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I've seen studies that have shown that they interfere with learning, but none (that weren't sponsored by someone trying to sell stuff) that showed they improved learning.

I'll help you since your workplace must be blocking Google. From what I was able to briefly find, the meta-analysis of current research shows three things:

1) Blended use of technology and traditional learning probably produces the best results.
2) We are still figuring out how to best use technology in the classroom, but we are improving.
3) There has not been nearly enough large scale research to "prove" any assertions about the effectiveness of individual techniques in bringing technology to the classroom.

Does the Use of Technology Improve Learning?
The Answer Lies in Design
Effective Use of Technology as a Learning Tool
Learning with Technology. Evidence that technology can, and does, support learning.
Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning. A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies
Using Technology in Education: Does It Improve Anything?

And depending on your definition of "sponsored by someone trying to sell stuff", you are probably unlikely to find many studies at all like that (a fact brought up by a couple of the above studies). Since most school districts cannot afford to spend money on unproven technologies, a large percentage of these studies have their devices donated or heavily subsidized by the device manufacturer. Here are some iPad specific ones, but even though some of them may have had iPads donated they still back up their research with actual test scores.

Five Studies to Prove the iPad’s Educational Worth
iPad improves Kindergartners literacy scores
Study Finds Benefits in Use of iPad as an Educational Tool
iPads Improve Classroom Learning, Study Finds
iPad a Solid Education Tool, Study Reports

http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/07/21/apple-comments-on-developer-site-hack/

I like Ballmer's strategy, I like it a lot.

Never mind if it's any good.

iPhones have almost double the customer satisfaction rate of the closest Android competition. People think they are good.

Yeah, my 3GS is eligible for iOS 6 - but there's no way I'm upgrading until Google's standalone Maps app is released.

That might be a very long wait/a.

Btw... What's wrong with opening Google Maps in Safari and pinning it to the home screen? Opening it using the icon on the home screen should get rid of Safari's chrome if Google did this right.

Just like Apple actively studied Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and tons of other designs and massively imitated them. That's how product design works.

And if one of those companies sued Apple, and produced equally compelling evidence that Apple was actively trying to copy those devices, those companies would likely receive large judgments as well. That's how intellectual property law works.

But it seems pretty unlikely. After all, Samsung and other companies were trying to copy Apple because, even though they had been in the phone market for years, Apple's designs were far more successful. Apple had far less motivation to copy these less successful companies--particularly considering that the nearly universal industry wisdom when Apple released the iPhone was that there was at most a small market for touch phones without keyboards

There is no legal requirement for designs to be original.

When other companies have trademarked and patented designs, there is indeed. That's how intellectual property law works.

Cellular phones have used the image of a telephone handset combined with the color green for over 20 years to indicate "making a call". And icons with rounded corners have been around for as long. Apple did not invent any of this and they do not deserve ownership.

Yet it was obvious to the jury that Samsung's icons were far more like Apple's than either Apple's or Samsung's icons were like the green telephone buttons on older phones, and documentation was produced demonstrating that Samsung had studied Apple's designs and tried to copy them. Moreover, the jury saw evidence that other companies's did not infringe upon Apple's designs in the same way. So it was not inadvertent overlap of universal industry practice but a deliberate pattern of copying that went far beyond that.

Of course, one company carried out the design work and the user testing to create a touch based hand-held computing device with broad consumer appeal--something that many companies (including Apple) had tried to do before and failed--and took the tremendous financial risk of introducing such a product into the marketplace in defiance of conventional wisdom .

And in return they got two to three years where they had the 'no-keyboard' smartphone market pretty much to themselves. Even after three years (back in 2010) the iPhone 4 was generally regarded as the best smartphone. It is only now five years in that the competitors have, by and large, caught up (even with the supposed "willful infringement").

I'd say Apple's investment paid off, and handsomely. They do not need any "protection".

The fact is, that this field moves so fast that having the first mover advantage is what is important. Of course competitors should not be able to just clone your product (no-one has accused Samsung of doing that). But preventing competitors from learning anything from your example is ridiculous. That is how we advance.

Of course, one company carried out the design work and the user testing to create a touch based hand-held computing device with broad consumer appeal--something that many companies (including Apple) had tried to do before and failed--and took the tremendous financial risk of introducing such a product into the marketplace in defiance of conventional wisdom . Another company was able to undersell them by making little investment in design or user-testing, and simply piggybacking on Apple's already market-tested designs.

