Slashdot Mirror

Yes Direct connection, email, post to website, or MDM.

take a look at this game, Order and Chaos,
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/order-chaos-online/id414664715?mt=8

it's a near perfect version of World of Warcraft running on iOS and Android. the look, feel, and mechanics are near copies of WoW, but the content is different- the quests, bosses, maps, items, and so on.

if Blizzard can't sue for this, then EA and everyone else doesn't have a prayer in going after copycats.

BTW, OaC is quite a good game.

Slashdot - Taking Notes in the Modern Classroom

TL;DR - I found pencil and paper to still be the best way to take notes in class, but Notability and an iPad stylus work pretty well.

This past spring I sat in on an undergrad philosophy class that a friend of mine was teaching. I hadn't been in a college classroom for at least 10 years, and I decided to experiment with different ways of note taking. No risk if I messed up since I was just sitting in and not taking the class for credit. Here are the methods I tried:

• Good old pencil and paper, Ecosystem notebook and mechanical pencil.
• Macbook Pro - OmniOutliner, Pages
• iPad with on screen keyboard and bluetooth keyboard - OmniOutliner, [Pages]5]
• iPad, handwriting with stylus with Notability

The clear winner: pencil and paper. I thought carefully after trying each system about what did and didn't work, and why what didn't work didn't. Here's why I think pencil and paper wins out: there's no extra cognitive load when using pencil and paper. It's straight out of my brain and on to the page. All the computer and tablet based systems I tried required my brain to do extra work to get my thought recorded. With pencil and paper, I can put things where I want on the page without thinking about it. I can indent, underline, arrange text, and draw diagrams with no extra mental effort. With all of the computer/table based ways I tried, I had to not only thing about what I was putting down but also how I was going to do it. That effort distracted me from what I was supposed to be learning.

That being said, taking notes by hand using a stylus and Notability on the iPad came a close second to pencil and paper. Taking notes that way added less excess cognitive load than any other way I tried save pencil and paper. Handwriting on the iPad had a couple of advantages over pencil and paper.

• I could use different pen colors and line weights to emphasize important ideas
• If I wanted to re-arrange my notes on the page, I could just select the handwritten text and move it around the virtual page.
• Digital versions of my notes without having to scan them.

On the other hand, because of the size of the iPad screen, writing directly on the page doesn't work very well, so I had to use Notability's zoom feature to write legible text. That means I couldn't see the whole page at a glance, so it was hard to tell exactly where on the page I was writing. I often wound up scrunching letters at the right edge of the page, or writing over the page divider at the bottom of the page. The extra cognitive load of keeping track of those kinds of things was more trouble than the advantages were worth, for me at least.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/audionote-notepad-voice-recorder/id369820957?mt=8 "...Each note acts as a link directly to the point at which it was recorded, taking you instantly to what you want to hear! Didn't take any notes during the meeting? No problem, you can add them later!"

"Windows 8 Style UI" doesn't quite have the catchiness that Metro and Cocoa do, not to mention how old applications using this will sound in Windows 9...

Yes But then what will exist to remind people that they are running legacy apps. XP Mode, Classic Desktop?

A couple of classics from Microsoft's marketing department:

• Microsoft designs the iPod packaging.
• Microsoft selling sushi - cold, dead fish

"Windows 8 Style UI" doesn't quite have the catchiness that Metro and Cocoa do, not to mention how old applications using this will sound in Windows 9...

People say that you can't get "real work" done on an iPad but I'm an academic and use it as a primary tool for my research and writing. Here's what I use most:

Sente for iPad (academic reference, citation, and PDF database and annotating manager, syncs to the cloud and desktop database)
DevonThink to Go (the anything database, syncs to desktop database)
Textastic (Syntax-aware cloud-capable text editor similar in many ways to SublimeText)
Notability (Notepad/note archiving application)

There are a bunch of other apps that also get put through their paces from time to time—Pages, Numbers, Things, etc.

Thanks to Talkatone, my iPad is also my primary phone and text messenger.

I tried a Samsung Android tablet for a couple of weeks as I was getting ready to upgrade from a 16GB original iPad to a 64GB iPad 2. I hit up my friends and colleagues for input on replacement apps and academic productivity apps in general.

