to put the time and energy into it.

This philosophy of Apple's is part of the reason I've abandoned them as a platform for my own use.

I will preface this by saying that I was a Mac user and developer for over a decade until very recently...

Sorry, will have to call this one out. At the time that classical MacOS was around, most users were either running Windows 98 or Windows 2000. Few people ran ME... I worked in the industry and I think at the time for every 10 Win2K boxes I saw, I saw maybe one ME and 15 Windows 98. Noone saw a compelling need for ME so they didn't upgrade. And early versions of OSX up to Jaguar (10.2) were horrendous messes under the hood. The interface was gorgeous but some of the APIs were kludged together wrecks.

Now, I'm not saying that Windows was much better, at least on the 98/ME track... but the Windows 2000 API cleanup actually produced some really nice results. This was at the same time (roughly) as Mac OS9 which was one of the most awful kludges of an OS I think I've ever had the displeasure to work on. It was obvious that OS9 was created in a place where OSX was getting all the attention, but even OSX wasn't really properly clean until 10.2... and even then it was slow. Have you ever used 10.0 or 10.1 on hardware of the time? It was horrifyingly slow to do anything and the only thing it really had going for it was the interface.

Speaking of the interface... seriously... Finder is significantly worse than Explorer in terms of threading, resource utilization and stability. You want to see a kludged mess, check out Finder circa... well... any version of OSX actually. Of course, I've recently abandoned the Mac platform for Windows 8 for various reasons so I can't speak to Yosemite... but every time I work on a machine running Yosemite I just feel like the entire OS is going in a direction I don't appreciate.

Vista and Windows 8 both had huge improvements under the hood. Windows 8 in particular has gotten a bad rep simply because it has a UI that people find really polarizing... but it's seriously a fast and efficient OS that really takes advantage of the underlying hardware. It actually is a better operating system than the much-vaunted Windows 7 (which was itself an improvement over Vista) but most people never get to see it because they get hung up on the UI.

I have played with Windows 10, and I like it. I run 8.1 on my computers today but will switch to 10 when it comes out. That's not to say it's a fundamentally "better" operating system than OSX... but for my needs the priorities are all screwed up in OSX. They're both modern, stable and secure operating systems... and if that's all you need then great. However, running the same applications on both platforms does show the weaknesses of OSX; memory management is of questionable value in OSX and the storage management is kludgy at best.

Windows has been faster than OSX on the same hardware since Windows 7. I know; I've always had a Windows Boot Camp installation on my Macs. My last Mac is still a good one (2012 15" MBP) but has now been surpassed significantly. It used to be that Macs had a 5 year lifespan whereas Windows had a 3... that's one reason I liked Macs. Nowadays, not so much... and it's not changing workloads that are killing it but rather the overly heavy APIs and core problems with OSX that just don't scale quite so well... so new versions get heavier and slower on the same hardware.

I hate to say this, but if you honestly believe that Apple isn't above double-dipping here then you're sorely mistaken. A very quick Google search turns up plenty of reports of data being reported back to "the mothership" on iOS just as much or maybe more than Windows or Android. Yes, Apple makes money on the hardware but they're also a publicly traded company with a mandate to basically print money for their shareholders. Said shareholders (and the board) would have a fit if Apple were leaving that much obvious money on the table.

Wyse is also Dell FYI. But yeah, the statement "4 or 5 PC manufacturers" is blatantly false.

In a laptop?

I can say I use a Roccat Kone XTD and it's my favourite mouse I've ever used. I don't really care about the bling... it's actually not all that bad. What I care about is good tracking, weight and button response and this thing has all of them in spades :)

The Linux support is also really good, as you said. Their engineers really are geeks like us :)

See, the only thing I don't like here is that it's wireless.

I have used wired and wireless mice for a long time and have quite a collection, but I've pretty much abandoned wireless mice for all but simple usage when on the road because of interference or battery life issues. Bluetooth in particular is usually horrendous, dongle-mice tend to be better but still have issues on occasion.

I have three active computers I use a lot so have different mice. My work system I use a wired Dell mouse; a K251D (http://www.amazon.com/Dell-6-Button-Perfectly-Connectors-Compatible/dp/B005O239FW) which for a cheap mouse is bloody fantastic. Good tracking, decent if bland shape and adjustable sensitivity. Not a good gaming mouse, but for a great all-purpose one it's awesome.

