Anyone who believes that the style of the UI remaining the same means the OS is the same is an idiot. What you're saying is sheer ignorance and prejudice. You don't have a clue what you're talking about, factually speaking.

Anybody who can write that "iOS is static and hasn’t improved since 2007" has no idea what he's talking about. He's writing on an Android-oriented site, so I can certainly understand why he would come from the point of view that Android is the best. That's a reasonable opinion, even if I disagree. But to claim that iOS has remained the same as it was in 2007 isn't just a disagreement about opinions. It's factually mistaken, and it's sheer idiocy. It's hard to give credibility to someone who claims to believe that.

It surprises me that some people act shocked to find out about the negative parts of Steve Jobs' personality. Anybody who was even halfway paying attention for the past few decades knew about his dark sides. It's very common, of course, for great achievers to come with strong negatives, so it was no surprise. But even if you didn't understand that it's true in general, the specifics have been out there about Jobs for many, many years. He was a visionary genius (even if a lot of technical-minded people still don't understand that), but he was also very cruel, selfish and overbearing at times. The truth has been very clear for a long time. Those trying to make him just a hero OR just a villain are off track. He was far too complicated for either of those roles.

If a user is too stupid to understand the difference between a private message and a message posted to a Facebook wall (or timeline, now), he doesn't need to be using Facebook. In fact, someone who doesn't understand that distinction probably isn't bright enough to be online in the first place. There are a lot of potential problems with Facebook, and I don't like some of the company's practices. But this is a case in which the company did nothing wrong and Facebook-haters leapt on it in an effort to find SOMETHING to blame the company for. This one isn't close. A user needs to know the difference between a private message and a wall post on a website -- or else get off of the site.

If the iPhone didn't exist, I might very well be interested in Windows Phone. I think it's an interesting UI and has a lot going for it. However, I am VERY happy with my iPhone. There's nothing that Windows Phone does that makes me interested in looking seriously at it. A brand new product has to be an order of magnitude better than what someone is already using to make it worth the hassle of making a change. Even if I were to say that Windows Phone is the best platform out there (which I don't believe), it still wouldn't be MUCH better. For people already entrenched in the iOS world, I see nothing that Windows Phone brings to make us interested in switching. (And people who are attracted to Android are attracted to it for reasons that make Windows Phone antithetical to what they want anyway.) I just don't see who Windows Phone is that much better for. I have only one friend who uses the platform. He loves it, but the vast majority of my other friends are happy iPhone users (with a smattering of Android users in the bunch). Other than people giving up BlackBerry, it's hard to see what the legitimate target market is for Windows Phone. Most new smartphone users are going to either go with the perceive leading brand (iPhone, regardless of what others think) OR the mass market brand, Android, which they're going to see the most choices for. Microsoft's strategy isn't adding up in the current smartphone market, IMO.

You're not very bright, are you? The people who advocate for the GPL claim they are advocating complete freedom with code. The people who advocate for laws to punish murder don't pretend that they are in favor of people having the freedom to murder each other. In both cases, the advocates are trying to CONTROL behavior. People who are against murder admit it. People who don't want people to do what they want with software (unless they approve) are hypocrites.

Yes, I DO like controlling people who are intent on committing murder. And your point is WHAT exactly?

No, it's not wrong. It's also not misleading. The GPL CONTROLS what people can do with software. Just admit that you believe in CONTROLLING people in the name of achieving a RESULT you like. If that's your position, I have no problem with it, but it's hypocritical to posture as an advocate of giving people complete freedom and believing that restrictions are wrong -- except the restrictions that YOU happen to like.

The GPL controls what people can do with the code they get. Period. End of story. If you want complete freedom -- as GPL supporters claim -- they can't use this license. It LIMITS what people can do.

It's hilarious that the people in favor of forcing "freedom" for software on everybody else define freedom to mean that everyone should do things according to THEIR rules. If code is truly free, release it in the public domain. Of course, THAT would mean that you can't control what people do with it later -- and control is what the GPL is all about, despite the pretensions of its fans. They care about getting the outcomes they want, not about individuals having freedom to do whatever they choose.

I'll rephrase. "Unless you're already an Android enthusiast OR you're a trolling jerk, there's no reason to specifically look at an Android tablet." There. That ought to cover your case.

The framing here is that the Kindle Fire has more than half of the "Android tablet market," but that's a framing that only makes sense to those who follow technology closely and care heavily about Android. This says less about the strength of the Kindle Fire than it does about the fact that there isn't much of an Android tablet market. There's an iPad market. And there's a market for specialized devices such as the Kindle. But that's about it. The vast majority of Kindle Fire owners wouldn't even think of themselves as owning an Android tablet. They simply own a Kindle. There just aren't that many people who want a non-iPad tablet unless it's a specialized device (as they see the Fire), IMO. Unless you're an Android enthusiast, there's no reason to specifically look at an Android tablet.

As a percentage of the population, it IS a tiny minority who want to do hypertext stories. There might be tens of thousands of people who want it, but that's a tiny market. There might even be more than that, but as a percentage of the market, it's still tiny.

Whether there's a narrative story or not, the decisions that are made about getting from A to B to C to D and all the way through Z are the heart of what makes it literature. Whatever the form is, it's those decisions that make it art. Just creating the world and turning it over to the reader changes all that. It's no longer literature, regardless of the form -- narrative story, poetry, whatever.

It's really very simple. When you're reading literature, you WANT the writer to have made those decisions. That's the writer's job. The story decisions are the heart of what makes a collection of stories into literature. Otherwise, you're just creating a world and throwing a reader into it to do the work of building his own story. There's nothing wrong with it for the tiny minority who want to do it, of course, but for the vast majority of people, having someone else make those artistic decisions and give them a satisfying story -- with interesting twists along the way before arriving at an interesting end -- is what makes reading literature worth doing. The people who favor the reader-driven plots don't really understand what literature is. As others have pointed out, hypertext stories are simply games. There's nothing wrong with that format, but it's neither fish nor fowl. People who want a good linear narrative story are best served by a traditional book. Those who want an interactive game are best served by graphics-heavy games. Hypertext stories serve a tiny niche that will never grow, IMO.