I couldn't get a single one of the apps above satisfactorily replaced in the Android ecosystem. So I returned the Samsung and got the iPad 2. It's not that Android itself sucks (though it is less smooth and polished) but that the apps really suck when it comes to getting real work done.

I routinely put in many-hours-long sessions of real daytime work on the iPad, basically whenever I don't need to do anything with SPSS or large datasets or final write-ups, because the iPad interface is so much more transparent and the iPad is so much more mobile than my laptop. But what I've seen so far doesn't suggest to me that Android could be used for the same serious work in the way that I use the iPad, and it's not about the intrinsic capability of the device (the hardware is nearly as good) but more about the general half-assedness of the Android ecosystem in general.

I want to work on my work, not work on getting my tablet to do what I want.

People say that you can't get "real work" done on an iPad but I'm an academic and use it as a primary tool for my research and writing. Here's what I use most:

Sente for iPad (academic reference, citation, and PDF database and annotating manager, syncs to the cloud and desktop database)
DevonThink to Go (the anything database, syncs to desktop database)
Textastic (Syntax-aware cloud-capable text editor similar in many ways to SublimeText)
Notability (Notepad/note archiving application)

There are a bunch of other apps that also get put through their paces from time to time—Pages, Numbers, Things, etc.

Thanks to Talkatone, my iPad is also my primary phone and text messenger.

I tried a Samsung Android tablet for a couple of weeks as I was getting ready to upgrade from a 16GB original iPad to a 64GB iPad 2. I hit up my friends and colleagues for input on replacement apps and academic productivity apps in general.

I couldn't get a single one of the apps above satisfactorily replaced in the Android ecosystem. So I returned the Samsung and got the iPad 2. It's not that Android itself sucks (though it is less smooth and polished) but that the apps really suck when it comes to getting real work done.

I routinely put in many-hours-long sessions of real daytime work on the iPad, basically whenever I don't need to do anything with SPSS or large datasets or final write-ups, because the iPad interface is so much more transparent and the iPad is so much more mobile than my laptop. But what I've seen so far doesn't suggest to me that Android could be used for the same serious work in the way that I use the iPad, and it's not about the intrinsic capability of the device (the hardware is nearly as good) but more about the general half-assedness of the Android ecosystem in general.

I want to work on my work, not work on getting my tablet to do what I want.

> Few will question anymore that Apple is a dark force of DRM and lockin

I would question this; Apple has fought for consumers and against DRM. Apple is super consumer-friendly and they listen to their customers. Microsoft == computing dark ages.

"iTunes Plus downloads are songs and music videos available in our highest quality 256 kbps AAC audio encoding (twice the audio quality of protected music purchases), and without digital rights management (DRM)." http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1711

Done.

Almost a week late, but since zoloto and everyone else downstream got it wrong, here:

https://developer.apple.com/resources/developer-id/

It's 100% free to get a developer id. No $99/year or other bs. That's only if you want to distribute via the mac app store.

    iPill.

Yours In Freedumb,
K. Trout

P.S. M-I-Double-Tizzle For Prezeedent

For me. I usually like to wait about 3 months for upgrades. But will do this one very soon. The feature I want is the enhanced video drivers for rMBP.

Other stuff I like:

1) iMessage 2) Share / autosave / iCloud tightly wound together. 3) Launchpad search (for my parent's computers) 4) Fine control over mail notifications 5) iCloud tabs 6) X11 install on demand (for distribution) 7) Expanding scroll bars

And powernap might be cool.

Another very useful parent feature is automatic download and install of software and OS updates. Saves time when I go home.

You can't send HD resolution video across WiFi (or even Gigabit Ethernet) uncompressed, so AirPlay mirroring requires compression. AppleTV hardware only supports the H.264 codec, so the format has to be H.264. While it's very efficient in terms of compression ratio, it's also very difficult to implement in software -- as in, it probably takes almost all of a quadcore CPU's cycles to encode 1080p in realtime. Since that would be pointless (you want to use your computer normally while mirroring, not have its fans howling just to send its display to the TV), Apple requires hardware H.264 encoding to implement AirPlay mirroring.

This would be a decent reason if the source material was uncompressed HD video.

However, it almost certainly is not. It's ridiculous (for multiple reasons) that if you have an existing H.264 encoded file, you need a Mac capable of realtime H.264 encoding to stream it to an AppleTV.

