There's a particular kind of feminist known as a TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) who see trans women as men who are pretending to be women so they can rape women. They put massive amounts of effort into uncovering and harassing trans women, outing them to employers and schools, etc. Drag queens aren't trans women, but if I had to lay money on a responsible party, my best guess would be a TERF.

If I post photo X as a blogger user, it should be up to me to decide if I want to take it down or not, not Google

Not if you aren't the copyright holder, don't have a license to publish copies from the copyright holder, and Google receives a valid DMCA request.

Sue the Blogger user if you don't like their content, not Google.

Google are only protected from copyright infringement liability if they take action when they receive DMCA requests. If they don't, then they aren't protected by the safe harbour provisions of the DMCA.

Apple will continue licensing siri technology. Yes, they'll probably look for alternatives (the same way they are looking for an alternative to the Samsung chip fabrication).

I would be amazed if they weren't already working on this. You mention chip fabrication, but bringing software development in house compared with bringing manufacturing in house is a hell of a lot easier.

This is more akin to Google Maps vs Apple Maps. They are reliant upon licensing software from a competitor for a major feature. While they've almost certainly got a long-term contract in place that lets them use the technology on their own terms, at some point that contract will expire, and they'll be beholden to whatever new contract terms are offered. With Maps, the new terms were unacceptable, the timing was awful and they were underprepared to switch. You'd better believe bringing voice recognition in house in plenty of time for switching over is a priority.

Can't women just do this on any other dating site by not having any photos on their profile and sending photos once they've been talking to a man for a while?

Why would a man join this site compared with dating sites that let him see photos and don't make him jump through silly hoops?

Macs before 2009 can't run the current version of OS X.

Yosemite, which is the version that Apple are just about to release, runs on plenty of Macs released in 2007. The same goes for the current version.

Fuck everything, we're doing Windows 10.

Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of operating systems in this country. Windows XP was the operating system to run. Then Apple came out with OS X. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called Windows Vista. That's Aero UI and a sidebar. For widgets. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened - the bastards went to mobile. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling a desktop operating system with a sidebar. Aero or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to Windows 10.

Sure, we could go to Windows 9 next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, 8 worked out pretty well, and 9 is the next number after 8. So let's play it safe. Let's make a better UI and call it the Start Screen. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!

it would have been much easier and more polite to point that out instead of ranting nonsense for two posts minimum now

Not reading the sources I provided is impolite. I haven't been "ranting nonsense", I've been pointing out how and why you are wrong.

As I said: I'm full ear ... but not for rants. For information and facts.

I linked to these. You didn't read them.

Interface Builder has not changed in any fundamental ways since it debuted in 1988 with NeXTstep.

I'd say storyboards and auto layout are pretty big changes. Before storyboards, nibs were basically just view hierarchies and whichever other objects you threw in there. With storyboards, they can contain an entire application's user interface, including the transitions between different screens.

it is NOT a screen drawing tool. It is an object instantiation and configuration tool.

It's both. It's a screen drawing tool that uses object instantiation and configuration to accomplish that.

I simply doubt that companies other than Apple have any means to collect reliable data at all.

Yes, but your doubts are based on incorrect guesses you have made about collection methods and personal experience, both of which are worthless.

Furthermore, the statistics coming out of these companies are roughly the same as the statistics published by Apple, and you don't believe them either! So basically, your attitude is "if I don't like the stats, they are wrong". Well sorry, but you not liking the stats is not a reason to disbelieve them.

Otherwise we had not that company releasing every year a statistics claiming that Microsofts web server (IIS) where the most widely used one, ah well second most widely used :)

Huh? None of the companies we are talking about publish statistics like those.

However if you have ideas how they measure iOS versions share them, I'm full ear.

No you aren't. If you were paying attention, you'd already know how they measure iOS versions. The information is right there waiting for you to read it, but you ignored it already in favour of your own incorrect guesswork.

you gave me two links, I checked one and the 'usage distribution' of iOSes made no sense at all

No, what you mean is that you didn't like the statistics. They make perfect sense.

there was no information how they gathered that statistic

All you are showing here is that you didn't bother looking. That information is available on their websites, in one case at the bottom of the page I linked to.

I get that you don't like the fact that iOS adoption of new versions is high, but can you try to understand the difference between what you would like to be the case and what actually is the case?

If three different companies all independently measuring iOS adoption all come up with roughly the same figures, the fact that you know people who haven't upgraded does not outweigh those statistics.

Now, if you aren't willing to pay attention to reliable sources and think your personal experience is more relevant than statistics sourced from millions of people, don't bother responding, as it's impossible to have a sensible discussion with you.

Staying close to the cutting edge is easy when it's an incremental change. It's a very different thing when it means throwing out all of your your code.

Adopting Swift doesn't mean throwing out all of your code. You can have Swift classes in a mostly Objective-C codebase and Objective-C classes in a mostly Swift codebase as you wish.

