And, as soon as they deploy a drone, you'll be raging about the police flying big brother over your head.

No. Seriously. Do you honestly think people's reaction would be "hey, that's a smart idea" or do you think people would lose their shit? I know which one I would expect.

And you never, ever would have heard of Wozniak without Jobs.

Ever.

Wozniak needed what Jobs brought to the table as much as Jobs needed what Woz brought. Each, without the other, would have been nothing.

Said like someone who has absolutely no understanding of what addiction is and how it might come about and a complete lack of compassion for those that suffer it.

You're addicted to something? Hey, just stop being addicted! See, problem solved!

Moron.

You make it sound like these people just need to make a choice and change their diets and the way they live. You fail to understand that, in their heads, they don't have a choice. For a whole myriad and complex collection of possible reasons, they eat and live the way they do because that's what they believe is their only choice.

That is addiction - a compulsion to act a certain way or do a certain thing with no sense of choice of being able to stop.

Sorry, but we don't live in your simplistic world.

I'm surprised that no law firm nor the SEC has taken action against Samsung for lying to their investors. I don't know for certain but I would assume that lying to one's shareholders is both illegal and worthy of a class action lawsuit. When I first saw the news that they'd lied - let's call it "misreported" - to shareholders, I assumed that was going to quickly lead to very bad things for them. So far, nothing. I'm surprised about that.

People still put any trust in what Strategy Analytics has to say? Seriously?

Their numbers are routinely discredited, in the extreme. They aren't making slight errors - they are overtly fabricating numbers seemingly out of thin air all with an eye on, as they say on their own website, "improving competitive positioning" for their clients. They aren't a market analyst firm. They have clients and they serve the interest of those clients, up to and including creating the impression that their clients are performing in the market better than they actually are.

Even when confronted with hard numbers that show their figures are off by several million, they stand firm and do not correct their data. We're not talking about being off by slight degrees - we're talking about figures large enough to engulf the entire reported sales figures of major manufacturers. We're talking about things like figures including phantom product categories that nobody - nobody - can verify.

They are making shit up.

Come on - they aren't reliable even as one set of data points to be viewed alongside other analysts firms' data. I could make up numbers and be as reliable as they are. If we want to be taken seriously as knowledgable nerds, we have to stop putting any stock into anything that comes out of companies like Strategy Analytics.

Not allowed. If an in app purchase is offered and the same purchase is available on an external source, the price of the in app purchase cannot be higher.

Or Google. https://support.google.com/goo...

And virtually everyone else that offers payment processing services

Sorry - you were attempting to imply that Apple was akin to the Mafia because they charge the same rate as everyone else for the same service. As you were.

In app purchases pay a 30% fee to Apple to payment processing, etc. Purchases made outside the app (ie: at a developer's website such as amazon.com) do not incur the 30% fee.

It's up to each developer to decide if the 30% fee is worth the ease of use and Apple handling all the payment processing or not. The vast, vast, vast majority of developers happily pay that fee. Amazon is the one high profile developer to buck that trend, first with Kindle and now with Comixology.

Suck it up princess!

I know you're going to fight tooth and nail to get legislators to protect your business model but the writing is on the wall. Feel free to look up buggy whip manufacturers if you want to see how this story is going to end in the long run.

Oh, and if you think we, the public, are going to feel any sympathy for you as your business model gets replaced by newer and better technology, trust me when I say you're wrong. No sympathy. Adapt or die.

I know you think legislate or die are the options on the table but I assure you, it's adapt or die.

You're comparing a phone operating system to a computer operating system. Aside from both having the words "operating system" in their descriptors, they are damn near nothing alike.

How about you compare OSX and Windows? Oh. That's right. You're not doing that because then your attempt to paint Apple in a negative light would fall apart.

5, Insightful indeed... More like 5, Troll that we agree with.

Like every other company with a non-brain-dead accounting team.

No. Really. EVERY company does their best to reduce their taxes. Why aren't you vilifying all the other companies who tax advantage of legal tax deductions to reduce their tax burden?

And I'm willing to bet you, as an individual, did too. I bet you took advantage of some sort of tax break when you filed your taxes. Why should you be allowed to do so but not Apple?

No. Really. Answer that please. Why should you be allowed to benefit from any tax breaks but you vilify Apple for taking advantage of _LEGAL_ tax breaks to reduce their tax burden?

Don't worry. I know you won't answer because we both know what the answer is.

And yet the climate change deniers will CLING to that 1% and continue to stick their ignorant heads in the sand and pretend that we aren't messing up our climate.

I have largely given up any remaining hope that Slashdot can provide intelligent and informative discussion on most topics, especially any topic related to Apple.

Thank you for proving me wrong. That was an excellent and highly informative post. It makes me wistfully pine for the glory days of Slashdot...

Please consider this post a +1 Informative mod.