This is fallout from the previous settlement, Windows RT is not going to come with a browser choice screen in Europe and all non IE browsers will be crippled.

The current anti trust bogeyman seems to be Google which is ridiculous. How hard is it to switch your search engine vs switching your OS and all your data services? How hard is it for a player who makes a new search engine to convince people to try it out, compared to getting someone to try a different OS or office suite?

Google advertise their own services on Google search. That may be an issue, but I fail to see how it is more of an issue than others forcing you to buy and pay for unrelated services and software as a bundle deal like Windows RT + Microsoft Office. Windows RT doesn't tell you 'Hey Microsoft also has an office suite that you could try out, here's where you can get it'. You are forced to buy it.

The surface Pro will show what?

Read the review on the Verge, which is one of the few that isn't completely fawning as these release day reviews tend to be. One point it brings up, which I mentioned before on slashdot is how ridiculous the 16:9 ratio is and how tall it makes the surface, which is quite impractical as a tablet in both landscape and portraits mode.

There is no jack of all trades device, not until someone magically builds weightless materials that bend and fold and transmutate. It's quite ridiculous to pretend there is. No tablet that's the right size and weight to hold can offer an experience anywhere close to even cheap laptops, even with an expensive dock. That's fine when you're buying a product knowing it's a compromise, like a Galaxy Note II, or an Asus Transformer. People who buy a Surface Pro and the more expensive proper keyboard dock for over a grand thinking it will replace a competent laptop for the same price are going to be severely disappointed. As a tablet it will be big heavy and have a ridiculous size and aspect ratio and mediocre battery life. As a laptop it will have a small overly wide screen, inferior performance, and less practicality.

When the price of one of these things becomes so high that you can get two devices for the same price, you really have to wonder what the point of spending over $1000 on a crippled device is. The price of a Surface pro+proper keyboard dock buys you a cheap and reliable Windows 7 laptop AND a $249 Chromebook AND an iPad Mini, and all three devices are good at what they do.

The price of a Surface RT with a crappy cloth keyboard gets you an iPad Mini and a Chromebook with change leftover.

Microsoft must be delighted, the good old days where you could get sued for trying to bundle a browser with your OS (at least in Europe) are long gone. Now, you not only include a free browser, you can include a paid office suite with the price part of the price of the device with no option to opt out. You can rig the OS to make sure that your own applications have access to exclusive APIs and functionality that third party developers will not be able to access ensuring that your apps will always be the best. All apps have to be installed and downloaded from your own app store, and you take a huge cut every single time, even for in app purchases in the future. You can ban third party developers from offering apps offering the same functionality as your own apps. Your own app store is the only one people can get apps from, they can't install or use other app stores. And you can get away with all this because Apple does it already and gets away with it just fine, and they have a monopoly and not you.

The wonderful new era of computing.

Yup, let us have kids grow up without knowing basic chemistry, excellent idea. I mean, what possible relevance could it have to their later lives.

Who wants adults to be able to grasp the fact that there is a brand name for drugs and a chemical name, and 500mg of paracetamol is the same thing whether you get the generic one for a few cents or the $10 strip for Panadol/Crocin/Tylenol or whatever other fancy brand name it's known by and widely advertised on your country.

Why would we need our kids to see through bullshit marketing speak like 'all natural', 'chemical free', that bottled spring/mineral water isn't healthier than purified water.

Why would we ever want them to realize how homeopathy makes no fucking sense?

Why would we want them to understand how a soft drink with 50g of sugar is about four tablespoons of sugar, that if they get a double sized drink they get double the sugar, that sugar free drink actually have almost zero calories - it is amazing how many people tell me that 'less than one calorie' is just advertising bullshit.

Why on earth does anyone need a clue about what 'radiation' is, and why the banana you just ate was radioactive and why we sometimes go to a hospital willingly to get zapped by radiation?

Why would anyone need to have a basic idea of thermodynamics, to realize how perpetual motion machines are impossible, why nuclear fission doesn't generate CO2 while all fossil fuels do?

A basic idea of what biodegradable means and why plastics are not biodegradable?

To have a clue about what 'BPA free' means before telling everyone why they need to buy a $50 BPA free water bottle?

Just what we need, a population completely ignorant about basic science, yet brought up to believe that they have a right to form their own opinion on everything and their opinion is as good as anyone else.

Seriously, has this guy ever met someone who didn't have the chance to go to school, to learn basic mathematics, or even to read? Your kids actually have the chance to go to school, unlike half the kids in the world, and you feel they are learning too much?

And it's a stupid false dichotomy that if you learn basic science you won't have time to learn other stuff. Kids have plenty of time and I don't know one adult who doesn't regret not having learned more when they were young. Take a break form the XBox, the TV, or the trashy comics. I am not saying kids shouldn't have fun, but I haven't met many people who've grown up feeling they sohuld have spent more time watching Scooby Doo instead of learning to play a musical instrument.

The hardware design looks amazing, and would be very welcome when all non Apple hardware tends to be awful, with some notable exceptions like Asus.

The rest I don't understand. $500 and no retina/high ppi display? A 16:9 ratio on a device that is supposed to be meant for productivity? 10.1" is really pushing it for productivity, the wide narrow screen would just kill it. No stylus support. $100 buys you a crap keyboard - at least Asus docks include a big battery.

