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First of all the whole definition is:

  exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.

Using only part of the definition and omitting the most important part of exclusivity is trying to redefine it.

I'm sorry, but you are not parsing that correctly. See the OR in there? The "exclusive" modifier only applies to the part before the OR. I know you desperately want to use that literalist interpretation of "mono" to mean exactly one, but that's not what the definition you cited says.

Without exclusive control, how would Apple or anyone manipulate the price?

Come on man. Every single example of monopolies that I have already cited did not have exclusive control, only dominant. It is not a binary function. Here's the way it works in the real world - the less competitive a market, the more control the dominant sellers have over pricing. HHI

I have friends who are in bands that have music on iTunes and they set prices.

That is a technical truth that obscures the meaningful truth.. At best your friends have the ability to choose from three different price points that Apple permits to them.

iTunes Plus songs are available at one of three price points. In the U.S. the pricing is 0.69 USD, 0.99 USD, or 1.29 USD each.
https://support.apple.com/kb/ht1711

Yes, if something, this is a feature to me. Both a Win8 tablet and phone without the intrusive behavior....

Let me introduce you to http://adsinapps.microsoft.com/ Ads in Apps or as Microsoft say "Start monetizing with advertising Ads in Apps for Windows 8 has the features that developers want."

For the Apple users amongst up http://advertising.apple.com/ iad "Every brand has a great story to tell. With iAd you can put that story into the hands of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users around the globe."

Clearly your not using Google ;)

When you die the rights to that music dies with you.

It does? Where does it say that? I've looked over the TOS and I can't find that anywhere. What have I missed?

http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html

awk != gawk. the one true awk is maintained by bwk.
and likely has seen very few updates. it is rock solid

Actually Apple sent a number of patched back to the one true awk to pass UNIX conformance testing by The Open Group, and sent those chnages back to bwk.

Sources are here: http://opensource.apple.com/source/awk/awk-18/

How many new games are still compatible with the original iPad?

all of them

Wrong answer.

You have to get the approval of their buyers to get in their stores and that's quite difficult, in many cases.

Not being an author or iTunes user myself, I'm not familiar with the process to publish on the iBookstore. I do know that Apple takes the first $650 because this page states that one must first buy a recent Mac, not a competitor's computer.

Does Microsoft offering a trade in program for these hotspots once they stop working?

ps. I'm still using my first gen iPhone, a little pokey, but still going.

I'll be impressed when they can match ComicCon San Diego, who have a hard time finding a ticket sales service that can stand up to more than a few seconds before it collapses under the load. The only reason it took 93 minutes to sell out completely was the slow server response times. Not many wet sites can handle 140,000+ people trying to log in at the same time.

Quite the opposite, really. WWDC sold probably five or six thousand tickets in a little over sixty seconds. That's about a hundred tickets per second. Had ComicCon SD used Apple's online store servers instead of an online ticket service, they would have sold out in a little over 23 minutes instead of 93.

As for the total magnitude, obviously I don't know the server stat numbers, but there are over 275,000 registered iOS developers in the U.S. alone (source: Apple), and the WW stands for "worldwide". Given that most of those folks would find a way to pay for it just to say that they got to go once, I'd be shocked if there were as few as 140,000 people hitting Apple's servers this morning.

In other words, I think you're grossly underestimating the magnitude of what just happened.

Share buyback here.
Results here.

Share buyback here.
Results here.

I was gonna call the guy who wrote this a complete moron, except for this...

http://forums.androidcentral.com/tablet-apps/239022-amazon-prime-video-app.html

http://betanews.com/2013/04/22/why-is-there-no-android-app-for-amazon-instant-video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed+-+bn+-+Betanews+Full+Content+Feed+-+BN

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000645111

We're missing something here namely something like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.netflix.mediaclient&hl=en

Yep, there doesn't appear to be an Android app for amazon prime. So either Amazon is telling android users to f off, or they're unaware of the issue they'd cause with DRM.

Annoyed yet? It's available for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-instant-video/id545519333?mt=8

You mean this webkit?

http://opensource.apple.com/source/WebKit/WebKit-7536.28.10/

Or this webkit? http://tech.slashdot.org/story/07/07/23/1953217/the-unforking-of-kdes-khtml-and-webkit-begins

Holding a grudge for 6 years? Man, in Internet terms, that's like a million years!

iOS users use the free 5GB of iCloud storage for backup, and when that is filled, they pay Apple for more storage.