If it is a H.264 encoded file, you can stream it directly from iTunes already. The new feature does full screen mirroring - perfect for streaming those services who are desktop only (Hulu and other flash players). There is a non-apple solution with some some technical trade offs if you have an older Mac or a Windows system.

Yesterday I went to the App Store, only to learn that my 2007 Mac Mini ... didn't have the hardware requirements to run OS/X Mountain Lion....

I was a bit surprised that 5 year old equipment just isn't worth it to Apple to support.

Well, get ready for another surprise... you're incorrect! Apple still supports Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 Effectively, Apple stopped supporting your hardware when three things coincided: 1) your warranty ended 2) they stopped selling the hardware 3) your system became too crusty to run their newest software. But they still support the systems that run on it. Just because your hardware is outdated doesn't mean that the OS X versions that it can run are unsupported. Don't believe me? Install Mac OS X 10.4.0 Tiger to a thumb drive and confirm that you can still download all the updates. What you meant to say is not that Apple isn't supporting your 5 year old hardware, but that their newest OS release doesn't support your hardware. That's an important distinction.

Concurrently?

http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html#timemachine

He answers only to the CEO, as do all senior VP's. There are just nine of these guys and they're each responsible for a fundamental aspect of Apple's operation.

I agree most corporate titles are complete bullshit, and I'm sure there are also lots of these folks running around at Apple Inc. But imho Apple's Senior VPs aren't really part of that nonsense as their titles actually show their responsibility and function pretty well.

If not, how do you explain that an ebook titled “How To Self Publish On Amazon, Kindle And iBookStore” is available at the Apple iBookStore? http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-self-publish-on-amazon/id546291491?mt=11

Well, a quick search of the iTunes Music Store lets me find a bunch of Amazon's apps. Narrowing it to books, there aren't many, but right on the first page of the search results is this and this.

Maybe there's more to the story than meets the eye.

Well, a quick search of the iTunes Music Store lets me find a bunch of Amazon's apps. Narrowing it to books, there aren't many, but right on the first page of the search results is this and this.

Maybe there's more to the story than meets the eye.

This doesn't even point to the most relevant fact. Amazon offers a free Kindle app for iOS devices through the iTunes Store.

Make a Killing on Kindle, by Michael Alvear.

What about books like "Make a Killing on Kindle"?

http://itunes.apple.com/book/id545283330?mt=11

Well, one difference is that you can find books about selling stuff via Amazon (eg, Amazon partners). So if you sell widgets and want people to buy your widgets via the Internet, one way of doing this is to become an Amazon partner and they'll do all the hard web stuff for you. I see plenty of books about that.

What I don't see are books about self-publishing on Amazon--unless they also mention iBooks (like this one.)

you can develop on a $500 Mac Mini just fine (I do)

Apple's cheapest Mac mini lists for $599 new. If you buy used, you run the risk of Apple very quickly dropping support for your older computer: a pre-2009 Mac mini can't run Mountain Lion.

> The mobile PC (iPad) replaces the PC just like the mobile phone replaces the landline phone.
> The landline phone is now an alternate kind of phone, and the mobile phone is the "real"
> phone. That is why you see the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is designed very much
> for the classic Mac customer who is a creative workstation user, running video editing or audio
> editing or photo editing or software development all day long, every day. It's less of a PC than
> any of the Intel Macs. iPad is for PC users, now. The Mac is back to being a creative power tool.

So you reply to a terrible article with a terrible post? If you had claimed the the MacBook as a PC replacement, you would at least had some possible argument. The IPAD is *NOT* a PC replacement. It's an overgrown IPHONE targeted at viewing/listening/reading. For output, it's only suitable for short messages like texting/chat/twitter/Fecesbook-status-updates/etc.

Try doing any serious photo/audio/text editing, long emails, or even taking notes at a meeting, and you'll see why. And don't give me any BS about buying a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. You've essentially converted the IPAD into a laptop or desktop.

Tablets (IPAD and Android) fill a large market for dumbed-down PC's. They do not come close to replacing the desktop. And Apple prices are a joke here in Canada (Toronto to be specific). E.g. desktop Apple (Mac Pro). The "low end " (Quad-Core Intel, 6 gigs of ram, 1 TB drive) is $2,549.00 !?!?! http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro A similar ASUS (Quad-Core Intel, 6 gigs of ram, 1 TB drive) is $999, http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?item_id=042214 and I can get something similar built for less.

