So, desktop apps. What's the difference now?

The correct analogy would be: do you like tofu? No? Well, here's a coupon for free tofu anyway. If you like it, pick it up at the store. If not, don't. Either way. Free tofu.

Stop. Apple just adds the album to the list of music you have access to. Everything else you describe flows from your incorrect understanding of this key point.

They absolutely do not in any way make you listen to it.

That's basically what they did. They gave everyone access to it, so you now have a link to download the music by clicking one of the songs and tapping "play.

No, it's about someone starting a U2 radio station that you don't have to tune into unless you want to, but now it's there if you want to hear it.

I swear to God, if my kids whined as much as the Internet has about me giving them a copy of an album I like, I'd ground their ungrateful asses until their iPods decayed into lead.

The best part is hearing the lamentations of software patent attorneys and rejoicing in the sounds of their despair.

I can imagine plenty of uses for this in automated systems such as video system or other data gatherer. And even if it's to be used to record manually-triggered output, there's much to be said for the concept of "so much freaking storage that I can pay for this once and never have to think about it again over the lifetime of the equipment I'm using it with".

Were you dropped on your head as a child? Quoth the wiki:

In 1848 Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), wrote in his paper, On an Absolute Thermometric Scale, of the need for a scale whereby "infinite cold" (absolute zero) was the scale's null point, and which used the degree Celsius for its unit increment.

Celsius degrees came before Kelvin units.

Those are not real worlds and I'll be damned if I'll ever utter them with anyone over the age of 3 in the room.

Pfft - I came up with seven mind-blowingly awesome ideas before breakfast. The problem is that each would take several programmer-years to implement, so there's an enormously high risk:reward ratio for each.

People don't copy other ideas because it's too hard to come up with their own good ones. They copy ideas because those ideas have already been vetted and proven viable in the marketplace (whether of ideas or of cash revenue).

Microsoft's hardware is nice (although you'd be crazy to compare Surface to MacBook Pro), but their user experience is terrible in comparison.

Microsoft decides that it's in their best interest for all customers to use identical UIs, so they make Metro the standard interface on phones, video game systems, tablets, desktops, and servers. Apple decides that it's in their customers' best interest for products to have similar but individualized UIs, so they create tailored interfaces for tiny, small, and large displays.

That, in a nutshell, is the difference between the two companies (and why Apple is eating Microsoft's lunch in every category where they directly compete).

The New England Patriots make about $428M a year across 16 games, each of which takes an average of 192 minutes. That works out to about $139K per minute. If Bill Belichick thinks he can work more efficiently with papyrus and a scribe, there'd be a tiny replica of the Nile in the basement of Gillette Stadium by the end of the day.

They already have one.

So you wouldn't use a device that helps you avoid unhealthy behavior, just out of spite against the insurance companies?

I nominate: 3a) discreetly getting notifications during meetings. Did no one else catch the part about its buzzer being inaudible?