Saying a tablet isn't a full blown computer is not forward thinking. That's like saying 10yrs ago, you're crazy for wanting to use email on your phone, a cell phone has a niche and this is what it does - accept it. Apple loves this kind of thinking.
What's 10 years from now got to do with anything? If 10 years from now tablets will be running a full-blown desktop OS (they won't), that doesn't mean they should be doing so now.
but really, a lightweight portable device that runs a similar platform to whatever I sit in front of at work and that has as few limitations as possible will clearly dominate the market at some point.
That's not clear at all. An OS designed for a large screen with a mouse and keyboard doesn't make sense for use on a small multitouch device. Additionally, what you mean by "as few limitations as possible" is not relevant to most people. I assume you mean the type of limitations that the iPad has (primarily, the app store). Those "limitations" to you are not limitations for most people. On the contrary, the App Store is more enabling for most people than the Android-style solution.
What matters much more than if your portable unit runs the same OS and the same exact apps as your desktop is if your portable device has apps available to do the things people want to do away from home. With the iPhone and iPad, the answer is clearly "yes" for the vast majority of consumers so far.
As soon as someone makes something that incorporates Apple's understanding of the UI but makes a tablet style computer instead of a toy, the idea that your tablet has to be a specialty niche device evaporates - it becomes just another portal to your digital world.
The thing that makes you call the iPad a toy is the exact reason you are wrong here. People just aren't bothered by the limitations that irk you. In the '80s, the Mac was a "toy" because the mouse was "too limiting" and people "wanted the same text-mode apps they used at work", etc.
I don't get it. How does the ipad indicate that a windows 7 tablet won't work?
It's a bit of evidence, not proof. Another bit of evidence is the complete dominance the iPad has over Windows tablet PCs. Yet another is HP, who previously showed their Slate running Windows 7 at MS's CES Keynote, has scrapped Windows for WebOS.
None of these prove a Windows 7 tablet can't sell, such a proof is impossible anyway (you could always say that there was some non-Windows reason, such as the Apple-hater rally cry of "Apple is just better at marketing!"). But pretty much every indicator is that Windows on the tablet is, in its traditional form, a dead-end.
Right now Apple is riding easy, but once someone comes along who can compete across the board, Apple's "just barely enough" attitude* will start to hurt.
Your list is rather anemic, and I don't mean not very long, but that the examples are pretty lame and aren't even examples of "just barely enough".
You didn't though, you said "not at all" which means that the price of the tablet pc has nothing to do with the purchasing decision.
That's not what it means. You're just choosing to apply my words in a way that I've repeated stated they weren't intended, pretending that somehow your way is the only thing they can mean. But it's not. It means I don't agree with your assessment that price is the reason tablet sales have sucked, *not* that price is completely irrelevant.
All you're doing is playing a game of "if I can keep up this stupidity long enough, he'll give up and I win by default".
Before I finish with this thread, I'll leave you with this bit of advice. When someone says something, and you interpret their words incorrectly, you accept their correction (so long as it reasonably fits with what they've been saying the whole time) and move on. All you've done here is wasted my time, and yours. You know damned well that your interpretation is not my position. You also know that your interpretation is not the only one. You're just playing a silly word game, and you know it.
So regardless of your response (whether it's a continuation of your nonsense, a well-reasoned reply on the original topic, or an honest apology, whatever), I'm done with this thread. I've already wasted more time on it and you than either deserve.
Sorry! Must’ve forgotten that Master Jobs already said you didn’t need it.
That's your argument for Flash? That if someone doesn't like it, they're mindless drones?
The iPhone is better off without Flash. That's my opinion, and while I don't care if you agree with it, if you're not going to respect that it's my opinion, you can just fuck off.
Let me know when you can play a flash game on your iPhone.
Why would I want to? The iPhone has no shortage of games, all of which run natively, without any of the problems Flash brings to portable devices.
Maybe now that there's a beta version of Flash out for Android, we can finally see how enticing a feature it really is. Even if I were rabidly anti-Apple, I'd be happy with their anti-Flash stance and be a little ticked that it's coming to Android.
Yes, restaurants control you. In many ways. But only for one meal.
I promise you that when I'm in a restaurant, I'm still in control of myself. They may limit some of my choices (such as in what I can wear (or not wear)), but that isn't tantamount to simply saying the restaurant controls me. They do exert some control over some of my potential choices. No big deal.