For notebooks MacBook "Air" and "Pro" *START* at $1029 and $1229 respectively http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro Regular notebooks can be had for under $500 http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?item_id=046492

IPADS *START* at $419. Android tablets are a lot lower. See http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?cPath=710_375 BTW, the 11.6" notebook I mentioned above is competitive with the IPAD, and it actually has keyboard and mousepad.

Apple has chosen to go for the more-money-than-brains market, like Mercedes/Cadillac/Lamborgini/RollsRoyce/etc. That can be a profitable niche, but I'm not part of that market.

> The mobile PC (iPad) replaces the PC just like the mobile phone replaces the landline phone.
> The landline phone is now an alternate kind of phone, and the mobile phone is the "real"
> phone. That is why you see the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is designed very much
> for the classic Mac customer who is a creative workstation user, running video editing or audio
> editing or photo editing or software development all day long, every day. It's less of a PC than
> any of the Intel Macs. iPad is for PC users, now. The Mac is back to being a creative power tool.

So you reply to a terrible article with a terrible post? If you had claimed the the MacBook as a PC replacement, you would at least had some possible argument. The IPAD is *NOT* a PC replacement. It's an overgrown IPHONE targeted at viewing/listening/reading. For output, it's only suitable for short messages like texting/chat/twitter/Fecesbook-status-updates/etc.

Try doing any serious photo/audio/text editing, long emails, or even taking notes at a meeting, and you'll see why. And don't give me any BS about buying a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. You've essentially converted the IPAD into a laptop or desktop.

Tablets (IPAD and Android) fill a large market for dumbed-down PC's. They do not come close to replacing the desktop. And Apple prices are a joke here in Canada (Toronto to be specific). E.g. desktop Apple (Mac Pro). The "low end " (Quad-Core Intel, 6 gigs of ram, 1 TB drive) is $2,549.00 !?!?! http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro A similar ASUS (Quad-Core Intel, 6 gigs of ram, 1 TB drive) is $999, http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?item_id=042214 and I can get something similar built for less.

For notebooks MacBook "Air" and "Pro" *START* at $1029 and $1229 respectively http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro Regular notebooks can be had for under $500 http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?item_id=046492

IPADS *START* at $419. Android tablets are a lot lower. See http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?cPath=710_375 BTW, the 11.6" notebook I mentioned above is competitive with the IPAD, and it actually has keyboard and mousepad.

Apple has chosen to go for the more-money-than-brains market, like Mercedes/Cadillac/Lamborgini/RollsRoyce/etc. That can be a profitable niche, but I'm not part of that market.

Do you mean to compare a subsidized HTC Evo 4G to an unsubsidized iPhone 4S without even talking about the rest of the cost? It looks to me as if the EVO 4G is $599.99 instead of your $300 which makes it a heck of a lot closer to the Apple 4 that is only only 519€ unlocked in France (couldn't find a price unlocked in the US).

Unlocked HTC Evo 4G... Our Price: $297.

As of right now your price for the Apple phone is UER 519 which is $639 USD versus $297 for the Samsung just as GP said. Moral of the story: never accept any claim by an Apple fan at face value. Second moral of the story: a Best Buy link is always a red flag.

No, the moral of the story is that Fandroids will stoop as low as to link to some shady site just to prove how damn cheap they could get their phone - not that they would actually buy them there themselves.

The best reviews for zwee.com say you get your money back after they can't ship for a couple of weeks.

You can still do this. The developer program is free here https://developer.apple.com/programs/register/ , as are the developer tools. The sand boxing requirements only apply if you want to sell your app through the apple store. You can do anything you want on your own computer.

That is not correct. Apple is sandboxing Mac OS X and Mac OS apps will have to be sandboxed to be accepted into the Mac OS app store very soon.

When you load up Mountain Lion, you will discover that by default the system will not run unsigned apps, including the ones you bought from them and other notable vendors.

Note that "signed" does not imply "sandboxed". The default Gatekeeper setting means that, unless you do Special Stuff, applications downloaded from the Intertubes (by programs that set the "quarantined" extended attribute, at least; dunno if any applications that set it do so only if they were downloaded from an "external" site, for some definition of "external") can't be launched with a double-click (or, presumably, automatically through some code paths) unless they're from the Mac App Store or signed by a "registered developer", even if they're not sandboxed. There are ways (involving a context menu, i.e. Control+click, I think) to override that without changing the default setting.