This page advertises that adding 50 GB of more storage would cost $300 over the three-year expected service life of an iOS device. That's enough to buy three 1 TB hard drives, even after the recent Thai flood.

assuming they have wifi

And assuming their home Wi-Fi is backed by fiber, cable, or DSL, not satellite or microwave.

Apple, and to a large extent Google, have come with new business models where they take the output of that process and rebundle it in a way which allows them to avoid sharing the key features which differentiate their products.

Um what? Clang is open source. WebKit was open sourced by Apple. Under the GPL they are only obligated to release modifications to the original KHTML base code. They are under no obiligations to release JavascriptCore or WebCore but they did. Apple didn't have to hire Michael Sweet and have him keep developing cups.

In Apple's case by adding proprietary GUIs and other features which mean that nobody else can the free stuff and compete with them.

It means you can't use their stuff which they want to keep proprietary. But you are free to compete to develop your own. Also under the BSD license which OS X is derived, Apple doesn't even have to release Darwin but they do.

LLVM is one of their key tools in trying to leverage that. This is done for profit, mostly by taking money out of the pockets of people like Slashdotters. It is a tool in ensuring they will be able to build developer environments where they take your source code and hide it from you.

Again, what? Clang is open source and Apple is a major contributor. LLVM is open source and Apple is a major contributor. LLVM was released under a BSD style license long before Apple was a contributor.

It is not a coincidence that we keep getting stories about there being lots of non-GPL software coming out etc. The shills want us to give them everything we have for free and have no need to return to the community.

Again, what? Do you even look at this page?

Correct answer: License under the AGPLv3 whenever you can and only back off to the GPL or LGPL, let alone MIT licenses when someone gives you a really compelling benefit for doing so.

And who are you to dictate to the authors what license they pick? LLVM picked a BSD license long before Apple was involved. NeXT used the same type of license long before Apple purchased them. Apple cannot change the license differently than the authors intended.

Just time for fact checking...

>Do closed source people share code with BSD people? Nope.

Hmm. Strange, I'm guessing that means Apple doesn't release any source from what they do with BSD source, and BSDI never contributed SMP or anything like that to FreeBSD, and Juniper never contributed anything back.

Read the links, especially the last one.

> Do GPL people? Nope.

For the most part, correct...although there are a few who insist on not converting permissive source code (Luis Rodriguez is the main one .

>Are BSD users against closed code? Obviously not...

http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43

Start with bad data, you'll get bad results.

*eyeroll* FUD troll is FUDdy. Also...how's that LLVM/Clang/WebKit/CUPS you're using?

I'm in the same boat as you, and currently figuring out how to get our XP dependent ERP stack up to Win 7. Fortunately I have a similar setup, still not as nice as an apt package manager would be, but for Windows I'd never expected this level of automation.

However with the whole BYoD crap I, and I'm sure you too, get pestered about all the time, I thought I'd share what made my life easier dealing with iPhones and iPads.
To be honest, I haven't seen this level of configuration since blackberry.

(PS, if you or anyone knows of anything like this for Android, I would love to hear about it. That is the last system that is a thorn in my side to support)

Contrast that to when we get a new iPad in. No PXE booting, no easy configuration through the network. No management tools that are worth a tin shit. I have to physically enter all that information in. Can't even swap in a replicated hard drive since it can't be taken apart. Loading from a USB stick? Hahah... No we have to go through the "cloud" for everything.

Check out the Apple iPhone Configuration Utility - About or Windows download page
and any one of the many MDM (mobile device manager) servers for the backend.

You create various "profiles", which are signed and/or encrypted XML files with a .mobileconfig extension.
Think Active Directories Group Policy for iOS.

I've made quite a few of these configs and have them posted on a sub-website on the Intranet, as well as keep handy to forward as email attachments.
On iOS if you click one in a browser or as an attachment, it will display what parts of the system it will change, and if it can be removed, requires a password, or can't be removed (except via factory reset - think company owned devices)
You just click accept, and if you only use required values the entire setup is done. Alternately you can mark some things as user provided (like domain username, and AD password) and you're prompted for those in one screen after confirming to install it.

