The US is allegedly a rich country, that your government chooses not to help is the problem.

We choose not to have the government help much, because government is inherently wasteful.

Instead many Americans donate money to charitable organizations that waste far less of the money, so more people obtain help... America by far has the highest rate of donation to charity.

I've always wondered how god-fearing republicans can choose to not the help poor people

That's where you are utterly, terribly wrong - I am an independent, and do not attend church. But I know a lot of "god-fearing republicans" that donate a large amount of charity, plus every church I've every know has lots of missionary work they do to help the poor.

In fact if you look at statistics you'll find that Republicans donate quite a lot more (on average thousands more) than Democrats do - because like you they don't really care about helping the poor, they just want to feel like they are.

First of all, sorry about your not closing the quoting tag you used. I do that sometimes, and it's so sad to see all your hard work obscured under an italic fog... so I thought I would at least respond in detail to help make up for it.

The charging point you make is a great one. There are some powered mounts that you can plug a phone into, but they require more work to fit... I prefer a general mount you can use with separate power so that as I change phones I can maintain the same mount.

A really excellent non powered mount is the FlexPod, if a model exists for your car... it's very sturdy and is not obtrusive when not in use.

If notifications are an issue you can usually set the phone to something like Do Not Disturb mode. But I've never had that really cause issues.

Now about the Garmin device giving great directions - that may be true, dedicated devices have had a while to build good nav systems. I personally use Apple Maps and find the navigation for that works pretty well, it also gives land guidance... (it was better than Google Maps for navigation from Day One).

But, there also exists a Garmin dedicated app with offline maps. You get all of the Garmin benefits you detailed, only it's easier to update,

And you can switch to Waze when not needing navigation (I totally agree with you about Waze navigation not working very well). As you say, nothing beats the Waze Police/Hazard alerts.

The uproar was that with computers long term storage the IRS could do things like make you pay taxes on something your parents did 60 years ago, or use the power of tagging to harass specific organizations based on political leanings. What absurd notions those people of ancient times had!

Chuckle.

What could be worse than food!?

Taco Bell

So, the more appropriate method is to ask (nicely, or send some guys with guns) the cell service providers to shut down all towers in the required area.

They are not going to do that because a cell tower covers a lot more area than any protest.

Consider the protest in Nevada recently over the Bundy Ranch cattle being taken by armed federal agents. If you shut down cell access for that group, you are shutting down cell access for a potentially very large area of I-15. That's just not going to happen.

The reason why the kill switch would be used is that it cuts off video/image feeds from newer devices, the older phones that still might work would not be as much of a concern. As long as the government can prevent video and images escaping real time they have a lot more latitude in dealing with civilians.

In San Francisco you "have to see the poor" daily as well. Hows that working out for them?

The trouble with the homeless is that they are not just poor, there are usually multiple problems at work including mental issues... so seeing them and giving them money is usually not helping much.

If you really want to help the poor I suggest going to Modest Needs, that is the best place I've found to help the truly poor directly before they fall off the bottom rung of the ladder.

So please take your "standard" USB on one

I do every day and charge iOS devices with it all the time. The cable hardly matters, and in fact it's easier to find an Apple cable in a store if you've forgotten one than the "wrong" kind of Micro-USB cable (since there are a few different types).

You are on the wrong side of standards on this one.

The fact that you can plug anything into USB is enough.

That is a big reason, but it also mattered that the device itself was not OSX shrunk to a touch-screen tablet (some people thought that's what it would be instead of using IOS). That was the mistake Microsoft made.

But it's also related, Apple had the luxury of not just plopping desktop OSX on a tablet because they knew iOS developers could produce a good range of software out of the gate. Microsoft apparently never trusted in the development community enough to take that leap of faith.

There were many tablets released before the iPad that did not sell that well.

Yes, Microsoft made them, they ran Windows, and since applications were not designed for touch they sucked compared to laptops.

What Apple did was not marketing, but make a tablet that was usage because everything from OS to software was made for a tablet, not a PC.

It also relied heavily on many IPhone developers being able to quickly write software for the tablet before it was even launched - we could only test apps on the simulator before they went into the iPad App Store on day one! Kind of insane if you think about it, but it generally worked because the devices were similar in OS. If there had not been a good base of software from day one, sales would probably not have been as good... oddly parallel to a console launch come to think of it.

How well do the maps work when you don't have cell coverage in most cars? Just fine.

Same is true of the phone. Either you can buy any offline mapping program ranging from $10-$20, or just use what offline maps exist in Google/Apple maps (Apple maps once it starts a nav route no longer requires a network to get to where you are going).

Those are all updated automatically, for free, and I can chose the navigation I think works best for where I am.

I use the adaptor in my own car, which provides a custom cable from 30-Pin iPod to the car's USB port (but it needs that cable in order to run an app specific to the car).

I've been using the lightning adapter with the iPhone 5 every since it came out, it charges just fine.

You know those USB ports in the back of some airlines seats? You can use them to stream video from an iPad.

That was from 2006... I thought I had read recently where some airline was working on a system where you could get in-flight movies on your iPad.

To me, phone GPS is plenty good enough for car use (either Google or Apple). I've been using a car mount to hold my phone for years and have never had issues with it reporting where I was accurately, outside of one odd anomaly somewhere in the middle of Utah where for about thirty miles GPS assured me I was 500 feet off the side of the road.

Will this be similar to how apple "broke the monopoly on ebooks" http://online.wsj.com/news/art...

Possibly, Apple tried to save us from an Amazon monopoly and failed.

Ever heard of getting a third party GPS for like $99 at costco with lifetime maps?

Yes, and they suck compared to a smartphone because they aren't integrated with anything. I have some left over from the Old Days.

Really, you think that is fair? Would it work the other way as in i think apple should be mandated

Get the stick out of your ass man. I was talking about car regulations. Any device can charge by USB now so your griping looks like lunacy.

How much do I pay for Maps updates with Apple? 0.

How much do you pay for mapping updates in most cars? LOTS AND LOTS (sometimes over $1k!)

Not to mention Apple maps can be fed locations from any application, whereas the car nav can only get input through whatever torturous interface the car make has put in place.