I have been resisting learning objective C, hoping to continue writing portable C++ applications against the Unix API's and other well known interfaces like X and python. I don't know yet if the sandboxing system only works for objective C Cocoa programs.

As far as I know, at least some of the sandboxing is ultimately implemented with Mandatory Access Control hooks in the kernel (see the security top-level directory in the XNU source, and stuff it calls and that calls it), which means it applies to anything that makes system calls, either directly or through libraries or frameworks, regardless of whether it's written in C or C++ or Objective-C or Objective-C++ or FORTRAN or..., as long as it's a statically-compiled language (if it's interpreted, the calls are made by the interpreter, which isn't sandboxed, and if it's compiled on the fly, the code that's running the generated code would need to be sandboxed; I don't know whether software of either type is allowed in the Mac App Store). Some of it might be implemented at the Mach messaging level, which means that part applies to anything that sends Mach messages to the services to which access is controlled, either directly or through libraries or frameworks, regardless of whether it's written in C or C++ or Objective-C or Objective-C++ or FORTRAN or... (same comments apply as in the previous sentence).

However, if you want to sell or give away your app via some mechanism other than the Mac App Store, you don't need to sandbox it. To have it launchable with the default settings on Mountain Lion, you'd have to join the Mac Developer Program and get a Developer ID and corresponding certificate with which to sign your code.

(And if you just want to build your own code and run it on your own machine, you don't, as far as I know, even need that, as the code hasn't been downloaded from the Intertubes and thus hasn't had a quarantine label slapped on it. And if you've downloaded the code with, say, curl, that might not slap a quarantine label on it, either.)

That is not correct. Apple is sandboxing Mac OS X and Mac OS apps will have to be sandboxed to be accepted into the Mac OS app store very soon.

When you load up Mountain Lion, you will discover that by default the system will not run unsigned apps, including the ones you bought from them and other notable vendors.

Note that "signed" does not imply "sandboxed". The default Gatekeeper setting means that, unless you do Special Stuff, applications downloaded from the Intertubes (by programs that set the "quarantined" extended attribute, at least; dunno if any applications that set it do so only if they were downloaded from an "external" site, for some definition of "external") can't be launched with a double-click (or, presumably, automatically through some code paths) unless they're from the Mac App Store or signed by a "registered developer", even if they're not sandboxed. There are ways (involving a context menu, i.e. Control+click, I think) to override that without changing the default setting.

I have been resisting learning objective C, hoping to continue writing portable C++ applications against the Unix API's and other well known interfaces like X and python. I don't know yet if the sandboxing system only works for objective C Cocoa programs.

As far as I know, at least some of the sandboxing is ultimately implemented with Mandatory Access Control hooks in the kernel (see the security top-level directory in the XNU source, and stuff it calls and that calls it), which means it applies to anything that makes system calls, either directly or through libraries or frameworks, regardless of whether it's written in C or C++ or Objective-C or Objective-C++ or FORTRAN or..., as long as it's a statically-compiled language (if it's interpreted, the calls are made by the interpreter, which isn't sandboxed, and if it's compiled on the fly, the code that's running the generated code would need to be sandboxed; I don't know whether software of either type is allowed in the Mac App Store). Some of it might be implemented at the Mach messaging level, which means that part applies to anything that sends Mach messages to the services to which access is controlled, either directly or through libraries or frameworks, regardless of whether it's written in C or C++ or Objective-C or Objective-C++ or FORTRAN or... (same comments apply as in the previous sentence).

However, if you want to sell or give away your app via some mechanism other than the Mac App Store, you don't need to sandbox it. To have it launchable with the default settings on Mountain Lion, you'd have to join the Mac Developer Program and get a Developer ID and corresponding certificate with which to sign your code.

(And if you just want to build your own code and run it on your own machine, you don't, as far as I know, even need that, as the code hasn't been downloaded from the Intertubes and thus hasn't had a quarantine label slapped on it. And if you've downloaded the code with, say, curl, that might not slap a quarantine label on it, either.)

in response to question about the walled garden you just get DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, ...Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE,

Umm, Ballmer was talking about third-party developers in his music video. The Microsoft equivalent to the Apple page to which you're pointing is here.

in response to question about the walled garden you just get DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, ...Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE,

Umm, Ballmer was talking about third-party developers in his music video. The Microsoft equivalent to the Apple page to which you're pointing is here.

in response to question about the walled garden you just get DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, ...Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE,

Umm, Ballmer was talking about third-party developers in his music video. The Microsoft equivalent to the Apple page to which you're pointing is here.

