That's the reality. The moment people talk about "rooting" and "hacking" their tablet, they are already lost virtually the entire customer base. These tinkerers need to get off their shaky pedestal and realize that the largest and most profitable market is made up of consumers that could truly not care any less about the ability to root their device and as to how "open" it is compared to Apple's walled-garden. That market is made up predominantly of people that want simplicity (not complexity) in their life, they want what is essentially a "toaster" in that it "just works", and all the parts that make up the whole - software and hardware, and apps - work fluidly and seamlessly.

Even the TouchPad firesale is made up predominantly of tech-heads, geeks, and nerds that simply want that "cheap" table to either convert into an Android tablet or use as reading material on the toilet. Unless, you're an entrepreneur and are simply buying it to put on Ebay for 2-3 times the price and sell to.... you guessed it.. the same folks I mentioned in the beginning of this.

There is no "tablet" market, only an iPad market. So until the industry realizes why the iPad is so successful, and also figure out the consumers that are wanting it (most are not iSheep), they will continue to crash and burn.

As smart as many /.'s here "think" they are, they are really having a hard time figuring that out.

Not exactly... Perhaps he did do a third act indirectly.

He saved Apple

Bought George Lucas' graphics division and out came Pixar

Because of Pixar, definitely saved Disney's backside buy having them buy Pixar and no personally saving Disney's film industry and pocketing 7% of Disney's stock!

So would this qualify??

I'm going to miss Steve Jobs. He really is the last of the special breed of luminaries.

God Speed Steve. I hope long life follows you, if only as the Chairman. You'll be missed.

Of course. Let's all make a statement by refusing to purchase any products from the following companies (from Wikipedia) since AC's tend to conveniently ignore them while making it sound it's only Apple:

Acer, Amazon, Intel, Cisco, HP, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, Sony, Vizio

Let's see how long your crusade lasts!

I'm from San Francisco. That guy had more than one knife on him. He rolled the dice the moment he threw the knife at the officer. Nothing to read here, move along.

Apple creates iPhone. Slashdot lapdog AC's like you say "It has no keyboard. Will never sell!" Sells untold millions, for billions of dollars, and now suddenly everyone makes an iPhone clone. You now say "But Android is better".

Apple creates iPad. Whiners like you criticize it as "Just an oversized iPod Touch named after feminine products". Sells untold millions, for billions of dollars, and now suddenly everyone makes an iPad clone.

Where Android licensees compete for scraps at the bottom of the barrel, Apple commands a majority share of all mobile profits.

Smart people have bought AAPL and profited handsomely. You on the other hand hope to bootleg Apps from the comfort of your parent's basement.

You're just a whiny little brat, kicking and screaming that you missed the boat. Apple does in fact do their own R&D, and from the looks of it, Apple does the R&D for Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and .

You cannot make any valid arguments to counter Apple's success so you resort to ad hominem because you know you really have no clue.

This is a recycling program. Not a market. It's highly doubtful that any machine returned this way will be refurbished and resold unless it's a fairly new(er) machine in full working condition. Beats throwing it in the dumpster when all the precious metals (gold, copper, etc..) can be recycled and reused elsewhere.

I remember watching a program on TV not too long ago where they said that recycling old computers and electronics to extract gold is actually more profitable and more efficient than trying to mine the gold ore out of the ground nowadays.

If it's gathering dust in your house and never used, may as well get rid of it this way, or determine if selling it, dealing with the headaches and time to sell it is worthwhile.

Either way, it's good that Apple provides this as a free service.

Android fans are akin to people (like AC's) who will get what they can and avoid actually paying for it due to some ego-inflated, false-sense of entitlement. They they think they are being 'cool' but don't realize that, by doing so, they are just being a tool.

Fixed that for you.

Bullshit. Samsung from day one has done nothing but copy Apple's ecosystem. From icon design, peripherals, GUI interface (phones), etc.

Before Apple came into the field, everyone had 20+ years to come up with a phone / tablet design to shake the industry. Even with with the few players that gave up quickly, everyone else did NOTHING!

Now Apple comes in with their iPhone and iPad and SUDDENLY everyone's products now looks like an iPhone and iPad. That is no coincidence at all. When the iPhone was just an introduction back in 2007 before it shipped 6-months later, even Steve Jobs said they "And boy, did we patent it!". Why??? Because NO ONE ELSE had anything even remotely similar to it, and good for them!

What happened to designing your own stuff??? Even Samsung's CEO publicly admitted having to hold back their Galaxy Tab after the iPad2 introduction so that they could essentially copy its features.

And yet you fandroid-huggers continue to spin the story that Apple is the one at fault.

"Who cares if everyone is copying Apple's stuff. Apple should just keep innovating to stay ahead!" - Wrong! Apple can (and should) protect both its current IP and continue the same path of R&D that has made it hugely successful. This does not give copy-shops like Samsung an open-invitation to simply ride on the back of Apple's R&D.

Slashdot's Android fanboys are just delusional. It's no surprise that the Android OS itself is now in front of the gun barrel with patent and licensing violations, including Google's own internal messages that they knew Android's Java implementation was essentially stolen.

