Way to miss it and fly right on by!

Yes, but I can read and modify every line of it if I want to (yes, I'm one of those Linux freaks). Even if I never, ever do, I should have that privilege -- failing that, I should at least have the option not to run it at all. With today's personal computers, *I CAN DO THAT.* But if I don't want to run Apple's code on an Apple device for whatever reason -- hey, maybe the hardware's more important to me -- I can't do that without first exploiting Apple's code. I inherently do not have full control of an iDevice. In fact, I have less control over an iDevice than I do over my personal computer running Windows 7, precisely because Windows -- and any programs on it -- can be uninstalled. Once again, in case you missed it -- I can't uninstall iOS unless I hack it first.

Again, I have the source code to "those devices". In the cases I don't (proprietary overlays and such), sure, they can't be trusted -- because they're not open, either. At the same time, allowing users to bring personal equipment on a company network is always a bad idea. But company equipment running software where I know (or can easily find out) what's going on is an entirely different matter. And possible, given the amount of rootable Android phones and completely open firmwares.

I do exercise that "full control" every day. I'm always installing or removing programs, making changes, tweaking something. Sure, not everyone's like me. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have the opportunity. You can even have some sane user interface prompt in the way that asks, "Hey, you could really mess your system up, are you sure about this?" Firefox does it. I don't see why it would be all that bad. Why is it reasonable to completely and utterly refuse this control, granting the user zero chance of exercising it at all? Why should Apple be able to run code, stop code, kill code and download code onto my device that I bought, but I'm not allowed to do the same thing at the same privileges? If there's that much a risk of breakage -- and in the case of 100% of iDevices, there isn't, everything can be fixed by a restore -- then void my friggin' warranty. Why are there parties out there able to do things with my device that I, myself, am not able to do, purely because those same parties have built their device to actively resist my efforts?

And this, right here, is precisely where you completely ignored my post and just flew on your merry way. I said:

So let me shorten it -- if closed tablets kill open computers, and we enter this "post-PC era", no consumer may ever have control of his or her sophisticated hardware ever again, even if they want it, need it, and/or can actually use it.

I'm surely going to have a lot of people yelling at me in a second, but hey.

The big problem I see with you and everyone else with this dismissive "sure, a few geeks will whine and complain, but the rest of the world will buy and use it" attitude seem to be missing the entire point of said "whining and complaining." You seem to think it's as simple as incredulity or jealousy that people will actually buy something that is effectively a lot more useless in a lot of different ways than an actual computer system. Actually, it goes deeper than that.

The inherent problem with the world actually buying into this crap in a "post-PC" world, to the detriment, of course, to the PCs, is that when the market for the more-capable devices shrinks and quite possibly dies, there may well be nothing left to use but this locked-down Big-Media-friendly user-/competition-hostile Apple crap. (Apple? User-hostile? Yes; it absolutely is user-hostile to prevent the user from attaining full access to a device the user has purchased outright, no matter the user's skill level, to the point where the user has to rely on binary code written by third parties just to gain such access! And yes, many/most Android vendors are no different!)

If these "post-PC" hopes come true, there is a very, very real threat that there will be very few devices the user will ever have full control over without hacking, ignoring the used market. But no one seems to pay attention to this; everyone seems to pay attention to the shinies and the capabilities the devices do have while ignoring, dismissing or apologizing for the capabilities they completely lack by design. Are fancy effects and pretty designs worth the device producers having far more control over devices bought and paid for than those doing the buying? How can these devices be trusted in a corporate or government network?

Actually, just throwing my two cents in, I could see myself lugging both a tablet and a laptop around -- the tablet for those instances when I just need to look something up quickly or do a minor task and don't want to wait for the boot-up (looking up wikipedia, for example), and the laptop for when I need to do much more intensive work that I have to deal with the boot process for anyway (SSHing to multiple places and doing tasks concurrently).

Right, but that's not really having a choice of operating system, that's simply hacking the operating system already in place; being able to run an alternative operating system is non-functional on anything but the very first iPhone, to my knowledge. Even if Apple doesn't have to provide support for it -- and they don't -- it's still troublesome that they actively prevent even the attempt.

Proper Android tablets can't even meet the price of the iPad..

Actually, I don't think you're taking the pricing in the proper context.

While true that the *cheapest* iPad is, in fact, much cheaper than, say, the Motorola XOOM, you'll find that -- at least in hardware -- it's also lacking many of the features that the XOOM *does* have. Fortunately, there are models of the iPad that are comparable down to being in the same provider with the same storage space and other similar specifications.

First, let's look at the XOOM: a dual-core 1 GHz ARM CPU (just like the iPad 2 IIRC) with 1 GB low-power DDR2 (twice the amount of the iPad 2) and 32 GB storage space to start, upgradable with another 32 GB to a maximum of 64 GB -- but let's ignore that and stick with the 32 GB baseline. The crucial thing to keep in mind here is that this baseline also, by default, is for Verizon cell service, and it unfortunately doesn't seem to be able to have any alternatives for that. The resolution is also at 1280x800, whereas the iPad's is 1024x768.

That's just pointing out the discrepancies you'll be facing when you see this comparison. So in order to get a fair (IMO) price comparison on this, we'll need an iPad 2 that's roughly the same, INCLUDING Verizon service. If we completely ignore storage altogether and just go Cheapest vs. Cheapest, the answer... depends on getting a contract. If you're a new customer with Verizon (or, I suppose, if you're renewing and they want to give you the contract rate), the cheapest iPad 2 sits at $629 whereas the Motorola XOOM... sits at $599 . If you're matching storage points and getting a contract, the XOOM still sits at $599 but the iPad goes up to $729! Of course, however, if you're not getting a contract and purchasing the device outright, the XOOM does get its ass handed to it on price -- although, to be fair, I could not find contract-less purchasing for an iPad 2.

tl;dr: XOOM is less expensive, spec-for-spec unless you're buying it without a contract.

