I have a crappy, locked down Asus 7" cheapo tablet (don't blame me - I won it in a raffle). Anyway, it's still on Ice Cream Sandwich, but I did receive an OTA update shortly after the Heartbleed news - so I do think they must've patched it.
Then again, Asus is pretty much a tier one player these days, and a patch should've been expected.
That's a really good argument against tying a browser to an Operating System. For a time, there were similar problems getting the latest Firefox version on various Linux distros. FF was tied enough to specific versions of GTK that you couldn't upgrade it until your OS upgraded all of GNOME to pick up the right GTK version. I think that problem's gone a way (mostly?) these days. Maybe FF stuck with the GNOME 2 toolkit and only has to target a frozen version of that.
It's more like they're trying to keep their options open to produce a full-featured model that's, y'know, profitable. These low-end models seem to be a way for a known brand to get their foot in the door to a very competitive segment. But they're not making tons of money on them. My pet peeve is that they don't put Kit-Kat on them, when it was specifically designed to work better than Jelly Bean on devices without a lot of memory. If it were unlockable so that you could upgrade it yourself, I might buy one. But again - they don't want these to work too well.
Does Google require that they're the default search engine on Android devices? I thought at one point Verizon was selling android devices with Bing as the default search engine. Google Play access has some strings attached, but I think an OEM can still change the launcher, etc. How about the defaults? I think Amazon and Nokia don't get Google Play because they don't want their devices to be able to run Google services - not because they simply refuse to make them the default.
Why would a lineman want even a 12" device up there on the ladder or forklift? The only justification would be to run existing windows desktop software on it - but then it's not really a tablet, is it. And they're surely not using MSOffice up there on the cherry picker, so seriously, if it hasn't been done already, the apps needed by this kind of worker should be rewritten as iOS, Android or HTML apps. And they should be accessing them on BYOD phones or company issued ruggedized smartphones, not tablets - much less glorified laptop one-size-fits-all devices like the surface.
The only problem is - the business market doesn't really need a 'laptop that's also a tablet'. Businesses may buy some as status party favors, but for the price of a surface, you can get a really nice laptop that's even better for the business user's work needs. And a cheap laptop is just about as good for those needs too. Sure, there's somebody out there that enjoys using a 12" laptop as a tablet, but for most people, the $200 7 inch tablet does tablet things better.
To tell the truth, the phablet form factor may make more sense as phone/tablet hybrid than any tablet/laptop hybrid does. The beauty of a tablet is its comfort as a 'lounging on the sofa' casual device. A phablet's a little small for some of that, but since you're already carrying around a phone, a phablet means one less device to keep charged - and one less data subscription. Unless RT succeeds, there won't be any popular Windows phablets. And even if surface becomes a businessman's status symbol, that's not enough to fill up the Windows store with enough touch apps to help RT. Those folks are using it for the desktop apps.
I think a nice solution for this would be for Adobe to donate the viewer side source to Mozilla (or some other foundation) which would be explicitly licensed to build and release binary modules for whatever OS's their browser runs on - without releasing the source. How does Adobe make money off of this thing anyway? If it's by charging the content producers for the encryption side, then Adobe really has nothing to gain from controlling the binaries for the consumption side. Mozilla could do it better, while also auditing the code for backdoors and security issues. Plus Mozilla could offer Adobe a bigger market for the bit that they're selling.
This compromise acknowledges that DRM can't work without at least some restrictions. And it's streaming video we're talking about, so the argument about "I bought it, I should be able to control it" doesn't really apply. It's being offered for you to watch one time over the web. That's not the same thing. Look - I have a DVR and haven't watched a commercial in years. That doesn't make me proud - I do it because I can. Whether I should be able to do it is a different matter. I also pay for HBO - that's what happens when you want something and don't have the option to freeload. Now if DRM'd video streams had commercials you couldn't skip, I probably wouldn't watch those videos. But I'm not so unreasonable as to claim I have any right to commercial-free video...
The Surface will bring in additional revenue compared to the iPad, because it uses Microsoft services such as Bing, Bing Maps, OneDrive, and Outlook.com email. But I'm not convinced that the additional revenue will make up for the income shortfall.
