I assume he was talking about the actual port on the phone body so that charging cables would be compatible across multiple manufacturers and models. Does the iPhone use the iPod connector, or a standard micro- or mini-USB connector?

I don't understand; could you perhaps make the subject more relatable by using a car analogy instead?

New versions of Flash support hardware acceleration, so if both your Flash player and the Flash application can do it, performance is more betterer. May as well check to make sure you're using an up to date plugin, although there's obviously nothing you can do if the Flash object wasn't compiled with hardware acceleration support.

Gordon R. Dickson's novel Wolf and Iron comes to mind, if you decide maybe it wasn't a movie. I can't recall whether it was Montana or Utah, in that one, though.