Apple wants to control you for the rest of your life-owning-of-their-product, which is why I wouldn’t buy it.
Apple has absolutely zero interest in controlling me. They do want to exert some control over the iPhone. I am not my iPhone. No big deal.
This "Apple wants to control you" nonsense tossed around here on Slashdot is really absurd.
Just how much control are you happy with giving away?
Depends on the situation. Of the two, I actually prefer the control Apple wishes to exert (because it's focused on making a superior product) to the control Google wishes to exert (because of the privacy implications). But neither is strong enough for me to specifically not want to use Android or iPhone.
If Apple were even 1% as controlling as people here claim, I'd switch to Android instantly. Fortunately, hyperbolic control is no threat to me.
That's no Google's style. They take the Linux model for their products, where they put out a customizable, extendable product. That's why Android has such disproportionate mind-share here on Slashdot, because it resonates with the geek mindset.
1. I promise you, I know what I said, and I never said that price has no impact on people's buying decisions. Please quote where I said that. All you've done is incorrectly inferred it.
2. This does nothing to dispute what my actual claim was, which is that traditional GUIs are awful for tablet computers.
Bullshit. I said that the fact that companies ridiculously overprice tablet pc's has kept them from becoming popular. Your response was "Not at all". Ergo, you are saying price has no impact on people's purchasing decisions.
So, according to you, people don't look at price when deciding to buy a product? I think it's time for you to meet a friend of mine - her name is Reality.
If you check with your friend, she'll tell you I never said any such thing.
Wrong. If tablet pc prices weren't so much higher (on average 3-4 times higher) than a comparably priced laptop, then tablet pc sales wouldn't have sucked for the last decade.
Not at all. WIMP GUIs absolutely suck for tablets, and people hate styluses. I realize there are small niches where a stylus is useful and others where someone might want a touch-screen or pen-based Windows slate, but these markets are extremely limited.
The fact is that there is absolutely no consumer market for a stylus or touch based Windows (or Linux or Mac OS X, with their normal GUIs) tablet. That's why those devices have failed.
That's the reason Apple completely redesigned the interface for OS X for the iPhone, why MS has a completely new interface (finally, and most certainly too late) for Windows Mobile, and why Android is Linux with a completely custom interface.
The distinction isn't between "general purpose" and "content consumption". Most people primarily consume content on their PCs, and there are plenty of content creation apps for the iPad. The distinction is fundamentally in the interface. Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X on a tablet doesn't make sense because the interface doesn't make sense.
The reason the battery life is so long on the iPad is that the A4 CPU is extremely power efficient.
Probably, but if any product is going to be able to compete with the iPad, it will have to be something where the same company controls both the hardware and the software. Consumers don't care about freedom in the FSF sense, they care about what works best for them. So HP is starting out on the right track. I don't think they will succeed, but at least they are starting (well, restarting) with the correctly by doing it themselves (through acquisition, though).
For a WebOS tablet to reasonably take on the iPad, it will have to be top-notch hardware (no, that does not mean an SD card slot, or USB), and it will have to have top-notch software. I just don't see how HP will be able to get close enough to the iPad in either of those. If they market this as an iPad competitor and go after the average consumer, they will fail. If instead, they go after some other niche, they may certainly be able to gain some traction.
I would absolutely love it if HP were to make this into a sort of engineering device, but sadly that HP is dead. They are a consumer company now, and there isn't a consumer company on the planet that can out-design and out-engineer Apple.
Might brush up on your set theory. According to you, Apple is making a "set of things you can't do on the iPhone". By definition, what is left is the "set of things apple does not prohibit you to do on the iPhone".
Except that the former set is infinitesimal compared with the latter set. Additionally, Apple doesn't have a whitelist of allowed activities, it has a blacklist of banned activities. They don't say, "here are the things you can do, and that's it", they say, "here are the things you can't do".
That's why it's absurd to focus on the former, unless there's something particularly egregious about it, and there isn't.
Freely and easily?... and nobody has ever had problems with their jailbroken phone bricking up, for example?
No, you can't brick an iPhone by jailbreaking it. Although I don't see your point, unless bricked iPhones are a reasonably common enough occurrence to warrant caution.
The fact of the matter is that the iPhone isn't even a tenth as closed or locked down as folks here seem to think.
List of things that you *can* do: Apple store List of things that you *can’t* do: Everything else
No, because there's nothing stopping those "everything elses" from getting onto the App Store, except for a few limitations. Apple controls my iPhone no more than a restaurant controls me by having a dress code, and a handful of other rules.