The problem is that Bing, Bing Maps, OneDrive and Outlook.com are all other Microsoft slow followers that are still in their own loss-leader phases. So far none of microsoft's mobile offerings are moneymakers. They have the resources to stay in the game for the long haul, and who knows - someday mobile will be profitable for them. But their strategy is to leverage Windows - specifially Office - to make it happen. That makes Surface expensive, if only for all the extra memory required to hold and run that stuff. And now there's Office for the iPad. Of course, one of these days there will be a real native version of Office for RT - instead of a tricked up version of the desktop app. At that point RT could possibly be made price competitive with the iPad without losing money on each unit...
The problem is that a cheap 13" laptop is a full computer too. And if you need a full computer to get your work done, the laptop does it better than a Surface Pro would for twice the bucks. Personally, I still prefer a full blown desktop for such things. And I use my phone for casual consumption tasks. I have a tablet, but for what extra benefit the bigger screen provides I find I can't be bothered even keeping the thing charged.
So yeah, there are still some people who need their work computers to be mobile. Not enough to make Surface Pro's fly off the shelves. Most people don't need their mobile devices to be desktop replacements. Even salespeople on the road will tend to only need email and a web browser. Presentations can be done with PDF's just as easily as with PowerPoint. Nobody's impressed by a flashy PP these days...
Where I work we build apps in C on top of a home-grown platform. Various project managers have let developers use C++ when they wanted to, and without fail, the C++ code is much harder to support than C code. Part of it has to do with the C-based library and its persistence model, which isn't very C++-friendly, so the C++ stuff tends to build its own concept of what an object is in this context, and it invariably adds layers of complexity to what is a pretty nice and conceptually very simple C-based app platform. It also doesn't help that the dbx debugger on the AIX platform we run doesn't handle C++ objects nicely. Essentially, it's really hard to know what C++ code in this environment is doing. And without a powerful C++ framework to take advantage of the language, the language itself is more trouble than its worth.
I've done some work in Java, and was pleasantly surprised. To me, it turns out that the nice thing about Java isn't its object orientation. It's that it doesn't count on the compiler having to know the internal structure of class objects. No.hpp files, no need to define everything twice. And garbage collection (if it really works...). I still prefer C - since I have a good sense with it of exactly what is happening at any point in my app. But when I have to use it, Java's not bad. C++ still gives me a headache.
Before AD, Microsoft started including the Exchange client with Windows, making it much easier to just use Exchange for email. And that required a Windows server. And once you have your first Windows server, well, it's just easier to go whole hog. All of which would be okay (i.e. legal), i guess, except the bit about bundling with Windows. But Windows' monopoly status hadn't been established yet.
As far as Mac's and Linux systems attaching to Windows shares. It took an antitrust action in the EU to guarantee that one. Otherwise, the Samba guys would still be reverse-engineering deliberately obtuse (and frequently changing) MS protocols.
Because, at the time, Word Perfect was a big player. This was before Microsoft began bundling in a 'free' copy of Office with Windows (i.e. OEM deals that made it nearly impossible to buy a PC that didn't 'come with' MSOffice), which is what ultimately killed WordPerfect. But making them late to the Windows 95 party didn't help either.
You can bet, that if the Microsoft antitrust findings weren't essentially dropped by the Bush justice department (after having been partially voided by a flaky accusation of judicial bias - for calling Bill Gates a liar in a magazine interview after he, you know, lied in court), they would've taken that one on appeal.
I think some of the issues had to do with the "appearance of corruption" - and even there the current court thinks millions of dollars in political contributions coupled with obvious enhanced access don't rise to the level of appearance of corruption. That leaves solid evidence of quid pro quo shennanigans, which will never be produceable. I.e., they've simply defined corruption away in order to rule the way their politics dictate. Except, of course, where their politics dictate otherwise (e.g. Bush v. Gore).
I suppose you could make Aereo's analogy to cloud storage if their business were primarily to allow you to upload content to them for streaming to your mobile devices wherever you are. That would make certain sense, and the privacy of the user to upload whatever they want should outweigh the rights of the networks to snoop on users to try to catch unauthorized uses of their copyrighted content.
But the service Aereo is selling is a 'cheap DVR in the cloud', which is a very different thing. I suppose the bit about streaming to your mobile devices adds some value, and if dropbox were to add that functionality, they'd probably pass muster. But Aereo's only source of content is broadcast signals - i.e. the broadcasters know without snooping that Aereo users are swiping their content. That ought to tilt the scales in the networks' favor.
Of course this Court isn't so good at striking a balance between two competing values. Given a choice between the Constitutional protection of (money as) speech and the democracy-unfriendly practice of influence buying, I'd have gone with the one that lines up better with the value of one person, one vote. But that's just me...
