You look at their Exchange/Google/whatever shared calendars and schedule the meetings accordingly, because the software will have daytime/in-office hours highlighted for you.

Yes. It's called immersion. Sure, games can be immersive without these things, but they sure do help, and once you've experienced them in newer games it's difficult to go backwards. And it's not just the graphics and sound, but also things like control schemes and "polish". Try playing GTA4 and GTA3 back to back. GTA3 was more fun, but I'm not sure I could tolerate it after seeing the production and experiencing the evolution that was GTA4.

Then again, there's very few games I'd play more than once, anyway.

It's not silly. We're just more sensitive to aesthetics.

Our ancestors had about the same memory - they would open the door, get on the floor, and everybody walked the dinosaur.

Like I said, misleading and divisive. A little condescending, too.

I'm sure there are key commands in most shells, it's just that they're not apparent and nobody takes the time to learn them. Further, I still think your framing of the argument as "newbie" vs "advanced user", while well-intentioned, is misguided and inadvertently divisive. Yes, I think UIs still have a way to advance, but I don't think they're catering to new users so much as attempting new paradigms. And yes, I find that the more that's on my screen, the less I can focus on the one task I'm doing. Different strokes for different folks. That's why some people like KDE and others (like me) prefer Gnome, and it has absolutely no bearing on how "advanced" the user is. Luckily, my preference is on the winning side!

If you have over 30 tasks that you are actively using and need to constantly switch between, you're far, far in the minority, my friend. And while yes, they may be catering to new users, they are also catering to people who prefer simple, non-cluttered screens. If I have to perform an additional click to do something that I only need 1% of the time, then I really don't mind if it simplifies the UI I have to stare at 100% of the time.

If you're running the apps full screen/maximized, which is usually the most useful mode, then all it takes is a swipe or two across the trackpad to switch virtual desktops, or control-Left/Right.

I realize that's not the answer you wanted, but again, 80% of the time you will be using apps maximized, and 80% of the time you will only be switching between two of them, and 80% of the time you will only have one window from each app open.

I'm not saying it's perfect by any means. Yes, it could do a better job with cues on how to use it efficiently or guard-rails for common confusing workflows. And it's very confusing coming from Windows or Linux. But I've come to like it, particularly with the added gestures in Lion.

I think Apple does a pretty good job of following 80/20. Cater to 80 percent of use cases, make them big, easy, and pretty, and then tuck the 20% away. It's a design philosophy. I cannot recall a workflow removing the animation would have made it quicker.

Now, it's interesting that you bring up this video game thing, because Assassin's Creed series keeps making me watch animations and I can't turn them off. Over 1 second to bring up the damn map! That's a waste of time... while I'm wasting time playing games.

Last I heard, Chrome doesn't support HTTPS Everywhere because it doesn't have the plugin hooks to do it. That's the main reason I stuck with Firefox. https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Ah, the Internet. Raising the quality of life for everyone.

Precisely why I have a computer for each purpose. I mean, this goes both ways - music software and audio drivers can be a nightmare with regards to DRM and instability.

If my recording PC gets fubar'd, I can just format, reinstall, and use my network backups... same with the gaming PC. It's sad, but that's the way it has to be until virtualization is fast enough to run these things. Workstation PC is Linux, which just doesn't get screwed up on the same level as Windows does.

That and some countries have censorship laws that require game modifications... or the games are banned completely.

Steam is not nearly as annoying as iTunes, because there's no magic dance I need to do to transfer purchases from one device to another... but that's another story.

Steam makes me buy more PC games than I could ever play, because it's all right there at my fingertips with enticing sales and instant gratification. Personally, I've bought every Assassin's Creed game on Steam as well, despite having played one or two on Xbox. Voting with my dollars... I support the series, I support Steam, and I support Ubisoft's support of the PC platform. Yes, you can all thank me for throwing dollars at Ubisoft to make PC somewhat profitable for them.

Honestly, I'm probably one of the few that doesn't care about "crappy console ports". That's what my HTPC is - an Xbox 360 that can run games at 1080p/60fps.

Solid state drives have driven up the price of hard disk space again, and driven down the capacity. Additionally, a lot of people have the extra processing power/ram to spare and may even come out ahead on performance with compression on.