Why say all this?
Consumers are abandoning video game consoles
Consumers are abandoning wired internet
Consumers are abandoning PCs
Consumers are abandoning cars
Consumers are abandoning colleges

Just say...
Consumers will soon use mobile phones for *everything* (coming soon, the pizza flavored iPhone).

Yes. Precisely my point. It is misleading.

You're making my point (by inserting the "some").

Really? If we only had cars and suddenly motorcycles and pickup trucks were introduced, would we say people are "abandoning" cars when car sales suddenly take a drop? I hear everyone is abandoning PCs for tablets too. And abandoning still photography for video. And abandoning butter for margarine (...now I dating myself).

Less agreeable to who?

Seems to me that you don't want a lasso but rather a very long tightly coiled spring.

Huh?

Yes its much easier to remember that a meter is the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during the time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second, than it is to remember that a yard is about the length of three of my feet. I was up in Montreal recently and received a cup of water in a restaurant with a line drawn on it that said .25L. I thought that was hysterical. If their standard was the quart, it could have just said 1 cup.

There isn't really a story here. There may be a few classics here, but this is no golden age arcade, especially considering the stock of late era look-alike candy cabs. If this arcade had been mothballed and locked-up in, say, 1983 or 84, that would be cool. Otherwise, there isn't anything very special here.

Old way.

1. Buy Photoshop CC, create thousands of editable images using CS6 proprietary features and saved in CS6 proprietary format. Cool.
2. Loved CC, but Acme Studios has finally released a superior product that will improve my images and workflow. It's incompatible with PS CC, but that's ok.
3. Buy Acme Studios to edit my new images; continue to use CS6 in parallel to edit my old images.

New way

1. Buy Photoshop CC, create thousands of editable images using CC only proprietary features and saved in CC only proprietary format. Cool.
2. Loved CC, but Acme Studios has finally released a superior product that will improve my images and workflow. It's incompatible with CC, but...oooh I think I'm seeing a problem.
3. Buy new software to edit my new images, but must continue to pay $$ ransom to Adobe to unlock and edit my old images forever and ever. Oops. Hmmm.

Moral. Until Acme Studios comes out, use CS6 and collaborate on your own terms.

Look, I'm still waiting for a killer smartphone app that motivates me well enough to upgrade from my flip phone. Now if someday I walk up to the vending machine at work and it will only accept payments via mobile app, that might do it. On the other hand, the cost/value equation of paying $300 more a year on my cell phone bill just for vending machine access might end up keeping me on a diet. As for Google Glass, perhaps the ability to just look at that Snickers bar and have it fall into my hands might make it worth it. Decisions, decisions.

I'm about as religiously conservative as they come, and I think you've got the wrong villain in you sights. Cradle to grave monitoring and control is a collectivist policy, which like much of current liberal thinking, accepts the ceding of privacy to the state as a contemporary norm. I've never talked to a conservative Christian in any of my circles having the point of view that the state should be entrusted with the right to inspect our daily lives. Rather, they tend to strongly advocate personal freedom, responsibility, and privacy. If you blame the religious conservatives for this sort of thing and they all go away, all you'll have left are the government and those who think government is pretty much the equivalent of God. Of course, I'm sure you'll eventually come to terms with this since there isn't a liberal around who, once they find that they can surreptitiously follow the creationists or any other of their selected villains around, wouldn't love to exercise their omnipotence.

I don't consider adaptive optics "additive" or "artificial". Adaptive optics, as I understand them, do not add new light but correct existing light like a sophisticated focuser. To me, the non-corrected image distorted by the atmosphere is more artificial than the corrected image, in which the atmospheric distortion has been subtracted out . Just as the repair work on the Hubble (or the optics on your glasses) did not "create" new or artificial light, neither does adaptive optics. One of the ways this can be proved is that in a post-processed image, you can only extract or enhance what is there. In this case, we are seeing detail that no post processing of the light could have visually revealed. This is not additive or artificial detail, it is real detail.

If the motorcycle were suddenly invented today, we would have a similar effect. A certain group of people would find the motorcycle very appealing. Compared to the car, they are small, more fuel efficient, and less expensive. So the set of people not needing an enclosed vehicle with room for passengers and cargo would all run out and buy one. In those first few years motorcycle sales would spike relative to cars, and probably displace some car sales.

Anyone looking at the sales figures and marketplace trends in those days would proclaim that the days of the automobile were nearing the end and that the car was doomed. After all, all motor vehicles are the same, right.

Actually, in hindsight, it might have been a good time to invest in cars.

Has anyone considered how many scouts will go missing because of this?