In my not so humble opinion as an engineer surrounded by non-engineers in an IT division...

These people you speak of are customer support/power users/project managers/etc. Most of them do very little "IT" work.

Third person perspective here. My dad upgraded his 4 (not S) to 7. I thought it was pretty slow/boring on 6... now it seems slow (wouldn't really say slower) and much less boring on 7. iCloud terms of service wasn't coming up (some network error). Wound up showing him the notification bar and he got a big kick out of that. I'm surprised that Apple doesn't have tutorials ala Android for new features - unless I'm just unaware.

Off-topic but happened to upgrade one of my Verizon lines to the Moto X (kept Unlimited too - woot) and I'm loving it. Definitely feels like a relatively minor upgrade over the Nexus 4 but it's an upgrade with VZW 4G and that's what I was missing.

ceteris paribus translates to "all things being equal" for us non latin speakers :)

Where did this "in a week" concept come from? You or management?

Depends on how big of a company this is too - are you in a team? - are you tier 2 with a helpdesk underneath?

Anyway, slow down and be realistic. Focus on the users of the systems (your customers) and not the systems themselves and you'll be fine.

2c.

I'm fairly confident somewhere near 100% of the people who are the market for this device would have made the purchase without the Netflix voucher at that price point... please provide counterpoint.

Sorry I really should add - I'm 99% sure I'm buying this phone on launch despite the tone of my previous post. I'm a grandfathered in Verizon customer and this will fit the bill nicely at it's rumored price.

Really wish they would have upped the specs on this phone's hardware and took a hit on profit like Google does with the Nexus line. We all know (as it's well publicized) that Google makes hardly any direct profit off of the sales of any Android phones let alone Nexus phones. I can't expect a company with hardware as it's focus being able to do the same... but I really don't think that they will make as big of a splash with software alone.

I'm personally not super-obsessed with screen size on phones - I can handle 720p as long as it's high quality at that. I can deal with the shell of the phone being of mediocre materials as well - I'm gonna case it out no matter what it's made out of to protect potential resale.

    I do however believe that stereo with amplification is not too much to ask (I'm a fan of the HTC One because of this). I also think cancelling out sound while using the phone (again, referencing the HTC One here) with dual mics is a great idea and not too much to ask. Both of these features are relatively low cost and just make a whole lot of sense - so I hope this becomes standard. Sensors galore come at a price (battery) too - but I'd prefer that they all be included standard with the option to shut them off if you're going with a single unifying flagship product.

Again, small hardware improvements that I really think should just be standard by now.

The moto-x looks kinda "thick" and unless they're doing that to compensate for a freaking huge battery that will make this thing last 2-3 days I'd rather forgo the girth of the phone and have an external standby battery.

Just my 2 cents.

NC - Good to know Scantron is getting subsidized

I'm finding that money or other financial incentives are not as standard and competitive as most people like but in general people don't respond to more pay - they get more pay because they're performing already. Something that is harder to quantify is respect for the "chain of command" for lack of a better word. I find that with IT we're too often minimized into being reduced to the lowest common denominator of being a resource. What helps me personally break free from that type of depressing perspective is having leadership that provides a sincere vision and clear objectives and actually makes people accountable for them. There's nothing more demotivating to me personally than doing work for work's sake.

I'm aware that I'm something of an idealist bordering on delusional :)

Now if only the giants would see this as a reason to innovate and increase competition and lower costs. We haven't quite gotten there yet.