That seems like a better analogy. Either way, the general public definitely stops taking alerts seriously when they get too many of them.

It often is a common feed. This is how the emergency alert system works, at least as I understand it - but note that I am no expert. I'll use an example of a weather alert.

Weather warning is issued by the National Weather Service. The alert goes out (with the EAS tones, which actually contain modulated data containing information about the type of alert, the geographical area, timing, etc.) via NOAA Weather Radio.

Your local radio station(s), TV station(s), and cable provider(s) have a device, such as a Sage EAS ENDEC, which is tuned to the weather radio station. When an alert goes out, if it's on the list of "important" alerts, this device will preempt programming - the broadcaster usually has no direct control over it - automatically to get the alert out there.

This is probably why you heard all of them at the same time.

There is also a situation where some broadcasters listen to other broadcasters. For example, in my area, we have a 50,000 watt AM station (it actually covers something like 37 states on good days). When a tornado warning is issued, first it's the weather radio, then it's said AM station, and then everyone else, because everyone else gets it from the AM station.

There's much more to it than that, but that's how I understand it. Hope that helps.

That's absolutely correct. However, with a NOAA weather radio, there's a good chance that you'll get even longer lead time.

For example, the tornado warning for Joplin was issued 17 minutes before that tornado touched the ground (source).

Obviously it's not practical to have a weather radio everywhere, and I'm certainly not going to carry one with me when I'm out and about...

But I will say this: I have seen these things be early and late. Fortunately I have other methods of getting severe weather warnings on my phone, which tend to be more reliably on time.

Yup. It becomes a cry wolf/alarm fatigue situation when they abuse it.

Go into Settings -> Notifications and scroll all the way to the bottom, there are two switches there. If you don't have them, then probably your carrier doesn't support it yet.

I believe it depends on both the carrier and the device. I know AT&T and Verizon have implemented this in many areas. On the iPhone, I believe iOS 6.x and above supports it, but it needs to be enabled on the device by the carrier. I just had the options appear on my phone after a carrier file update a few weeks ago.

One thing I have noticed is that the alerts I've received haven't always come on time. The best way to be alerted to a severe weather situation is with a NOAA Weather Radio.

I *think* that the Presidential message is probably the same thing as an Emergency Action Notification, which has never been used before.

Out of curiosity, have you found a self-hosted application similar to Evernote? For Dropbox, there's Owncloud, but I haven't found anything like Evernote.

I've got a Mac and an iPhone. I'll agree with you on the iPhone side. My iPhone is "locked down" in the sense that without rooting it, I can only install curated applications... although so far, I haven't found something I want to do that I can't.

But I disagree with you on the Mac. I've been using PCs since the early 90s. I use Linux (and occasionally Windows) at work. I bought my first Mac this year. In no way is it locked down any more or less than any of my Windows, Linux, or FreeBSD boxes. In fact, because I can very easily compile and install just about any *nix application on it, I feel like it's more open than my Windows box ever was.

It truly is great to have a fantastic GUI OS, while at the same time being able to drop to a terminal and use the standard suite of UNIX tools when I want.

I've had iOS 6 on my 4S for a few days now... the speed doesn't seem to have changed. However, I was weary of that: iOS 4 and 5 made my old 3GS a LOT slower, and iOS 5 made my girlfriend's iPhone 4 slower.

Some companies still do sell "Mac memory" but it's just overpriced DDR3 ;)

There's also Micro Center if you're not near a Fry's.

They give you a backup code you can use in case you lose your phone.

Officially, they have a 1-year warranty. You can purchase an extended warranty (called "AppleCare") that takes it to 3 years. After that, it's a bit of a grey area. Officially, they won't give you free service after that. Anecdotally, I've heard many stories of people getting free out-of-warranty service, including screen and motherboard replacements. In fact, there's even a comment in this post where someone took in a 2007 macbook for some kind of warranty work, and they replaced it with a 2009 model on the spot.

I think it comes down to personal preference - mine is that I don't really want to repair my main PC anymore. I don't want to screw with it. If it breaks, I want to have someone else fix it so I can get on with things. And I don't want to have to fight with tech support, wait for them to ship me a box so I can send the computer to a repair factory in some other state, wait a week to get it back. I want to drive 8 minutes to the Apple store with my computer in hand and have them fix it right there, which is usually the norm.

And for me, at year 4-6, if I still have this Mac and it has a hardware failure... I'll probably take it in to see if Apple will fix it. If it'll cost me a lot, I'll probably just get a new computer. I haven't kept a computer for more than 3-4 years in a long time.