Google Voice is still great for having a spam-box phone number you can give to places that require a working phone number (car dealers, political organizations, etc.), but you don't really want to hear from. But if that's how it ends up being used, I don't think that's going to convince Google to keep it around. You can tell it's been unloved for some time now... The iPhone app (at least) was updated once all of last year, and the only thing in the update was a warning if you try to txt 911. (So it was probably prompted by a legal issue.)

Maybe now that Google has a mobile phone OS and has to work with all the mobile carriers, there's outside pressure to hold Google Voice back. Well if it goes, so much for my spam-box.

...what will it take for general acceptance to finally take hold?

Wearers will continue to be further alienated from society and thus more dependent on Google being their primary social interaction. Eventually you'll have friends and coworkers that you can only interact with while they sit home alone wearing Google Glass and you'll feel sorry for them and invite them out for a drink. When you do you'll tell your friends, 'OK, now I know she has a computer on her face, but that's all she has and she's not really a bad person, so everybody just be cool with it. OK?" And they will have won.

Aren't most Wikipedia editors employees of somewhere? Maybe only unemployed people edit Wikipedia. (I'm responding more to the bad summary than the article itself.)

Better yet read the comments on Facebook. I've seen people use 4 letter words when talking to their friend of their friend's grandmother. There's a reason Facebook doesn't have a "dislike" button, even with real names.

Why do I have a feeling I'm still going to have to "Go Gold" to use the Netflix or Hulu apps...

I think the longer term strategy is clear: iOS isn't getting more Mac-like, Macs are getting more iOS-like. The article has it backwards... Why would Apple invest in its own chip development only to emulate that on the Mac? If the iPhone doesn't need a 64-bit chip what does? iPads and Macs. We're going to see an ARM-powered OS X. Getting developers on board with the easiest to port apps (iPhone specific ones) is just the beginning. I would kill for a MacBook that had the battery life of an iPad. If only it had the computing power too..

The point is Windows isn't being beaten by Chromebooks, as much as it's being beaten by anything that costs less than $200. Afterall, HP TouchPads were flying off the shelves at $100.

This is a well known negociation strategy to get better deals from Microsoft. Remember when Dell threatened to go AMD-only? Acer is a big laptop OEM, especially in emerging markets. What are they going to put in them? A browser OS? Really?

This is probably a troll, but I'll play along...

I thought the same thing until I checked Amazon and Best Buy. Search either one for Chromebooks and you'll turn up a bunch of products with thousands of reviews. This one's even listed as a #1 Best-Seller among laptops. Go ahead and do the same for Windows RT. It's okay, I'll wait here.

Now I'm not endorsing Chromebooks. I didn't even realize they were still available because I'm sure as hell not buying one... but that's two major retailers that have tons of models (including ones from Acer) that seems to be doing ok.

So I guess their "negotiation strategy" is going to be really really effective, because it also happens to be true.

The reason why they are focussing on the chromebook is because its selling. In fact its the fastest growing part of an otherwise lackluster PC Market.

Average people aren't buying Chromebooks, they're buying "that $199 email laptop." And the fact that it's the "fastest growing part of the PC market" is a very nice way of saying that customers aren't willing to spend $500 on a laptop anymore.. they're replacing their old computers with the cheapest thing they can find.

One of Microsoft's biggest fears from the late 90s was that the web browser would become more important than Windows and instead of just being an application, it would become the platform. If only Microsoft had been nimble enough to change their strategy in the past 15 to 20 years...

Oh no! The secret cabal of gov't spooks found out I saw Sharknado! And that I ordered a pizza!

The subject has shown an interest in wanton destruction and a potential alliance with the Italians. We request the court grant a search warrant for his home. As this is a matter of national security, the record of this request must be sealed.

Nearly every person I know who owns a smartphone and/or a tablet also has some sort of PC. I really don't think the portable device boom is the culprit here.

Maybe it's servers? How fast I could search my email used to be limited by my computer's cpu speed, but now it's limited by whatever is in Google's server rack. The computer upgrade cycle is being replaced by server-side-services, where I'm no longer responsible for the maintaining and upgrading.

I'd love to see a graph of the last 5 years of pc shipments vs. the last 5 years of servers.

For some reason, there still remains this weird claddistic requirement that "pc's" (ie desktops, I guess?), laptops, and other devices be all conceptualized in separate boxes.

Maybe it's because even though all of those devices are computers, the companies that are seeing success with them are quite different and so where the power lies has shifted dramatically.

The carrier has a higher risk when you buy your phone outright: the risk of you switching to another carrier when the other carrier offers you better conditions. That's why there are long-running contracts in the first place.

So at the point when I've already been convinced to purchase a phone that's locked me to a carrier and (here in the US at least) would have to purchase an entirely new phone to switch to a competing carrier... you're saying they need to increase the per-minute-cost because they're concerned I may jump ship to a competitor?

It seems more likely the concern would be that I'm not going to buy any more minutes... which if I don't, still has no financial penalty for them. If they don't like the APRU of pre-paid customers, that's not them "taking on risk", that's them trying to increase the cost of their service. Which is exactly what I would expect and why I doubt if subsidies are eliminated the cost of service would go down.

If they do away with the subsidy, you will have to pay full retail price for phones, but your monthly bill will be lower.

Speculation presented as fact... and it's not even a sentiment that's supported by the history of the carriers. Yeah, they might do away with subsidies, but does anyone really think the monthly fees will go down? They don't go down now when you've gone out of contact and more than paid for the cost of your phone. Or you can outright buy a phone that's prepaid and in return for less risk on the carriers part, you'll pay a higher price per minute.