Microsoft offered up this compromise months ago. And besides, I thought the SkyDrive fight was just being used as a proxy, since the real battle is over Office revenues. No way in hell Microsoft lets Apple get a 30% cut of Office 365 revenue.

Back when the first iPad was released, even a 4.3" phone was considered extremely large, so a 7-8" tablet would have still been significantly larger than phones of the time. And your point is weakened by the fact that larger screen phones exist today and people are still clamoring for smaller tablets. Besides the iPad, there isn't a single, truly successful 10" tablet, but there are several, well-selling 7" ones.

If this were the iOS or Windows Phone stores, then yes, that would be true. But with Google Play, the developer actually IS the merchant. The Play Store itself is only an intermediary. The system is setup like any other online store where there are "ordered" and goods are "shipped". Blame the fact that Google basically grafted the paid Android store onto a system that was meant for real-world goods. Honestly though, this isn't news. Every Android developer has known this for YEARS. And this is no different than any other online store out there.

If Microsoft wants to make the ultimate entertainment device, it's going to have a Bluray drive. I don't think it has anything to do with "sucking up pride", it's simply impractical to ship a new console with a DVD drive in 2013, and using some proprietary format is just plain idiotic because of the overhead costs. Heck, if even Nintendo has adopted the technology (but not licensed the ability to play BD video), then it's a given that Microsoft will include a Bluray drive in its next console. A given. I do expect 1st day digital downloads for all games though.

The almost near instant removal of the 500px app last week which went above and beyond Apple's supposed guidelines is more proof that the company does not apply it's rules equally to all companies.

Uhh.. the reason those features don't exist is to clearly push those kinds of customers towards Windows 8 Pro. It's the same reason why Office RT doesn't have Outlook. Microsoft doesn't want Windows RT to be used in enterprise and there are plenty of clues as to why not.

Honestly, the only thing important to DirectX 11.1 besides some optimizations is a standardized way to support 3D instead of proprietary nVidia 3D vision and AMD HD3D. And if you don't care about S3D, then 11.1 is a non issue. Sounds like a bunch of FUD to me. Regardless, until you see a bunch of DirectX 11.1 exclusive games and DirectX 11 support is dropped (which will never happen), people are ranting about nothing.

The game console will never die, but calling it that certainly will. When people spend far more time doing non-gaming activities, it behooves Microsoft and Sony not to call it that anymore so they can try to grab a wider audience. They want people to rent movies, buy TV shows, listen to music, download apps, etc... in addition to playing games on this device. In fact, if you could record and watch live TV, the cable set top box would be dead (and that's the real market they are trying to go after). With the apparent success of the $99 Xbox 360 w/ subscription, we are going to see Microsoft push that model further with the next Xbox. I'd say buy the console for $200 (high-end SKU), then for $30/month for at least 2 years, get Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Music, and maybe 1 free movie rental a month. The last part clearly indicates it's a media machine, and people have gotten used to paying monthly bills for cellphones and stuff like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Considering the Xbox 360 isn't that much cheaper now than it was when it launched ($299 & $399), the only reasonable reason not to buy a new console immediately is because it lacks any tangible functionality over the old one (back when they only played games). Oh, and the next Xbox must be FAR better at multi-tasking. Taking 3 minutes to boot an app is ridiculous. NEEDS MORE RAM.

When a huge chunk of those users are in China which has effectively banned Facebook in it's current form (it would have to partner with a local Chinese company and jump through TONS of hoops to start making inroads), I don't think you can count on growth from more users anymore. Besides, that doesn't scale very well anyway. They need to make more money PER user. It should be far easier to double the money made per user than to double the number of users.

Old investors who sold their stock for the IPO have already made their money. New investors who bought at the IPO price (or near it) were suckers since it's lost value. Retail investors who probably didn't have a chance to buy it at anywhere near the IPO price are probably going to sit this one out since the excitement is now over. Current shareholders who are most likely employees are disappointed because while they are worth a lot on paper, they can't sell their shares for a good 6 months, and will have to see their fortunes decrease every day. Bystanders like me are just laughing at the amount of funny money now floating around chasing a company that has a P/E of 100, almost 1 billion users, and no serious way of monetizing that base at the moment other than display ads.

Probably closer to $7-8, as they definitely have some significant avenues of revenue growth available to them, namely mobile. But $38 is rather silly for a company to be valued at $104 billion initially off of earnings of $1 billion a year. Though because it was an IPO day, the retail investor was likely locked out for most of the early trading (especially because the NASDAQ screwed up with delays). It might have actually benefited them though, because they probably didn't get a chance to buy it at $42-$45. But whoever bought it at that price just lost ~30% of their money in a day based on today's price of $33. Suckers!

It's all fun and games until someone hacks your bank, releases your identity, then you have lots of credit cards opened up in your name. "But your bank was secure and they were just doing it for the lulz!!!" People only care about this stuff when it happens to them. Even if you think what lulzsec is doing is a good thing, it encourages hackers with worse motives to try the same tactics with far more disastrous results. But of course, you think it's a great idea, so sure, let's let them continue!

Even if it's profitable, it's probably better to pour their limited resources into a car that would have larger mass-market appeal. They only have so many engineers.

The Windows Mobile and Windows NT kernel are not the same thing.

And here I was thinking that Google owned the trademark to "Chrome" as it refers to browsers and "Chromebook" would be an extension of that. How on earth is "Chromebook" the same as "ChromiumPC Modular Computer"?? The nerve some companies have these days.