Do you mean to compare a subsidized HTC Evo 4G to an unsubsidized iPhone 4S without even talking about the rest of the cost? It looks to me as if the EVO 4G is $599.99 instead of your $300 which makes it a heck of a lot closer to the Apple 4 that is only only 519€ unlocked in France (couldn't find a price unlocked in the US).

Unlocked HTC Evo 4G... Our Price: $297.

As of right now your price for the Apple phone is UER 519 which is $639 USD versus $297 for the Samsung just as GP said. Moral of the story: never accept any claim by an Apple fan at face value. Second moral of the story: a Best Buy link is always a red flag.

Oh, like this?

  If you’re sure the app is safe, you can manually override Gatekeeper by Control-clicking the app and choosing to open it.

-jcr

in response to question about the walled garden you just get DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, ...Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE,

in response to question about the walled garden you just get DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, ...Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE,

in response to question about the walled garden you just get DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, ...Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE, Resistance is futile you will work for the APPLE,

Do you mean to compare a subsidized HTC Evo 4G to an unsubsidized iPhone 4S without even talking about the rest of the cost?

It looks to me as if the EVO 4G is $599.99 instead of your $300 which makes it a heck of a lot closer to the Apple 4 that is only only 519€ unlocked in France (couldn't find a price unlocked in the US).

Don't forget most reviews did give the upper hand to the iPhone 4 vs the EVO 4G so comparing it with an iPhone 4S is probably a bit of a stretch.

Geez, and they say Apple users are fanbois...

All libraries and frameworks, including their bundled static resources, images, strings files, and so on, must also be signed.

They are all on the Mac App Store.

There are a couple of compounding problems with Steam on the Mac.

Their game ports are good but the Steam application sucks ass. It doesn't use any native controls or interface elements. Because they wrote their own interface elements from scratch, it has high CPU and memory usage, it doesn't work on retina displays, scrolling windows is jerky and horizontal scrolling doesn't work, etc... There Steam application is so bad that I have decided never to buy anything off of it ever again.

If the first party publisher doesn't release the game cross platform, then it must be ported by a third party. The way payments from steam play work, is that when buy a game then it looks for which platform you played it on first, that pays the developer for that platform. That's fine for first party developers. However a porting house had to spend money to port that title to the platform. So if you had been playing it on windows, then downloaded they Mac version, the porting house receives no placement. So there is no incentive for a third party porting company to release any of their titles on Steam.

From Apple's page.. http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/
iCloud, iOS related things, Game Center to play iOS owners, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, Sharing, Messages, Gatekeeper. Almost all of the things mentioned have to do with interaction between your Mac and iOS, other people on the Net, and well Gatekeeper is useful but basically it's their store. I'm dubious about PowerNap.
Dictation sounds useful. If it really is any good I would buy it from the App Store for my current Mac, if they allowed it.

On the other hand, it seems there are indeed work related improvements. So I will consider it in the future. After making a clone of my hard disk.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/7/#document-model
Apple has added APIs in Lion that, when used properly, enable the following experience.
- The user does not have to remember to save documents. All work is automatically saved.
- Closing a document or quitting an application does not require the user to make decisions about unsaved changes.
- The user does not have to remember to save document changes before causing the document's file to be read by another application (e.g., attaching an open document with unsaved changes to an e-mail).
- Quitting an application, logging out, or restarting the computer does not mean that all open documents and windows have to be manually re-opened next time.

Apple is now supporting X11 on Mountain Lion through the open-source XQuartz project:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293?viewlocale=en_US

http://xquartz.macosforge.org/

No, it won't. That's not a problem with the OS, I can assure you 110%.

Apple disagrees with you. I had WiFi connectivity problems on one of my MacBooks but it was fixed after 10.7.1, in fact you can see in the about pages for the updates that WiFi connectivity was most definitely an OS issue:

Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections. OS X Lion Update 10.7.1

And later there was another OS update addressing WiFi connectivity issues:

Resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep. OS X Lion Update 10.7.3

No, it won't. That's not a problem with the OS, I can assure you 110%.