I have one with our Exchange servers settings (which I admit is so simple to setup this one isn't really needed), two different ones for each VPN endpoint server, one that contains our wireless "guest" network settings as well as how to handle channel hopping and roaming between APs keeping sessions alive over wpa2-enterprise, all of our Sharepoint shared resources that can be linked in, as well as our public contact book.

These are available (in my case, user removable) for any employee to use to better utilize our resources without me having to setup anything.

Further, and at this point I'm probably starting to sound like an ad or something, still..

If we actually had company owned iOS devices, you can go as far as restricting any/all settings apps and extensions, pre-install your own apps, only allow apps on a whitelist to install, or even to not be able to install apps at all.
It can redirect all iCloud services to internal services, or simply disallow them.
iOS can link into active directory (via LDAP), and CalDav / CardDav, and have your x500 certificates installed

You can even do things currently only cellular carriers are privlidged to do, such as put apps or web shortcuts on springboard and not allow them to be removed or even repositioned.
It even lets you reconfigure the cellular radio settings, changing the APN, GRPS, and a proxy that all data communications passes through.

You can reconfigure and push out settings updates over the air as well. About the only thing I don't think you can do is push app installs over the cell network, you have to wait until they are back on the wifi for that.

While I personally have been fortunately enough to never had to touch the blackberry enterprise server, Apple seriously went out of their way to rival BES in what you can do using these policies.

Unfortunately some

I'm in the same boat as you, and currently figuring out how to get our XP dependent ERP stack up to Win 7. Fortunately I have a similar setup, still not as nice as an apt package manager would be, but for Windows I'd never expected this level of automation.

However with the whole BYoD crap I, and I'm sure you too, get pestered about all the time, I thought I'd share what made my life easier dealing with iPhones and iPads.
To be honest, I haven't seen this level of configuration since blackberry.

(PS, if you or anyone knows of anything like this for Android, I would love to hear about it. That is the last system that is a thorn in my side to support)

Contrast that to when we get a new iPad in. No PXE booting, no easy configuration through the network. No management tools that are worth a tin shit. I have to physically enter all that information in. Can't even swap in a replicated hard drive since it can't be taken apart. Loading from a USB stick? Hahah... No we have to go through the "cloud" for everything.

Check out the Apple iPhone Configuration Utility - About or Windows download page
and any one of the many MDM (mobile device manager) servers for the backend.

You create various "profiles", which are signed and/or encrypted XML files with a .mobileconfig extension.
Think Active Directories Group Policy for iOS.

I've made quite a few of these configs and have them posted on a sub-website on the Intranet, as well as keep handy to forward as email attachments.
On iOS if you click one in a browser or as an attachment, it will display what parts of the system it will change, and if it can be removed, requires a password, or can't be removed (except via factory reset - think company owned devices)
You just click accept, and if you only use required values the entire setup is done. Alternately you can mark some things as user provided (like domain username, and AD password) and you're prompted for those in one screen after confirming to install it.

I have one with our Exchange servers settings (which I admit is so simple to setup this one isn't really needed), two different ones for each VPN endpoint server, one that contains our wireless "guest" network settings as well as how to handle channel hopping and roaming between APs keeping sessions alive over wpa2-enterprise, all of our Sharepoint shared resources that can be linked in, as well as our public contact book.

These are available (in my case, user removable) for any employee to use to better utilize our resources without me having to setup anything.

Further, and at this point I'm probably starting to sound like an ad or something, still..

If we actually had company owned iOS devices, you can go as far as restricting any/all settings apps and extensions, pre-install your own apps, only allow apps on a whitelist to install, or even to not be able to install apps at all.
It can redirect all iCloud services to internal services, or simply disallow them.
iOS can link into active directory (via LDAP), and CalDav / CardDav, and have your x500 certificates installed

You can even do things currently only cellular carriers are privlidged to do, such as put apps or web shortcuts on springboard and not allow them to be removed or even repositioned.
It even lets you reconfigure the cellular radio settings, changing the APN, GRPS, and a proxy that all data communications passes through.

You can reconfigure and push out settings updates over the air as well. About the only thing I don't think you can do is push app installs over the cell network, you have to wait until they are back on the wifi for that.

While I personally have been fortunately enough to never had to touch the blackberry enterprise server, Apple seriously went out of their way to rival BES in what you can do using these policies.

Unfortunately some

>> A $200 pocket phone still cannot do a lot of things a full desktop PC could do a decade ago.
> Only because the software isn't there. And fixing that is only a matter of time. ... The CPU is really only a bottleneck

Can I have some of what you are smoking please?

