Because they're professional game developers and they've worked with both closed and open drivers. The Intel Linux GPU driver team spent time working with Valve's Linux team in Bellvue. The Valve guys told the Intel guys that they like open source drivers better. You should read the blog post I linked to.

Because they find them easier to work with. To quote a recent blog post by one of Intel's open source GPU driver developers: "The funny thing is Valve guys say the same thing about drivers. There were a couple times where we felt like they were trying to convince us that open source drivers are a good idea. We had to remind them that they were preaching to the choir. :) Their problem with closed drivers (on all platforms) is that it's such a blackbox that they have to play guess-and-check games. There's no way for them to know how changing a particular setting will affect the performance. If performance gets worse, they have no way to know why. If they can see where time is going in the driver, they can make much more educated guesses."

Intel develops open source drivers for their graphics hardware. See for yourself on their Intel Linux Graphics website. Intel worked with Valve recently to improve their drivers for Valve's games. Phoronix has some statistics on the development history of Intel's open source drivers.

Angry Birds Chrome is a poor example of an HTML5 game as it relies on Flash for audio. If I try it with Firefox 14.0.1, for example, without Flash installed I get a message which tells me that I either need to install Flash or use Chrome as it has Flash built-in. Better examples of HTML5 games which work without Flash are Cut the Rope, Pirates Love Daisies, World's Biggest Pac-Man, and Word Squared.

The development of the first three games was funded by Microsoft to demonstrate that credible applications can in fact be built against an HTML5 runtime. They also demonstrate that there are already high quality applications available for Firefox OS. It's pretty trivial to make them installable on Firefox OS.

Yes, especially because that developer community already exists. Even Microsoft has already inadvertently funded the development of a few Firefox OS applications. The HTML5 version of Cut the Rope, for example, already runs on Firefox OS. To make it an installable Firefox OS application all that would need to be added is a manifest file and an install page. And similarly for other Microsoft funded HTML5 games like Pirates Love Daisies and World's Biggest Pacman.

Something more for Thunderbird is integrated instant messaging. I want unified email and instant messaging in one application so I'll have unified contacts and search. The number of instant messaging services supported by Thunderbird seems like it will be limited at first but that will improve with time and perhaps there will be add-ons available to support more services.

I see no evidence that it isn't true. Browsers are more capable and faster today than they were even two years. Every browser maker wants their browser to be the fastest and the benchmark is the speed of other browsers. Competition breeds improvement.

There are no other browsers on iOS. There are only shadows of other browsers. If you can't have your full browser stack on iOS, there are no competiting browsers.

*Only* the rendering engine? You mean the most fundamental part of any browser? In any case, it's both the JavaScript engine and the rendering engine that are banned. My user experience would be improved by being able to run full Firefox on iOS. I like Firefox. I can run Firefox on Windows. I can run Firefox on OS X. I can run Firefox on Linux. I can run Firefox on Android. There is no justification for not being able to run Firefox on iOS. The quality of the user's experience is for the user to decide, not Apple.

If you want to draw an analogy between people and corporations, corporations are psychopaths. This may help you: http://www.economist.com/node/2647328

There are clear benefits for the end user that are derived from browser competition. You need only look at the improvement in browsers on the desktop to see that.

Apple won't allow other browser engines on iOS because it introduces competition on the platform and has the potential to diminish Apple's opportunity for profit. The capability to run web-based applications on iOS in a full version of Firefox or Opera or Chrome horrifies Apple because it would mean iOS users could install applications through distribution channels other than the one Apple controls and profits from. It also means that a user of Firefox or Opera or Chrome can more easily move to another platform because they can just go ahead and keep using Firefox or Opera or Chrome on the new platform with a minimum of fuss.

Remember: corporations hate competition. They will always do everything they can to avoid it.

This is naive. Generating profit and increasing shareholder value are Apple's primary concerns, as they are with any large corporation. It is not incidental. It is an explicit goal and everything Apple does is designed to achieve that goal.

If CSIRO is a patent troll then so is every major university. Stanford University's Office of Technology Licensing, for example, exists to generate income through the licencing of Stanford developed technologies which they then invest back into research and education. CSIRO similarly invests its income back into research and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. The idea that research organisations are patent trolls and shouldn't be allowed to licence their inventions to others in order to maintain their focus on research is both farcical and intellectually bankrupt. Joe Mullin's jingoistic and, frankly, pathetically insular article isn't worth a second reading.

I agree. Ars Technica used an inflammatory title to drive traffic to their site. I used to like Ars but it has adopted a tabloid journalism flavour lately so I don't read it anymore. For me, Ars is a damaged brand.

I would say the years have passed and the hardware is coming out this year: http://blog.webmproject.org/2012/03/webm-gaining-momentum-in-hardware.html

The MPEG LA has quite often raised the price for H.264. The MPEG LA's H.264 license summary talks about past license increases. The royalty cap has increased since 2005:

The MPEG LA's H.264 license FAQ specifically addresses their approach to increasing license costs: