I really hope the new one isn't that good, or I will have ridiculous gadget envy, even though I got an Air seven months ago, which has been a fantastic machine.

To the submitter:

I recommend either a Thinkpad or one of Apple's models. I have exactly one complaint with the 13" Air, and that is a lack of ethernet port (too thin), but you can always get a USB one. I found a "gigabit" USB adaptor for $20, which works great (put in quotes because USB 2.0 is obviously not capable of gigabit speeds). Apple makes one, too, but it's a 10/100 device and more expensive.

Boot time is 14 seconds with full-disk encryption, and just about everything I run opens instantly. The resolution is also higher than the 13" MBPs (1440x900 vs 1280x800). I have to say, though, that my favorite part of the laptop is the trackpad. Apple's trackpads make all the others look amateurish in my eyes.

Not entirely sure why either, but it actually is pretty cool on my iPhone. It's missing a couple things, though, such as tap top to zoom to the top of the page, and I'm not sure I can live without Reader. Other than that, it's a very nice way to search on a phone, and I'm surprised to be saying that.

On the desktop, though, it's bundled as an awkward browser extension that seemed to vanish as soon as I closed the Safari tab, and the Chrome extension has a big security issue (probably all versions of the extension, but I haven't bothered to check). But the main reason it's less relevant on the desktop is that I can simply middle click search results and open them--completely--in other tabs while I'm scrolling more results.

Then there's the issue that it uses Yahoo and not Google (which should be obvious to anyone with half a brain cell). I'm sure Yahoo's results are fine once you have a feel for how the search engine works, but I've gotten used to searching on Google, and certain things just don't bring up the results I expect. For instance, "kindle touch update" in Axis didn't bring up the most relevant page of all, which is the Amazon page for Kindle Touch updates. Instead, it showed me old articles for the 5.0.3 update, which isn't very helpful.

All in all, I hope that it either sees a lot of refinement, or that Apple and Google shamelessly steal its ideas.

Not to mention a lot of sites "helpfully" say that your +whatever address is invalid.

It's never been about need. We don't need the vast majority of technology out there. All you really need is access to food and water, a nice cave to shelter you from the elements, and a way to keep warm. Technology--especially tech such as this--is supposed to make things easier and/or improve quality of life.

"We don't need that" is rarely a good argument. Instead, you should investigate whether the proposed solution will make things better or worse, or have no impact (in which case you don't have to waste resources on it).

Considering he said he bought the newest book on the day of release, I would assume he already knows any potential spoilers. Or does the TV series change things?

As for the issue...I might be interested in seeing the series if I had HBO. The cost of DVDs isn't worth it, but they are available on Netflix, so maybe I'll give it a shot. If it weren't available there, I would simply not watch it. Just because I'm not willing to pay for something doesn't mean I am justified in pirating it. (If I lived in an area where I simply couldn't get it, then I may have a different attitude.)

While I would like it if it were open to everyone, it actually does make sense. Apple needs to pay for iCloud somehow, and making sure that developers don't get a free ride is the easiest way to do it.

Furthermore, this is old news. We've known this since Mountain Lion was announced.

I'm pretty sure that's not the same thing. Apple is saying that only they have the right to build machines that can run their software, not that you can't write/sell software to run on their machines.

Yeah, I'm not sure how this is at all like wearing a watch. It's in the right location, but all the watches I've ever seen (that weren't pocket watches) have had wristbands, not magnets. And, of course, iPod wristbands already exist.

Objective-C is a strict superset of C. Anything it adds over C has its own special syntax and notation, possibly to help reduce confusion. Properties didn't always use dot-notation--you used to have to do [object ivar] in order to access a member variable, and [object setIvar:ivar] to change it. The (relatively new) dot-notation and @property syntax is just shorthand for this functionality, and a welcome thing (though you can still use the old style).

Objective-C used to have a lot of irritating things about it, but I think the language has really improved over the past couple years. Properties, auto-synthesizing, automatic garbage collection, fast enumeration, etc. have all made the language much better. Once I got past the odd messaging syntax, I really came to like it, and I have to wonder how much recent experience some of these vocal haters have with the language.

I go through a reasonable amount of effort to ensure my software was up to date. I've gotten so used to Flash updating automatically on Windows that it didn't even occur to me it wasn't doing that on my Mac. After I updated to 10.7.4, it told me Flash was out of date. So I'm going to have to say this is a good move. I'd imagine most Mac users have outdated Flash versions.