The Windows 8 tablets looks nicer but then the pricing gets ridiculous.

Why is it that the words of analyst and journalists who have no clue about technology are considered important?

Apple buys Nokia. Great. Then what. They are stuck with a multi-year exclusive contract to sell phones based on a Microsoft OS, yup Apple would love that. Buy them for maps? Why? If Apple want Nokia maps, they can license them. What on earth do they get out of owning them that they don't get from licensing?

Just because they have a hundred billion dollars in cash doesn't mean they have to buy companies just because the cost seems relatively insignificant. This is more of someone wondering 'hey if I had hundred billion dollars, what would I do?' Well, you don't. And you never will. And if Apple were as stupid as that, they would never have either. They got there by being a lot smarter than some two bit journalist.

Apple made that kind of money by doing precisely the opposite of what this guy suggests. They have the most limited product line of any such company. They are never afraid of killing off products, like the Macbook pro 17". They are extremely selective about which segments they get into, and then take their time planning it. The companies they acquire are companies that will let Apple make their products and services better, like Siri.

It just means it doesn't work well enough.

Facebook is the worst performing and most opaque large scale site with the worst interface that I use regularly.

Browsing photos, the most basic Facebook activity is still a pain and buggy as hell on a slowish connection, and they keep changing the damn interface just when you figured out the previous unintuitive change. The mobile website sucks, their Android app sucks, I don't know what the new iOS app is like. The interface has gone from simplicity to being cluttered and horrible with multiple stream throwing information at you.

If Gmail worked like that I would have quit ages ago. If Amazon worked like that they wouldn't sell shit. Facebook still feels like a damn experiment coded by a few kids in a basement. If Youtube worked like that they would have been replaced long ago as the defacto video hosting site.

Maybe minor grumbling. People are underestimating the effects of Apple marketing and genuine ability to connect with users. Getting maps as good as Google will just take money, they've got the software down. And Apple don't lack money, I am sure there are millions being thrown right now getting the maps as good as Google's, it won't take long. Until then, Apple users will live with it just like Apple users have lived with limitations because Android has never made tings user friendly enough or sold features properly. Apple users so far have lived with absurd restrictions on Facetime, on download size over 3G,sharing options (and still will, Facebook and Twitter integration is fine, but nothing beats Android where you can share over anything), not being able to attach files, email not being as good as Gmail, no 4G, and until now, an inferior mapping experience without turn by turn navigation. It's a combination of the genuine user friendliness of Apple devices and their insistence on doing things right when they do, and the fact that their marketing is good enough to make Apple fans live in a different universe, where an Apple feature introduced long after others (usually Android) is still new to them with all credit given to Apple. I am sure they pulled down the iOS 5 notification drawer last year and went WOW! Like the person who was showing me how cool FaceTime on his iPhone is and how Apple is so cool because of it. The fact that Android devices can do the same over Skype and Google talk, over 3G and WiFi, to iOS and non iOS devices didn't even figure on his horizon.

tl;dr
If Google want even a minority iOS users using their maps, they need an app out there asap. It will soon be too late. Being a bit better than iOS maps won't count for much, Apple users don't go out of their way to look for alternatives to Apple services, and Apple make sure their services are easy to use, immediately accessible, and 'cool'.

Once the price becomes something absurd like $1200, I don't think it matters any more. I would rather have both an iPad (or a cheap 10.1" Android tablet) and a laptop at that price rather than a device that will have inevitable compromises.

A 15.6" 1080p 16:9 screen is nice. 14" is pushing it. 13.3 gets annoying. 10.1 is fucking ridiculous, aren't Windows 8 tablets meant to be productivity devices? Why the hell do they all (including the MS surface) have stretched out 16:9 screens that are awful for doing any real work in landscape mode with a keyboard attached?

Apple are the only ones who understand this, which is why all Apple laptops except the 11.6" Macbook Air (I guess it needed to be wide enough for the keyboard to fit, and even 11.6" 16:9 is nowhere as ridiculous as 10.1" 16:9) come with 16:10 screens, the ONLY manufacturer that I know of who still sell 16:10 laptops.

Take these prices with a grain of salt though, OEMs have a habit of pricing products rather hopefully before cutting prices to the point where stuff sells. I guess a Windows license costs a bit more than Google apps/Google Play license + Microsoft tax on Android devices (ALL major Android tablet and phone makers except Motorola and Sony pay Microsoft for every Android device they sell). But Android tablets with similar specs from Lenovo etc. are selling for $300 and even less with cash backs etc. A mid range Win RT tablet should be available for $400-450 in the market.

And you should be modded down again. You lack a basic understanding of statistics. The average is an average, you can't guarantee that exactly 50% will have a lower IQ than the average. If it turns out to be 50.001% or 49.999% you can't just change the average to make it exactly 50%.

That may be the case for large enough samples, but it's not a 'guarantee', or 'by definition'.

IQ results are scaled so that the average is 100. That doesn't mean 'by definition' that for any test group exactly 50% will be less than 100 and 50% will be more.

Take a case where the results were scaled to 100,105,99,99,98,99 so the average is 100. But two-thirds are 'dumber' than average.

For a large enough population the results will fit a normal distribution and the median and mean will coincide. That's different, and it's certainly not a guarantee for smaller groups.

Median. Not average.