Of course, there were other genuinely creative companies. Blackberry has continued to develop its own vision of smartphone design, which remains the favorite of a substantial minority of consumers, but the company is now on the ropes. Palm developed an innovative operating system and smartphone design, but the company ran out of money and was acquired by HP (another historically creative company) which is now also on the ropes. The woes of Palm and Blackberrry are not due to Apple--they were doing OK until the invasion of the iClones, which could undersell the products of these creative companies because they did not make the large investment needed to create and introduce a truly novel product.

...in any practical sense. You're correct that these design choices have consequences, but your interpretation, which appears to be that Apple products are actually less green because of it, is completely false.

The EPEAT requirements are dated, and Apple provides comprehensive recycling for all of its products, making the ability to disassemble them moot — do you really believe individuals, businesses, or government agencies are disassembling Apple — or any other — products themselves for recycling? Those parts of the EPEAT guidelines are designed that way so that all manufacturers' products are broadly recyclable.

BUT APPLE HAS A FREE RECYCLING PROGRAM FOR ALL OF ITS PRODUCTS, not to mention leads the industry in the amount of recyclable materials in its products. In other words, even without EPEAT, Apple is still better than other manufacturers on the environment front. Now, it's understandable that government and institutional customers would look to such a standard, because it makes things easier and has many other benefits — but Apple not being a part of EPEAT doesn't mean Apple is "less green" in a real sense.

For what it's worth, this is Apple's response.

Except that they didn't. That joke has been in there for quite awhile. Hell, the article I first read reporting the Siri issue even had a screenshot of that joke in it.

Seriously. I remember seeing the news about the Lumia being the response a few days ago, and in the same article they posted a picture with the joke response already being given by Siri. This has been built in for quite awhile. Apple didn't change anything recently.

I think Apple's of the mindset that as long as they're expecting developers to build on Macs for iPhone and iPad, as well as use Lightroom/FinalCut/etc. in production environments, there's a need for the Mac Pro.

Have you read any comments forums about Final Cut Pro X? Just a couple of days ago I read some, they almost all agreed to properly run Final Cut Pro X the current Mac Pro were lacking. On Final Cut Pro X’s professional exodus. Can Mini run Photoshop CS5 and Final Cut Pro? More: Apple’s Just A Twitch Away From Killing The Mac Pro Line Forever.

Falcon

Walled garden is the way to go.
Android users very satisfied: 47%
iPhone users very satisfied: 75%

http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/01/09/iphone-satisfaction-at-75-closest-competitor-at-47/

More to the point, there is no guarantee of a repeat next quarter, far from it.

Nothing's guaranteed. But look at the trend on Neilson's market share estimates.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/smartphone-recent.png

I think I can guess why this is happening. People on contracts generally get to change their phone every couple of years. Increasingly people are replacing a smartphone with another, rather than buying their first smartphone. And so satisfaction with their existing smartphone plays a big part of the decision. And that's bad news for everyone but Apple.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/01/09/iphone-satisfaction-at-75-closest-competitor-at-47/

"Samsung blew past Apple and Nokia in the third quarter to become the No. 1 smartphone vendor in the world, but another emerging smartphone vendor stole the top spot in the U.S. according to a new report"

As GP says, Apple's numbers are real sales. The submission summary suggests that Samsung and Nokia have beaten Apple. For a company so lambasted here as closed, it's sales numbers sure are a lot more open and transparent than this "devices shipped" canard we are hearing about Samsung and HTC.

See also, The bullshit Samsung smartphone numbers

Oh yeah Android is kicking iOS arse and now everybody is quiet about the numbers.

Um, not exactly correct. On either point.

He's not making up the 20% number...

Cook pointed to a study from market research firm NPD that pegs Apple’s current share of the US consumer retail market at 20.7 percent...

Source: Study: Mac claims 20 percent US consumer market share

Apple cant keep up with demand... http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/07/20/apple-cant-keep-up-with-iphone-4-demand/

50,000 applications vs 250,000 applications doesn't really matter. In both cases, it's enough to cover basically everything you'll need, and many applications are redundant copies of each other.

Oops! Your logic slip is showing! So, what you are saying is, the Walls of the Garden are so far away that the average user cannot see them, right? And you know what? You're right!

Android has multiple music players for it, the iPhone has just the one Apple makes.