But they do. Please let me know if I can go buy an iPhone and then choose to get an app from any website without having to do any hacking for voiding my warranty.
That's not controlling the apps, or controlling what you can do with your phone. It's controlling what you *can't* do. It takes an extremely warped view of reality to define things you *can't* do as controlling the things you *can* do, unless the list of thing you can't do are disproportionately large (in which case it's the other way around, and saying it *isn't* control is the absurd notion).
No one (outside of oddball Libertarians) claim that the government is controlling you because it outlaws murder and theft, etc. On the other hand, if the government outlaws pretty much everything, forcing you basically into a small set of things you *can* do (conjure up images of the USSR if it helps), *then* they are controlling you.
With over 200,000 apps, and far, far fewer outright rejections, it's a stretch of the imagination to claim that Apple is controlling the apps, the phones, or the users.
Oh wait, you can only get them through Apples app store.
I never said otherwise, although I don't think it's fair to completely ignore the jailbreaking option either. When you talk about control, but people can freely and easily bypass your prime example, that doesn't really help your case.
You are wrong.
In what way does Apple control my apps or my phone, for definitions of "control" that are commensurate with the cries of despair so common here on Slashdot?
How does that make them not "legitimate". It makes no sense.
Sure it does, they are opportunistic swine who game the system, insinuating themselves in front of the customer in order to make money. They are parasites who's profit comes from making things worse for everyone else.
I still disagree. The folks who do the most reselling are gonna be the folks with the time and resources to get around this sort of thing, not the small operation folks.
You don't seem to grasp, it doesn't matter if some people get around it, what matters is if there's a positive overall effect.
They also control which citizens can drive, own a firearm, get a job with children, practice medicine, pay tax... need I go on?
That they control who can do these things (some to more of a degree than others), does not mean that they control these things themselves. The government can say you can't drive a car, but they don't tell you when to drive, or to where. They don't control your car or where you go, except for some reasonable things (like you can't drive the wrong direction or into private property without permission).
Stop this government analogy. The government is there to control the populace, that is their main function.
Off topic, but you're wrong, they do much more than that (and sometimes, much less).
However, Apple isn't the government. They do still control what I can do with my device because they control the apps I put on it.
No, they don't control what you can do with your device. They define the device and its capabilities, but you fully control what you do with your own device.
they (apparently) can't ^W don't decide what you do with an app*, they still set limits on what the app was designed to do.
Exactly. They don't decide what you do with an app. Nor do they decide which apps you run, or even which apps you write. They only chose which apps they'll carry on their App Store. To turn that into "they control what you can do with your device" is nothing but nerd hyperbole.
I'm not sure what the phrase "legitimate customer" means.
Yes you do. They are people who are buying an iPad because they want one, or because they are buying one for someone who does. Not people who are buying them to resell for profit.
Nah, you can just give mules Visa gift cards and give them a little money out of your profit margin to buy them for you.
Sure, it makes it harder, but that only stops the small fries from doing it. Anyone with any eye for systematic eBay markups will get around it.
That doesn't matter, it still limits the amount of effect they'll have on legitimate customers. It's like speed bumps. People can still speed, but there can be no doubt that speed bumps will likely decrease the amount of speeding being done in most circumstances.
That still doesn't change the fact that their limits help keep iPads in stock for legitimate customers. If someone can game the system for a day or two (or even a week or two), they still hit a point where they must stop, whereas otherwise they could just keep on going.
It also doesn't change the fact that even before the cards are all tied together, that you had to go from store to store, only buying two at a time, which also limits the number of iPads you can buy, even if the cards are never connected to each other.
No, playing semantics is when you abuse the meanings of words to make a point that they don't make. That's what the people who claim that Apple controls the apps or what you can do with the iPhone are doing.
If others are playing loose with language to make false claims, it's not playing semantics when you correct them.
But Apple do control (albeit indirectly) everything to do with the iPhone and the App Store.
But they don't. Once an app makes it through the approval process (which is not even remotely as bad as people make it out to be), Apple has no control whatsoever what I do with that app, with the sole exception of having the ability to remotely kill the app (something they've never done to my knowledge, and is reserved for truly malicious software).
They control what apps they allow on their store, but they don't control the apps themselves. It's like saying the US government controls its citizens because it controls who can be a citizen.
They exert some control over them, but that's not what was said. What was said was that Apple controls the apps and that they control what you can do with your iPhone. Neither statement is true.