Fine, you think that. I'm not saying racial preferences are good - or even defensible. But to call the assumption, say, that Asians are better at math than other groups racism is to define away a hideous past of racism that defined black people as sub-human. Go see "12 Years a Slave". Racism in the context that it's used to justify affirmative action is not the simple assumption of racial differences. Plain and simple.
Can we please attempt to agree on a definition of 'racist'. Voting for racial preferences isn't racism just because you abhor those preferences. It's something else, and calling it racism is just the kind of false equivalence that poisons so much of our political discourse.
Racism is hatred or prejudicial negative assumptions about a person because of their race. There are other dynamics in society that reference race or ethnicity, but just because they do, that doesn't them racism. In the USA, there is no such thing as 'reverse racism' against white people. It's quite possible to hate white people without all the rest of the baggage that comes along with negative racial stereotypes as applied to black people. Calling that racism is meaningless.
I agree that the Israelis would only use the bomb as a last resort - just don't see how they could do that and still keep their strip of land. Besides, if the issue is preventing Israel's enemies from getting their own nukes, and one of the primary reasons those enemies can cite for pursuing them is "Israel has them, so why can't we", then the best way to end the middle east arms race would be for israel to give up its nukes in exchange for a US promise to retaliate against any nuclear strike against them.
Perhaps Israel didn't trust the US as an ally in the 60's, but they have no other reliable friends now - so they better start trusting us.
When you get a refund it is not a hand out from the government, it is YOUR money being returned because you paid too much
Well, that's the exact argument used by GWB to justify his tax cuts. But it's idiotic. You didn't pay too much if you (or your parents) elected successive governments that built up debts in your name. It's not YOUR money, you OWE it to the country's creditors. So rather than taxes being an immoral taking of your money, tax CUTS are an immoral shirking of your debts.
If you want a different government that spends less, elect it. And pay attention to all the things the government spends money on that you want, because that's what's likely to get cut unless you also elect a government that spends on what people want and need - not what corporations and military contractors want.
Judging from the outsourcing job that's been done on my company, the motivating philosophy behind it is that, with enough formalization of the 'process', all work is grunt work. This is horribly untrue. The Indian outsourcers that got all our software dev jobs are pretty good at process. The problem is they're really bad at actually programming. And the turnover is horrendous. Apparently they think that training developers to work on a large, complex system is also just a 'process'. Problem is, they're not very good at that one.
The problem with wearables is that they are by definition battery dependent. And if they're not low-powered enough to run for years on a battery like a traditional watch is, then the issue is going to be how useful are they vs. how much of a pain is it to remember to plug it in every day.
I have two 7" Android tablets, and I never use either of them. Sure, for some of the stuff they can do, they do it better than my Android phone. But the phone is the thing that goes on the charger every night. And for all the niceness of the bigger screen, I can't be bothered to keep the tablets charged. There's also the issue of the tablets not supporting separate user accounts, so where they might be useful as a household device for reading email, etc, I won't put my email account on it without separate lockscreen passwords. I suppose I could buy yet another tablet to get one that runs Jelly Bean, with multi-user accounts - but seriously... I'd upgrade the current ones in a minute, but the OEM won't provide an upgrade or allow it to be unlocked so I can install Cyanogenmod. So, I'll never buy another on some faith that that one would actually be used. I suppose iPad fans might chime in with how much use they get out of their pads, but I see all of the same problems there - except the upgrades, but iPads aren't multiuser either.
So, essentially, the only thing I ever used my tablets for was to watch Netflix streams - and then I got a Bluray player with Netflix built in. Netflix has moved to the TV - Big screen, no charging. I suppose I might charge a tablet up to take on a trip for reading the NYTimes online, but seriously...
Right - I'm not denying the benefit for those who use MSO and pay up. Just saying that Microsoft was waiting out the clock hoping for an MSO-fueled success of its tablets. But they must see the free competition as too compelling to wait it out - even if their fans don't. If LibreOffice had hit the iPad before MSO, it could've provided considerable incentive for users to switch to that pretty damn capable free alternative that, oh yeah, happens to 'work on all my devices'.
The thing is, people used to buy Office for use at home, because that's what they used at work, and they needed it to work from home. So they bought a copy for their home PC - or pirated a copy from work. Or, just followed the path of least resistance and paid for a copy along with their PC, which has on and off been hard not to do.