1. Let me know when I can _compile_ on a smart phone. Last time I checked there is NO native compiler running on iOS -- you need a "real" computer (aka desktop) for that. Likewise for game development you're not going to use some shitty 1 GB mobile CPU when you have 16 GB or more plus an i7 for game development. Maybe you'll complain most people don't need "high end code editing". Fine. Let me know when I can edit my HTML / Javascript pages on a phone. Just because you _can_ do it, doesn't mean you _should_ do it. My next point addresses this:

2. Why the hell would I even try to develop on a phone at a crappy low res phone display 1000x600 when I have 2560x1440 27" monitor to write code on AND a 2nd 1920x1080 monitor to run my app on??

IF phones would let me extend their "screen" to a REAL monitor then Yes, you MIGHT have a point someday.

At least you didn't mention the GPU. The advancement of GPU and OpenGL is moving along quite nicely. Every iOS user needs to check out "The Room" for a perfect example of how to properly use a GPU ! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-room/id552039496?mt=8

Just in case you don't get it. The KEY point is:

Mobile = great for consuming content,
Desktop = great for creating content.

Will Mobile catch up to the Desktop? Yes, I agree the gap will significantly decrease but I seriously doubt it will even come close within 10 years. The number of people consuming content is always much > the number of people creating content.

--
In other news ZDnet is dead. I haven't read "PC Magazine" in years.

The great thing about Silverlight is its ability to stream content as your internet line can take it. This means Silverlight will dynamically adjust the video and audio bitrate so that even users on less-than-fast lines can stream Silverlight video content.

HTML5 has this as well. (Documentation being linked to is Apple's.)
https://developer.apple.com/resources/http-streaming/
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/networkinginternet/conceptual/streamingmediaguide/UsingHTTPLiveStreaming/UsingHTTPLiveStreaming.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008332-CH102-DontLinkElementID_24

The great thing about Silverlight is its ability to stream content as your internet line can take it. This means Silverlight will dynamically adjust the video and audio bitrate so that even users on less-than-fast lines can stream Silverlight video content.

HTML5 has this as well. (Documentation being linked to is Apple's.)
https://developer.apple.com/resources/http-streaming/
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/networkinginternet/conceptual/streamingmediaguide/UsingHTTPLiveStreaming/UsingHTTPLiveStreaming.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008332-CH102-DontLinkElementID_24

Were do you get that number from? The latest predictions were 7% down (IDC) and 7% up (Garter), so they are probably staying the same in traditional computers.

http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q1fy13datasum.pdf Those are actual result published, by Apple. I've ignored your waffle.

Everything on http://archive.org/ is public domain.

My friend showed me that there's just been a really amazing iPad app released to access all the archive.org content, and hopefully an android version is coming soon!

Why does your kid need a IPad or a IPhone? Why not buy him a computer with an OS which does not have app stores.

You did say BUY a computer but there's little sale outside these top prebundled OSs:
Ubuntu App store
MacOS X App store
Windows 8 App store

It won't be easy finding legal Windows 7 copy without online merchants so that you can live App-free on your new computer.

Unless you plan to build your own PC and put non-Ubuntu FOSS on it, other choices call for wading into uncanny territory or buying older unsold items and used stuff

That said, I don't promote the idea of purchasing a tablet or phones for kids. There's already a living room PC and a laptop sitting around at home and kids do NOT need more room to hide their acts.

Nowadays, every device has a built in app-store or similar functionality and a credit card is required to even make the device function (why does Apple require a credit card to download free apps or update apps that you've already paid for?!).

That's simply not true.
http://s.iosfans.com/?u=http://cdn.macorg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/free-apple-account-002.png
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534

Plus, if you do have a credit card set up, then purchases require the password to be entered. You didn't give a password connected to your credit card to your kid did you?

On top of that, there are parental controls (under a different password) on the iOS devices, including one that turns off in-app purchase,

Further more, gift cards are available if you want to allocate a set amount for a child to spend.

So exactly how difficult is it for a responsible parent to stop their child spending? Actually it's the opposite way around... the parent has to take steps to enable the kid to make purchases.

For sure though there are a lot of parents that don't have the intelligence to not give a child a credit-card enabled phone. And low intelligence is not their fault. And I have no problem at all with governments clipping the wings of any companies peddling exploitative apps or premium phone lines.

