If you think that Apple is a hardware company, you do not really understand Apple: "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." Alan Kay, 1980.

I beg to disagree: in theory resolution independent user interface elements should be a lot better than Apple's approach of only allowing double densities. Practice however shows, that if you have a resolution independent UI API, a lot of developers are lazy and do not adapt their layout to different screen sizes, or do not correctly use the APIs.

As an example, the windows experience on high-res displays is significantly worse than the Mac OS X experience: the majority of Windows applications simply do not work correctly on a Mac Book Pro Retina display, since only parts of the UI elements scale correctly, resulting in a complete mess.

Android fares somewhat better due to a better API, but the fine-tuned user interfaces for different resolutions on iOS (tablet/phone) usually make for a better user experience. On Android there is too little incentive (return on investment) for developers to fine-tune their user interfaces to different resolutions.

... that a lot of IT people who root for Samsung seem to overlook the following problem:

Companies like Samsung and various Chinese manufacturers that blatantly copy from US and European companies are partially responsible for moving a large number of tech jobs to Asia.

So as an IT person, if you root for Samsung you are essentially saying: well you can have my job, but please continue to sell me a cheap smartphone.

I don't like the patents that were used by apple in this case, but they used the existing patent system (*) and a win for Apple sends the right message: don't copy, do your own stuff. Apple is at least doing most of the design in the U.S and manufactures chips in Texas.

(*) and yes the patent system should be somewhat reformed but as a realist I don't see that happening any time sone.

Ahhh..... a real computer is defined by being able to tinker with it.

And silly me thought a computer is a tool to get work done.