PDFs aren't only good for printing. They're good for things like Board papers when a large bunch of people will be discussing the same content in a meeting. Some will have printed it; some will view it on a tablet or phone; others will view it on a laptop. And, when someone mentions the chart at the bottom of page 28, everyone else can go to it immediately.

No other tool will easily allow content to easily be combined into one document that was created in a mixture of Office, data visualisation tools, or any other app that can drive a printer. Each person can annotate their comments using a pen, keyboard or stylus using either a shared or a private copy of the document, and the result can be archived in a single file with a large choice of reading software.

That sounds pretty perfect for a huge range of corporate functions. No alternative comes close.

But, yeah, don't use it in the wrong place.

Surely freedom includes the freedom of others to use proprietary software? In this case, the huge proportion of affluent consumers (and I don't mean me) who browse the web on their iPhones, iPads and Macs using Safari provide an important incentive for web developers to avoid creating sites that work solely on Chrome. That indirectly benefits users of other browsers like Firefox.

Freezing food is usually pretty good from a nutritional and perspective, but it utterly destroys the texture of many foods. Canning destroys both texture and nutrition. So frozen lamb tastes pretty decent, but frozen salmon is a totally different culinary experience from fresh. Frozen peas aren't too bad, but frozen strawberries are disastrous.

So, no. 'Fresh' is a fixation of those who care what they eat, not the rich. Fresh food can be incredibly cheap - root vegetables, the cabbage family (including kale, cauliflower, broccoli, kohl rabi, etc) taste amazing and cost next to nothing compared with processed food.

Fruit can be trucked maybe 1000 miles North or South before it loses its freshness. That extends the growing season of common fruit from weeks to months. After that, I'd prefer eat something else. Out of season fruit taste dreadful. Winter strawberries look great but are a flavour desert, for example.

On of my rules of thumb when assessing a new restaurant is to look at the dessert and vegetable menus. If they're advertising out of season stuff - maybe asparagus in autumn or berry fruit in spring - I go to a different place and the grounds that the chef doesn't understand the importance of high quality ingredients.

More important than the chemicals: what happens to the nutritional makeup of the food when it's stored for longer than normal? It might look fresh, but do vitamin levels fall, for example. Do some of the volatile chemicals that give it an attractive fragrance disappear. Or will the texture degrade over time?

As a consumer, I don't really want food to have a longer shelf life. I want fresh food. Long shelf lives just benefit supermarkets with inefficient supply chains.

Mac on ARM makes a lot of sense for Apple.

From a business perspective, they have always believed in vertical integration. Using their own CPUs will also leverage their existing investments in A-series CPUs. If ARM Macbooks can sell for the same price as Intel Macbooks, Apple's profits will increase sharply and they will better control their own destiny.

From a user perspective, ARM Macbooks will likely be quieter, lighter and need to be recharged less often. Old software will need to be recompiled, but all major software packages (Office, Adobe stuff, etc) will become available immediately and smaller software houses will have no option but to offer ARM versions of their code. Besides, most things are done in the browser these days.

The only losers will be people who want to dual boot Windows. Maybe Microsoft will rescue them with ARM Windows, but I doubt Apple cares very much.

Inatead of moanong, I'm not sure why you - or, for that matter, the author of the original article - don't just grab hold of any conference calls that waste your time and make them more efficient.

In my experience, it's almost always clear who is chairing a conference call; I always know which voice belongs to which attendee as I rarely have calls with complete strangers; an agenda is usually circulated in advance so that people are well prepared; and invitees who do not believe that they are required are free to not join.

Conference calls serve a critical purpose by facilitating communication and decision making on a projects or transactions with geographically dispersed teams. Perhaps I'm spoiled as most of my calls are with lawyers or city bankers. That wouldn't tolerate the poor behaviour that this whining article describes.

Did you take a look at recent camera sales?

These days, most people take photos only with their phone. They're happy with the editing tools provided by Google and Apple. A few people own DSLRs. For most of them, simple apps like Shotwell are good enough. A few are more demanding and a tool like Darktable will meet their needs.

A tiny, tiny minority make a living from photography. They need Adobe's software and Linux won't cut it. But I doubt they constitute more than 0.1% of the population.

Another issue with the standard analysis of distance v pixel size is that 20/20 vision, although typically used as a measure of normal visual acuity, is not perfect vision. Many people have much better vision than this.

The Wikipedia article on visual acuity says, 'Healthy young observers may have a binocular acuity superior to [20/20 vision]'. I am healthy (although definitely not young!) and throughout my life my visual acuity has consistently been measured by my optician to be around twice 20/20 vision.

So, for many people, higher resolution displays offer clear benefits without there being any need to press your nose against the pixels.

In the UK, there almost certainly is a law to protect consumers. Under the Consumer Rights Act, consumers have a legal right to reject goods that are of unsatisfactory quality, unfit for purpose or not as described, and get a full refund.

If the manufacturer of a sound system has stated that its devices may eventually cease to function, I find it hard to imagine that a court would find that it was as described when sold.

Look at Garmin's range before you buy and read the very detailed reviews on dcrainmaker. A Garmin is almost certainly a better fitness tracker but may not be the best match for your non fitness needs.

I have a Garmin Fenix 5 and I'm very happy with it. It serves me much better than an Apple Watch would.

I didn't say that solar doesn't work or provide any benefit. I simply drew attention to its principal drawback in a country like ours.

Instead of a meaningless argument over language, the issue is that solar energy doesn't contribute anything toward the UK's peak energy usage. It clearly reduces CO2 emissions when, during daylight hours, it allows fossil fuel power stations to be temporarily scaled back or shut down. But the capital cost of solar has to be incurred in addition to the capital cost of conventional power generation, not instead of it.

That doesn't make investment in solar power bad per se. It just makes it far more expensive than a naive assessment might suggest.

You're missing the point.

Our peak electricity demand usually falls between 5.00pm and 6.00pm in winter when people get home and switch on their electric kettles, electric cookers, electric lights, electric TVs, electric showers, electric water heating and, in many cases, supplementary electric heating. In winter it's dark at that time of day; hence my use of the term 'night'. In the winter months, it's exceptionally rare for solar power to produce any of our power needs at the time of peak demand. Typically the only exception is Christmas Day when millions of turkeys and roast potatoes are simultaneously roasted whilst the weak winter sun feebly attempts to spark a photo-voltaic reaction through dense blankets of winter cloud.

Of course energy consumption falls dramatically later in the day when people do to bed, but it also rises again when they get up before dawn. The problem comes when it's cold and dark outside but we're all wide awake inside.

So here's the problem for the UK. As I write, renewables are doing well at 18.5% of power generation: a rare sunny day means that 15.1% is from solar with a gentle breeze producing a further 2.9%.

But the sun doesn't shine at night. Britain is a cold, dark country so we need lots of energy at night. At 6.30 this morning, only 4% of our energy came from renewables and, as a result, we had to import more than 10% of our energy requirements from France's largely nuclear power stations. Thanks, France - without you, my morning would have been a bleak one.

Data from here: http://nationalgrid.stephenmor...

But the two things - Eich's departure and aping Chrome - are likely related and it's probably no coincidence that their market share fell away at the same time.

When the entire executive of a business is focussed on internal politics, the business quickly becomes rudderless. When the outcome is the loss of an inspirational leader, the period of naval gazing is even more damaging. Combine that with serious annoying a proportion of your previously loyal customer base and your doom is sealed.

Politics and business rarely mix very well.