But these days, most occasional work from home is best handled by RDP'ing into your home system (or possibly taking home your company-issued laptop). In other words, if your work uses Office, you can use your work copy of the code. So, sure Office - as a de-facto standard - isn't going away. But most casual home users don't really need it. Some users might derive enough benefit to bother springing for a home copy - and the iPad version might actually be a nice option for business travelers that don't want to lug a laptop around. But, unless you are a heavy user, or computer-phobic enough to think you can't learn to use a different app, LibreOffice will serve your purposes fine - even if those purposes have to do with docs created in MSOffice.
But getting back to why iPad, why now. That bit about casual home users is key. They haven't had Office, and they haven't missed it enough to switch to Surfaces. For a while Microsoft was hoping that would be the case, but apparently they were smart enough to hedge their bets and develop an iPad version anyway. Because they must've sensed an inflection point where a sizable portion of their user base was finally realizing they were less locked in than they thought they were. Even the arguments on here about "you just don't understand how invaluable MSO is in the real world" are arguments for accepting lock-in as inevitable. So you folks making that argument might consider that Microsoft seems to understand where the industry is going better than you do.
I wonder, though. When you buy a new Android phone and sign in to Play, it downloads (or at least offers to) all the apps you had on your old phone. Does the same thing happen there - i.e. if you had apps with privileges that weren't available on your old phone, do they get automatically installed on the new phone with all the privileges - or is it treated like an update with new privileges, where you need to agree to the installation before it will install? If so, I imagine that could be changed in the Play Store without having to get an OS update out to devices currently on the shelves.
In any case, Android permissions could use to be a lot more specific (i.e., limited). "Modify or delete the contents of your USB storage" is a bit vague at best. Aren't apps given their own data folder that they can use? Does this permission grant access to all data folders, and if so, why? And 'full network access' - that could mean just about anything. Sure, it's needed for just about any app that accesses remote data, but what - if any - limits are placed by the OS once you grant it. It's pretty much to the point where you'd better only ever install very well-known apps (since just about everything asks for "modify usb storage", "view contacts" and 'full network access').
Slashdot Mirror
I have a crappy, locked down Asus 7" cheapo tablet (don't blame me - I won it in a raffle). Anyway, it's still on Ice Cream Sandwich, but I did receive an OTA update shortly after the Heartbleed news - so I do think they must've patched it.
Then again, Asus is pretty much a tier one player these days, and a patch should've been expected.
That's a really good argument against tying a browser to an Operating System. For a time, there were similar problems getting the latest Firefox version on various Linux distros. FF was tied enough to specific versions of GTK that you couldn't upgrade it until your OS upgraded all of GNOME to pick up the right GTK version. I think that problem's gone a way (mostly?) these days. Maybe FF stuck with the GNOME 2 toolkit and only has to target a frozen version of that.
It's more like they're trying to keep their options open to produce a full-featured model that's, y'know, profitable. These low-end models seem to be a way for a known brand to get their foot in the door to a very competitive segment. But they're not making tons of money on them. My pet peeve is that they don't put Kit-Kat on them, when it was specifically designed to work better than Jelly Bean on devices without a lot of memory. If it were unlockable so that you could upgrade it yourself, I might buy one. But again - they don't want these to work too well.
Steve Ballmer buys a sports team. Has this guy ever had an original idea?
Does Google require that they're the default search engine on Android devices? I thought at one point Verizon was selling android devices with Bing as the default search engine. Google Play access has some strings attached, but I think an OEM can still change the launcher, etc. How about the defaults? I think Amazon and Nokia don't get Google Play because they don't want their devices to be able to run Google services - not because they simply refuse to make them the default.
Why would a lineman want even a 12" device up there on the ladder or forklift? The only justification would be to run existing windows desktop software on it - but then it's not really a tablet, is it. And they're surely not using MSOffice up there on the cherry picker, so seriously, if it hasn't been done already, the apps needed by this kind of worker should be rewritten as iOS, Android or HTML apps. And they should be accessing them on BYOD phones or company issued ruggedized smartphones, not tablets - much less glorified laptop one-size-fits-all devices like the surface.
The only problem is - the business market doesn't really need a 'laptop that's also a tablet'. Businesses may buy some as status party favors, but for the price of a surface, you can get a really nice laptop that's even better for the business user's work needs. And a cheap laptop is just about as good for those needs too. Sure, there's somebody out there that enjoys using a 12" laptop as a tablet, but for most people, the $200 7 inch tablet does tablet things better.
