> I absolutely love C# syntax and the easy readability of the code.

I agree. I found the experience of programming in C# generally enjoyable, and the IDE was one of the better ones I've used.

> .NET libraries are also wonderful

I disagree. They are certainly no match for Cocoa.

Consider one example, the lowly combo box. For decades (literally) people have been asking for MS to support the multi-column format found in Access. Over and over and over and over. Nothing in GDI, so it's not surprising it wasn't in MFC or WTL. And it's not entirely surprising it wasn't in WinForms, right? But why not in WPF? And if that's not enough TLA, it's not in .NET Micro either. Seriously? And I *still* have to buy a 3rd party lib just to get real work done?

Or consider data access ODBC comes out and, IMHO, it remains one of the few good data access APIs ever made. But the early drivers sucked, and it didn't handle the results in a programmer-friendly way. Ok, so RDO. Geez, slow on top of slow, ok lets try DAO. Oh, that's not very good, so OLEDB, wait I mean ADO. Oh geez, ok how about ADO.NET? Oh, darn, ok fine, let's throw out ACE and see if that sticks. Oh, and none of this is working on 64 bit? Ok, port-o-rama!

Funny part to all of this? When you look at the results all of these system produce, you find they're bug compatible with the original ODBC drivers. It's new code, don't get me wrong, but *they copied the bad code*. Meanwhile, ODBC continued to improve, and iODBC absolutely kicks ass. If they just stuck it out with ODBC and waited until they really understood how to wrap it, we'd all be using it today. Like we do under Cocoa.

When MS builds new stuff, like C#, it tends to be pretty damb good. They look at what's out there, select the good, fix the bad, and there it is. But when they're trying to fix something that already exists it seems they invariably just re-apply the lipstick to the chicken. Then they give you both, and when we note it has the same problems they throw up their hands and cry "well what do you want already?!"

"Unfortunately there are a lot of Objective-C old-timers, both at Apple and abroad, who think that Objective-C is a great language and don't see how it needs much refinement"

Hmmm. I'm one of those old-timers (well, semi-old) and I can assure you we complain just as loud, or more loudly, than most. Your experience is very much not of the norm, and I suspect you are conflating the negative with the common.

"Even Apple's own old Dylan was a more interesting and innovative as a language than Objective-C."

Agreed. I loved the multi-interface stuff. Why doesn't anyone else pick that up? It would be particularly easy to implement in Bundles. But...

"the availability of libraries is often more important than the language itself"

Bingo. Lets be honest, is any native library set even *remotely* as good as Cocoa out of the box? With the exception of Delphi I've fiddled with them all, and the answer is a resounding "no!". All you have to do is compare the basic text editing widget across libraries and you can draw your own conclusions.

"Clang recently added literal syntax for collections and boxed numbers"

Oh thank your deity. Long overdue IMHO.

That's "30", not "300", of course.

> None of those can deviate far from any of the others

If the ABM problem were so "trivial", do you think the US and USSR would be so quick to abandon them during SALT?

The Spartan's 5 Mt M71 had an effective range of about 50 km - by FAR the largest of any ABM. A polar-launched ICBM has a re-entry footprint that is typically 500 by 150 km. That means 300 Spartan's are needed to cover the footprint of a single ICBM, and twice that number if you want to actually stop them. Every missile that the Soviets build required the US to build hundreds.

And footprint is easy, it's far easier than accuracy. So if you're only interested in city busters, avoiding a nuclear armed re-entry-phase ABM is "trivial" even for a hypothetical (which they are) NK missile system. Trivial as in "already done" as opposed to "my ill-informed pondering".

> 600 km would allow intercept for most of the country from South Korea

And South Korea is only 0 km from North Korean artillery, which they would use en-masse if this were to occur.

> Plus, any launch vectors that would have a hope of hitting the USA

Which are, specifically, none at all.

A real threat to the US is Type II Diabetes. North Korean missile attacks are science fiction. So why are they spending money on the wrong one?

"Bishop says that USAID needs to find ways to assist developing regions without compromising the jobs of U.S. call center workers"

*sigh* Insert your image of plantation owners and whips as you see fit.

> Sadly a Leaf cant make my 40 mile commute and back

I thought the real range was about 100 miles?

> weather is below 70 degrees F

That sounds too big. Li-ion is generally less susceptible to temperature effects until you get down around 45 degrees.

We bought a seasons pass for a TV show on iTunes on the ATV. It took us a surprisingly long time to figure out how to watch this on the Mac laptop.

The purchase did not appear in the item called "purchases", nor "TV", which only showed the things we already downloaded. Going into the Store, we found the show, and double clicking on it cause a smaller all-black window to appear with an episode list. Clicking on these played the preview. Eventually we figured out that clicking the cloud icon would download the episode. We could then go to the Downloads screen, and double-click to watch it as it streamed.

So logical.

As if this were not enough, last night we could no longer make this work. The episode list that used to open when we double clicked... somewhere... no longer appears. We tried everything.

Its time for this to die.