Actually it's "TO all intents and purposes", or, as originally used in an Act of Parliament under Henry VIII, "to all intents, constructions and purposes". The OP who used "for intensive purposes" is without doubt an idiot but he does at least need to be corrected accurately :) Every day's a school day.

A push button dialler has _more_ functionality than the older rotary dialler (at least additional items "#" and "*")
The transition from rotary->push button is simply one of mechanical reimplementation, not of simplification.
Now we have address books, how would people feel if you _only_ had address books, you couldn't add any new numbers you could only choose from the numbers that were somehow "blessed" by your tellco or phone manufacturer. That is a more accurate comparison to the iPodification of tech.

I'm all for UI's that hide complexity as long at they always allow you to express the full power of the system in question, even if they hide much of it by default. However that is rarely what these UIs do, generally they simply remove needed features.

I'm not going to be using my phone data and tablet data at the same time (to any great degree) so I see no reason why I should pay an additional £15 a month for a tablet data plan. Android tethering all the way, and I don't need to pay for another radio in my tablet, win-win.

Odd, I use Google reader on my Vega, it's first release was pretty poor but it really nice now.
Additionally you don't check "pixel counts" on android you allocate assets depending on device categories

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

No it doesn't. iOS literally doubles the phone app pixels, it's a terrible way of doing things due to the fact that iOS was not built for resolution independence. Android have been allowing for variable screen sizes and dpi since 1.6. Android apps don't "re-scale" they simply conform to the available space (assuming they are written well)

Nonsense, iOS is almost identical between the iPad and the iPhone, your artificial separation of "mini-app" and "full-size app" makes no sense. The only difference is the layout of the UI nothing about the core of the app needs to change (assuming the API is flexible enough)

Sure there may be apps that are fundamentally impossible to build using a small screen. But mostly the formula is "two panes, one for navigation the other for content" rather than "one screen leading to another" That is easy to do on Android even without honeycomb.

It does, and it provides resource management so you can provide separate assets for ldpi mdpi and hdpi. Most tablets are mdpi (~160 dpi) the nexus one is hdpi. The g1 was mdpi.

Developers can fail to handle this nicely but most of the "good" apps handle dpi just fine.

Familiar, happy days. I cut my teeth on Slackware 3.4 floppies in 1995. In 1996 I treated myself by ordering Slackware '96 on CD-ROM. I remained a Slackware user up until 2008, when I finally switched to CentOS and now I use Ubuntu. Happy days.

Luxury. My first Linux box was a 486 DX2/66 with 16Mb of RAM. It ran a web server and hosted shells for all my mates, and it did so well. Etc.

How would a firewall help in the slightest? This is http traffic from an app that has already been approved (buy the user on install) as having full internet access. All you could do with a firewall is pop up a message on the first use saying something like:
"Oh I know you already said this app could access the internet but it looks like it actually is. Are you _sure_ this is ok?"
Not that I don't think that Android permissions can improved but firewalls are _hard_ to do in a protective and useful way

Right, the only way to make money as a talented person is to ensure that corporate music is screwing _so many_ other artists that they have enough left over cash to throw at someone they consider a "50/50" or less bet?

That song sound like its about a shitty industry that has been shitty for 40+ years, the notion that copyright infringement is what has made it shitty is laughable.

BTW, its a great song and she has a great voice, I'll see if I can buy some of her work as long as I can get it straight from her and not through a label.

Which is why Google _don't_ call it a java platform. It's dalvik, it runs dalvik bytecode on a dalvik VM. You can write in any high level language you like as long as you have a compiler that results in dalvik bytecode.

As a convenience, Google provide a java->dalvik bytecode compiler, which is nice of them, but they don't ship a JVM nor a java system.

Android 2.2 has tethering built in so, you can:

1) wait for 2.2
2) buy "Pdanet" from the market
3) Root your device and void your warranty
4) Write an app yourself

On the iphone you can

1) Jailbreak your phone remembering apple claims this is illegal

_That_ is why android is more open.

Now _within_ the Andoid ecosystem there are more and less open phones (it's worse for you poor sods in the US, but that because telco's pay their way out of needed regulation)
If you got a Nexus1 then rooting is available with google supported tools (you still void your software warranty though) if you get HTC branded phone it's harder and Moto are really pissy about that sort of thing.

A friend of mine said it best:
"The iPhone encourages you to be a consumer
Android encourages you to be a creator"

* Wireless and USB tethering.
* CIFS mount,
* Bluetooth HID keyboard demon (with some fiddling)
* Extra 200+MB memory (Due to a kernel problem in the stock rom the N1 can only use half it's memory).
* Use of the LED flash as a torch, ability to use coloured notification lights in the trackball
* Ability to screenshot any app without using the SDK
* 360deg screen rotation

Those are the things that I unlocked my N1's bootloader for