Whoa now, that just ain't true. Not at all.

Techies tend to forget how ridiculously hard it is for non-techies to administer their computers. Apple's iOS frees its customers from complexity, it frees them from stress and worry about viruses and Trojans, it frees them from the repercussions of being successfully hacked.

Sure, for your typical geek-o-matic here, OMG-I-don't-have-root-and-I-can't-allow-that! But for regular people, Apple's walled garden is a blessing.

I only took a quick glance, but it looks like the MacBook Air is half the weight, has a better CPU, better graphics, more USB 3.0 ports, much better battery life, lots of useful built-in apps, etc.

Exactly how did you compute that your Asus Vivobook S200E "ultraportable" is a "better MacBook Air than a MacBook Air"?

Why do you hope for that? Microsoft pretends to reinvent itself regularly, but one thing remains constant through the decades: Their goal has unswervingly been lock-in from top to bottom, while trying to nickel and dime you the whole way.

For nerds, this means locking you into their programming languages (e.g., VB or C#), or if not that, at least lock you into their APIs (so that you're as good as locked in, even if you're using C or C++). It means abandonment of entire domains that no longer suit them (look up how woefully out-of-date and ignored the C part of their C/C++ compiler is).

It means locking you into their platforms, whether that be the operating system (Windows) or the browser (Internet Explorer).

It means high prices (have you seen the prices on Windows Server and/or Microsoft Azure lately?), which is not-at-all nerd-friendly. It means guaranteed stagnation in those domains where they achieve dominance. It means product churn for the sake of profits. It means ignoring customers and forcing bad implementations on them (*cough*Metro*cough*) and then taking forever to admit it was a mistake and fix it (when is Windows 9 due out? Next year sometime?).

Just because some new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss is singing some unicorns-and-rainbows song doesn't mean the core of Microsoft is going to change. They're still after the same things they've always been after: Lock-in so severe that the pain of escape ensures most people remain slaves, and profits, profits, profits.

Well, let's think about that for a minute. Let's guess that on average filling up your tank from near empty to near full is around 13 gallons. An extra 12 cents per gallon will come to around $1.50.

If people fill up weekly, that'll be about $6/month. I don't think that'll impact the poor so very much...

Also, wealthy people tend to drive bigger vehicles, such as SUVs, and tend to commute longer distances from expensive suburbs. This will certainly cost wealthier people more money (but still probably not enough to matter).

This proposed 12 cents per gallon tax increase is peanuts, but be prepared for republicans in congress to scream and holler and shout about how it'll destroy America, cause more homosexuality, etc.

Guaranteed death in a car accident -- what's not to love?

OS X has what's called the Zoom button, not a Maximize button. It's supposed to size the window to best fit the content. Sometimes it does the same as Maximize does, sometimes it doesn't. Often it doesn't.

Source: My wife switched to OS X about 4 1/2 years ago. The lack of a Maximize button is, indeed, an annoyance. In OS X Mavericks, there's a full screen feature, but that's not quite the same. We frequently merely struggle a bit to manually maximize windows.

Because that's not a useful feature for 99.9% of the market.

I would moderate more if I could, but (1) I browse /. on my iPad a lot, (2) I use the standard desktop view of the site on my iPad, not the mobile view, and (3) When I open stories in new tabs, it forgets that I'm logged in, thus I can't moderate.

If /. ever fixes that long-standing bug, I would be happy to try to do my part to moderate posts objectively and fairly.

This is nonsense. There are a lot of web apps and Chrome apps for creating things.

Your speculation is incorrect. Pointing out that Google may have issues in no meaningful way adds to the discussion regarding Facebook's well known issues. It's a rhetorical trick to distract from the fact that Facebook has issues.

I'm happy to discuss Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. But when someone clearly points out people don't trust Facebook, and for good reason, no value is added to the conversation when someone says, "But... Google!"

You mean, other than Google Apps for Business, Google App Engine, Google Drive, etc.?

Your seething hated of Google is noted. And noted. And noted...

This article is about Facebook. Quit trying to change the subject.

I can't even get them to give us an option to turn off fucking autorefresh. It seems rather hopeless. :(

But that's just one potential solution, it's not the fault of the technology itself. In addition, at least your key presses show up instantly, rather than making a round trip before they show up. Low latency is nice.

I stand by my assertion that equating X11 and the web is wrong, not that it stops the haters and/or the ignorant from parroting it (and getting modded up for it).