The thing is, the phone built on the foundation of the Apple Newton and what they learned from that.

I think a lot of that knowledge went fallow and they mostly started from scratch.

it isn't like Steve Jobs was seized by inspiration, locked himself in his office for a week and then walked out with a fully functional iPhone

Only die-hard Apple Haters (of which Slashdot holds many) ever come up with drivel like that, meant to belittle others who have the audacity to like something. People like you though seem to want to pretend the whole thing was just about that easy to produce, to make sure Apple gets no credit whatsoever for the work that went into it.

The LG Prada was like the other smartphones of the day, but used touch (NOT multitouch) instead of a stylus. There was nothing about it like the iPhone save for superficial appearance (and some of that was obviously tweaked in response to the iPhone pre-launch demo).

Perhaps your problem is the definition of nothing, but to me that part is accurate since Apple did not sell any kind of phone or touchscreen device up until that point... and it really was a dramatically different device than any smartphone sold at the time.

From the standpoint of what Apple had done until then, it was from nothing. Resource wise, they had some money coming in from the iPod at that point, but they were tiny compared to all other companies making smartphones at the time. Lots of people dismissed the chances of Apple's making any kind of dent in the market based on that alone...

From an engineering perspective, it's not that big of a change

Well that certainly begs the question as to how Blackberry, Palm, Motorola, and Microsoft all missed such a small change...

If Apple did something that was a tiny change then you are inferring every single one of those companies is run by gibbering idiots.

Personally, I think better of people in those other companies - even Microsoft.

Boy, that DOJ was sure in the pocket of Apple!

The same DOJ that sued Apple for collision against Amazons over powerful monopoly...

Oh wait.

I've read several of the Wheel Of Time books, and all of the GoT books so far - even though the reading gets harder in parts of the later GoT books I still could easily read through them in a sitting, where I just cold not face any more WoT books after three or four. I find the GoT stuff vastly more interesting.

What flies with me is systems that work better than old corrupt systems.

Plainly Uber does a better job overall than cabs, or people would not use them.

If you are so hidebound to rules that you must follow them to your detriment, then there is no help for you I fear.

When regulations do nothing to help real people, and only restrict compassion with an old failed system - it is morally wrong to follow those regulations. I few Uber (and other companies like them) as the ultimate form of civil disobedience, and feel it is my duty as a citizen who wants to see a better world to make use of them and promote them when possible.

I have NO connection to Uber. Just a lifetime of experience with the world of Cabs that you are trying to keep us all mired in, a lifetime of poor to horrific experiences.

If they refuse to play by the same rules,

Uber is doing background checks on drivers - at least as well as cab companies. Probably better because who can say how many cab drivers make it in via political favors? Uber is far newer, and thus far less corrupt than decades old cab companies at this point.

When it is a group that is in ongoing violation of the regulations,

*cough*Cab Companies*cough*

It's for instance regulation to charge a certain rate from the port to the airport in Miami. Guess what really happens? You get extra fees added on when it's time to pay. Who are you going to complain to, really? The fact is that cab companies break far more regulations every day than Uber follows in spirit, even though not technically bound to them.

Cab drivers rape people occasionally also; if they can't be stopped from doing so after being in business for decades why should Uber be able to spot someone any better? The problem is that some people just fly under the radar of screening.

I had a cab driver who was borderline pscho, and almost refused to take money from my wife while I went around back to collect the bags.

Not that it should be needed, but you can buy an Thunderbolt to Ethernet adaptor... I bought one just in case as you never know when traveling what networking will be like.

Good god man, with the protocol fully in the hands of hackers they can reverse the bluetooth polarity flow - either shifting it to red through acceleration to burn your wrist, or even worse with the reversed flow affecting the heart rate monitor the hackers have full control of your heart rate!

Think everyone wearing a FuelBand as now living either a Logan's Run or Running Man scenario...

Google had problems with getting updates out to devices, so they decided to move many functions of Android the OS, into a Google Services library that could be upgraded when the core OS could not...

But doesn't that leave Google kind of vulnerable? In theory a different company could create their own variant of that library, take things the way they want...

I'm surprised Samsung at least has not done that, perhaps Microsoft is considering it.

This is exactly the reason why Internet access in the U.S. is so expensive and so crappy relative to other first-world nations.

I'm sorry, but to my mind any definition of "crappy" must include the freedom to access any website, which many other first world nations (like the UK) do not enjoy.

To label it a slower is fine, but just to say "crappy" is ignoring the tradeoff from one kind of crap to another.

Sounds like the system worked perfectly then. Others were not affected by your miasma, and depression would naturally lead you to interact less with others.

Your mental health is nothing compared to the tens or thousands of mental states you negatively impacted.

It's no big deal.