To tell the truth, the phablet form factor may make more sense as phone/tablet hybrid than any tablet/laptop hybrid does. The beauty of a tablet is its comfort as a 'lounging on the sofa' casual device. A phablet's a little small for some of that, but since you're already carrying around a phone, a phablet means one less device to keep charged - and one less data subscription. Unless RT succeeds, there won't be any popular Windows phablets. And even if surface becomes a businessman's status symbol, that's not enough to fill up the Windows store with enough touch apps to help RT. Those folks are using it for the desktop apps.
I think a nice solution for this would be for Adobe to donate the viewer side source to Mozilla (or some other foundation) which would be explicitly licensed to build and release binary modules for whatever OS's their browser runs on - without releasing the source. How does Adobe make money off of this thing anyway? If it's by charging the content producers for the encryption side, then Adobe really has nothing to gain from controlling the binaries for the consumption side. Mozilla could do it better, while also auditing the code for backdoors and security issues. Plus Mozilla could offer Adobe a bigger market for the bit that they're selling.
This compromise acknowledges that DRM can't work without at least some restrictions. And it's streaming video we're talking about, so the argument about "I bought it, I should be able to control it" doesn't really apply. It's being offered for you to watch one time over the web. That's not the same thing. Look - I have a DVR and haven't watched a commercial in years. That doesn't make me proud - I do it because I can. Whether I should be able to do it is a different matter. I also pay for HBO - that's what happens when you want something and don't have the option to freeload. Now if DRM'd video streams had commercials you couldn't skip, I probably wouldn't watch those videos. But I'm not so unreasonable as to claim I have any right to commercial-free video...
From the article
The Surface will bring in additional revenue compared to the iPad, because it uses Microsoft services such as Bing, Bing Maps, OneDrive, and Outlook.com email. But I'm not convinced that the additional revenue will make up for the income shortfall.
The problem is that Bing, Bing Maps, OneDrive and Outlook.com are all other Microsoft slow followers that are still in their own loss-leader phases. So far none of microsoft's mobile offerings are moneymakers. They have the resources to stay in the game for the long haul, and who knows - someday mobile will be profitable for them. But their strategy is to leverage Windows - specifially Office - to make it happen. That makes Surface expensive, if only for all the extra memory required to hold and run that stuff. And now there's Office for the iPad. Of course, one of these days there will be a real native version of Office for RT - instead of a tricked up version of the desktop app. At that point RT could possibly be made price competitive with the iPad without losing money on each unit...
The problem is that a cheap 13" laptop is a full computer too. And if you need a full computer to get your work done, the laptop does it better than a Surface Pro would for twice the bucks. Personally, I still prefer a full blown desktop for such things. And I use my phone for casual consumption tasks. I have a tablet, but for what extra benefit the bigger screen provides I find I can't be bothered even keeping the thing charged.
So yeah, there are still some people who need their work computers to be mobile. Not enough to make Surface Pro's fly off the shelves. Most people don't need their mobile devices to be desktop replacements. Even salespeople on the road will tend to only need email and a web browser. Presentations can be done with PDF's just as easily as with PowerPoint. Nobody's impressed by a flashy PP these days...
Where I work we build apps in C on top of a home-grown platform. Various project managers have let developers use C++ when they wanted to, and without fail, the C++ code is much harder to support than C code. Part of it has to do with the C-based library and its persistence model, which isn't very C++-friendly, so the C++ stuff tends to build its own concept of what an object is in this context, and it invariably adds layers of complexity to what is a pretty nice and conceptually very simple C-based app platform. It also doesn't help that the dbx debugger on the AIX platform we run doesn't handle C++ objects nicely. Essentially, it's really hard to know what C++ code in this environment is doing. And without a powerful C++ framework to take advantage of the language, the language itself is more trouble than its worth.
I've done some work in Java, and was pleasantly surprised. To me, it turns out that the nice thing about Java isn't its object orientation. It's that it doesn't count on the compiler having to know the internal structure of class objects. No .hpp files, no need to define everything twice. And garbage collection (if it really works...). I still prefer C - since I have a good sense with it of exactly what is happening at any point in my app. But when I have to use it, Java's not bad. C++ still gives me a headache.
