It's so funny, because I was thinking the exact opposite. The phone in the video looks complicated and ungainly. The user can't even hit the bottom buttons properly. He's moving things around the gui in ways that look totally cryptic, like some alien ui in a movie. I don't even own an iPhone and I've picked one up before and used it like I had been using it for years...

Why?

I'm not trying to ge a dick. In fact personally I think large corporations should be broken up. But WHY, from Apples perspective, should they stop?

Ill third you, but for Canada. Netflix here is garbage old movies. Everyone I know who tried it has canceled. I don't know how they are surviving.

Except isn't the opposite true as well? If you remove patents, then anything one company designs and builds can easily be copied wholesale by another. It will completely kill innovation, because nobody will want to put money into something that everyone else will simply copy. Unlike what seems to be the majority of slashdot posters, I don't think there is a simple and obvious solution. The reality is that a lot of very smart people have already designed a patent system that, for the most part, seems to work to a semi-acceptable level. The world is complex, and in a lot of cases there is no simple or easy answer.

The average slashdot poster will undoubtably argue vehemently against a "post-pc" world, but I think to an extent it is inevitable. It probably won't happen this decade, but maybe in the next. Computer appliances are the way of the future. Average Joe wants an easy to use appliance, not a build-it-yourself nightmare. Even before tablets, the big pc makers were using less and less user maintainable parts. In most modern laptops basically the only thing you can fiddle with is the ram.

The question is: will custom hackable computers ever really go away?
I think the car industry may give a glimmer of hope there. As cars have become more and more difficult to self-service, there is a still a healthy and thriving enthusiast community who hack their cars. I suspect this will also be true for computers. Don't put your solder away yet!

Tell that to my iBook that's been in constant use for 9 years with the same battery. It doesn't last as long as it used to, but it still works.

I dont think it is a matter of "schmoozing", but rather of attitude and culturing. As an example, what sets people apart into cliches in high school such as jock, prep, nerd? Invariably it is as much to do with their attitude and experience as anything else. Executives have an "executive" attitude. Their whole life is about their work, with little time for even families on the side. Their ethics are different than the average worker, and their instincts usually honed from years of training in high class and executive environments. You and I could no more become an executive, even with luck, than a nerd could become a jock. I speak of all this from experience, as my father is an upper class CEO.

Are you sure that works?
What's stopping any Facebook widget site from placing a cookie on your machine and tracking you? Sure they may not know who you are, but they can still collect all the same data. I don't know if they do this, but the whole Facebook network scares me.

The airport extreme is leaps and bounds better than any other router I have tried. I fiddled with a lot of routers of the last 15 years, and they were all a PITA, except the airport extreme. It didn't even occur to me that you COULD have a router that sat in the corner and just worked forever, without requiring reboots and updates and fiddling every few weeks.

Shoes already have absorption in them, it's a feature...

This device is below your foot, and doesn't require your foot to do crunches or anything. Your foot isn't going to get more tired. It works by using the already existing energy in the compression of your soles due to gravity and a humans need to lift a little with every step. Ths is actually the perfect place to get energy which is currently being wasted. You could potentially do something similar in a cars suspension or braking (it's already done in the braking in some cars, actually).

I have to ask though: why do you feel the need to criticize things that have no real impact on you?

Certainly there are android phones at the same price point as the iphone, except that the most popular android phones are the cheap ones which usually either have zero upfront cost or no contract. So in reality the situation is more similar to what I suggested: Android is the cheap alternative to the iPhone.

It's obvious that if you offer a tablet with similar features to an iPad but substantially cheaper, even if it lacks in some areas (such as apps or polish), people will buy it. It doesn't take a genius to realize that. Thats pretty much what's happening with the iPhone and Android phones already. The question that interests me more is whether a worse tablet (worse specs) at a substantially reduced price point will sell well.