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Did your linked page originally came from realitydistortionfield.com?

The LG Prada phone was winning design awards months before the Iphone was first announced. Note that this article on the Prada phone is dated before the Iphone was first announced: http://mobile.engadget.com/2006/12/15/the-lg-ke850-touchable-chocolate/

Likewise, the Ipad closely resembles prior tablets. Here's the Crunchpad prototype from six months before the Ipad was first announced: http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch-prototype/

Here's the Knight-Ridder concept tablet from 1994 (16 years before the Ipad was first announced): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBEtPQDQNcI&feature=player_embedded#at=139

Sorry fanboys.

The netbook, which was on the same boat few years ago, is now, obtainable around $200 price point, which gives you at least twice the CPU power in most cases, a full keyboard, multiple expansion ports, more memory and storage space, alas, no touch screen.

Not everyone is like you, not everyone has your preferences, and not everyone thinks like you.

If all you're doing are web surfing, email/chat/IM, and basic games -- which is what the majority of consumers do -- a tablet is functionally better than a netbook (let's see how many people pay attention to that word, as I'm arguing about tablets vs netbooks, and not tablets vs tablets):

* No 2-3 second waiting for a resume. A tablet's responsiveness is generally very snappy compared to the netbook.

* For the unwashed masses, the use model (a finger) is more natural than the traditional keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

* The form-factor is more convenient. You can easily hold a tablet with one hand and control it with the other. Holding a netbook with one hand and typing with the other is just awkward (not to mention that you've got to unfold it first and maybe hit the power button if you have a model that doesn't automatically turn on when opened).

* Polishing touches such as smart covers. Seriously, to anyone who hasn't used an iPad, smart covers may seem like "total meh", but it's actually a genius-level polishing touch: stuff automatically turns on when you take it out, and stuff automatically turns off when you put it away. You don't have to hit a power button.

* Consumers (not the people on /.) generally care about what you can do with a product, and care less about specs.

You may not care about the above points, and may think that I'm crazy (and maybe rightfully so :), but, for most consumers, a tablet's "experience" (yes, I hate that word) really is better than a netbook's.

Yes, tablets don't work well for some things. They're not great at writing long documents, although wireless bluetooth keyboards help, and they downright suck at software development. However, for the majority of what consumers generally want to do, they do it well. And, the market is proving that, for better or worse, consumers are willing to pay iPad prices. Tablet manufacturers do well, netbook manufacturers not so much.

I have a netbook and a tablet, and my netbook has pretty much sat unused since I got the tablet (my old Asus eee 1005ha runs like a dog compared to the tablet). And, while I don't agree with everything, here's an opinion on the changing PC/tablet landscape.

Right now, I think only Amazon's upcoming tablet has a chance of hurting iPad sales, even though it's not really meant to be a competitor. Amazon is probably the only one with the ecosystem that can compete.

No - try reading the first letter of each line of the GP post - It's a Schwarzenegger Letter.

Batteries do have an expiry date and Apple charges a quite bit more than $20 for a new battery, which means that you are not most people. Most people will either pay the (what I consider to be gouging) price for a new battery or decide to upgrade. Planned obsolescence is by no means a new concept, but Apple has certainly embraced it

http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/

It's really very unfair. Here we were, just defending our rightful monopoly over all things rectangular with screens on the front, and these uppity bastards with their "patents" on "foundational RF technologies" that they supposedly "invented" are getting all touchy about it. WTF?

Problem with your thinking is....no tablet looked anything remotely like the ipad until the ipad came out. Look at the picture at the bottom of the link to see the blatant copying Samsung did. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/30/apple_accuses_motorola_samsung_of_monopolizing_markets_with_patents.html

http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch-prototype/

http://lawpundit.blogspot.com/2011/08/samsung-digital-picture-frame-2006-is.html

"I'm guessing that's because of lack of resources."

That sounds to many people like a reasonable guess, but it is incorrect. See this story: Mozilla Extends Lucrative Deal With Google For 3 Years.

Mozilla Foundation's audited financial statement from 2009: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2009-audited-financial-statement.pdf

Yup, SuperPoke is on its way out. And the Pokers are piiiiiiiiiiissed.

Microsoft tried Xbox Live cros platform play with Windows Live ...

