Whether they implied they would be back or not, is hardly the point.

People made purchase from them, and then they simply blocked access to the downloads without any client communication. However you look at it, that is extremely bad customer service.

It's reasonable enough for them to do a publicity stunt, but they have a duty to at least email the people that have made purchases and inform them what will be / is happening, or provide a way for them to access their account / downloads.

Pockets full of devices? I can't see why. Two devices would be perfectly reasonable - one for things that demand connectivity (talk, text, net), and one for the other stuff (games, videos, music). Even if the 'other stuff' has occasional connectivity capabilities to download new music, etc.

When people say phones are for talking, it's not a frivolous argument - they need to be available for talking. Which has two implications:

1) What should happen when you have an incoming call? Do you lose your position in game, etc?

2) The battery needs to stand up to the demands.

As it is, 3G devices struggle to get through a day. It's not going to help matters by gaming on them for an hour or two - pushing the cpu, graphics, display to the limit. If your games console runs out of juice, it's generally less of an issue than if you suddenly can't make or receive calls.

Yes, you can block posts from an application. As I already have, along with the hundreds of other applications that spam my newsfeed every day.

It's still one of the major reasons why I've largely turned my back on Facebook and turned to Twitter.

Wrong. Drivers can and do detect the names of real applications, and configure their support accordingly. Control pad drivers can be set up to detect a certain application name being run, and set up button mappings to suit. Many graphics drivers have in the past had profiles shipped to iron out pathological cases in real world apps. You can even manually set certain parameters based on what application is being run in current drivers.

It's just that it can't pro-actively do this. You have to rely on support from the manufacturer (or create your own if possible), to get the best - or even half-decent - performance when new applications are released.

This wouldn't happen to be a manufacturer that used some 'unusual' rendering methods?

You would also need to monitor the CPU, and only switch when it isn't overloaded, but the GPU is.

The real question is, who cares if a manufacturer detects whether a certain application is running, and reconfigures it's support to provide the best experience for that application? If I'm playing a game, I just want the best experience that my hardware can provide.

That's the problem with benchmarks - you can't ever take one application, no matter how representative it is supposed to be, as the gospel for system differences. The real world across a variety of applications will almost inevitably be different.

So who watches the CCTV footage? Who archives the recordings? Who maintains the equipment? I think there are serious questions to be answered there, but ultimately, there is no fundamental reason why those people can't be held accountable for their actions - and we need to ensure that they are.

Sure, an officer merely observing something isn't going to cause a big uproar. But the actions of any officer might. There are enough cases of police corruption, racial abuse - and perjury.

CCTV isn't a solution by itself, but it can be part of effective, responsible policing. There needs to be accountability, there needs to be a balance with enough officers on the street as well. But it does play a role in preventing crime from occurring in the first place, solving crime, and providing evidence when cases do go to court.

Sure, if you go on a strict - same spec, same dimensions, same weight, etc. - comparison, then the Apple's aren't badly priced in relation to Windows PCs.

But with Windows, you have a choice. You decide what features are important to you, what you compromise to get a better deal.

If I want a workhorse laptop, where portability really is secondary, I can get much better machines for far less in the Windows world. Often, to get the one or two features I really care about with Apple, it means buying the most expensive machines they do, with a bunch of stuff I don't care about.

Although I admire the design of Apple equipment, for the most part I have no need for it or desire to pay a premium because of it.

(The one exception is the standard MacBook, which makes a fantastic machine where portability is a primary concern.)