I throw virtual mod points in your direction, you ol'timer!

I am going to disagree. Provided this is app belongs to you and not someone else, and that this is discrete and tactful, then go ahead. I am assuming you have acknowledgments or something similar in Help - About or whatever makes sense in your app.

The reason you can do this is because many people will go "Awww... thats nice" and because not many other people are doing this now.

Perhaps in the future everyone will do this, and you won't be able to click on anything without seeing a splash screen, slideshow, or musical tribute to someone's deceased relative or lost family pet. Then we will have a new standard of annoying and look back fondly on the days where we just saw ads for Chrysler.

I am very much hoping that highly intelligent beings have received our signals, understood our culture, and are beaming back final episodes for series that were cancelled in mid-season. There are many series that need better endings. But which ones depends on how far away they are. If they are closer, they could be now sending a better ending for Joanie Loves Chachi. If they are farther away, they could produce a better ending for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. I just hope they do not become big fans of that famous TV show, The Invaders.

How is this different than Ubuntu offering the much beloved Unity interface, but giving the ability for hardcore mouse users the ability to start the classic interface?

I don't see a difference. I am sure I won't like it either.

When considering relevance, What is more telling that by almost midnight on the west coast, there are only 270 comments on a new operating system announcement by the largest operating system manufacturer.

Posted on my iPad.

The poster has good insight. A good windstorm will take out the phone system. An extended power outage will drain the batteries that backup the wired phone system. Cellphones will last longer and probably ridethrough, but in the emergency business you would never rely on cellphones.

I saw a similar article a few months ago and immediately ordered an iPad for my autistic nephew. His parents told me that when he used it to select the food he wanted to eat a restaurant, everyone cried. I teared up a little bit too. For the group of people that cannot connect with words by have to think in pictures, then the directness of the touchscreen seems to be a logical step. Although admittedly expensive for parents that are paying for lots of autism resources, if it worked even a little bit then it could be a lifechanger for the kids where nothing works at all. I was happy to fork out the dollars myself.

I have a device like this. It is in my pocket when I am at work and at my bedside when I sleep. It is my iPod. It has a non-Windows operating system and a non-traditional user interface. It has a ton of applications, and around half of them need the internet (is that pronounced "c-l-o-u-d" now?) It has more than a few games, which seem to consume a similar amount of user-lifetime-hours that the fancy graphics intensive games consume. It runs google apps - I can edit google docs, and see google maps, and check out google earth. I didn't know I wanted one until my wife gave it to me, now she might divorce me because I love it more than her. Although not perfect (can't print, devoid of flash games, typing could be improved), it proves that there is a market for the kind of handy internet appliance that keeps being advertised as the Next Big Thing. My point, and I did indeed have one, is that this market cares less about OS features than the average reader of /..