Oh... And apparently everyone is buying Macbooks.

Up 14% YoY.

No Apple are doing absolutely awful Mac's are down 22% Year On Year for 2013Q1 http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q1fy13datasum.pdf

Multiple wifi antennas? Really? Every laptop model I've ever worked on (and that's a few dozen) that came with wifi out of the box had at least two separate antennas. Usually one goes up one side of the screen, and the other goes up the other side.

Photo editing software can be had for free.

Since you said sub $1,000 and the closest a 13" mac gets to that is $1,199 I'll use that model for comparison.

http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD101LL/A?#hardware
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834100228

And here is what you asked for.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230262

It meets or exceeds the specs of your $1,199 13" Macbook Pro in every way and costs just $749 - regular price, not on sale. Your Macbook costs over 50% more.

You're welcome.

When I say "desktop", I mean the thing humming next to me that contains 6 internal 1 Terabyte drives (yeah, time to upgrade), a PCI-E graphics card that needs its own power connectors, a PCI-e USB 3 card I added recently, and one or two e-SATA drives. I call that a "desktop".

And I'd call that a workstation, not a desktop. The workstation market is dead. Far too many of the people who used to buy workstations are now comfortable with more mainstream computers. That is the incremental advantage in terms of what what can be done for a 2x, 5x, 20x, or even 100x speedup isn't there for most users. That's not to say there aren't faster computers (desktop workstations) sold but they are a tiny fraction of the market. Something like one-hundreths of one percent of devices. No one is designing OSes with workstation users in mind as more than a niche. And mostly the kinds of people that use those sorts of system can also tweak and modify their OS to change features and get what they want.

Apple more than anybody else if focused on similar higher end users since they have 85-92% marketshare in the over $1k computer. Though they still aren't aiming at something like that.

Obviously Windows intends to in some ways support Workstations but they don't care to support them well. They lost the high end mostly to Apple and they are trying to move up market. But when I say upmarket they are targeting Apple's low end, the person who might buy a $1150 Apple with a Windows system at around $800 that's equally good. They aren't aiming that high at all. So at best you can expect indifferent support for Workstations. That is your relationship with Microsoft at this point.

There are Linuxes that are fairly good and because of Linux's dominance in supercomputing I'd expect Linux to continue to get stronger in this area with time.

From what you say, it appears that you believe MS is truly expecting to turn laptops and even desktops into touch interface devices.

Yes.

I'd be tracing my finger along some sort of touchpad. Why? We've gone through all this before, and most people think mice are better than the alternatives.

Over 1/2 the people who own non-mice oriented computing devices (tablets and phones) don't own mice oriented devices so they don't seem to prefer it. Apple for example is moving their desktop (iMac) customers over to a trackpad and away from mice http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/ and has been getting a very good response. Honestly I don't know anyone who has used a good quality resistive capacitive touch screen on a laptop and says they would rather use a mouse. At best they plug in an external mouse infrequently.

And as for workstation users they are a diversified lot. But quite a few of them like specialized hardware inferfaces like mixing boards as their primary interface. Secondary interfaces they are often quite flexible. Again it is entirely possible that there are niches that do like mice. But this is all with a situation where most applications are designed to work well around mice. What happens when most applications are written without mice in mind?

(con next reply)

Yeah because we cant do this already with NightSky

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/the-night-sky/id475772902?mt=8

Here's a writeup in Techcrunch.

I don't know if it's going to get that big but I realized the other day that even in my non-criminal, law-abiding life there are still a lot of things that I send to people via SMS that I probably should not have. Lots. Of. Things.

They have a tech FAQ which goes into detail about encryption, privacy, etc.

Well an obvious way is to complain if you're an Apple customer. Honestly, companies behave this way because a lot of very ridiculous minority groups raise a HUGE fuss against stuff like this on TV, or in the AppStore or whatnot. But the majority of people who could care less, or simply think parents should look at the ratings before handing it to their kids? They don't bother to raise a fuss. They shrug and move on. So yes, buying android is a solution (and a decent one at that, after all, taking away money from the bottom line is a hugely important tactic in getting companies to act in the way we the consumer's would like), but let them know WHY you're buying Android and are no longer a Apple customer.