Before AD, Microsoft started including the Exchange client with Windows, making it much easier to just use Exchange for email. And that required a Windows server. And once you have your first Windows server, well, it's just easier to go whole hog. All of which would be okay (i.e. legal), i guess, except the bit about bundling with Windows. But Windows' monopoly status hadn't been established yet.
As far as Mac's and Linux systems attaching to Windows shares. It took an antitrust action in the EU to guarantee that one. Otherwise, the Samba guys would still be reverse-engineering deliberately obtuse (and frequently changing) MS protocols.
Because, at the time, Word Perfect was a big player. This was before Microsoft began bundling in a 'free' copy of Office with Windows (i.e. OEM deals that made it nearly impossible to buy a PC that didn't 'come with' MSOffice), which is what ultimately killed WordPerfect. But making them late to the Windows 95 party didn't help either.
You can bet, that if the Microsoft antitrust findings weren't essentially dropped by the Bush justice department (after having been partially voided by a flaky accusation of judicial bias - for calling Bill Gates a liar in a magazine interview after he, you know, lied in court), they would've taken that one on appeal.
I think some of the issues had to do with the "appearance of corruption" - and even there the current court thinks millions of dollars in political contributions coupled with obvious enhanced access don't rise to the level of appearance of corruption. That leaves solid evidence of quid pro quo shennanigans, which will never be produceable. I.e., they've simply defined corruption away in order to rule the way their politics dictate. Except, of course, where their politics dictate otherwise (e.g. Bush v. Gore).
I suppose you could make Aereo's analogy to cloud storage if their business were primarily to allow you to upload content to them for streaming to your mobile devices wherever you are. That would make certain sense, and the privacy of the user to upload whatever they want should outweigh the rights of the networks to snoop on users to try to catch unauthorized uses of their copyrighted content.
But the service Aereo is selling is a 'cheap DVR in the cloud', which is a very different thing. I suppose the bit about streaming to your mobile devices adds some value, and if dropbox were to add that functionality, they'd probably pass muster. But Aereo's only source of content is broadcast signals - i.e. the broadcasters know without snooping that Aereo users are swiping their content. That ought to tilt the scales in the networks' favor.
Of course this Court isn't so good at striking a balance between two competing values. Given a choice between the Constitutional protection of (money as) speech and the democracy-unfriendly practice of influence buying, I'd have gone with the one that lines up better with the value of one person, one vote. But that's just me...
Fine, you think that. I'm not saying racial preferences are good - or even defensible. But to call the assumption, say, that Asians are better at math than other groups racism is to define away a hideous past of racism that defined black people as sub-human. Go see "12 Years a Slave". Racism in the context that it's used to justify affirmative action is not the simple assumption of racial differences. Plain and simple.
Can we please attempt to agree on a definition of 'racist'. Voting for racial preferences isn't racism just because you abhor those preferences. It's something else, and calling it racism is just the kind of false equivalence that poisons so much of our political discourse.
Racism is hatred or prejudicial negative assumptions about a person because of their race. There are other dynamics in society that reference race or ethnicity, but just because they do, that doesn't them racism. In the USA, there is no such thing as 'reverse racism' against white people. It's quite possible to hate white people without all the rest of the baggage that comes along with negative racial stereotypes as applied to black people. Calling that racism is meaningless.
I agree that the Israelis would only use the bomb as a last resort - just don't see how they could do that and still keep their strip of land. Besides, if the issue is preventing Israel's enemies from getting their own nukes, and one of the primary reasons those enemies can cite for pursuing them is "Israel has them, so why can't we", then the best way to end the middle east arms race would be for israel to give up its nukes in exchange for a US promise to retaliate against any nuclear strike against them.
Perhaps Israel didn't trust the US as an ally in the 60's, but they have no other reliable friends now - so they better start trusting us.
When you get a refund it is not a hand out from the government, it is YOUR money being returned because you paid too much
Well, that's the exact argument used by GWB to justify his tax cuts. But it's idiotic. You didn't pay too much if you (or your parents) elected successive governments that built up debts in your name. It's not YOUR money, you OWE it to the country's creditors. So rather than taxes being an immoral taking of your money, tax CUTS are an immoral shirking of your debts.
If you want a different government that spends less, elect it. And pay attention to all the things the government spends money on that you want, because that's what's likely to get cut unless you also elect a government that spends on what people want and need - not what corporations and military contractors want.
