I can take high-ISO handheld photos with my 6D in an only partially lit parking lot at night

Dude, you can get arrested for doing things like that.

Seriously, though, DSLRs are amazing, so long as you actually learn to use them. I almost laugh out loud on a regular basis when on holiday every time I see someone with an entry-level DSLR in full auto mode with a kit lens, shooting some artefact or monument with the built in flash. Those sorts would do better with an all in one bridge camera and spend the difference in the hotel bar.

Actually, I've wondered for a long time why it's not normal behaviour for a GUI-based OS to prioritise the foreground task. It drives me mad that, when my workstation is rendering some video (for example), I can't check my mail. Multicore and multiprocessor becoming the norm has done a lot to improve this, but it still seems to me that when I sit down at a computer and click on something with the mouse, the majority of the CPU time should be used to respond to that click since that's obviously what I'm concerned with at that moment in time.

I don't think it is "inverse square from the projector to the screen and inverse square back". I think the inverse-square law for light is radiation from a point source, i.e. it describes the drop-off in illumination as the light spreads out, rather than attenuation per se. When you're focusing, you're causing the beam to converge on a particular spot (the screen) which is a different thing.

That's how I use root in Ubuntu, anyway: I open another terminal, type sudo su and carry on...

Thankfully, as I have a reading age greater that 7, I can spot a trojan. Keeping my system updated or running updated AV won't make a difference to that.

So it seems youre also the sort of idiot that claims macs dont get viruses because they dont get the same viruses as windows pcs.

I'm that sort of idiot. I've run three Mac systems (2 laptops and a desktop for a while) over the past 5 years with no resident antivirus protection, and I've had 0 viruses. I've been in cybercafes on at least 4 different continents, hundreds of different WiFi networks, plugged hard drives and memory sticks in from all sorts of people, and never had a problem. I've never recommended antivirus software to any of the many people I've suggested buy a Mac, and none of them have ever come back to me with a messed up machine to sort out - the closest anyone has come was a hard drive failure after about 3 years of use. So, yes, I think "Macs don't get viruses" is a factually correct statement for all practical purposes, at least for the time being.

I'll bite... it's slower than Windows 7 for launching applications, running things like Windows Update and Control Panel - I only know this because my limited use of Win8 has been to help people set up their machines. The 'hover the mouse in the screen corner' thing is totally confusing and unintuitive. Ditto the start screen thing. It actually seems like a step backward to something analogous to the Dos/Win3.1 days - back then most PC users thought of the Win3.1 interface as 'the computer' but sometimes you had to drop down to DOS to fix something, and certain programs (games mostly) were DOS only. Win8 feels like that - there's two competing UIs with completely different metaphors duelling it out on one screen that flips backwards and forwards. It's a bizarre attempt to take the approach that Apple has been using - gradually bringing the touch-based iOS and the desktop-based metaphors together - but Microsoft have just done it in one leap, and the result is terrible. It would be OK if the start screen thing actually brought some major advantage, but it's just a confusing mess that makes it difficult to launch the required application.

My breakfast is better, up yours. My breakfast is better, eat yours.

"Also since the phone features an active display..." - as opposed to all the phones with inactive displays? Nice slashvertisement, with almost no technical details.

I'm not sure USB has the robustness to work for some professional applications. Look at the mess that USB-RS232 adaptors are - many engineers keep old laptops around just for their proper serial ports. PCIe over Thunderbolt seems to work perfectly. Only time will tell I guess.

Thunderbolt has made internal upgrades unnecessary (or at worst work-roundable). In the sector Apple is targeting, high-end video including broadcast, mobile and studio audio recording, etc., there's a lot of kit that couldn't possibly be connected via USB or even FireWire. Thunderbolt effectively separates the high-end third party hardware from the host machine, which means that in the future artists and producers can walk into a studio with their own machine and software workflow and plug in via Thunderbolt to record and mix. This has the potential to be a major step forward.

Yep, and the creative pros will love it. I've done a bit of work in design and photography offices, and practically all of the Mac Pro towers I've seen have empty drive bays except for the stock boot drive and DVD RW. And the desk and floor is littered with FireWire and USB external drives, audio interfaces, etc.. People want to be able to plug in a new drive without rebooting their machine, and want to be able to take work home on their laptop.

Also the build quality and robustness tends to be a lot better than competitors. I think this has changed in the past 18 months or so as some manufacturers have copied the Apple design style - and added some of their own enhancements - but there are still plenty of creaky plasticky blobs on the market. The price premium compared to high-end Sony, Dell, Asus etc. really isn't that big (and sometimes Apple comes in cheaper) but if you compare tech specs alone than Apple will look pricey.

I consider not releasing several updates to the same computer line in a year to be an advantage. Known hardware platform, not a moving target. Serious issues with the hardware or firmware usually get fixed. Third party software or peripherals that have an issue on a particular model usually get fixed by the developer. Other manufacturers may be happy to leave issues unsolved when it's a problem on one of thirty models on the market that will be replaced in 2 months time. Peripheral developers probably cannot get hold of the particular Dell or Asus model that doesn't work on their device, so it just gets left.

Didn't meant to repeat the blood, blood!