Right now it's either on the device or in the cloud. And users have every right to be concerned because unless one subscribes to broadband at home and happens to be at home, files in the cloud are limited to a couple GB up or down per month. Does the OS attempt to hide whether files are in iCloud vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. the service formerly known as SkyDrive? If not, then inserting a memory card could be handled like logging in to one of these online storage services.

Apply 1.21 GW of power for 2.47 seconds and you will have done 2.99 GJ of work.

Phones and popular tablets don't multitask the same way desktop PCs do. Phones and popular tablets tend to have only one application running at once.. Unless you plan to split a single app into multiple processes (does iOS even allow this?), you can't make use of all 8 GB of RAM with only 4 GB per process unless you're devoting about 3.5 GB to caching the flash memory.

One problem is that Apple has lagged in implementing a lot of HTML5 features in Safari for iOS, even when the feature would apply better to a handheld device than to a Mac. One of these features is the getUserMedia draft, which gives the user a button to turn on the camera and let the web site take pictures of things. Taking pictures is essential for scanning barcodes inside an application, such as price-checking a product in a store to see if it'd be cheaper on Amazon.

Because not everybody's home router 1. is easily customized and 2. has enough memory. I've read that my seven-year-old NETGEAR WGR614 v6 doesn't have enough flash for DD-WRT, and some people don't want to bother soldering, and some other routers are tivoized not to run an unapproved kernel. If I were to replace it with newer hardware, what make and model of home router would you recommend for no more than the price of a Raspberry Pi?

The lowest common denominator is one PC in a house, and not all gamers live alone.

One standard has existed since 1998 when Windows 98 added USB gamepad drivers: DirectInput. Another has existed since 2005 when the Xbox 360 came out: XInput.

But if you tell a game designer to design a game with online multiplayer, that is a restrict beyond the hardware, which wouldn't need to be addressed if you just let them turn it to local multiplayer. It is a restrict because it requires the user to move to an area where wired broadband Internet access is affordable and/or buy an additional PC and an additional copy of the game for each additional player.

I see your point about games with intentionally limited information. But there also exist games with intentionally unlimited information that must propagate instantly. Simple example: karate. How can you ensure each player sees each punch and kick as it is thrown, and not 200 ms later? How can you ensure each player owns a gaming PC, as opposed to a PC with integrated graphics more suited for word processing and Facebook, and a wired broadband connection, as opposed to satellite or cellular broadband or dial-up because the user lives in an area without cable or DSL or fiber?

By "video games" do you mean AAA games or indie games? I was under the impression that an indie game could be developed and brought to market on not much more than a board game budget.

This was the intent with iOS 1: all non-bundled applications would run inside Safari. But phone browsers have a habit of not exposing most of the phone's capabilities. For example, Safari for iOS couldn't upload files until very recently, and even now it can't upload anything but pictures and videos. Nor does it support WebGL in web pages or ability to use the device's camera and microphone (with the user's permission). Otherwise, there would have been no need for things like PhoneGap.

Windows CE got replaced with Windows Phone 7 (a .NET-only platform with an annual fee to run your own code on your own device) and later Windows Phone 8 (a slimmed down version of Windows RT that I think has the same annual fee).

This is true if you happen to live in an area where only CDMA2000 carriers that refuse to use CSIM have acceptable coverage. But if you happen to live in, or can move to, an area where T-Mobile or another respectable GSM carrier (or a CDMA2000 carrier that uses CSIM) has acceptable coverage, you can always take the SIM out of one phone and put it in the other phone.

For one thing, I think excluding applications that aren't scriptable was a joke. For another, plenty of MUAs are scriptable.

For the same reason that most smartphones are poor at writing code, any smartphone that isn't the Xperia Play is poor at some game genres. A platformer like Mega Man, for example, really needs physical jump and fire buttons. When I tried playing a platformer on my Nexus 7 tablet, I kept missing the on-screen buttons with my thumbs because I was looking at the action at the center of the screen, not the buttons at the sides.

In addition, from the page you linked: "on{X} beta requires Facebook ID for authentication"

Carrier V and its MVNOs: CDMA
Carrier S and its MVNOs: CDMA
Carrier A and its MVNOs: The single most hated carrier in the United States
Carrier T and its MVNOs: Zero bars in too many places

What do you expect the major U.S. CDMA carriers to say when an individual customer asks to switch to GSM?

How should U.S. residents qualify for legal immigration to escape "the US' bizarre anti-competitive mobile phone system"?

So what steps should I take next to help get netbooks back into production? Or by "netbook" are you referring to 12" laptops?

I would imagine that the majority of people aren't willing to find a new house to live in, find a new job for oneself, and find a new job for one's spouse, all over degradation of home Internet service.

Then sell any real estate that you may happen to own in Colorado.

Not all broadband is the same. Good luck downloading a 6 GB game over satellite broadband if you're already 5 GB into a 10 GB/mo cap.