One of the design objectives of LTE is reduced latency (compared with 3g) - as low as 10ms. See this page for comparisons with various 3g technologies: http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/cellulartelecomms/lte-long-term-evolution/3g-lte-basics.php In fact the 3G technologies have also been improving steadily.

As someone else here has already noted - 48VDC power supply distribution has been standard in Telco exchanges since.... forever as far as I know. When I first started working in Telecoms (early 90's) the exchange would have a separate power room with rectifiers and huge battery banks. The resulting 48VDC was distributed through the equipment room using large busbars. In latter years this approach has mostly been replaced with smaller power supplies installed in each suite of racks, but the principle is still the same. It has always seemed somewhat ridiculous to me that one powers one's server by passing 240 or 110 VAC into a UPS, convert it to DC, charge a battery with it, invert it back up to 110/240, feed it into the server, which then converts it back to DC.

Very good point. If Apple had wanted it to be possible for third party developers to make software to interact with the iPod then they would have published the interface one should use. The fact that they have not implies that they don't want this to happen. This next step is an obvious extension when they saw that despite the lack of a published interface, others were still making third party software.

When buying such a device, the onus is on the purchaser to decide it's suitability for their intended purpose. The onus on the vendor is only to make sure it does what it is described as doing. Therefore, if you want a media player to use together with Linux, or if you want one to use with Windows or Mac and do not like iTunes, then probably the iPod is not for you.

Having said that, if I only purchased hardware that stated it would work with Linux, I would probably have no hardware at all.... so we really are between a rock and a hard place here.