On my gaming rig (the one I'm typing on) I have a Roccat Kone XTD (http://www.roccat.org/en/Products/Gaming-Mice/Kone-XTD-Series/Kone-XTD/) which is one of my favourite mice to-date. It's shaped perfectly for my right-handed self, has great adjustable weight (I packed it with all the weights that came with it) and a brilliantly sheathed cable that's incredibly long.

My wireless mouse of choice on the road is a Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/arc-touch-mouse). It's wireless with a dongle, but collapses flat so it can be packed neatly in my laptop bag. Perfect on the go, works on just about every surface I've thrown it at and gets great battery life. I use it with my work laptop when on the road and my Surface Pro.

Now having said all that I do like a lot of Logitech's gaming gear. My keyboard is a G710+ and I have a G13 that when used with the Roccat is brilliant. I just haven't found a Logitech mouse I really liked to be honest; the Roccat fell perfectly into my hand when I tried it and I pretty much got it on the spot it was that good. Still, this one looks pretty good except for the wireless part... as I said I just don't do wireless for gaming :)

Honestly, I think it depends on a lot of factors.

For the record, I own two smartwatches; the original Pebble and a Moto 360. The Pebble has mostly been relegated to a drawer because I just don't use it any more... probably go on eBay pretty soon. My Moto 360 gets used daily because it's really handy for my work. I work in the tech field; I'm a consultant for a large company who travels all over two states talking to customers about their technology needs.

For my part, my Moto 360 nearly always gets questions at the table. "Do you like it?" "Is it useful?" etc. and I'll tell you exactly what I've told them; it depends a lot on your use cases.

I use my 360 all the time. It's right there on my wrist, so even while driving if I receive a notification that I've received a text message I can flip my wrist over and check the summary on my wrist to see if I need to respond to it, or if it can wait until I get to my destination. I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket or retrieve it from my jacket that may be hanging in the back of my car (depending on where I put it). I get reminders of appointments and again I don't have to rely on my phone to do the same. In fact, because the alarm on my 360 is vibrate only I can actually turn the notifications completely off on my phone most of the time and I still know what's going on. Similarly, in a meeting when my phone rings I can immediately see who's calling at a glance and throw it off to voicemail. I also like the ability to use the microphone in my 360 to set timers, set an alarm, bring up the weather etc. For my use case, it works extremely well.

There are some things I wish my 360 did though that would be cool. I wish airlines in particular would get with the program and allow me to bring up my boarding pass QR on the screen of my watch rather than digging for my phone. American Airlines already has an app for the Android Wear OS, but it doesn't do that... annoying. But as a general rule these are niggles that will be ironed out as/if people buy more of these devices as you said.

I'll also note that because I'm not turning my phone on every time there's a notification or I want to know the time, my battery life on my phone actually increased when I moved to a smartwatch.

As far as charging every night, that's less of a problem than you might think. I don't wear my watch to bed, so I have my Moto 360 charging base sitting on my nightstand right next to the cable for my phone. Instead of setting my watch on the nightstand itself, I set it on the charging base and voila... no problems. It's no more a chore than setting it down, really. Yes, it can be frustrating if you are traveling and forget the base, but that's also true of forgetting charging cables for any of your other devices. So far it hasn't been a problem. Battery life also isn't half bad on the 360; I can get about 30 hours of tested time out of mine... given that I charge it nightly that's pretty bloody impressive and I have no complaints about it.

I do agree though that this is still a nascent industry... people haven't really found that killer app for a smartwatch yet, but for people like me who are natural early adopters, techies and people who just like stuff like this I think there's still a market.

Seconded on this. I type a lot for work and I love my G710+. There's also a newer version, oddly called the G710 that replaces the Cherry MX Brown switches with the Blue, but I have not used it so I can't really judge.

I find the inverted decoration good; remember it's a gaming keyboard so the decoration is to highlight gaming keys (like W,A,S,D etc.). While you might not need it, it is nice. I also like the fact that it's lit; not because I ever really look at it, but seeing the keyboard lights at the bottom of my peripheral vision certainly does help when positioning my hands to type.

Having said all this good stuff though, it is a bit bulky. It has an extra row of gaming keys down the left hand side and a set of media keys on top. Plus, Logitech elected to make it tapered to a larger base. This makes it quite a large keyboard, but in my opinion it's totally worth it. For a mechanical it's also pretty quiet, though definitely not silent :)