The manufactures aren't trying to destroy Android, but the negligence is sure to stunt its growth. As long as Android is free and provides a good tech demo companies will continue to use it to sell the newest version of their phone.

Without a more cohesive foundation it will probably stagnate though. The same thing happened with Linux; 'the year of the linux desktop'. Linux has survived not because of market viability but because technical people liked it. It still doesn't have more than a couple percent of marketshare (in the consumer market.) Android has an advantage in that smartphones are more integrated platforms than desktops, and people expect less expandability, but each smartphone will be a part of the manufacturers brand, rather than the Android brand. On a fragmented market it's much more difficult to deliver expanded functionality in the form of applications to consumers. It will be more like the crappy java games that you'd see on old phones than the market for desktop software.

It's a new concept for phone companies though, and they'll probably start updating the OS once they get used to it. If they don't though, Android will probably see a limited success.

The perennial issue that always crops up when gender issues are discussed is the fact that men and women are different.

Yes, what you're saying is entirely true. The problem however is that the discussion is always left at that and never explored further. The difference may be due to inherent differences, but using that as the default answer is just as disingenuous as saying 'God did it' and leaving it at that. A historical example could be the wide gap in participation in sports, which has changed along with societal attitudes.

A similar statement to yours could be made as such: It's almost like whites and blacks are well, different!

Never underestimate cultural values, as humans are social creatures.

I don't think your examples are quite accurate. For emacs + console + PDF you want to see all of them at the same time, rather than hidden behind tabs. I think a more apt metaphor would be frames where the sides of applications stick together: that would be much more handy. Groups of app already have tabs—they're called workspaces.

Tabs work well in browsers because you don't need interoperability between webpages that often. Somebody will find a use for attaching apps together, but that feature isn't the revolutionary bit; tabs for every application for free is.

I agree with you, having used macs while growing up (System 7) so bear with me when I say that

OS 9 totally let you tab windows (look in the bottom right)

(Not quite the same thing I know, but that cosmetic similarity would be enough for some people to claim ownership.)

Letting the number of workspaces dynamically expand and contract would probably lead me to frustration. Currently I have 2 desktops that are static (web browsing and music) and 2 that are dynamic (for any two projects I'm working on at the moment). Whenever I want to look something up or change my music I know which space they're in, kind of like muscle memory. To use the desktop metaphor, I have a spacial picture of where things should go (i.e. soda is always in the same place.) Adding additional workspaces is just enough work that it isn't easy enough to accidentally do, and not hard enough to be adverse to doing. Frankly, I'm never working on more than two things at one time though. However, what would probably be the best would be the ability to save workspaces and then load them up again, much like OmniWeb and Opera allow you to do with browsing sessions.

On an evolutionary timescale the opposite seems to be happening though. I can't remember exact numbers , but the difference in size based on gender have been decreasing since about the time of Australopithecus (I think from males being 50% larger to around 10 or 20% larger than females, I read the article a while back). While the size differential can be very noticeable in some culture groups, the genetic change for humans as a whole is probably less concrete. For example, dogs have a wide variation in body size, but if you interbreed them then after a few generations you'll get a mongrel with a fairly average body size and shape.