* http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/21/did-microsoft-kill-xbox-livewindows-live-cross-platform-play-because-console-gamers-were-too-bad/
* http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/numb-thumbs-blog/1724432/console-gamers-pwned-pc-peers

Actually, its well known the primary reason its slow is that its written in Ruby - or at least it used to be.

I can't speak for Acer tablets, but their Android phones are absolute crap. I had an Acer Liquid E (S-100) - if that had been my only Android experience I would have never even looked at the platform again. Fortunately, after 3 of my Acer Liquid E phones died prematurely, I managed to convince my carrier to forward date my hardware upgrade eligibility and got a Samsung Galaxy S. I couldn't be happier and I much prefer it to my wife's iPhone4. Based on my smart phone experience if I were looking for a tablet I would look at the Galaxy series.

Motorola, on the other hand, has made some fantastic smart phones... and Google just bought them.

I've also had Acer monitors - also crap. I've never bought an Acer laptop, but I've had 4 or 5 generations of Dell Latitudes (the Inspiron series is not so good) and will by another when my Studio XPS finally dies. Let's face it, there is a reason Acer products are cheaper - they're garbage.

I've worked on many an Acer laptop in the past few years - they appear to have a warranty timer in them. Probably >60% of the users who have brought me a dead Acer laptop have stated that their warranty ran out 30-90 days prior to the machine failing to do simple tasks (like turning on).

Hurrah for the great idea, but anything that shuts down software patents would cripple the economy.

Here, read this.

Google gets hit with a few patent lawsuits over Android, so it responds with the $12.5B buyout of Motorola Mobility. And everyone knows why they did it. Patents. They have to make a proactive move to protect Android. So, how much of that value is in their patent portfolio? Now imagine that value suddenly going *poof* in a puff of logic. Now multiply that across every software company you know.

The effect would be devastating.

I wish it were possible, but I just don't think anything is going to come along and just suddenly devalue software patents. Too much value is tied up there to simply vanish.

All these silly things are keeping Android from being a serious competitor to the iPhone

What world do you live in?

Techcrunch

Wired

Tested

NetworkWorld

I kind of agree. Maybe the next step for Nintendo and Sony should either be: 1) Open the platform for indie development and offer an online store where people can submit games (similar to Xbox live games)

Agreed. Apple has actually made a mistake in one department: the latest generation iPod Touch only has 256mb RAM compared to the iPhone 4's 512mb RAM. This makes many games that are compatible with the iPhone 4 not compatible with the latest iPod Touch. Most parents won't buy their children iPhones due to the expensive monthly data plans but a ~$200 iPod Touch is no problem, but since they can't play the latest games it's no good. Why Apple did this is beyond me but it locks out many potential buyers.

But you're right about one thing: any gaming device, console or portable, better have a well-stocked app store if they want to survive. They better beg, borrow or steal to get developers to make thousands of games if they want to compete with Apple. Apple's App Store might not have the best quality games or the latest 3D hardware but they have millions of paying customers and those millions of customers translate into millions of dollars for developers. Raise your hand if you want millions of dollars. I thought so, so what does Nintendo have? Do they have millions of customers using their Wii Shop Channel? Where's the Wii Shop Channel millionaires? There's plenty of App Store millionaires, and that's what draws developers. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft need to turn average joe game programmers into millionaires in a hurry if they want to survive against Apple. Honestly, I think they're SOL. App Store has been around for 3 years and in that time Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft just looked at it with a blank stare while their sales have suffered while Apple gathered 200 million iOS users downloading over 15 billion apps and paying developers $2.5 billion dollars. How many more years are they gonna wait? Really disappointed, it's like they saw the tidal wave coming and they sat in shock rather than move out of the way.

Why does Mozilla keep treating Firefox like it's something they need to apologize for? Firefox has the best add-ons out there, hands down. And it's been around for years. Why are they acting like Chrome and others are setting the standards now? Why do they act like they're in some kind of pissing contest with Google? Google is the one with something to prove here, not Mozilla.

Maybe because 85% of Mozilla's funding comes from Google.

The claims of Hitwise don't explain why I keep finding things like Microsoft service pack download pages better through google than through bing.

That's because unlike Google, Bing doesn't favor its own services over others.

Since when does Google have a service to download Microsoft service packs?

