I have seen many such sites, but they're all hugely out of date, and often review exactly the same software as each other. All they end up achieving is a slightly differently skewed marketplace.

It wouldn't be dishonest. Right now, a lot of the recommendations are things you've probably already heard of anyway. A policy of "discovery" recommendations would be no bad thing.

And given that Amazon allegedly don't pay developers for their free app of the day, it does very little to sort the balance of power in app land....

you mean like the magazines we all read in the 80s and 90s to tell us what was worth buying? Just what I was going to say. The problem is... who's going to pay for it? Computer mags were full of ads, but who's going to pay to advertise when either A) your site tells people their software is rubbish or B) your site tells people that they should buy the software anyway.

For decades, computer games manufacturers have put out limited demos to encourage people to buy the full thing. Some even experimented with DRM to give time-limited access to the full thing. The App Store and iOS give 99.9% security (most iOS users don't jailbreak) so why haven't Apple given the developers a toolkit for time-limited demos? Why are free and paid-for versions listed as separate apps? As an iPad user, I want a proper try-before-you-buy that lets me see exactly what I'm going to get, and if I had that, I'd certainly spend more money. (I could even say the same about Steam, actually...)

The app store model doesn't reward the best - there's a lot of luck involved in getting into the charts, and being in the charts is self-sustaining.

The problem is a bit more subtle than that.

The app "gold rush" encourages people to out in untold millions of man-hours of development time to get a piece of the multi-billion action. What it doesn't say is that a huge chunk of that goes to some random guy who just got lucky (think Flappy Bird) and someone who just took a very common game idea and stuck cutesy graphics on it (Angry Birds). It also doesn't take into account that if you come up with a good idea for a game, you're likely to get cloned almost immediately, and quite possibly by Zynga, who will use their marketing muscle to push you out.

A lot of app developers end up never even making back their Developer Programme membership fees.

But Apple doesn't care, because their customers have a limited amount of spending money, and they're probably spending it all as it is. Given that Apple's cut is a fixed percentage, there's no financial motive for Apple to change the model. And developers are instant profit for Apple, even if they never sell a single app.

My sister used to run out into the garden to pick fresh broccoli to eat when she was a child. As an adult, she has been seen walking down the street munching on a head of raw broccoli.

Twilight, Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey...? The medium is NOT the message. Reading is not automatically less trashy than watching TV, or vice versa.

Smart kids learn despite their teachers. The underachieving kids are the ones who need direct and instruction.

A trap? Not really. From the developer's point of view, they'll still be able to get access to any changes to code on their terms, even if it is "tivoised". They can incorporate them into their code base without worrying too much about which hardware devices will or won't work - Somebody Else's Problem. They're interested in the code, not in "right to do whatever you want with your devices."

Surely a formally-proven OS doesn't want a traditional open-source license, because if you let people tinker, what you will end up with is forking... into unproven versions. And suddenly, the world's first formally-proven microkernel is just a plain old microkernel again.

OK, so maybe tinkering is alright as a personal hobby, but it risks the ecosystem.

Quite. I never understood why Google didn't try to get a jump on Apple by speccing up an OS version for phones with D-pads for gamers at first launch. Look at the mess and fragmentation that we ended up with in third-party accessory controllers for the first few generations, and there are still some compatibility kinks to trip you up...

How long is anyone realistically going to be using a VR headset for daily?

I thought OLED's biggest problem was UV stimulating chemical decomposition. If so, surely the laws of physics say an OLED display in a black box with two small eyeholes is going to last much longer than a mobile phone display that is often used in direct sunlight...?