So seriously, e-mail Tim Cook and say this is not how you want the AppStore on the device you paid for run.

feedback
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

support
http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/

And I'm sure anyone on this site can find Tim Cook's email without too much trouble. If you can't then why are you on /.?

Well an obvious way is to complain if you're an Apple customer. Honestly, companies behave this way because a lot of very ridiculous minority groups raise a HUGE fuss against stuff like this on TV, or in the AppStore or whatnot. But the majority of people who could care less, or simply think parents should look at the ratings before handing it to their kids? They don't bother to raise a fuss. They shrug and move on. So yes, buying android is a solution (and a decent one at that, after all, taking away money from the bottom line is a hugely important tactic in getting companies to act in the way we the consumer's would like), but let them know WHY you're buying Android and are no longer a Apple customer.

So seriously, e-mail Tim Cook and say this is not how you want the AppStore on the device you paid for run.

feedback
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

support
http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/

And I'm sure anyone on this site can find Tim Cook's email without too much trouble. If you can't then why are you on /.?

Well an obvious way is to complain if you're an Apple customer. Honestly, companies behave this way because a lot of very ridiculous minority groups raise a HUGE fuss against stuff like this on TV, or in the AppStore or whatnot. But the majority of people who could care less, or simply think parents should look at the ratings before handing it to their kids? They don't bother to raise a fuss. They shrug and move on. So yes, buying android is a solution (and a decent one at that, after all, taking away money from the bottom line is a hugely important tactic in getting companies to act in the way we the consumer's would like), but let them know WHY you're buying Android and are no longer a Apple customer.

So seriously, e-mail Tim Cook and say this is not how you want the AppStore on the device you paid for run.

feedback
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

support
http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/

And I'm sure anyone on this site can find Tim Cook's email without too much trouble. If you can't then why are you on /.?

Thunderbolt (codenamed Light Peak)[1] is a hardware interface that allows for the connection of external peripherals to a computer. It uses the same connector as Mini DisplayPort (MDP). It was released in its finished state on February 24, 2011.[2]

On the same day, Apple released new iMacs with Thunderbolt.

Now what are your facts?

They can already blacklist apps on your iPhone.
https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps
They just haven't added any to the list yet.

Apple server offerings here.
Apple office suite here.
Neither are particularly new, though. And the server offerings have actually been decreased, no more rack mount Apples.

Apple server offerings here.
Apple office suite here.
Neither are particularly new, though. And the server offerings have actually been decreased, no more rack mount Apples.

You do realize that the iPhone makes more money than all of MS right? Quarter ending 12-31-2012: MSFT $21.42B Quarter ending 12-29-2012: Apple iPhone: $30.06B

POSIX-compliant, Open Brand UNIX 03 Registered Product http://images.apple.com/media/us/osx/2012/docs/OSX_for_UNIX_Users_TB_July2011.pdf

I don't think you know how things work in encryption these days...

You don't need the username/password information to encrypt things. iMessage and most of the communication of short messages between Apple devices and between Apple's cloud and the devices is based on the XMPP system which uses simple S/MIME to encrypt similar to how e-mail encryption works. It's end-to-end encryption. Could Apple build-in something to transfer the private keys from the client to the server and intercept it there - sure - but that would be 1) against the XMPP standard, 2) easily noticed and exploitable, 3) may even be illegal.

Where did you read that iMessage is using the S/MIME Encryption extension to XMPP or that it is using XMPP? I haven't seen anything to suggest this. I suspect this is simply that iMessage is properly using TLS/SSL connections to their servers making snooping difficult. They can probably still snoop by subpoenaing Apple for the records. According to wikipedia and other sources, the protocol is actually a binary protocol based on Apple Push Notification Service.

We've thought about buying an iPad for guests to use, but decided it wasn't right to knowingly let others use a computing platform that may have been compromised.

If you're willing to buy a $499 iPad just for guests to use, then you'd probably be willing to buy a $249 Chromebook instead. It's a great second laptop, and perfect for guests to use. There's even a "Guest" account they can use, and it clears the data when they are done using it. And it's secure - which you want if your guests have "high risk computing habits."

These tablets are being offered for sale at £549 (US $834.32) and £634 (US $963) respectively. The Kindle Fire HD costs from £159, the Google Nexus 10 costs from £319, while the Apple iPad costs from £399. Even if there were nothing else wrong with Windows RT, trying to sell tablets for between 150% and 350% of the price of the comparable market leaders was never going to work.

