Where COM fails is DCOM.

Loading in process has been pretty good in my opinion.

These people seem to agree:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XPCOM
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFPlugIns/Concepts/com.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/20001158-CJBEJBHH

Since this is google, they must have figured out a way to monetize this free offer. Are they going to profiling network usage? All HTTP requests?

Then again, they could have figured out that the good publicity was worth the cost.

Hey, think positively. It prepares students for the real world, where people get promoted until they fail. Then they get fired or laid off for not meeting expectations.

The problem with engineers and scientists is it's pretty easy to get stuck on details. (Feature lists, etc). It's the strength of Apple's marketing that has made then a success. People buy the iPod vs. potentially better players because they know that the iPod exists, and they know the exact colors that are available for the nano.

Not only that, but looking back at Apple advertising (not the Mac vs. PC stuff, but stuff really associated with products), they probably got the Ph.Ds of advertising. For example:

I. iPhone commercials which in a minute or so:
      A. Teach how gestures work. (To the layperson, gestures only became "intuitive" after the commercial showed them in use.)
      B. Show core features of the phone, such as email, gaming, calls, mapping, photos, screen unlock, accelerometer.
II. iPod commercials. (at least the early ones. Current ones are more along the lines of Cola commercials reminding that it still exists and there is yet another yearly upgrade.)
      A. Brief glimpse of iTunes, drag and drop play list.
      B. Firewire syncing play list in a very short amount of time.
      C. Scroll wheel and how to use it.

I just don't see other competing devices advertised as widely or as well.

For example:
I. Other cell phones
      A. It's the carrier advertising the phone, and they only focus on carrier specific features like # of SMS, # of minutes, weekend/evening minutes, rollover.
      B. Hardly ever shows the phone in use, so people are forced to waste time researching what the phone can do.
II. Other media players
      A. I don't see Zune commercials anymore. And the ones they had were shitty. I didn't know the details of their subscription model until that one person I know who has a Zune mentioned how the subscription plan worked. (10 songs permanently gifted per month) And since "squirting" was supposedly the killer featuer, it should have been a centerpiece in all of the initial Zune ads. And if the feature wasn't really advertiseable, then they should have never ever mentioned "squirting" until it could be advertised.
      B. Does anyone else advertise?

As much as I like to trash talk advertising and sales people, I believe Apple's success boils down to smart advertising of reasonable products. A lot of other companies forget to tell people what the hell they're delivering, and they need to find marketing people who can come up with competitive advertising.