I understand your points, but eventually we have to take some small risk to move beyond a nearly century old frame rate and it's artifacts just because people are used to them, toward something better.

The killer for me, is that I can stand juddering pans, they look horrid. I can't believe we are stuck on century old frame-rate that traps us with this artifact.

I find it particular galling when people get snobbish about those artifacts as the only way to shoot movies (which thankfully you haven't done).

For me it is just unfortunate that Edison didn't win his 46 FPS argument in his day.

Most of the time you can't even tell the difference between frame rates, except when it emerges as artifacts at 24 fps.

24 fps movies are purposefully shot with more motion blur to hide the jerkiness. But nothing really gets around it when panning.

So 24fps primarily equals artifacts: Blurring, jerky motion, and juddering pans.

How nonsensical is it, and how resistant change do you have to be, to worship these artifacts. They are no more beneficial than ticks/pops were on Vinyl. There is certain nostalgia value to listening to something with ticks/pops sometimes, but it isn't something we put everywhere because we can't do without it.

So these resistant to change, Luddites in love with quite irritating artifacts have taken to calling superior motion video with less blur, less judder and less jerking: "The Soap Opera Effect".

Do a freeze frame on a soap opera and good movie. You can still tell which is which when frozen. Soaps look like crap, because they have crap production values. Poor sets, poor lighting, poor cameras, shot without any flair.

Shoot 48fps (or 60 fps or 120 fps for that matter) with great sets, great lighting, great cameras and great flair and it will be amazing and have nothing in common with soap operas.

Levy is still there, but downloading music is not legal. I believe there are now specified damages of $5000 for infringement.

The free for all is now over.

ARM chips are still slower than the PowerPC chips Apple moved away from in 2005.

This is rumor is pure BS.

2013 is bringing out an all new OOO execution Intel Atom core on 22nm process. Intel might start dominating Android phones leading to next years rumor that Apple will be moving iOS to Intel.

I don't see either move as likely in the foreseeable future. Beyond that is pure 100% BS.

That isn't evidence. They are just repeating the rumor, much like the rumor for iPad mini, where Samsung was out, and Sharp was in.

But when they dissected a Mini, it had a Samsung screen. So much for rumors.

There is also one other problem. Sharp doesn't build IPS screens. LG and Samsung do (though Samsung calls it PLS).

Sharp is heavily invested ASV technology which is a VA offshoot with inferior viewing angles.

I have yet to see any evidence that Sharp screens are used in any of Apple products.

That was the rumor, the only thing anyone has seen in a Mini, is a Samsung display. Which wasn't part of the Rumor.

Yeah, that was a typo, I meant to say Samsung/LG.

... major supplier of LCD displays to Apple ...

Really, which LCD displays do they supply to Apple? LG and Samsung are major suppliers, I can't remember the last time I saw an LCD in an Apple product wasn't LG/Sharp.

Perhaps if Sharp actually was a major supplier they wouldn't be in quite so close to bankruptcy.

Yes. I am sure there are companies that just can't wait to service it Anti-Apple, Anti-HP, Linux Users, who buy cheap refurbs, but assure us they are willing to spend big bucks if only someone that isn't one of the above companies would ship such a product complete with proper Linux drivers. That market must contain literally Dozens of potential sales.

Keep waiting, I am sure they can't resist that market potential much longer.

You know what drives changes like this. People showing they will pay a premium to have it.

By a 2880x1800 or 2560x1600 Retina Macbook, when they sell in numbers, competitors will follow.

You know why there is a 2560x1600 Tablet. Because Apple sold shipping containers full of Retina iPads (2048x1536) and Google took notice and decided to one up them.

Putting your money where your mouth is, trumps whining on a blog every time.

If they didn't charge $100 for 16GB upgrade, I would say those were solid reasons. But since they are gouging massively on the Flash upgrade (just like Apple) those reason carry less weight.

The flagship device for RT, along with the OS, and weak buggy ecosystem seem destined to flop.

Extensive Verge review.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/23/3540550/microsoft-surface-review

All the people thinking Apple has to compete with Nexus/Fire are forgetting something. Those products have essentially no profit margin, they are non-profit products.

Apple doesn't work that way. Apple makes its money with nice healthy profit margins, of which there would be zero in an 8" 4:3 iPad. That is another thing, did everyone forget how rounding works. The iPad Mini rumors state the display is 7.85". If you going to round off to the nearest inch, that is 8" not 7" like everyone keeps stating.

Basically there is no way in Hell that (we exist for profit margins) Apple is going to sell an 8" iPad for less than $300.

Is there anything else they would care about? I can't think of anything more important than running your software that an OS has to do.

I remember the outcry when Vista was incompatible initially with a handful of applications. In this case nothing would run, if you end up with WinRT without the implications being clear.

That they have some similarities that can lead to confusion is all the more reason to work that much harder at strong brand differentiation.

Because they differ in one highly important and critical way.

Only one of them actually runs what we know of today as "Windows Software".

That is about as huge a difference as it gets for a "Windows" operating system. I can't think of a more critical difference.

The ONLY reason I use Windows, is because it runs "Windows Software". If it doesn't run "Windows Software", then IMO it shouldn't be called Windows.

But now that ship has sailed. We have Two versions of "Windows" launching on tablets at the same time, that look the same, but only one runs "Windows Software", it should be blindingly obvious, but instead because of poor branding it will likely be lost on MOST consumers and that is a massive screw up.

Really this is a Microsoft Problem because they named them too closely. They should have called WinRT something totally different, to avoid this mess, really anyone thinking about it should have been able to predict this.

If all the product specialists are the biggest electronic retailers in North America are confused and making mistakes, what chance does the average consumer have.

Essentially the same thing happening at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Tablets-Accessories/Category/ID-164?Tpk=tablet

Check the top of the page.

Win 8 Tablets!

Then they have a mix of ARM/x86 tablets all with the same graphics (this time Metro).

But it is still both kinds of tablets called Windows 8 and undifferentiated.