My take is that it's an "oh, crap! my machine isn't working and the instructions for fixing it are on the net!" feature. That, or a pre-emptive strike in case of a virus some day. Boot into safari mode, browse the internet for the wisdom it contains, maybe connect to apple.com for an update, etc.

*presumed* innocent. In the United States.

Being presumed innocent and actually _being_ innocent are two different things entirely.

Fear not! Once you get out of your teens you'll find you have much less desire to expose your ignorance and lack of eloquence. It's just a phase you're going through.

I'm sure glad I went to school in the 80's where I could choose to use my RPN calculator. If I was forced to use a TI it would have taken me twice as long to finish a test.

My G5 runs Tiger just fine.

I think, though, that the other 99% of calls have better quality. So, improve reception for 99% of the calls by sacrificing quality for 1%? Sounds like a decent trade-off. Unless you're that 1%.

It's not so much the iphone is poorly designed, or other phones are poorly designed. The fact is (or seems to be...), there's a hard problem to solve in the smart phone arena and Apple, like others, have so far failed to solve the problem. So, they haven't designed a flaw into the device; instead, they've failed to design a solution to an inherent problem that nobody else has solved either.

It's not quite the same thing. It's more like the CEO of a car company saying "all cars allow some road noise in, it's a problem for the whole industry". It's not so much that Apple has done anything wrong, but more like they've failed to fully solve a problem that everyone else has also failed to solve.

I think it has been proven scientifically that searing does nothing for retaining juices. It makes the outside nice and crusty though.

... because retiring is quitting, isn't it?

The point that I think people are missing is that the fanboys were right to a degree -- the devices didn't *need* whatever feature-of-the-day was hot at the time. If the device needed it and didn't have it, people wouldn't have bought the device. Yet, the devices continued to sell. Now, as for the device being better with feature-of-the-day -- yes. The iPad would likely be better with multiprocessing for all apps, for instance. Does it *need* it, a million plus people say no.

eventually, probably. What's your point?

I disagree. I've met very few people outside of techie circles who want a custom option or two. Kids, yeah. Geeks, yeah. My mom? Sisters? Cousins? People I interact with in professional offices (doctors, lawyers, etc). Not so much. They want to do what they want to do (doctoring, lawyering, planting gardens, sharing information with friends). None of that -- in the strictest sense -- requires "using a computer". The computer is just a device they have to use in order to do what they really want to do. Outside of computer geeks, nobody wants to "use a computer". They just don't. They want services that a computer provides, but as soon as a better device comes along that provides those services they'll drop the computer like a hot potato. I've met orders of magnitude more people like that than I have people who want options and ports and freedom to compile their own code.

Where did he get the design for the original imac, the ipod and ipad? Maybe he didn't invent a lot of that stuff, but the world of computers and consumer electronics would be considerably different (and arguably, not nearly as interesting) without his involvement.

Working 60 hours is a choice. You can choose to work for companies that don't expect that, or you can choose to work for companies that do. Not all software companies are sweat shops.

Me? I rarely work more than 40.0 hours. Often it's more like 38 or so, depending on how you count. Though to be honest I spend a few hours here and there on some weekends, and also several after hours thinking about work. And I always work extra hours when extra hours are necessary to get the job done. But my butt is rarely in the office chair more than 40 hours a week.