You obviously don't have one of these. There is in fact a GPS inside, and they specifically instruct you to put it near a window if the GPS LED doesn't go solid. There have been various complaints on other boards about this fact, with tips on where to find GPS antennas and connectors (yes, there is an antenna jack on the back of the unit) so that the MicroCell can be used in a more convenient place while still getting a GPS signal.

Another problem was the difficulty in finding programmers who had a keen understanding of WebKit as Apple and Google snatched up most of the top talent

But wait, I thought that engineers were just pluggable resources...

Yeah, and despite all that, my Kindle Library pretty darned large thank-you-very-much. 90% of it read on an iPad, the other 10% on my 2nd-gen Kindle which was immediately given to the in-laws once I got the iPad. For my situation, reading on the iPad is a way better situation than the Kindle.

Exactly. Or the shorter version: Get an iPad. Duh.

And as others have pointed out, skipping out on Internet is silly---she will get a huge benefit by being connected. eBooks, video calls, multi-player games, news, etc. If the nursing home has Wifi, then there ya go. If not, get the 3G model and have the family chip in the measly $15/mo to keep it on a basic data plan.

And yet it is suprisingly good at figuring out the command and parameters. You seem to be saying that Siri is worse because it doesn't force the user to speak as if it were typing commands in /bin/sh. Which is precisely why it is better than traditional voice recognition. I've used Google Voice, and I was a very frequenct user of the much-more-limited iOS 4 voice commands. Both worked well for their intended use. But Siri is a whole 'nother thing.

Vlingo has been around awhile on iOS too, so it's not like that's a case of "Android had it first". And having installed Vlingo on my iPhone, and subsequently picked a 4S, I can definitely say that Siri != Vlingo.

So the fact that Apple has successfully beat the carriers with a stick and essentially said "no crapware", is somehow not an advantage an iPhone?

From the consumer's perspective, it doesn't matter where the crapware came from. If it's on the phone and it can't be removed, then you are stuck with a phone full of crapware, end of story.

And that simply doesn't happen with an iPhone. What's so hard to understand about that?

...and at 10PM I shouldn't be doing math in my head. Make that roughly 200,000 times the RAM vs 100,000 times the RAM.

Uh, ok, so it's only 1,000 times the RAM versus 2,000 times the RAM. This invalidates the GP how again? While the device is impressive, there is only so much you can squeeze out of such a resource-constrained environment. There is a reason the iPod Touch's RAM spec has an "M" after the numbers instead of a "K". Or perhaps you thought the engineers picked that number for the hell of it.

Need a TCP/IP network stack? SSL? A modern GUI? Codecs? Good luck doing that in 2.5K.

Even if you could wave a magic-pixie-dust-wand and somehow make all that happen and more, you are going to spend an inordinate amount of resources writing code that has to do it's job with only 1 byte of RAM, since the rest of the code took up the other 2.499K already. So while you can beat your chest and show how you managed to squeeze a bunch of functionality into a small footprint, that still comes at a cost.

Maybe I'm not in your category of "Apple zealot", but our household has seen every model of iPhone since the first one. But no way would I switch carriers just to get an early lead on the iPhone 5. I've been eligible for a discounted handset-upgrade since April, but have been holding out for the new iPhone. If Apple really does something as boneheaded as a Sprint exclusive, I will just wait a little longer.

Sadly, while this was meant in jest, there is at least one person we know that fits this description. Leave voicemail or send email all you want, and it goes into a black hole. Send her a message on Facebook? Two hour turnaround! Mind-boggling...

Totally agree here. I read a few books on my iPhone prior to breaking down and buying a Kindle. The only thing advantage to the Kindle screen is size. Frankly, I find eInk to be a pain in the ass due to low contrast in anything but the brightest of lighting conditions. I too, make a living in front of LCD screens all day. I've read eBooks on both LCD and eInk, and so far, I really don't see what the big whoop is with eInk. Once the price comes down a bit, I have zero issues with replacing my Kindle with an iPad.

Hah, reminds me of a salescritter's comments a few years back. He was bragging about "Nine 5's" reliability. To which I replied, "Heck, I can give you as many fives as you want!"