I could be wrong, but I really, truly don't see anything about the new language that makes me want to start rewriting those billions of lines of existing code in a new language.

Who is talking about doing that? The conversation is about Swift being the dominant language for iOS development. If most new code is written in Swift, then it's dominant regardless of the fact that there's lots of legacy Objective-C code out there.

Apple is positioning this not as a replacement for Objective-C, but as a replacement for the Ruby/Python/Perl bridges

That's not even close to accurate. Read the Apple material, watch the WWDC videos, talk to the Apple engineers. This is not a replacement for a scripting bridge, it's intended to be the first choice for typical developers.

tell me why in the world you think that Apple won't take even longer to replace a non-temporary language

Once more, the conversation is about whether or not Swift will be the dominant language, not whether it will be the only supported language. Nobody is arguing that Apple are going to remove Objective-C support tomorrow.

Preliminary third-party analysis of Swift shows that for many simple operations, it is more than an order of magnitude slower than Objective-C. Assuming their testing methodology does not prove to be invalid for some reason

It already has for the most part, where have you been? Most of the benchmarks out there were run with beta tools, had different compiler switches, or other beginner level mistakes. Yes, there are some areas where Swift is slower, but most application developers aren't going to be significantly affected by that. Letting vague aspersions about performance dictate your language choice is nuts. Most of the time it doesn't matter and when it does, which language is faster depends on the exact thing you are doing.

if you're thinking about writing a major app in Swift, you should probably think twice

This is just FUD. Most languages are fast enough for typical use cases, and if you think you are going to be in the minority affected by performance issues, you really should consider Swift rather than dismiss it because depending on your use case, it could be faster for your situation.

start with Objective-C. That will let you get started working with real-world code now

Ah yes, my running streak of conversations involving the phrase "real-world" meaning "things I don't irrationally dislike" remains unbroken.

There is absolutely nothing that is not "real-world" about Swift.

The vast majority of what you learnâ"the frameworks themselvesâ"won't change if you later decide to switch to Swift. Only the syntax changes.

If you think that the only difference between Objective-C and Swift is syntax, then you really haven't given Swift more than a passing glance. It's a very different language.

Just stop. You have no idea what you are talking about. You are just guessing incorrectly at how these companies collect their data and you think your personal anecdotes trump real statistics. You're ignoring the information right in front of you because you only see what you want to see.

My source is the author of NovoCard.

Yes, but where did he say this? I want to be sure you aren't misinterpreting him or that there isn't another factor involved.

Mixpanel and Fisku have no means to figure who is running what version of iOS on what device

Of course they do. Do you really think they are just making the numbers up?

The only company who could is Apple, but they only track sold devices versus downloads of new OS versions.

No, that's not how they track it. Where did you get that idea from?

It seems to me you are denying the numbers based upon your feelings towards the update. It doesn't matter what you feel, the numbers are what they are. Almost everybody is using iOS 7+.

The programmer of "NovoCard" released that for iOS 5 or iOS6, he is now prevented from putting bug fixes for the old release into the AppStore because Apple requires him to release the "new release" for iOs7 and above.

Are you sure you aren't mistaking that for the fact that he's required to support iOS 7? Where's your source?

Your claim that 95% of the users are now on iOS7 and newer is simply wrong, regardless what Apple claims.

Nearly everyone I know (and has the knowledge how to do it) switched back from iOS7 to iOS6.

Your anecdotes about people you know do not outweigh the statistics gathered across all active users.

It's not just Apple that say that 95% of people are on iOS 7+. Mixpanel do as well. Fiksu put it at 90%. You get the picture. Multiple independent sources all say that the vast majority of people are using iOS 7+ regardless of your personal gripes with it. Just because you don't like it and you know other people that don't like it, it doesn't mean Apple are "simply wrong" when they say that almost everybody is using iOS 7+.

this is one good reason to use Obj-C instead of Swift: to support older iOS devices that cannot upgrade to iOS 7.

Not all that good a reason. 95% of active iOS users are already on iOS 7+ and that number is growing every day. The only devices that can't upgrade to it are the iPhone 3GS and below, the equivalent iPod touch, and the first generation iPad. There aren't many people using these devices any more.

I have an iPad 1 that is stuck at iOS 5.1.

I appreciate that it's frustrating being left behind, but when only 0.66% of active iOS users are on version 5, it's very difficult to justify the extra work involved in supporting them.

By the time the OP learns to develop for iOS and actually builds his application, the number of people using older versions of iOS will be even lower. Unless you're willing to chase diminishing returns, it's not worth supporting anything beyond the previous major version, and even that's debatable.

Remember how long it took to lay Carbon to rest.

Very different situation. I work with a lot of companies that develop iOS applications, and it's extremely rare for them to be more than a couple of years behind the cutting edge.

Then take a look back at all the new programming languages and frameworks Apple has introduced over the years and then shot in the head.

Modern Apple does it very infrequently, and usually, when they do, it's because they've got something newer to replace it. In this case, Swift is the newer thing.