I would expect from the context of the rest of the sentence, that it's 15m devices on the Internet with UPnP.

If your battery was great until a software update, then the problem probably isn't the battery but the software, and replacing the battery won't solve your problem.

Developers are, for the first time in the history of free software, helping inform each other about licensing and aiding in the selection process

Huh? In the 17-odd years I've been using Free Software, I've never known there not to be an ongoing public discussion amongst developers about licensing.

the brief window when I could have got a beta dev version

I'm a developer who signed up in that window to get a beta dev version, and they've failed to do that even. They've sent me some generic marketing emails, but nothing that would help me actually get my hands on a device. Totally lost interest now. If they can't even figure out how to deliver the goods, chances are it's not going to be a great product.

Stores already have barcode scanners at every POS, and with a little software they can easily interact with non-NFC smartphones that display loyalty info on the screen.

Depends on the type of scanner. Laser scanners are widespread and don't work well with phone screens.

Actually, when Jobs announced the iPhone for the first time, in the keynote he made a point of telling everybody that it ran OS X and had desktop-class applications.

In context of the mobile operating systems and mobile apps that came before the iPhone, it's easy to see why he'd say that, but it wasn't quite true. The difference between what they did and what Microsoft did is that they recognised iPhoneOS and OS X had different, mutually exclusive design goals, and acted on that understanding, whereas Ballmer demanded "no compromises" for the mobile version of Windows.

If the vendor picked the option of giving you the source code along with the binaries they can be argued to both be part of one piece of software.

No, that's not the case, and the GPL isn't written that way. The source and binary forms are treated individually and where distribution together is mentioned, the GPL describes the source form as accompanying the binary form, not being a part of it. If one thing accompanies another, they are by definition distinct from one another.

They can't. The organisation I bought the machine from is only compelled by the GPL to provide source code to the person they distributed the binaries to, i.e. me.

This is not true. The GPL requires that the offer is made to "any third party".

Not really. You are quoting "any third party", so I assume you are talking about GPLv2. Here's the relevant section from that license:

You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

[...]

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

When the vendor distributes the machine to me, they are compelled to provide the written offer to me. I am not compelled to give this written offer to anybody I might sell the machine to.

I think you might have misread my comment. Why are you talking about redownloading the software to put it on a new machine? I am buying the machine with the software preinstalled. I'm not downloading or installing anything.

Because you can get around the GPL once that way. It is not really a hole worth being concerned about.

Once? People can buy machines in bulk. Are you missing the relevance to the story here? Consider what happens if a company like Fantec contract an external organisation to install GPLed software on their components before reselling them.

Generally you are only allowed to pass on the entire software or none at all, not to modify it by only providing parts.

In the scenario I described, I'm not modifying anything.

Either the source code came with the software, in which case it could be argued that you have to transfer both binaries and source code in order to comply with copyright

Why would I be compelled to transfer source code to anybody? The only thing that would require me to do so is the GPL. I don't have to agree to the terms of the GPL because I'm not making any copies of the software.

The GPL is a license that allows you to do things that would otherwise be covered by copyright in exchange for you agreeing to do certain other things. In this scenario, I'm not doing anything that is covered by copyright. There's no reason for me to agree to the GPL.

In the latter case the person you sold it to can just go directly to whoever made the written offer.

They can't. The organisation I bought the machine from is only compelled by the GPL to provide source code to the person they distributed the binaries to, i.e. me.

All they can do is alert the copyright holder(s) of the license violation and hope that the copyright holder(s) care.

What license violation? The vendor is complying with the terms of the license by providing source to me if I ask for it, and I don't have to agree to the license, so I'm not violating it.

Even if you manage to circumvent the GPL this way, it is rather inefficient. You have to redownload the software every time you put it on a new machine, otherwise you're copying it. If you make scripts to do it for you, you are likely to end up modifying the software, which triggers copyright.

I think you might have misread my comment. Why are you talking about redownloading the software to put it on a new machine? I am buying the machine with the software preinstalled. I'm not downloading or installing anything.

If modification takes place, it will be the vendor I am buying from that does the modification, and that vendor is only compelled to provide source code to me.

Under very few legal codes is it OK to distribute something that you do not have the appropriate copyright/licence.

Distribution is fine. It's copying that is restricted by copyright.

For example, I can go and buy a game in a box from a shop. I then give you that game. I'm distributing the game, but I am not copying it. Copyright doesn't stop me because copyright is for copying, not distribution.

Why does that matter? Well consider this: what happens when I buy a machine with GPL software preinstalled on it by the vendor? I have the right to ask for the source code, right? Well what happens when I sell that machine to somebody else? I never had to agree to the GPL because I never made any copies of the software. I'm not obligated to follow the terms of the GPL. Does the person I sold the machine to have any right to ask me for source code? Why?

the iPhone 5 (with it's tiny screen)

Huh? This is a phone we are talking about, not a tablet. It's got a perfectly reasonable screen size. Any larger, and I'd have a problem fitting it in my pocket. Screen size is not a good way of judging a mobile phone, especially if you think bigger is better.

When I buy an eBook, I do not own the book. In order to read the book, I have to hope that some DRM server somewhere will authorize the eBook reader to show me the book I want to read.

That's only true of some ebook publishers. For instance, I've bought a lot of ebooks from O'Reilly. You get DRM-free files in multiple formats that you can do what you like with.

If you've bought an ebook that has to ask for permission before letting you read it, you bought from a bad publisher. It's not a problem inherent to e-books.

I have books on my book shelves that are over 50 years old, and I can still read them fine

I've got decades-old physical books that I can't read. Why? Well I had to get rid of a load of them because they were simply taking up too much space. And the ones I've kept, I can't read them when I'm abroad, when I'm commuting, or pretty much anywhere except my house, because it's not feasible to bring all my books with me every time I leave the house.

The advantage of replying with bogus data is that the app cannot pester the user until he gets fed up and enables access.

Also, applications cannot pester the user in this way. After two rejections, the requests for user location data is automatically denied.

So, we're back to "You have disabled access to tracking your position. You need to enable this to continue playing".

Apple reject applications that do things like that.

What those APIs return is directly related to the users choice- for example, if the user says "no" when the application attempts to determine your location via Core Location, then the CL APIs will still work- they'll just return useless information (basically hardcoded to nothing). The other APIs work in the same way.

No, that's not true. iOS tells the application when something is unauthorised. For example, you can call [CLLocationManager authorizationStatus] at any point, and if you ask for the user's location and get denied, it sends your delegate a locationManager:didFailWithError: message saying that the user denied the request. The same is true for other APIs. You don't get fed bad data.

... is that if apps are denied permission, they may refuse to work (even though the permission requested might not actually needed for the app's official purpose).

It's unlikely Apple would approve an application that did that.

So, what we would need is a change in how permission refusal is communicated (or not communicated) to the app. The OS should always tell the app "yes you got permission", but then just fake the action (return plausible but fake location data, plausible but fake adresses, etc.). Or fail with a code not linked to permission (pretend that there is no cellular network available if user refused permission to use it)

That sounds like a recipe for an incredibly confusing user experience.

The way iOS works at the moment is that if an application tries to access something like your contacts, a system prompt pops up asking the user whether to allow it or not. If they don't allow it, the application is told this and has to handle it as well as it can. If it fails to do this well, it won't be approved by Apple. Once the user has allowed an app to access something twice or refused it twice, this preference is remembered and the user isn't prompted again.