There are also differences in algorithms. Bing doesn't count so called junk-links while Google does. Bing prefers link inside good, relevant content. Google, on the other hand, counts all kinds of links.

Google also filters on link farms. Of course their filtering isn't perfect, but it would surprise me a lot if Microsoft had discovered the magic algorithm to get rid of all "search engine optimization" gaming, and it's simply wrong to say that Google "counts all kinds of links".

Judging by the usual slashdot response of "but they should just improve their algorithms", people don't seem to get how immersively complex current search engines and their algorithms are.

One of my main issues with bing has nothing to do with complex search algorithms. Just search for e.g. shoes. The first page of results already contains two sets of duplicate results in my case: www.shoes.com and www.shoes.com/womens (sic, it actually stands for "women's"), and www.shoes.be and www.shoes.be/schoenwinkels.asp?l=k.

I get this with virtually every search term I've ever tried on Bing, which means that there are much less individually useful results than on Google (which will group all similar results from the same domain and then let you move on).

PS: yes, this is the first time in my life I've searched for the term "shoes" on the Internet

That article says they can't bring FarmVille and CityVille to Google+ because of deals with Facebook, but it does link to another interesting article - Google investing $100-200 million to Zynga. So much for the another usual slashdot argument about Google just providing neutral platform for others to use - it's a highly strategic game, such that every other huge company in the industry plays as well.

Zynga's already on board. Maybe they thought that placing the FarmVille icon will make them seem too much like Facebook? I mean they really are creating carbon copies of the features they're adding. If you added Zynga to the announcement post it'd just read "Step 17 of the 'Google+ == Facebook' project".

They should just give up the pretense, though. I'd respect them a lot more if they said -- "Look, Facebook is popular and they're making a ton of money. We didn't invent the search engine, and we didn't invent online advertising. We just made them better, and that's what we're going to do with the social network".

And what do I do when my buggy rural network connection keeps dropping on me, probably getting me killed, possibly getting my items lost?

well, there are other games to play for times like that.

Obama saving us money? Your kidding right? I have faith he is just getting rid of them so he can rent them off of someone else at a higher price. Or maybe he got in with Amazon to scale up as need with cloud services kind of like what United Kingdom is up to http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/uk-government-now-using-huddles-platform-for-top-secret-documents/. Or the fact that Hillary Clinton is shipping US datacenter jobs off to Inda so we don't need a lot of computing power over here. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/india-and-us-to-work-together-on-datagov-and-against-cyber-crime/633 So we will never know.

They did it, oh, almost 50 years ago?

Mozilla, the organization behind the popular Firefox web browser, has extended its search deal with Google for another three years. In return for setting Google as the default search engine on Firefox, Google pays Mozilla a substantial sum – in 2006 the total amounted to around $57 million, or 85% of the company’s total revenue . The deal was originally going to expire in 2006, but was later extended to 2008 and will now run through 2011.

http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/

To quote, "Seemingly sick of being continuously slapped in the face by the patent issue, Google’s SVP and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, wrote a blog post calling out several of Google’s rivals for attempting to use “bogus patents” to destroy Android. Chief among the rivals called out was Microsoft. Drummond noted that the software giant had been getting in bed with other rivals to hurt Google.

Among the accusations was that Microsoft teamed up with Apple to buy Novell’s old patents, implying that they did so in order to keep them away from Google.

Microsoft didn’t take too kindly to that remark. “Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no,” Brad Smith, Microsoft General Counsel tweeted out in response."

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/03/microsoft-just-kicked-google-in-the-nuts/

If I disclose my real identity complete with full name and postal address:
- it will not improve the quality of my posts; facebook is a perfect example on non-anonymous people incapable, on average, to produce any useful content

TechCrunch would beg to differ with your assertion:

Simply put: with the previous system, roughly half of the comments were more or less useless.

With the Facebook system, the most popular posts are only touching around 100 or so comments (obviously, the ones about the commenting system have more). But of those 50 to 100 comments, many of them are actually coherent thoughts in response to the post itself â" you know, what a comment is supposed to be.

Take a look at the comment section of Engadget to see how anonymous commenting can cause chaos to discussions.

That is not a business decision, that's an admission they cannot compete.

Because Sumsung's Android gear has been selling so well they've decided to no longer report the numbers, to ...um... not make anyone jealous. You can see why Apple might be shaking in their boots.

