Apple have this exact attitude [...]
Hum
... they won't only have to continue to teach users what the "any key" is, now they can teach generations of users how to put batteries in, all over again.
Remember, kids: it *always* a good thing if there's more than one way to do something; indeed, the more ways there is to do something, the better (*).
I always appreciate devices that treat me like an idiot, and attempt to do my thinking for me. I'm looking forward to my first device that is missing the [+] and [-] signs in the battery bay, because hey, it says there right on the box that I threw away half a year ago that the batteries can go in any which way. Duh.
(*) alert: sarcasm
Okay, this is probably going to come across a a little weird. I contend that the main thing that MS got wrong with the Kin is the name. You cannot call a device "Kin" without some kind of blowback. "Kin" is a basic anglo-saxon word that essentially has no etymology - it just is. The dreaded four-letter words fall into this category, as do many other very basic words such as water, earth, grass, fire, and so on. Except that "kin" does, as MS correctly identified, have a social connotation. "Kin" is people you're related to by blood or common interest - and by "common interest" I mean savages fighting for the same cause, and not people who like the same kind of literature as you do.
Now - call a device "Kin", and you are basically claiming the you can use it to identify who in "kin" to you. And that is plain too powerful. When I first came across this device the main part of my reaction was to be slightly upset at MS' attempt to co-opt this rather neat word. And that's why I say weird above: basically I'm saying they evoked a concept too powerful for this or any gadget.
So: They should have called it the "Microsoft Social Management Device" or something similarly inane. Then it would have been accepted more as "good first fling, looking forward where they're going to take this", rather than "this is what they want to sell us as the epitome of social interaction? You have *got* to be kidding me". Unfinished devices are fine; the first iPhone didn't have copy-paste, and that was OK.
Finally: I would have liked to like the device. A Blackberry keyboard on a social device? Cool. Perfect present for your 11-year-old niece. Welcome to the social; finally. Backed by a company that will maintain it for years to co... oop, where'd it go?
I think a -1 (fail) would be better than just a plain -1 (wrong). It's like, I dunno, claiming Poland has no coast or something similarly insane. But thank you for the heads-up.
Ouch. I need to lay off
Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database
A million gigabytes is what we call a petabyte.
And by "we" you mean "us who don't mind being off by a factor of 100 or so"?
There are two points I take exception to:
(1) The title of this post, which should read "I Took a Big Vendor To Small Claims and Won". The product isn't named. The OS isn't named. The instructions from tech support aren't given. All it really says is "Oh yay it isn't easy and you have to be precise." You have to bring ample evidence to court and make yourself aware of how it will be interpreted? Oh my.
(2) The penultimate sentence: "Needless to say, I have not bought any other Adobe products. Even opening a PDF makes me nervous!" Now I'm not exactly the grand proselytizer of Adobe products - but I am aware that a large number of people are using their products professionally day in day out. This blanket statement implying that "Adobe == shit" just casts, to me, a rather dark shadow on the not-being-a-lame-brain bit further up.
"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker