I live since a few years in Asia (first Singapore, now Hong Kong). 3 years ago I saw lots of people with iphones in de metro, gradually this shifted to mainly big Samsung phablets which are really popular here. Switcher friends told me that they liked their iphone 4/4S but they simply like a bigger screen more.
Now, the iPhone 6 Plus is (very visibly in the metro) stealing customers back from the Android camp, often these are switching back buyers.
I did ask a few colleagues about their switch back, the general opinion is that while they needed to unlearn a few Android habits, they thought that the Apple gear worked very well, and (ALWAYS a factor mentioned by the lady colleagues) they thought that the iphone was simply a beautiful, elegant device.

I upgraded 2 months ago from a 4S to the 6 Plus myself. I am not so impressed by hateful online arguments (nor do I have a problem with Android phones), and it must be said that it works indeed very smoothly. It is still just about portable and the comfort has made me almost abandon my old ipad (between the 6Plus, and the small MAcbook Air the ipad sits now a bit uncomfortably). Also, the camera is remarakable. Without doing scientific tests, I have the impression that the general image quality is akin to my old Nikon D200 (without the nice bokeh of course), the pictures are more than good enough for most casual uses.

GP here: in the apps that I tried there was no lagginess nor was the accellerometer too inprecise, it sas simply a matter of living an illusion of movement that the body doesn't feel that gave me an unpleasant feeling. A VR app where I just looked around without moving (like, an aquarium app where sharks swim around you, or the zeiss cinema app) work very well without nausea.
So these are my experiences with the iphone 6plus and the stooksy set, I expect that the Samsung experience will be roughly similar.
A killer app: VR point of view porn videos. I am not a big porn consumer (no, really), but I was curious enough to download a trailer from a vendor site. The visual effect was shockingly convincing. Most strange was in fact seeing tattoos on "my" arms.

Out of curiosity I bought the Stooksy VR set for my iphone 6+. It is a Google cardboard variant from plastic foam, and despite its crude appearance it has some good features: ability to adapt for the distance between your eyes, a focus ability and very useful for me: big enough to accommodate my glasses.
In practice it is really impressive (considering that there are not that many great apps on the ios store that can handle google cardboard), the first time I tried Hiroshi Jump and the Zeiss cinema app I was grinning like an idiot.
But I soon found that I was quickly getting dizzy when using the more interactive apps or rollercoaster side by side movies,as the difference between what you see and feel is so big. Think about playing Doom for the first time, but in my case an even stronger dizziness. How do others experience this?

Absolutely not the case where I live in HK, and not perceived at all during my trips to Shanghai and Beijing.

I currently live in Hong Kong, and I do several business trips to Chinese cities. I am not surprised that China is catching up in the space race, based on the general impresson of ambitious, intelligent and thorough workers. Indeed, they have not caught up everywhere (both as in the geography where there is a divide - but closing, and as in product categories), but it is obvious that China will only get more dominant.
A lesson for western countries (I am European btw) may be to increase school quality. Schools in HK and China can be VERY high in quality (perhaps pushing the kids too far), andI learned twice already from chinese expats in the west that their kids found the supposedly excellent local western schools too simple. Eduation is investment in the future, and I notice that China does that well.
Meanwhile, when I go back to Europe every half a year, I am saddened by the general lack of ambition. People tend to wait for th e government to do something for them. Over here, people are much more ambitious and enterprising.

So much negativity and cynicism here.
Would there be a similar /. backlash if, say, Ubuntu would do a similar effort this week?

I detest that twisted logic that because a company is rich, it is acceptable to steal from them.

If this were an American probe, would the commentor also have dismissed this landing as easily?
I think that it is a fabulous achievement. And even if it will not be possible to drill: look at those awesome pictures. Wonderful.

Correction: Final Cut Pro costs $300 these days. For someone who is serious about their video, that is not too bad. It is good enough for the Coen Brothers after all. But for non professional use, something like Premiere Elements or iMovie may be more than good enough, except of course if you use Linux. Does Pitivi offer more features?

Their life cannot be complete without the opportunity to whine about the U2 album that appeared on their iphones.

I was looking at my mega compendiums of Invincible and Walking Dead, these have between 1024 and 1088 pages per big volume. Wouldn't Transmetropolitan fit in 2 such big collections?

Will Transmetropolitan ever be released as a big single collection? Or perhaps 2 books?

Even so, I wonder if the Samsung CEO toyed with the idea of coming out now that Tim did it.