Could you have found a more biased site. They readily admit they are paid by Apple. Besides that proves nothing. If Apple isn't scared, why are they trying to get the courts to prevent Samsung from selling a much demanded competing product. Sorry if this shatters your fanboyish delusions.

That is not a business decision, that's an admission they cannot compete.

Because Sumsung's Android gear has been selling so well they've decided to no longer report the numbers, to ...um... not make anyone jealous. You can see why Apple might be shaking in their boots.

How about you drop the extra "wifi-router sized boxes" and do microlocation with actual wifi routers and pre-existing security camera feeds?

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/01/diablo-3-drm-requires-constant-internet-connection-until-you-crack-it-of-course/

and the 1up interview:>

http://www.1up.com/news/diablo-3-requires-online-when-playing

be sure to scroll down for the new internet meme, it has been a while since i had a good lol

Meh Blizzard now. I used to love d1 and d2, but.. well, I got older and I don't feel like bending over just because Pardo wants me to. I want a date and a hug and kiss in the morning. Sheeeeet...

I've thrown all the feeds from each of these sites into Google Reader. In no particular order:

wired.com
slashdot.org
spectrum.ieee.org
scientistscanvas.com
arxiv.org
techcrunch.com
techdirt.com
news.discovery.com
physicsworld.com
newscientist.com
physorg.com
nationalgeographic.com
scienceblog.com

I have plenty more. Any RSS feeder app works. You get some repeats but there's a constant stream of science news.

"Its not. It costs $6 just to rent a single movie and their free movies are lame. "

VUDU is the same. You can only rent movies to stream, unlike netflix where you pay once a month for all-you-can-eat. And VUDU has been around for 4 years. Yes, FOUR, and it hasn't gone mainstream yet, while Netflix is everywhere.

And VUDU wants 99 cents to $5.99. Come on, $5.99 is about what I pay Netflix for the month, and you want me to give you that for just one movie? No thanks, not when I have redbox down the street with $1 DVDs and $2 games.

I worked in Bing for a several years as an SDE until leaving recently. The Online Services Division in which Bing resides is losing money at an alarming rate. In the last fiscal year ending June 2011, OSD lost $2.5 billion.

Why is Microsoft in this space? I heard it from Bill Gates himself at a team function last year. If Microsoft does not put up a fight in online search, Google will continue to encroach on Microsoft's cashcows, Windows and Office, with their product offerings. I don't think anyone in Microsoft really is driven to make an honest-to-goodness better search experience; Bing is just Microsoft's 70%-Achieved beachhead in online search just to keep Google honest.

Oh really?

Samsung didn’t give any figures, but when a company describes sales of a flagship product as “quite small,” you better believe those sales are microscopic.

As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.

This was back when people were touting the "2 million Galaxy Tabs" sold when in fact that was just the shipped figure and then Samsung is saying the sales were "quite small". Yes, that would lead very much to believe that it is "dramatically less". Otherwise, if the sales were so great why don't they quote the actual sales numbers rather than the shipped numbers? Businesses do this to hide the fact that actual sales suck.

This would be true, except that later that day (or perhaps the next day) a redaction was submitted, saying he was misunderstood. What he really said was "quite smooth".

How about Samsung's own statements about the Galaxy S just a couple of months ago:

As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.

"Sell-out" means actual sales to consumers. So why should anyone believe that Samsung or any of these other tablet markers are doing anything different now than Samsung was back in January when it was trying to inflate their "quite small" sales by using the shipped figures instead? Oh right, Motorola and RIM also had to have their actual sales figures dropped as well after pulling the same tactic.

Oh really?

Samsung didn’t give any figures, but when a company describes sales of a flagship product as “quite small,” you better believe those sales are microscopic.

As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.

This was back when people were touting the "2 million Galaxy Tabs" sold when in fact that was just the shipped figure and then Samsung is saying the sales were "quite small". Yes, that would lead very much to believe that it is "dramatically less". Otherwise, if the sales were so great why don't they quote the actual sales numbers rather than the shipped numbers? Businesses do this to hide the fact that actual sales suck.

Yeah, like this.

It's Apple's own fault, really. They should just get a license for Nintendium - it probably would have ended up working better after the fall. (And for those of you too lazy to click the article, it's of a Nintendo Gameboy that was hit by an explosive shell in the Gulf War and still works.

