How is the support library not easy?

It is easy. What it is not is nearly as expansive as iOS6 support libraries, never mind iOS7.

And why can't this be achieved with the support library?

Some of it could but a huge number of changes rest on top of an operating system tuned to make them practical to use from the standpoint of performance and battery life for the phone.

As an application developer, why would you shun the support library that brings new functionality from new versions to older platforms?

Because if the performance sucks and the battery life is horrible due to my application, *I* am the one that gets blamed, not the platform.

Seriously never get a job selling phones.

What an ironic foreshadowing!

itunes is looking a clunky relic, and music playing and purchasing from through the cloud with your favourite application can be done on the cheapest Android without any of that ugly legacy baggage. ... and also on any iPhone. Talk about being someone who doesn't know anything about phones! You haven't needed to use iTunes on a PC for what, six years?

Seems like you could probably get a job at Radio Shack with that level of technical expertise.

On the flip side Google offer a competing service on the Apple phone, the embarrassment

It is pretty embarrassing that Apple is so powerful that Google is forced to write apps that work on the iPhone, eh? It's not like Apple has to write map apps for Android. But Google does for iPhone if they do not want to wither and grow irrelevant.

This is strange ... bullshit.

Edited down the helpful summary of your post and general level of mobile understanding.

Also, the rerouting functionality of google maps is pretty limited

Forgot to comment on this - believe me, Waze has NOTHING to teach Google about routing. As you say they have better information when something happens to trigger a re-route, but Waze has sometimes really bad routing. I would use pretty much any app except Waze for routing (though I do like how Waze displays all known events along the route it has picked).

Google maps has to wait for the traffic to start backing up, and that can occasionally screw you. Waze seems to sometimes be able to warn you before the cars really stack up.

That's because if a Waze user is driving by as an accident happens or just after, they can mark it on the map.

The question is, will people stay after Waze is owned by Google? I used Waze because I didn't want my traffic data fed into Google to correlate with everything else I do.

The problem is, nothing else quite like Waze exists so there are not a lot of options (that I know of).

If people do leave, it will affect the value Waze has... a risky move by Google where all the value is based on a user base that may shift elsewhere (though I 'm sure Waze has some good infrastructure, does Google really need a company to help them with good geolocated infrastructure? I think not).

Why does it matter, as an app developer?

Because each iteration makes a number of things easier, some substantially easier.

You are about to see a huge wave of iOS application updates with iOS7, incorporating lots of advanced system features. As Android updates lag in adoption it becomes harder and harder to maintain parity with iOS versions of applications that are just plain simpler to write and have more powerful features.

Why as an app developer would you exclusively target a version and lock everything else out,

Why as an application developer would not not make use of updated OS features that shaves tens or hundreds of hours of coding time, when you know that 80-90% of the target market will be able to run it?

You are not locking everyone else out. You are helping to provide a reason to move forward.

Look at these images of Ada Lovelace

Is she wearing jeans and a t-shirt? No.

I hope you feel properly ashamed and will stop kicking women out of STEM who might have otherwise had a happy life there but didn't fit your tiny mental model of who should be in STEM.

Women already in Engineering are ... wait for it ... the kind of woman that would be interested in Engineering.

They are only one kind. You are excluding people you THINK would not be interested out of hand; why?

There are programmers who like good clothes. Why can't the same be true of women? Here's an amazing thought; perhaps a person can have multiple interests!

The point is, women who are highly interested in being fashion consumers are unlikely, IMO, to be interested in getting involved in the nitty-gritty details of technology

But my point is this line of thinking is at best barbaric, and totally wrong! It's exactly that kind of thinking that is keeping so many women out of engineering because everyone is constantly saying "oh you are interested in X, therefore you cannot possibly be a good programmer of electrical engineer".

I know good male programmers who have good fashion sense and also like good clothes. So why the hell should that not the be the case for some women too?

For whatever reason women are simply less inclined to even try STEM areas of work. So lets not go around building fucking walls to keep even more out than naturally already discard the thought out of hand even though they would enjoy it.

Again, you CANNOT get the size of a group to increase be being highly selective and exclusionary!

If you want to make STEM careers attractive to a larger set of the population, the answer is simple: increase the pay

WHAT THE FUCK. The pay (and job stability) is *already* extremely compelling and just about any STEM field. That's OBVIOUSLY not any kind of solution.

But now people on Slashdot, for some odd reason, want to bring more uninterested people into this career field?

NO you idiot. We want to bring people into STEM that have a natural love of it (and those are the only people that would stay anyway, you cannot force anyone into STEM which is why programs to herd women into STEM en-masse are stupid). But utter morons like yourself are driving them off before they can find out they do in fact like STEM sorts of work, and that means many females are in fact doing something they like far less than they would like working in STEM related fields.

Finally, if this is such a great idea, why don't we use a variation of it to bring more men into STEM careers?

We do, there are tons of things everywhere that make STEM seem interesting to boys. In fact that is a problem in itself though, in that there probably are a significant number of men that also would be happy in STEM that do not pursue it.

I've known lots of women in engineering (and dated a couple). They were definitely NOT the kind of women interested in fashion clothes

Yes but remember THEY ARE ALREADY IN ENGINEERING!!!!!!!

I'm not saying this fashion thing is the best way but it's stupid to say that things that don't appeal to the women in STEM today have no value, because if you want the number of women in STEM to increase substantially you have to reach out IN SOME WAY to the women who are NOT in engineering!!

Why can't a woman who likes fashion ALSO be interested in STEM if approached in the right way? Applying technology to the creation of fashion can be fascinating and I think is an excellent way to draw in more women that may have been uninterested in technology otherwise.

Mmh, the number of Diaspora users grew by almost 40% within the last 12 months, so it seems quite alive and well to me.

40% growth on zero is still zero...

So it's growing faster than G+, then?
/rimshot

When speaking to a police officer, there are only two things to say:

(1) "Am I Under Arrest"

Which will generate either a yes or no. Any answer other than "Yes" prompts the following question:

(2) "Can I Go Now?"

Which will generate either a yes or no. Any answer other than "Yes" prompts the following question:

(1) "Am I Under Arrest"

repeat....

the human race will be long extinct, along with anything we ever built.

Three things I can guarantee will still be around:

1) Porn. Even as we evolve into beings of pure energy we will wire ourselves to be electrically excited by existing porn as a tribute.

2) Trolls. The art of trolling will be unimaginable at that point but we all know they will be there.

3) Emacs. It's too damn pretty to die.

You missed does more than play games.

But Apple hasn't...