(No, I'm not including software, usability, etc. -- I'm just going hardware-for-hardware and ignoring the OS, which is largely a measure of personal bias. Full disclosure: my personal bias is Android. However, what I've written here may be verified by going to the websites for the Apple Store and for Verizon's store.)

1.) It's really *not* Linux's fault if a vendor doesn't release hardware specifications, and you still have no right to blame it for not supporting hardware that no one knows how to code support for because the vendor didn't release the specs! If you want to blame someone, blame the vendor, even though there is no obligation for them to release specifications. The whole idea behind that "b.s." is to create consumer pressure on the vendors to the point where they *do* release specs and get better support for their device for it.
2.) There are no competitors providing open, free, decent graphics hardware for these reasons:
a.) There's a huge number of patents and IP involved with graphics hardware that prohibits 'duplication' of certain capabilities by an up-and-coming graphics vendor. The legal fees alone to simply figure out whether a feature can or cannot be implemented would be staggering.
b.) Even if the legal fees were out of the way, the task of actually building such a card is fairly daunting to people who simply don't have the cashflow to begin with to produce such things. ESPECIALLY if you're aiming for compliance to any number of video/graphics specifications (OpenGL, etc.) and versions out there.
c.) To compete in the video marketplace, they would also have to write and release Windows drivers, which for various licensing reasons they may not be able to release source code for.

Basically it comes down to the process of making such a card being too large and difficult for most people, even in the open source community, to accomplish without outside help.

And, of course, the companies seem to figure Linux can be ignored -- except that the big two graphics companies, nVidia and ATI, are both releasing drivers (and ATI *has* open sourced a fair bit of their stuff, releasing specifications for the rest).

Ever try installing Leopard (10.5) on a Mac with a PPC G4 < 867 MHz? Or Tiger (10.4) on a Mac without built-in FireWire? Or Panther (10.3) on a Beige PowerMac?

"Miraculously", XPostFacto allowed this to happen (well, the Leopard/G4 requirement has to be bypassed some other way); without it, it wouldn't happen because the vendor wanted to force obsolescence on systems still at least somewhat viable. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that applications that start supporting the new versions of Mac OS X start dropping support for the older versions -- effectively rendering a rather sizable number of machines stuck without application updates for a given application simply because Apple decided those machines shouldn't run new software anymore. If I recall correctly, you can't even get a newer version of Firefox installed on those machines unless you entirely exchange the operating system for Linux or start running Windows in a VM and using that exclusively (which defeats the purpose).

Actually, Apple has a regular habit of making the next given version of Mac OS X simply not run on what they deem "old" hardware, regardless of whether or not that old hardware is actually still capable of running the OS or not. It's not even a technical check; it's a "if allowed_vendor(venid) && allowed_product(prodid) then run else fail" type check. It's one of the things that's most irritating about Apple. Thankfully and luckily, those machines they choose to arbitrarily obsolete usually wind up running Linux extremely well in OS X's stead, since no distribution is going to play that kind of silly game.

What is it about other people's computer choices that bothers you so much?

When those other people get up in your face all the time crowing about how damn good their computer is and how superior it is to everything else ever made EVER, you start to get pissed the fuck off. I'm just saying. (Yes, this cuts both ways.)

For fuck's sake; it's been in the OS since (I believe) OS 9.2.2 or, at the latest, OS X 10.2. Just because the "default" peripheral doesn't do it out of the box doesn't mean it's not there; the Mac usability/human interface guidelines (however rarely-followed) are very different from PC, and Mac applications are strongly advised to avoid use of the 'right click' as often as possible to reduce user confusion. It adds to simplicity, which is ostensibly a good thing; the costs of this decision, of course, are users who don't know better and think that this necessarily equates to a "lack of functionality", and retards like you who keep making these "HURUR RIGHT CLICK LOLZZZZ" jokes.

In the end it wasn't technical superiority but business economics and logistics that delivered x86 as the winner, and we're still paying the price.

Actually, wasn't the thing that finally killed PPC Mac the fact that IBM simply could not deliver higher-performing chips past a certain point, nor could they deliver a chip like the PowerPC G5 in a mobile form factor while still keeping an exceptional battery life and a minimal heat profile? Apple has even cited performance-per-watt endless times as a reason for the switch. Or is that not a technical superiority thing?

(Not that I have a particular fondness for x86, mind you, but I'm pretty sure Apple had valid technical reasons to drop PPC for holding them back)

I'm sure if Opera gets in, Firefox does too.

Actually, no; Opera Mini just tells a rendering proxy at Opera's servers to render a page for it, and the proxy renders the page and sends the data (and all the interactive regions and such) back to Opera Mini, which presents it. This is necessary because Apple doesn't allow 'language interpreters' to be in applications in the App Store (last I checked, anyway). The way Opera does it is complete crap, actually, in my opinion, but they did manage to use it to beat the system.

I could write a script that just replies to posts the way you do and no one would be the wiser.

original iMac - remove hatch by twisting coin placed in slot, put stick of memory in space provided, close hatch

Only if your "original iMac" is a slot-loader -- tray-loaders actually require you to take apart the chassis, and they only take notebook-style PC100 SDRAM, IIRC. Everything after that takes the normal PC100/PC133 sticks.

Considering the guy's been around for years (his first album came out to critical acclaim in 1999, I believe), does that mean we've got two decades to go before your point is proven or disproven?