The difference between the Kobo and the Nook/Kindle is that Borders partnered with Kobo whereas B&N/Amazon developed their own ereaders. From what I can tell, the Kobo is still going to be alive even if Borders turns to dust. Here's a nifty little article: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/18/borders-may-be-dead-but-e-reader-kobo-is-still-alive-and-kicking/

Bullshit. There isn't a single example of Apple doing this. On the other hand, Apple, unlike SCO, has actually invented quite a lot over the years, and protects their inventions.

How about this one?

And this is Apple "suing HTC into oblivion", with "patent claims more ridiculous than SCO"? HTC will survive this, two of the patents have been ruled as being violated, and these are inventions that Apple actually did invent and use, not just SCO-like patent trolling.

What you are basically saying is that technology patents should not exist, or perhaps just that Apple shouldn't be able to have any, or Android should be granted unlimited, royalty-free licenses to any patents they need (from Apple, perhaps, but not Microsoft?), or something along those lines.

One of those patents dates back to the Newton, where it's pretty much impossible to argue Apple didn't invent something without needing a pair of strong, Slashdot-strength, anti-Apple, fanboy goggles.

Bullshit. There isn't a single example of Apple doing this. On the other hand, Apple, unlike SCO, has actually invented quite a lot over the years, and protects their inventions.

How about this one?

(1) Twitter.com is the biggest single client for interaction with Twitter: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/15/report-use-of-third-party-twitter-clients-dwindles-to-42-percent/

(2) It's not a "wall" in the sense that TFS/TFA makes it out to be, it's just a quick way to do an @reply to the user whose profile you're looking at. Many Twitter clients already have a "reply to this user" button to achieve the same thing.

HP has the same problem as Nokia and RIM. Company execs aren't putting enough resources into their new OS's to get things moving.

Nokia had a good thing started with Maemo/Meego. Just look at the recent N950, N9 reviews by Engadget and others (
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/21/nokia-n9-first-hands-on/ ; http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30/nokias-n950-demos-meego-harmattan-in-marathon-video/ ). A great start/ideas, but they didn't put enough of their not insubstantial resources behind it to get it developed quickly. They gave developers a mixed message, which had a lot of them sitting back waiting to see if there was going to be full commitment by the company before joining in.
Result, the new OS floundered from lack of backing, and they ended up turning to Microsoft.

RIM had been giving the developers the same mixed message about where they are headed. QNX could be an awesome phone OS. Frankly, I'm not sure why someone wasn't putting it on phones years ago. Will it succeed? If it does, it will be despite the big brass's ambivalent attitude.

And now we have HP, which bought a great little OS in WebOS from Palm, that just didn't have the money to dig themselves out of the hole they let themselves get into.

HP's administration said they were going to "double down on WebOS." Their new CEO says they are going to "be cooler than apple". He's also said they were going to avoid the same mistakes made in the past and that they would now "ship products within weeks of announcement"".

HP keeps claiming they have 'incredible scale' and vast resources to make WebOS a success. But since the purchase of Palm, they haven't put their money where their mouth is.

What have they done with those vast resources?

They let the bulk of the creative talent from Palm, the folks who had all the great ideas that make WebOS the induitive OS that it is, leave to go to Apple, Google, or anywhere but HP.

They've put out the Veer, which is basically a smaller version of the original pre, with slightly upgraded hardware.

They have essentially converted a tablet that they were originally going to have run a MS OS. Their Touchpad is bulkier, heavier, and has slower hardware than the competition. And the OS is laggy.

The 'Cool thing' about the Touchpad was that it is supposed to synch with their(new) phones, (Veer, and Pre3). The veer is selling terribly because it's too tiny for a smartphone.

And the Pre3? The Pre3 was announced in February. It's going to ship (in the U.S.) in the Fall. With specs that are way outclassed by phones already released with Android, and facing a likely new iPhone in the fall, as well as some insanely better hardware in the Galaxy S2.

Not much to show for HPs vaunted vast resources.

And then there's customer service...

Original Pre owners were strung along for many months by HP, who told them their Pre phones would be upgraded to WebOS version 2.x and finally get FLASH, that was promised to them 2 years ago when the phone first went on sale. Then at the last minute, folks found out (via twitter, not even a real press release) that that wasn't going to happen.

