Great post, but there are things that X11 needs to fix. The whole "visuals" bit and the capturing of the mouse? xlib is a mess to program to and the GUI toolkits try to hide that but the overhead still exists.

Now, having said all of that, I would rather have a push to streamline X11 while keeping a strong window manager separation (this is actually important for security in addition to usability) and the remotable constructs. X11 has drawing primitives that are better than bitmaps (wayland) but not really that great. And some of the behavioral requirements makes it really hard on connections that have any level of latency.

Fixing these core items (and bringing in better layer management with composition at the display server side and not client side) is the way to go. Doing so and still being compatible will be very painful. Doing so and having "fun designing new" (or suffering from NIH) does not mix well. Just beware of the draw of "green fields" (starting from scratch) as it rarely works out in the end. (You usually make mistakes that were already address/solved in the prior system since you are more concerned about the "mistakes" in the prior system that you are claiming is the reason for starting fresh)

Even more so, the Mac was a rework of the Lisa - which came out in 1983 (yes, boys and girls, before you were born :-)) The Mac was successful. The Lisa was too costly (at $10k of 1983 dollars, it was more than my new car back then!)

And, yes, many of the ideas came from Xerox but with permission.

That is absolutely correct. If a company/pension fund manager did what the US government did with the Social Security funds, the company and fund managers would go to jail and the company would be liquidated to recover the missing funds.

Now, we can't liquidate the US government but we can also make sure that promises made are promises kept and that the money that was paid in FICA taxes (which are not part of the normal taxes but are collected from payroll) is not just taken illegally (and in doing so, disproportionally hurting the lower income groups)

The real kicker for this was that the justification to reduce taxes was because we had a "surplus" but we never really had a real "surplus" - we were just finally paying down some of the debt rather than acquiring more of it. (In other words, we finally had some minor positive cash flow) And it was not even that stable yet since there were a large number of debts coming due. But, somehow, the politicians (GW Bush and friends) convinced people that this was the right thing to do - to give huge tax breaks - and then, when 9/11 and the wars started, to continue giving even more tax breaks even though anyone with even the slightest brain would have known that the wars will cost money. (In fact, they were kept off-book specifically to hide how much it was really costing)

And now, after all that has gone on, and all the wealthy have become even more wealthy (and corrupt, in the case of many banks), the cost of all of this will be transferred to those who have the least (poor, elderly, children) since they don't have the means by which to influence government.

Others that do such things would be brought to trial... But congress (mostly the republicans) are somehow immune from responsibility and the common decency that the average human has.

I would not be so quick to say that. While I am no x86 fanboy, there are a number of things that are "nice" about the model from the point of view of most software developers. The instruction set is basically a compression system (much like thumb2 is for ARM). The very simplistic (to reason about) memory model (which is rather complex to implement in hardware) makes multi-processor significantly easier for most people. Most people who think they know how to write good multi-processor, multi-threaded code end up bumping their heads hard on a weaker memory model and ARM has a very weak model. (This does not mean it is bad to have a weaker memory model - it actually allows for lower power and higher performance than the extra complexity of the stronger model that x86 lives with but it does expose complexities to all such developers while x86 "solves" the problem for you in hardware at the cost of some transistors and a few really smart engineers)

The x86 is not all bad. And ARM is not all good. It will be interesting to see where the trade-offs end up pushing the world since power is critical and yet performance is critical and yet, even more so, being able to write reliable software with reasonable performance at a reasonable development cost is potentially an even larger issue. It is not yet game over for either side.

While Microsoft stock is not going up, it is unclear why. The company has, over the last 10 years, over doubled revenue and almost tripled profit. And it did this in an environment where they held 80+% of their primary market. This requires innovation and growth into new markets since you can't grow much when you already have 80+%

Looking at Apple, they have done well. Made products people want. Gained technology to product price competitive products. But the real point is that they were under 3% of the market and now are at 12% or so. Microsoft still is over 80% but the point is that growing by 9 basis points for Microsoft would be just over 10% but for apple it was 400% growth. In fact, there is no way Microsoft can grow more that 25% in their primary market as, well, that would put them at 100%, The growth potential is almost all in other markets and new technologies. Apple, on the other hand, has tons of room to grow into if they can take more market share. However, if you look at their actual financial data, it is the new markets that really pushed them forward over the last 10 years. They executed very well in identifying new opportunities and taking the risk to enter those markets at the right point.

Microsoft is currently, I believe, undervalued. Microsoft does have some very bright people and some compelling products coming, And they continue to be stable too. Not that Apple is not in a major growth spurt, but they are also valued relatively highly compared to earnings.

Exactly, only more so - a missed opportunity for a sale in the cell phone market is a major loss - not just for the 1 (or more likely 2) year contract period, but also for the mind-share that is then built by the user. Apps that are purchased are extra barriers to moving to another platform after the contract period. Habits that are built using the product that they got vs the one that they did not.

The scarcity marketing ploy would only be useful if there was no significant opportunity to select a competing replacement. (Even if one would ever think of using such a ploy)

No, there are logistical limitations to producing such products in large scale for bulk sales. There can only be so much flow rate and if demand is too high, some may not be satisfied at initial launch.

You had to have seen this video before then: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

Warning: Do not drink near keyboard while watching

And ISO image is a nice filesystem which can contain multiple bits of data and even be cross-platform (given that it is a standard). A single ISO image could have a program for Windows, Mac, and Linux if you wished. And since most applications are more data that native code, it would only require unique native code for each platform with the rest of the application files just as files (images, backgrounds, sounds, datasets, helpfiles, documentation).

I really like the concept of being able to read the documentation PDF or the installation ReadMe before executing the code.

And finally, I wish more software did not need an install process more complex than dragging the icon for the applcation/product to where you want it. Most Mac OSX applications are that simple to install. Most Windows applications require an MSI installer to do the vast array of complex operations. (I won't even talk about "most Linux applications" since usually it is dependent on the distro and various code repositories for those and the tools to drive them: apt, yum, rpm, etc.)

Actually, they care more about the quality of the display (how it looks) and the quality of the software (how it doesn't crash)

So many of the other tablets don't have high quality IPS displays. They have software that has unexpected failures. They run out of battery before the day is over.

These are key features - the raw specs don't matter. If the product works, looks good, and gets the job done all day, they don't care if it was a V8 or a turbo-V6 or a super-charged L4 in there. (Or an ARM or ATOM / dual-core or quad - does not matter as long as it works and is enjoyable)