People who want a box whose industrial design doesn't stick out like a sore thumb next to a television. People who play games other than FPS and RTS, games whose multiplayer mode uses one screen and up to four gamepads, such as platformers, fighting games, and rhythm games. Multiplayer PC games, on the other hand, have tended to require a separate computer, monitor, OS license, and game license per player.

Because there weren't credible Linux tablets between the release of the original iPad and the release of the Xoom, just as there weren't any credible Linux smartphones between the release of the original iPhone and the release of the HTC Dream. This, combined with delayed availability of Google Checkout (now Google Wallet) in some countries, caused people to end up with a collection of purchased applications and movies that don't transfer to anything but an iPad. Besides, it appears you would prefer having to buy three tablets and carry all three everywhere you go: an iPad for running iOS-exclusive applications, a Surface RT for running Windows Store-exclusive applications, and something else for running Linux-exclusive applications.

So what are the open alternatives to AAA games? U.S. copyright law hasn't been as kind to cloners of games (Tetris v. Xio) as it has been to cloners of libraries (Oracle v. Google) and cloners of business applications (Lotus v. Borland).

The original intent was to check once a day, not once every 30 days like I'm told Steam does. I can think of a lot of situations where one would lack Internet access for a couple weeks but still be able to play single-player, same-screen multiplayer, and LAN multiplayer games.

Italian and especially Sardinian are closer to Latin in some ways than even Portuguese. But in both Italian and Spanish, a Latin 'o' in some contexts became a diphthong: "uo" in Italian or "ue" in Spanish.

From Virgin: Venture, Chaser, and Optimus Elite still have 2.3. Ting also has the Optimus Elite.

For one thing, not everybody agrees on what constitutes a "better experience". Some people prefer one-button installs (compared to a typical Windows installer "wizard"). Some people prefer not having to mess with third-party antivirus and third-party video card driver updates in addition to operating system updates. Some people don't want a big, noisy tower next to the TV. And some people are fans of genres other than FPS, RTS, and MMORPG. Some genres, such as platformers, fighting games, kart racers, rhythm games, light gun games, and JRPGs, are reportedly far more common on consoles than on PCs.

When in such areas, develop your XNA game as if it were an XNA game for Windows PCs, and work on the port to the Xbox family platform only when you have a quality Internet connection. I get the same problem: I do some development work on a laptop on the bus, where I can't test on the ultimate target platform.

Probably for the same reason Nintendo is selling Smash Bros. 4 for Wii U and Smash Bros. 4 for Nintendo 3DS as separate SKUs: so that you'll buy both.

Even if you own the kernel, the device manufacturer owns the design of the module that monitors the boot process. In the x86 world I think they call this a TPM.

Prior to Jelly Bean 2 (Android 4.2), Android didn't really have multiuser capabilities. How many Android devices in the field are running Jelly Bean 2? Many are still shipping with Gingerbread (2.3). And as I understand it, phones still don't ship with multiuser; only 7" and bigger tablets do. You have to root to get multiuser on a phone.

Would you use a desk big enough to hold only one sheet of paper? Alt-tabbing between your textbook and where you are writing your solutions to the exercises can get tiring.

Any desktop Chrome browser is running what is essentially the user space of the Chrome OS, just with a different kernel.

21 inches for one application? Google has strongly resisted any attempt to add tiled or overlapping window management policy to stock Android. This means applications have to be coded to each hardware manufacturer's proprietary window management API. I can dig up Google employees' explanation of this "all maximized all the time" policy and why Cornerstone isn't in CyanogenMod if you want.

A star that became brighter because it exploded? Might as well call it the Pinto. Oh wait, Ford took that one.

There are also fans of console-exclusive franchises (e.g. anything whose characters appear in Smash Bros. series except Sonic), fans of genres that rarely get ported to PC (e.g. fighting games, platformers, and certain JRPGs), and people who prefer one-button convenience in their gaming. These people may do their gaming on a console and everything else on OS X or GNU/Linux.

And the Internet has since come full friggin' circle, with dedicated mobile applications to access particular services.