pesky plants and animals be gone.

if "work" includes being stupendously slow but technically functioning, sure, it might.

you do realize that a page file on a fast local disk is already a horrible compromise of speed for functionality, right?

Seriously... you know what you're getting into when you develop for Apple's locked down ecosystem, and if you did not realize your survival there will forever be at the mercy of your corporate overlord's whims, you are to oblivious to succeed anyway.

I know a lot of people consider patents "broken" for one reason or another, and here is yet another example where it seems the patent should never have been granted in the first place, let alone been something Apple could use to bully other companies.

So, I agree that patents are broken and easily/often abused. Now, what is the "fix"? Should the patent office be held to task for granting these things when obvious prior art exists? Or should the barrier for going after a supposed patent infringement be raised? Or should patent violation rewards be reduced to where pursuing supposed violations is only profitable in extreme cases? Or something else I can't think of at the moment?

How do we change the world so that companies like Apple cannot do this anymore?

Actually, you can do that with a Tandy Color Computer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42jBBrqn70w

History provides plenty of examples of evil men who acquired power and used it to get lots of things done.

What I don't understand is why Jobs' actions are acceptable to his fans.

With hundreds of different devices in all shapes and sizes, yes. Much easier than "thinking different" on a platform that allows one manufacturer who releases one model.

there are plenty of reasons besides tinkering that Android is vastly more popular than iOS. In fact such activity is relatively rare on the Android platform, after all it is the most widely used smartphone platform in the world so it has certainly found favor far beyond some group of techies.

Some examples of reasons that people are choosing Android:

some people like to have a variety of choices in what their phone looks like
some people prefer a more powerful environment
some people like to stand out in a crowd rather than blending in
some people prefer not to allow a massive corporation to censor the content and applications they are allowed to use
etc...

I think we just don't think of "private data" as being the same thing. My name, physical address and email address are just not something I worry about. Name and physical are public record, email (in my case) is my first name @ my full name .com

I'm also old enough to remember when *every* magazine had all of their subscriber's name and address, as they needed this to deliver the magazine. Lots of magazines have had mine over the years and overall things turned out pretty well.

I do worry about things like my correspondence and my location. These are obviously not already public record and it's not hard to imagine bad things occurring if they were.

Its fairly simple.

The repercussions of violating privacy are much higher for Google than they are for other companies. Therefore logic dictates that Google will do more to prevent these violations.

If the typical company lets your private data get out (and as I'm sure you know, many have) they still have products to sell. Google's product *is* that data. They have nothing else. If the data gets away from them *or* if they lose the confidence of the public to keep it safe, Google is out of business, the end for them.

Do you want your data held by a company that specializes in making consumer electronics, or a company that specializes in *data*?

Is your question meant to be moronic?

you say: Google is nowhere near as protective of my privacy as Apple

i say: Google has more reason to protect your privacy than basically any other company, including Apple ....and you think that we are saying the same thing. hrmmmm.

Why on earth would you think that?

Google's entire business model is based on the data they collect. It is their most precious resource. Anything that reduces their ability to collect this data is a direct threat to their existence. This is not at all true of Apple.

Google has more reason to protect your privacy than basically any other company.

There are also no PCI slots and a serious lack of available 5.25 in drive bays. WTF microsoft?!?

We're talking about field equipment used by law enforcement here. An officer in pursuit of a suspect, responding to an emergency, etc is not going to just pop into the local best buy and replace critical equipment.

I'm not sure what the origin of this straw man is, but the officers I work with are quite happy with the devices currently in use. They have access to a wide variety of county and state services, with new capabilities being added quite often. For instance, they recently added the ability to do an on scene photo line up that allows victims to identify suspects only moments after they have been apprehended (and without having to confront the suspect personally, a major roadblock to getting charges brought against criminals involved in gang related activity). Trust me, the officers do *not* resent being given tools that help them get these guys off the street.

Training is part of an officer's life and it goes far beyond what someone would pick up just using something around the house anyway. This is why they are given quite a bit of driving instruction despite most likely being familiar with how to operate an automobile in a civilian capacity. They learn how to operate their weapons, communications and computing equipment in a way that is very different than someone would use a device in their home. This will be true regardless of whether their equipment is a consumer grade device or a professional tool.

Vendor lock in is obviously not a concern here, as they have selected Apple devices.

In cases where lives depend on computing, you will absolutely will not find consumer grade PCs used for critical roles. You will however find quite a few mainframes and high end unix systems.

Valid point. I helped the local public safety and pd departments deploy "MDT"s nearly 10 years ago. Some of the original equipment is still in use and AFAIK nearly all of it was retired in upgrades, not because of failure. They are rugged, actually somewhat indestructible. They have hardware and software interfaces tailored to the unique demands of an officer in the field and are well proven.

Using flashy consumer grade tech toys in the field sounds like an uninformed executive's special recipe for failure. It's very hard to imagine what possible advantage a general purpose, light duty device would have over the highly refined and specialized solutions that are available (and have been in use since long before the current tech fads).