Really, I don't know what all the fuss is about. So I threw a few chairs, haven't we all?

Well, if you were in one of the states where she wasn't on the ballot, it would have to be a figment.

If Apple has the margins of a fashion company, does that make Cisco even more fashionable since their margins are higher?

The market they sell into is meaningless, your original statement said absolutely nothing about their customer base, just their profit margins. Since Cisco's profit margins are higher than Apple's, therefore they must be even more of a fashion company than Apple, according to your original statement.

Changing your statement now, to try to make it mean something completely different, isn't helping. What you said is right there for all the world to see.

Just take your lumps. We all make mistakes.

I bought the chair. It's mine, I can do what I want with it.

And if I want to run around on stage holding it on top of my head while chanting "Developers" over and over...

This is just a guess, but I suspect he meant a chain link failure.

All to have the same functionality of a laptop in a docked (home/office) setting. In a mobile setting you have a tablet, instead of a (larger, heavier, etc.) laptop.

Listen, I don't even believe in laptops because they're less powerful than desktops, nor do I own a tablet. But I can understand the appeal of a light, responsive "mobile" device that can accomplish what needs to be accomplished on the go while docking to get extended functionality when you get home or to the office. And it's not like (better, not bottom-of-the-barrel netbook-esque models) laptops don't also have docks to gain ports and slots and additional functionality when you reach the same places. Arguing against docks when docks exist for both platforms is just silly.

Frankly the largest thing I want to be hauling around is a smartphone or similar pocketable device. I'm not thrilled with the current mobile iDevices because their screens are just a bit too small, but if the iPhone 5 comes out with a larger screen it may make a suitable replacement for my current mobile device. And no, the iPad isn't a mobile device in my book - if I can't fit it in my pocket, it isn't mobile. But that's for me, others can use their own value system and still be perfectly rational, even if the result doesn't match mine.

No, it's still a tablet. Want to know why?

Now that you're done sitting down editing your documents with a keyboard and screen, pick up your computing device. Remove the keyboard. Remove the video output. Strip it down to the bare, lightest, minimum for mobile use.

You can't do that with a touch-screen laptop. You're stuck lugging around extra equipment you don't need in a mobile setting. That extra equipment carries a power penalty. A weight penalty. Penalties you don't have to pay with a tablet solution.

Just because a tablet can be expanded doesn't mean a touchscreen laptop can be contracted.

The only websites I really notice being built entirely in flash are car company websites, but they all have sensible mobile sites.

If those online video sites are smart they'll use HTML5 and "encourage" individuals of older browsers (e.g. IE 5.5) to upgrade to HTML5-capable ones (e.g. Chrome/Firefox).

To be fair, when a lot of those classic toons were made, Flash was pretty streamlined and lean, capable of running on low-end machines. Current versions struggle to run on quad core CPUs with GPU acceleration.

If Adobe had stayed focused on keeping their product streamlined and lean, it would have had a fighting chance on mobile platforms, but instead... bloated code, security holes caused by bloated code, and update after update after update after update after update to fix the security holes. Bloated code hurts battery life and the constant updates eat up bandwidth that wireless providers loathe to increase.

Flash was a great product. It could become a great product again. But it would take someone with balls stepping up at Adobe and changing the culture so they don't push out products until they've actually gone through rounds and rounds and rounds of optimization, instead of just pushing them out after adding features.

The case wasn't the look & feel lawsuit, that was ruled on ages before the public investment press event.

It was about the Quicktime for Windows lawsuit, wherein Microsoft & Intel hired the Quicktime for Windows developer, then ordered the developer to copy Quicktime for Windows source code and put it into Video for Windows.

And you're right to be skeptical about the 4 billion figure, since Apple had over 8 billion in cash and short term investments a couple years before the investment. That number was on a steady downward trend however, but there's no way it got slashed in half by the time of the lawsuit.

The real smoking gun of the Apple/Microsoft settlement is the cross licensing agreement, wherein Apple got access to a huge array of Microsoft source code, and Apple didn't end up owning Microsoft because they were finally legally authorized to have the Quicktime code inside Windows (Microsoft had since gone on to use DCI for other things, derive other technologies using the techniques, etc.).

As for there not being software patents at the time, holy crap you must be young. Do you think we rode around on dinosaurs?

Apple paid a developer to create Quicktime for Windows for them. Their latest version used an innovative method to copy video to the screen that was light-years faster than what Microsoft was doing with Video for Windows at the time. Since Apple paid the developer, the code in question did not belong to the developer, it belonged to Apple. If I hire you to produce shovels for me, you don't get to come along later and grab a shovel out of my inventory because you made it. The fruit of your labor is owned by the person who paid you to do the labor. That's why you're getting paid.

As part of the lawsuit, interviews with the individuals in question were performed as well as legal discovery of documents, emails, etc. End of the day Intel and Microsoft met with the developer and told them in no uncertain terms to copy the code from Quicktime to put in DCI, and proof of it came out during discovery. Both Intel and Microsoft quietly settled the lawsuit in Apple's favor. How do you know this? Because a very short time after the lawsuit was settled Microsoft made their public endorsement, bought Apple stock, formed a Macintosh Business Unit, and (this is key) cross-licensed source code.

Microsoft re-distributed it because the individuals responsible for the act thought nobody would ever find out, because they kept the knowledge of the act compartmentalized. The rest of Microsoft didn't realize what the managerial team responsible for producing DCI did, they just realized they needed to compete and these guys pulled off a hail mary play that would help them nail those &*(@#&*($# bastards over at Apple to a wall.

As for what was so great about the technology, it literally quadrupled (or more) the framerate of videos displayed on screen while simultaneously requiring less CPU time. Apple paid their Windows developer handsomely to develop this technology and expressly forbid them from sharing this work with other companies.

PowerPC is also still around, you need look no further than a Playstation 3 or XBox 360 to find a mass-market example of one. And they're still huge in the embedded market.

So packaging, manuals, distribution, development, advertising, warehousing, and all the other work that went into software in the 80s & 90s cost "near zero?"

My god man, custom runs of floppy disks alone were $1 or more, and most products included multiple floppies. When CDs first came out there were substantial mastering costs involved in pressed discs, and the per-disc price was also measured in dollars, not cents.

You really need to realize that Steam wasn't available in 1986.

No it isn't, but Vista, the preceding product, was. It was such a low quality product that Microsoft was forced to roll up their sleeves and fix all the problems in it, then had the gall to charge us all for it.

When they did the same thing in Windows 98 Second Edition, at least they released a megapatch that updated long-suffering Windows 98 owners to Windows 98 SE. Similarly, when Apple released OS X 10.1 they gave it away free to everyone who owned OS X 10.0.

Seriously, what the hell.

If by gun you mean requiring them to pay him money for a Windows license even if they didn't ship a copy of Windows with the system or, if they didn't want to agree to those terms, pay a substantially inflated price for Windows licenses that would have made their business uncompetitive... then yes he did.

Indeed, the investment didn't matter at all. The public support was what was important.

Of course the actual reason for the support was due to Microsoft (and Intel) being on the losing end of the QuickTime for Windows lawsuit. When you hire your competitor's third party developer to develop the next generation of your competing product, then explicitly tell them that the developer needs to copy the source code from your competitor and put it in your next gen product, you damn well better believe you'll be on the losing end of a lawsuit. Once the evidence of that was uncovered a settlement in Apple's favor was inevitable.