Apple disagrees with you. I had WiFi connectivity problems on one of my MacBooks but it was fixed after 10.7.1, in fact you can see in the about pages for the updates that WiFi connectivity was most definitely an OS issue:

Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections. OS X Lion Update 10.7.1

And later there was another OS update addressing WiFi connectivity issues:

Resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep. OS X Lion Update 10.7.3

I think you're blowing the "iOS-ness" of Mountain Lion out of proportion. I've been using the GM for a while and the DPs before that, and my core usage has remained unchanged since Lion. "Now wait," you say, "Lion also brought iOS features!" True. Of course, you don't have to use them. My Lion usage patterns are unchanged from Snow Leopard.

If you look at the main features, you'll see two things. First, it's not a big update like Leopard or Tiger (hence the $20 price tag). Second, the most iOS-like feature is Notification Center, which is basically just a better version of Growl that Macs have had for years now. Reminders and Notes are apps that appear in iOS, yes, but that's all they are--apps. Use them or don't.

There are two major features of Mountain Lion. iCloud is the most obvious user-facing one, as it is much more tightly integrated with the OS than it was in Lion. The biggest feature is probably the one least talked about, and that is Gatekeeper. It's pseudo-iOS-like, because by default it only allows apps from "identified" developers to run on your system, but when you try to run an unsigned app it lets you know how to turn it off. It should be noted that "identified" does not mean App Store only, though obviously App Store developers are "identified".

Compare this to Windows 8, which is getting a near-complete UI change. Or GNOME or Unity and possibly other DEs I haven't used, which are also heavily influenced by tablets. Apple seems to be the only one that isn't trying to completely change my workflow. I wouldn't be sure I'd call this update insanely great or anything--frankly, the iCloud features should have been present in Lion--but it's a nice update and it's cheap.

The beauty with Apple is you don't usually need to worry about the CPU, you can just refer to the computer itself. Especially since they built the entire package. The only reason you would worry about the CPU requirement is if you're running it on a hackintosh. If that's the case, you can deal with that problem yourself. Have fun!
Since I'm a nice guy (and seem to understand how to look data up relatively quickly compared to you), here's your info. (only took me less than 2 minutes total to dig up this info for you)

OS/X Mountain Lion Technical Specifications
http://www.apple.com/osx/specs/

Supported Models:
iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - 2.0GHz or 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Xserve (Early 2009) - 2.26GHz or two 2.26GHz, 2.66GHz, or 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 series “Nehalem” processors
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - 1.6GHz or 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - 2.0GHz or 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors

Let's be clear about it. An analyst will say whatever he thinks will be accepted, so they can pretty much juggle with whatever figures and estimations they have, based on pretty much anything.

More importantly though, and this is becoming more and more rare among (especially big) companies: margin went up from 41.7 to 42.8 percent. The margin is already quite impressive, and they're becoming even more profitable.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/07/24Apple-Reports-Third-Quarter-Results.html

Other than that, revenue still went up, which is still quite remarkable, seeing as competitors are now becoming more and more active. 'Normal' people now know who Samsung is and what they do, instead of tablet computer = iPad. So ... meh ... don't believe the analysts, if we believed them, Apple would've died in 1996 (in 1997 they kicked out Gil Amelio and put Jobs as iCEO for the time being).

As for USB, Apple has not put in USB3 in any of their computers.

Excellent post, except one minor correction: the new retina MacBook Pro has USB 3, so Apple is doing USB 3. I suspect all future devices will have it.

Not only the retina MacBook Pro, all new MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs introduced last month have USB3. AFAIK, Intel supports it with its new Ivy Bridge chip sets, so Apple supports it, too. They apparently just could not be bothered to add an extra chip for USB3 in previous generations.

Because now Apple is getting virii and they want to start expanding their recruitment to actually replace their "security through obscurity" model by implementing *real* security measures.

It's probably more about image damage-control after having a reasonable-sized botnet stroll in through the wide open door of complacency on one of their platforms.

Up until less than a year ago, there was no security division that external parties could even contact to tell Apple about vulnerabilities.

Apple's Product Security page, complete with contact information for reporting security issues, has publicly existed in its current location since at least November 2001.