Then they said they'd do something to 'make things right' to the WebOS users. What did they do finally? Their marketing guys attempted to upsell those folks by giving them a $50 coupon for the touchpad. But only if they got the high end 32MB version. And only if they did it within 30 days of the notice.

Not timely, not cool HP.

I'm afraid WebOS is fated to go the way of BeOS. O

Didn't the guy who setup PayPal say the same basic thing about colleges and universities? “If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?” Peter Thiel - http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/ I agree with many that GenEd classes are not necessary. I went to a small college almost ten years ago for web design, which was pretty useless at that time. I was told that I wouldn't have to take and GenEd classes. I ended up dropping out of that school when I lost my grant after failing a couple of GenEd classes.

In response to the report MG Siegler from Tech Crunch says that Apple TV is simply "not happening". See: http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/21/the-apple-branded-cake-is-a-lie/

This is one of a series of "Facebook-taking-on-X" trial balloons, where X is a well-known, highly-capitalized company with a real business model. The last wave had X = Google, which made no sense at all because Google's search rocks, while Facebook can barely tie its shoes with its own search (try searching comments on your own Wall if you don't believe me).

The legions of Cloud fanboys will be all over this, because Facebook can't really create apps in the same way that the iTunes store can, so of course it means transient operation. (Ignore slow download times and bad performance because everything has to run on a scripting engine.) Techcrunch isn't much on actual analysis, but they sure do a great job as a press release outlet.

You are exactly right from an economics standpoint. However, potential engineers aren't becoming doctor's and lawyers (they make chump change!). Potential engineers are going to work on Wall Street, where they make millions.

Every few years I read one of these stories and get angry. Either the people in control have no understanding of economics, or they are trying to drive down the salaries of engineers. I'm beginning to think they want to reduce the salaries for engineers, so the big wigs on Wall Street can make more money for themselves. I'm sick of it!

The time has come for the engineers of the world to unite. People in the engineering world will form a society. I propose we call it The John Galt Society. One day, all of the engineers of the world will call a general strike, and bring the world to a halt!

Techcrunch is one of them.

Meanwhile, Apple is in the middle of a giant lawsuit against Samsung for it's mobile phone division, which is starting to seriously make a run for crown of the Android market, and is eating away at Apple's business.

Apple:

1. Generates more revenue than any other company in the world selling cell phones (yes they generate more revenue than Nokia)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20056289-248.html

2. Has 50% of the worldwide profit in cell phones compared to 13% for all Android manufacturers combined:

http://www.asymco.com/2011/05/16/iphone-share-of-phone-market-in-q1/

3. The iOS app market is more than 17x bigger than Android's by revenue:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/

Android from a business perspective isn't really doing that great.....

And Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes from.

Citation most definitely needed for this. The majority of their revenue may be coming from iOS devices, but it is the *device sales,* not the *app store,* that is accounting for the vast majority of their revenue.

10 billion plus apps downloaded. 200 million iOS devices sold to date. That's roughly 50 apps per device. Some year-old numbers suggest that 75% of the apps in the app store are paid apps - so let's assume that 38 of the 50 apps per device are also paid apps. Again from last year, average price of a paid app was $3.63.

So the "average" iOS device, with 38 paid apps, has generated 137.94 in app store revenue. Apple keeps 30% of that, for a cool $41.40 per iOS device, or 8.3 billion in revenues from every app sold since the app store was opened.

Last year, Apple had 65.2 billion in revenue.

Please show your math that leads you to conclude that the app store is the "major source" of Apple's revenues?

There were Android prototypes predating the iPhone announcement, like the HTC Omni and this rather suggestive keyboard candybar (doesn't look like an iPhone to me). Remember, Android was a company that had been developing their software for years before Google bought it.

I was looking over the comments to see if anyone was aware of this.

You're going to "shun" AMD products because they now have R&D facilities in Israel? If you avoided every product developed in Israel, you'd have almost nothing to "compute" with. It's not just semiconductor companies either -- Microsoft and Google have large setups in Israel as well. Facebook bought Snaptu a few months ago.

The Israeli economy is built around the tech sector.
Oh, and I'm Israeli, so don't forget to post some charming apartheid reply to this comment.