> What I hear: Yelp isn't trustworthy

We need a review site to review all review sites. :D

> In an age where 16 GB is available as RAM on many desktops and laptops...
>The iPhone is just an underpowered palm computer...

Do you realize how big 16 GB of desktop RAM physically IS? And do you realize how fucking SMALL a modern smartphone is?

"Underpowered"? Compared to what, exactly? Please, show me a palm-sized computer from ANY manufacturer with all the power of a current desktop computer -- I'd love to have one.

Yes, the "portability premium" IS pretty goddamn high to make AN ENTIRE COMPUTER about the size of a laptop's hard drive alone. Do you actually CARRY your laptop in your pocket? No? Hmm, I wonder why that is... (And if you say "yes", then you've got a tiny netbook AND big pockets... and I'll bet my next year's pay that I can find a more powerful and larger computer.)

Also, there's this little thing called "physics"... how big do you want the battery to be to run a device at a certain performance level for any reasonable amount of time? Do you think there's no difference between the current draw of a big stomping desktop compared to a smartphone?

Seriously, how did you get a "+5, Insightful" out of that? All the smart people must be doing something besides reading Slashdot this weekend.

Simplifying does NOT mean "show what I think are the 4 most important controls and hide the other 47 behind a menu icon."

Is there oil underneath them? Yes? No worries -- the U.S. will intercede.

It will be ONE WHOLE YEAR MORE before they get into NFC in a big way!* This will certainly doom them, just like how they went out of business when they were late to the MP3 party, and again when they were late to the smartphone party, and again when they didn't let people install apps on their smartphones on Day 1, and then again when they didn't ship the first tablet...

Those morons, in the last 15 years they've doomed themselves so many times they just have to sit in the corner and console themselves with the fact that they're one of the biggest and most profitable company in the world. IDIOTS!

So wrong on so many levels. 1) Apple DOES has A solution for payments, just maybe not the one you want. 2) NFC is not the ONLY reason that someone will or won't buy a new iPhone. (Fun fact: they sold FOUR MILLION in the first 24 hours.) 3) Things CAN and WILL change. That year will go by pretty quick. They aren't going to miss the boat entirely just because they're not on it this year. 4) Did you notice Apple is the biggest company in the world? They have some smart people there doing good work. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, they analyzed their options and decided this was the best, and MAYBE it'll turn out that that's true.

* Besides all the pull they have with retailers and credit card companies to make them use Apple on the back-end... besides that one little detail, DOOMED!

Agree, I worship Picard. The warrior-poet, the tactician, the scholar.

But you want to talk shitty, grim future? I see your Battlestar Galactica and raise you Warhammer 40k!

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/...

IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR

"It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants -- and far, far worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

Totally different. Kosmo was a web 1.0 company trying to do this, while Uber is a web 2.0 company. (Or is it 3.0, now that we've ditched gradients and went back to using vowels?) Anyway, it's totally gonna work this time. The rules of space, time, and economics are all different now.

You know how when you first look at a block of words, your eyes and brain kind of skip around, read things out of order, and occasionally change words to fit what you think you're reading? My brain's first impression of this poll was...

To prepare for a mass ejaculation, I ...
_ Do nothing
_ Stockpile toilet paper

At that point, I figured I was reading it wrong.

In either case, my first answer is "Back up my data and foil-wrap the drive." Then the toilet-paper thing. :-)

> at one point "research" showed that jeans
> were responsible for higher risk of cancer

Erm, are you sure that wasn't "genes"? ;-)

Favorite line from a comedian long ago: "I'm not sure about research, though. 'We took a 4-ounce lab rat, fed him 22 pounds of saccharine, and he developed a tumor!' Well, NO SHIT!"

Funnier with das link.

I had all those problems with the stream too. (The interlacing, especially, made me LOL.) Tried to watch for about the first third, then gave up. It also jumped back in time repeatedly, sometimes all the way to the beginning. At one point it was JUST getting good, then it bounced back a few minutes to the middle of the game demo.

One more problem: the stream problems led to problems with the web pages themselves, if you were watching it in a browser. And since the stream was embedded into the apple.com homepage -- not jus the /live/ page but the homepage itself -- I now have a screenshot of an error right on www.apple.com.

Extra bonus funny: coverage at theverge.com got images up BEFORE I saw them on the "live" stream. Obviously the stream was buffered a bit, but DAMN those guys at The Verge were FAST. They're getting pretty good at this. Multiple text posts and pictures EACH MINUTE. I don't like much about the verge, but their event coverage is pretty great.

At least #livestream on twitter had a LOT of funny comments to pass the time with.

What is exactly is your threshold for when a product should be created? That it does everything? That everyone likes it? Apple will sell METRIC SHITLOADS of these and do just fine, thankyouverymuch.

MOST Apple products are a little overpriced and underspecced upon release. Look at the original iPod -- it was indeed expensive, had no wireless, and "less space than a Nomad." Then it TOOK OVER THE WORLD. The MacBook Air was a little slow and $1699 or $1799 at launch, and then OH LOOK, the WHOLE PC INDUSTRY tried to copy it with the whole "ultrabook" thing, and by the way Airs start at $899 now.

So yeah, the first batch will be sold to people who are willing to spend $349 to see texts without digging out their phone. Then they'll get cheaper, more powerful, and more useful over the next few years. There is LOTS that could be done here. Maybe they'll create the pico-SIM and you'll be able to use it without your phone, and they'll push telcos into supporting it for free since it uses so little data. Etc etc etc. THIS IS JUST REV ONE. Stay tuned. And if you don't like it, don't buy it. Get a pebble or a moto or a samsung or whatever. Or don't. Apple will do just fine without you.

And finally, "a gigantic set of the population" DOES still wear watches. Apple became the most valuable company in the world JUST A FEW YEARS after introducing the iPhone, the original target of which (as announced by Steve Jobs at MWSF, January 2007) was just 1% of the phone market. A product at which Steve Ballmer famously laughed. Don't worry about Apple. They'll do OK with 1% of the watch market, too.

Favorite old joke: "When I die, I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather... not wide awake and screaming, like the 4 passengers in the car he was driving."

"who hasn't yet dumped a bucket of icy water over his or her head for charity?"

Me. Because fuck you if you think you can publicly shame me into giving money to a cause when I could name a hundred other equally worthy causes. Also, I don't brag about my charitable donations.

Sure there is a legal basis for criminal charges.

You charge the guy with "reckless driving resulting in death", instead of what might be a more serious charge, lke "reckless driving resulting in death while texting"

The guy still killed someone with his car while driving. He should still be charged.