All you need is around $75 000 from 100 000 people; that gives you $7.5 billion. 50, 000 acre islands are surprisingly cheap (10 -50 million); if you build shelters in a mass produced fashion or even low cost sky rise you could get the price down to around 25 000 a home (maybe 30 000 with shipping) call it $3 billion; a billion dollars gets you a lot of wind/tidal power; internet cost depends where you get the island but should be under a billion for a submarine cable; you can grow enough vegetables to support 10 people from one 40 foot shipping container with 2 kw of continual power for the hydroponics, at $5000 for 10 000 that's $50 mill; planting a 10 000 acre orchard some where wouldn't cost more than 10 million; your an island nation so coastal fish farming would make sense, maybe $50 mill; throw some cows, chickens and whatever on to 10000 acres for $50 mill; a billion in investment for maintenance and stuff like rice and soap (it's so cheap it doesn't make sense to make it your self). That all adds up to 6.21 billion, leaving 1.29 billion dollars to spend on robots to do all the boring work, gaming/film studio, engineering work shops, and arts centers. Don't think it's enough, add on $10 000 to the entry cost and you have another billion to play with ($75 000 is nothing for shelter, food, water, power, internet, greatest hacker space ever imagined, and robot slaves, for life). and it's not even controlled by an advertising giant.

The article is brief on facts but i would bet my money she has just repeated the graphene super capacitor experiment done by and explained in detail by these guys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oEFwyoWKXo all you need is a light scribe dvd player some grpahite oxide and a dielectric.

Heads up displays could be very cool, but stupid google went out and made the worst possible version; freaking big solid unhinging frame and only one display that's all the way up in the corner.

The rules that define them need improving. It's all you must have at least 1 number, symbol and capital; but when you have a 20 something character, couple of obscure words joined together password (much easier for humans to remember bluesunsuperpartytime than 1s0stat1C) it isn't going to matter much if you put in a % sign at the end.

No one really wants to admit their weakness and most are not even aware of it. It's hard to give an example without knowing you better; but what if something like a recommendation from Linus Torvald could get you onside. When they know something like that (and there is plenty of data to find it) you can think you have complete free will all they way to giving them your credit card details.

Or apple is too big to kill with something like that, and you'll bring more bad publicity to yourself. But microsoft/BB they have a chance of crushing before they get any meaningful marketshare.

When the advertising companies have enough data on you they can geniunly get you to buy something that you wouldn't of otherwise (maybe your a hard target audience at the moment, but many other demographics arn't). The Rc plane was a happy coincidece (i'm currious what model you bought becuase i'm an avid piolt my self (many rc air vehicles and flying leasons), and google has tried to get me to buy plenty of rc stuff; ussally not as good as what i find myself). But google is just getting rolling here immiagine what they will be able to do in 10 years.

You have some valid points, however i still think if the iphone hadn't of included multi capacitive touch (a cutting edge feature at the time, maybe seen on one or two devices previously) it wouldn't of been anywhere near as successful as it was. If they had used the ipod scroll wheel, resistive touch screen (like my old pocketpc), or buttons; then the phone could have been the same quality, but would lack the premium feel.

Different countries have different ideas about premium though. If you look at American cars they concentrated on bigger engines and nicer seats, whereas Europe focused on suspension, weight placement and drive systems. If you asked either continent whether they made premium cars, both would say yes; personally i think the European cars are a bit more premium, mostly due to the extra tech (but that's just my opinion).

I think you confusing feature list being promently displayed, with inculding state of the art features. If your trying to tell me mercedies don't include lots of features only seen in other cars a decade latter, then i'm going to have to out right disagree with you. You know when i was a kid phones all had 13 buttons on the front and you could only play snake. If it wasn't for including new features apple would of never of got a foot hold in the phone market. Considering features pointless is a very naive view of the manufactured world. I'm not saying putting in features for the hell of it make a good product, but leaving out good features the competition has is a recipe for loosing customers. As i've said before i'm not a samsung fan, but even though their phones are placticy pieces of shit, stuff like widgets and sd card slots are making it pull way above it's weight.

I'm not really sure what your examples are trying to prove here. The Association with f1 just means they have cutting edge technology, along with all their testing systems. Golf is just about knowing the target audience. Then if you open a tab about a production car (not a concept car that isn't being sold) http://news.mercedes-benz.co.uk/products/the-a-45-amg-the-new-star-from-mercedes-amg.html you will see they dive straight into juicy details (full to the brim from the 2nd to 6th paragraph). I'm no samsung fan here, but be careful what you say, because I've seen a plenty of android/samsung things eventually make their way to ios, and i bet your about to see more. To me premium is about being at the top of your profession and that includes features which enhance your use (I've never said anything about features for features sake). Are you seriously saying that apple is being all apple can be at the moment? that your little phone is at the top of what current hardware and software can put together? Because if you are, i think you have to hand in your geek card.

Ok then MLB and starbucks, still hardly the kind of success people were expecting from apple. And no i wont accept an Appleinsider claim; that mob will say anything to try and keep people from selling their shares (not that it's all that impressive any way). Apple is a long way from going bust yet and i'm pretty sure they have a few tricks up their sleeves, it just seems a little stagnant at the moment.

That's funny i just read an article about passbook, and it was saying no one uses it except maybe starbucks. NFC is for more than just payments (which i think is a pretty poor use of the technology, that google is only pushing to get more consumer data and control another aspect of life). Nokia for example have built it into the software so that when you place it down on the wireless charging pad/stereo nfc tells it how to behave (turn on music, start charging, ect). You don't want to walk around all day with bluetooth or wifi on, but nfc uses very little power. I see some very gimmicky features out there and i understand including those don't make something premium, but i'm not the only one that thinks apple is falling a bit behind by not doing more.

it will always be a part of it. If Mercedes didn't have fast and reliable engines that continually get better, or 6 and 7 speed gear boxes, and fancy hard top convertibles roofs; then the premium crowd would go else where. Sure you would have some people buy it just for the name and the quality of leather stitching but you wouldn't even get half the customers your getting now.

For apple to stay premium they need to stay ahead of the curve with features, and that's what has people scared. Has apple got what it takes to stay relevant, or are they going to keep trying to push a page of program shortcuts.

How do you know humans aren't deterministic? The program we are running would obviously be very very complex but how do you know we aren't just replying to inputs with learnt reactions and approximations for outputs.