Judging from the outsourcing job that's been done on my company, the motivating philosophy behind it is that, with enough formalization of the 'process', all work is grunt work. This is horribly untrue. The Indian outsourcers that got all our software dev jobs are pretty good at process. The problem is they're really bad at actually programming. And the turnover is horrendous. Apparently they think that training developers to work on a large, complex system is also just a 'process'. Problem is, they're not very good at that one.
The problem with wearables is that they are by definition battery dependent. And if they're not low-powered enough to run for years on a battery like a traditional watch is, then the issue is going to be how useful are they vs. how much of a pain is it to remember to plug it in every day.
I have two 7" Android tablets, and I never use either of them. Sure, for some of the stuff they can do, they do it better than my Android phone. But the phone is the thing that goes on the charger every night. And for all the niceness of the bigger screen, I can't be bothered to keep the tablets charged. There's also the issue of the tablets not supporting separate user accounts, so where they might be useful as a household device for reading email, etc, I won't put my email account on it without separate lockscreen passwords. I suppose I could buy yet another tablet to get one that runs Jelly Bean, with multi-user accounts - but seriously... I'd upgrade the current ones in a minute, but the OEM won't provide an upgrade or allow it to be unlocked so I can install Cyanogenmod. So, I'll never buy another on some faith that that one would actually be used. I suppose iPad fans might chime in with how much use they get out of their pads, but I see all of the same problems there - except the upgrades, but iPads aren't multiuser either.
So, essentially, the only thing I ever used my tablets for was to watch Netflix streams - and then I got a Bluray player with Netflix built in. Netflix has moved to the TV - Big screen, no charging. I suppose I might charge a tablet up to take on a trip for reading the NYTimes online, but seriously...
Right - I'm not denying the benefit for those who use MSO and pay up. Just saying that Microsoft was waiting out the clock hoping for an MSO-fueled success of its tablets. But they must see the free competition as too compelling to wait it out - even if their fans don't. If LibreOffice had hit the iPad before MSO, it could've provided considerable incentive for users to switch to that pretty damn capable free alternative that, oh yeah, happens to 'work on all my devices'.
The thing is, people used to buy Office for use at home, because that's what they used at work, and they needed it to work from home. So they bought a copy for their home PC - or pirated a copy from work. Or, just followed the path of least resistance and paid for a copy along with their PC, which has on and off been hard not to do.
But these days, most occasional work from home is best handled by RDP'ing into your home system (or possibly taking home your company-issued laptop). In other words, if your work uses Office, you can use your work copy of the code. So, sure Office - as a de-facto standard - isn't going away. But most casual home users don't really need it. Some users might derive enough benefit to bother springing for a home copy - and the iPad version might actually be a nice option for business travelers that don't want to lug a laptop around. But, unless you are a heavy user, or computer-phobic enough to think you can't learn to use a different app, LibreOffice will serve your purposes fine - even if those purposes have to do with docs created in MSOffice.
But getting back to why iPad, why now. That bit about casual home users is key. They haven't had Office, and they haven't missed it enough to switch to Surfaces. For a while Microsoft was hoping that would be the case, but apparently they were smart enough to hedge their bets and develop an iPad version anyway. Because they must've sensed an inflection point where a sizable portion of their user base was finally realizing they were less locked in than they thought they were. Even the arguments on here about "you just don't understand how invaluable MSO is in the real world" are arguments for accepting lock-in as inevitable. So you folks making that argument might consider that Microsoft seems to understand where the industry is going better than you do.
I wonder, though. When you buy a new Android phone and sign in to Play, it downloads (or at least offers to) all the apps you had on your old phone. Does the same thing happen there - i.e. if you had apps with privileges that weren't available on your old phone, do they get automatically installed on the new phone with all the privileges - or is it treated like an update with new privileges, where you need to agree to the installation before it will install? If so, I imagine that could be changed in the Play Store without having to get an OS update out to devices currently on the shelves.
In any case, Android permissions could use to be a lot more specific (i.e., limited). "Modify or delete the contents of your USB storage" is a bit vague at best. Aren't apps given their own data folder that they can use? Does this permission grant access to all data folders, and if so, why? And 'full network access' - that could mean just about anything. Sure, it's needed for just about any app that accesses remote data, but what - if any - limits are placed by the OS once you grant it. It's pretty much to the point where you'd better only ever install very well-known apps (since just about everything asks for "modify usb storage", "view contacts" and 'full network access').