This is not bad for consumers. This is actually good for them because it will force Samsung to ACTUALLY COME UP WITH ITS OWN STUFF! Who knows? It might even be better!

Spin your way out of that.

Nonsense. Apple does nothing to advertise their next product. They are chided for their extreme privacy which pretty much leaves it to the media and tech-heads to guess, doing it enough so that after saying it enough times, they begin to believe it is true. Apple does nothing.

It's also fanboyism from BOTH sides that contributes to your post. I lost track of how many times folks yell at consumers buying an iPhone near the end of Apple's yearly cycle, and others bitching about people buying a new iPhone on day one, claiming they should never buy a first-generation Apple product, blah, blah.. whatever.

What Apple has provided is a product that the majority of its customers love and created a halo-effect so that people do look forward to their next product offering. Any other phone company would sell their first-born to have that kind of customer loyalty.

How can any one Android maker get a following of that magnitude when there are so many different phones and configurations? You can't get excited for more than five minutes and expect loyalty when there's a new phone every other day coming out. If Apple pulled this kind of shit, you folks would be ripping on Apple for "gouging" consumers and paying an Apple tax.

Of course... because it's not like HTC would try to then sue the other makers of Android phones of violating their patents right??
HTC might be in the mood to start thinning the Android herd a bit.

Nice attempt at slinging BS everywhere in the hopes something sticks. Apple haters will always hate, even if it means flat-out lying to suit their agenda. Non-Apple BT devices work fine. What happened? Did the housing inspector evict you from your bridge?

Apple's Bluetooth keyboard does indeed have an on/off swtich. It's the silver disk located on the right-side of the keyboard. You have to hold down the button for a couple seconds to turn on/off the keyboard. There is a (very) tiny green LED light on the top-right of the keyboard which which tells you when it's on or off after pushing the button.

Apple's bluetooth keyboard and mouse work great. Never had a problem with pairing. They did their development right. I can only assume that they will continue that movement with the new Bluetooth standard.

I had a logitech BT mouse before this and never had problems with that either. It was amazing with battery life.

He is right on a fundamental level. Android is more geared towards tech-heads, geeks and nerds. Nothing wrong with that. iOS is geared towards eliminating the technicalities from the user. Again, nothing wrong with that.

I don't like the pissing-contest folks either. To each their own. However, I have noticed a distinct pattern that most of my non-tech-savvy friends hate their Android phones and end up going the iOS route simply because what makes it popular for the tech-community is exactly the reason it is hated by the joe-consumer. They purchased their Android phone simply because it was a "free" phone, or came in at a lower price, etc.

It's hard to educate a user about this when phone salesmen are so biased to one system or another. Buying a phone should not have to e like buying a car.

You are assuming most users of smartphones have common sense to begin with in order to stay away from red-light-district App stores. That is simply not true. Most users (regardless of platform) are simply not savvy enough to know better.

Sure, you can label them as "ignorant", or "stupid". I've read countless of postings from tech-brats preaching that if a user doesn't know any better, they should not even buy a smartphone. If that were the case, then Android would have had a much more difficult time getting any market penetration.

Users don't know (and should not have to know) that going to a Chinese App market is akin to rolling dice. They don't look at their smartphone as a desktop-computer per se, and it's really naive to think that they should have to. Google's open-to-all approach is fundamentally broken. So much so that even fandroid folks here are hinting that Apple's walled-garden approach actually is something that should be considered. Who knew that Hell would freeze over so fast!

Best protection is not common sense. We're beyond that now. People should not have to babysit their phones. It should be treated as an appliance, not a PC. Google needs to address this or it will be their downfall. This is one area where Apple really has their act together.

Yes. You're right. The millions upon millions of iPad users all over the world are all Apple fanboys with no capabilities of thinking in an individual capacity. The iPad is a failure just waiting to happen and netbooks will still come back and take over.

You keep telling yourself that. Please. Run with it.

When iPads came out, they created a new (or reinvigorated and old and dead) market. There was uncertainty in its capabilities outside of iHaters calling it an "oversized iPod Touch". Now, two years later the iPad has had a large penetration in vertical markets where before there were none for a tablet. Back then, perhaps it was correct to say that it is not meant to replace laptops or netbooks. Now though is a different story. I lost track of how many friends and colleagues that were looking for a new home computer or a laptop decided to buy an iPad instead. There is a huge, huge market for people that don't need the capabilities of a laptop/desktop PC and all the headaches that go with keeping one running. Tech-heads, geeks, and nerds hate that idea as Apple's model pretty much obliterates their definition of what computing should be like. I say it's about damn time. We've had decades of what was essentially garbage PC's devoid of any user-friendliness for the Joe-consumer. I think it's great that Apple saw how the PC-folks were screwing everything up and decided to make "computers" that hides the computer part from the user and just let's them use it like a toaster. Good for them.

It's the haters that try to convince everyone until they're blue in the face that the only "real" tablet is one that can be rooted. I can tell you right now that that kind of logic guarantees you'll lose 99% of your potential consumer base.