As it is, if you actually want a Windows RT tablet for some reason, you've got to know that there's going to be a huge fire-sale of these things, and soon. Why would anyone pay those prices?

Tablets cannot read optical media unlike a laptop.

Nor can my laptop without an external optical drive. In theory, inability to use a USB optical drive is a driver problem, and my laptop reads and writes optical media fine through an Iomega SuperSlim DVD drive that I bought through Dell.com. In practice, Apple has anticompetitive reasons to refuse to provide an appropriate driver for iOS.

There are people with audio cds that want to convert them

Instead of buying audio CDs, buy iTunes. Apple has anticompetitive reasons to block the use of used CDs from a pawn shop.

or photos they ordered on cd-r from a photo lab.

Then order the photos on download from the photo lab.

Are there tablets that can read flash drives which I would consider a good alternative?

Apple makes a camera connection kit with a 30-pin iPad connector that can read USB flash drives and SD cards. Accessories for Lightning are also available: an SD card reader and USB MSC reader that work with Photos.

Tablets cannot read optical media unlike a laptop.

Nor can my laptop without an external optical drive. In theory, inability to use a USB optical drive is a driver problem, and my laptop reads and writes optical media fine through an Iomega SuperSlim DVD drive that I bought through Dell.com. In practice, Apple has anticompetitive reasons to refuse to provide an appropriate driver for iOS.

There are people with audio cds that want to convert them

Instead of buying audio CDs, buy iTunes. Apple has anticompetitive reasons to block the use of used CDs from a pawn shop.

or photos they ordered on cd-r from a photo lab.

Then order the photos on download from the photo lab.

Are there tablets that can read flash drives which I would consider a good alternative?

Apple makes a camera connection kit with a 30-pin iPad connector that can read USB flash drives and SD cards. Accessories for Lightning are also available: an SD card reader and USB MSC reader that work with Photos.

Tablets cannot read optical media unlike a laptop.

Nor can my laptop without an external optical drive. In theory, inability to use a USB optical drive is a driver problem, and my laptop reads and writes optical media fine through an Iomega SuperSlim DVD drive that I bought through Dell.com. In practice, Apple has anticompetitive reasons to refuse to provide an appropriate driver for iOS.

There are people with audio cds that want to convert them

Instead of buying audio CDs, buy iTunes. Apple has anticompetitive reasons to block the use of used CDs from a pawn shop.

or photos they ordered on cd-r from a photo lab.

Then order the photos on download from the photo lab.

Are there tablets that can read flash drives which I would consider a good alternative?

Apple makes a camera connection kit with a 30-pin iPad connector that can read USB flash drives and SD cards. Accessories for Lightning are also available: an SD card reader and USB MSC reader that work with Photos.

I wonder if any developers have bumped up rates for in app purchases (+30%) while still giving the option to buy on the website w/o the premium. Not sure if this would violate any rules, but this would seem to offer customers a choice, while exposing Apple's cut for convenience.

It is against apple's terms. And honestly, it's pretty ridiculous IMO.

Yup, it is pretty ridiculous. Your claim that is. E.g. Dropbox offers both in-app purchases to their Pro-service as well purchases on their web site.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dropbox/id327630330?mt=8

There are plenty of graphic editors including Photoshop touch, Video editors and music/sound editors. in that category.

There are also no business or productivity apps in the app store either.... oh wait. https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-business/id6000?mt=8

https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-productivity/id6007?mt=8

There are plenty of graphic editors including Photoshop touch, Video editors and music/sound editors. in that category.

There are also no business or productivity apps in the app store either.... oh wait. https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-business/id6000?mt=8

https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-productivity/id6007?mt=8

There are plenty of graphic editors including Photoshop touch, Video editors and music/sound editors. in that category.

There are also no business or productivity apps in the app store either.... oh wait. https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-business/id6000?mt=8

https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-productivity/id6007?mt=8

Did the previous owner use the "erase all content and settings" feature of that phone? Or just restore it. That would have been using the built in tool and would have overwrote the data. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2110

The author used the last iPhone (3G) running the last iOS version (4) that would exhibit such behavior. It seems a contrived test.

An upgrade to iOS 5 would fix the problem on the 3G. On newer phones the encryption key needed to access the data is destroyed, so the problem never would have occurred.