I guess you didn't see the iOS4 Keynote, nor the iPhone 4 Keynote, where Jobs specifically mentioned Pandora (and I believe even had the CEO of onstage to DEMO). It was one of the apps he SPECIFICALLY mentioned in his introduction of iOS4 multitasking.

Android has applications with political and/or sexual content, the iPhone has practically none.

Sorry, you have blown it with your first statement about "cover(ing) basically everything you'll need." Strawman argument. Next!

Something about temporary safety over essential liberty and deserving neither comes to mind...

Which is why I pointed out (and you conveniently DIDN'T copy into your reply) that ""Liberty" on smartphones is NOT the same as "Liberty" in government. And, just so I don't get some sort of snippy retort, TRUE "Liberty" would mean that I could hunt you down and kill you for not agreeing with me. Do you really think THAT's "1337"? ". But instead, you ignored that, and the example I pointed out about a BANK SCAM APP being approved on Android Marketplace, and came back with the lame-ass "argument" that:

What part of "you can do whatever you want as long as you don't infringe on anyone else's right to do the same" don't you understand?

So, which part of a BANK SCAM APP do you think is not "infring(ing) on anyone else's right(s)"?

So, let's recap:

First, you ADMIT that the "Walled Garden" is sufficiently large that it contains "basically everything you'll need." Next, you IGNORE that Jobs DEMOed PANDORA running on iOS4. Then finally, you attempt to besmirch the hallowed memory of one of our country's Founding Fathers (Ben Franklin) by invoking his words (which I OBVIOUSLY had in mind when I clearly delineated "Liberty in Government" from "Liberty for App Stores"). THEN, you actually IGNORED an OBVIOUSLY PERFECT EXAMPLE (Bank Scam App) of just exactly WHY a "Curated" App Store is actually BETTER for the USER (name me ONE identity-theft app on the Apple App Store). Wasn't there just a /. article on "Fifth of Android Apps Expose Private Data"?

In fact, one app was SO egregious that Google felt it necessary to REACH INTO USERS' PHONES and DELETE IT!

But, that's ok, because they can apparently PUT IT (or anything they want to!) INTO YOUR PHONE as well (without your knowledge or consent. Just like the deletion).

Yeah, Android's "install any app" thing is working out JUST fine for the USER, and is SO MUCH BETTER than Apple's "Curated" approach. Riiiiight.

BTW, with an average of over SIX HUNDRED NEW apps being APPROVED EVERY SINGLE DAY (given the average 95% approval rate), just exactly WHAT is your problem?

I stated there's a point of no return. You won't see improvements after a point.

You might have stated it, but you're not Nostradamus, and you are most certainly wrong. Electronic devices always improve year on year. e.g. They've been shipping TVs since the 1930s, and they are still getting better technology. We're in the middle of upgrades to digital, HD and now full colour 3D is coming.

Just because you can't now imagine what the improvements to phone hardware will be in years and decades to come, doesn't mean they won't happen.

The hobbled OSX that Apple has implemented has serious limits. Just look at the hacked multitasking implementation as an example.

Hacked? I'm afraid you don't understand. It would be far easier for Apple simply to allow unlimited multi-tasking as Android does. The OS is perfectly capable of it - it's the exact same kernel as on Desktop OSX. And indeed it always did multitask with the built-in system apps. e.g. Music continued to play when you switched away from the iPod app.

The Apple approach of suspending background apps, and providing limited background services to them was far more work for Apple to implement. So what did they do it? Because running background apps drains battery life. Don't believe it? Even Google, the creators of Android admits it does:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/05/19/google-says-multitasking-apps-hurt-androids-battery-life/

The iPhone solution isn't a "hack". It's a way of providing 99% of the utility of full multi-tasking whilst preserving the battery life. It's a good engineering solution.

From other platforms, we know that is not a major battery drain, and it's perfectly possible for a scheduler to do automatically whatever Apple's special APIs are trying to achieve.

Um, even Google acknowledges that multitasking hurts battery life. As a geek, that's an acceptable tradeoff because you know about it. For the average consumer that can barely distinguish the difference between Li-Poly and Lipitor, all they'll know is that the battery life on their iPhone sucks and Apple is totally to blame.

With multitasking, you could run local file servers and local web servers. You could create new applications delivery platforms, local music servers, and a local file system and file manager.

With the iPhone, Apple succeeded in selling a smartphone to consumers by hiding all the complexities of a smartphone like the filesystem and a file manager. And you want to undo all of that? Maybe perhaps Apple didn't design the iPhone for geeks like you.