The developers are ultimately in control of their own apps, and the users are ultimately in control of what they can do with their iPhones. Apple has some controls and limits in place, and if that's all that people said there'd be no problem. But it's not, so there is.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying a tablet isn't a full blown computer is not forward thinking. That's like saying 10yrs ago, you're crazy for wanting to use email on your phone, a cell phone has a niche and this is what it does - accept it. Apple loves this kind of thinking.
What's 10 years from now got to do with anything? If 10 years from now tablets will be running a full-blown desktop OS (they won't), that doesn't mean they should be doing so now.
but really, a lightweight portable device that runs a similar platform to whatever I sit in front of at work and that has as few limitations as possible will clearly dominate the market at some point.
That's not clear at all. An OS designed for a large screen with a mouse and keyboard doesn't make sense for use on a small multitouch device. Additionally, what you mean by "as few limitations as possible" is not relevant to most people. I assume you mean the type of limitations that the iPad has (primarily, the app store). Those "limitations" to you are not limitations for most people. On the contrary, the App Store is more enabling for most people than the Android-style solution.
What matters much more than if your portable unit runs the same OS and the same exact apps as your desktop is if your portable device has apps available to do the things people want to do away from home. With the iPhone and iPad, the answer is clearly "yes" for the vast majority of consumers so far.
As soon as someone makes something that incorporates Apple's understanding of the UI but makes a tablet style computer instead of a toy, the idea that your tablet has to be a specialty niche device evaporates - it becomes just another portal to your digital world.
The thing that makes you call the iPad a toy is the exact reason you are wrong here. People just aren't bothered by the limitations that irk you. In the '80s, the Mac was a "toy" because the mouse was "too limiting" and people "wanted the same text-mode apps they used at work", etc.
I don't get it. How does the ipad indicate that a windows 7 tablet won't work?
It's a bit of evidence, not proof. Another bit of evidence is the complete dominance the iPad has over Windows tablet PCs. Yet another is HP, who previously showed their Slate running Windows 7 at MS's CES Keynote, has scrapped Windows for WebOS.
None of these prove a Windows 7 tablet can't sell, such a proof is impossible anyway (you could always say that there was some non-Windows reason, such as the Apple-hater rally cry of "Apple is just better at marketing!"). But pretty much every indicator is that Windows on the tablet is, in its traditional form, a dead-end.
Right now Apple is riding easy, but once someone comes along who can compete across the board, Apple's "just barely enough" attitude* will start to hurt.
Your list is rather anemic, and I don't mean not very long, but that the examples are pretty lame and aren't even examples of "just barely enough".
You didn't though, you said "not at all" which means that the price of the tablet pc has nothing to do with the purchasing decision.
That's not what it means. You're just choosing to apply my words in a way that I've repeated stated they weren't intended, pretending that somehow your way is the only thing they can mean. But it's not. It means I don't agree with your assessment that price is the reason tablet sales have sucked, *not* that price is completely irrelevant.
All you're doing is playing a game of "if I can keep up this stupidity long enough, he'll give up and I win by default".
Before I finish with this thread, I'll leave you with this bit of advice. When someone says something, and you interpret their words incorrectly, you accept their correction (so long as it reasonably fits with what they've been saying the whole time) and move on. All you've done here is wasted my time, and yours. You know damned well that your interpretation is not my position. You also know that your interpretation is not the only one. You're just playing a silly word game, and you know it.
So regardless of your response (whether it's a continuation of your nonsense, a well-reasoned reply on the original topic, or an honest apology, whatever), I'm done with this thread. I've already wasted more time on it and you than either deserve.
Fair enough.
Sorry! Must’ve forgotten that Master Jobs already said you didn’t need it.
That's your argument for Flash? That if someone doesn't like it, they're mindless drones?
The iPhone is better off without Flash. That's my opinion, and while I don't care if you agree with it, if you're not going to respect that it's my opinion, you can just fuck off.
Let me know when you can play a flash game on your iPhone.
Why would I want to? The iPhone has no shortage of games, all of which run natively, without any of the problems Flash brings to portable devices.
Maybe now that there's a beta version of Flash out for Android, we can finally see how enticing a feature it really is. Even if I were rabidly anti-Apple, I'd be happy with their anti-Flash stance and be a little ticked that it's coming to Android.
Yes, restaurants control you. In many ways. But only for one meal.
I promise you that when I'm in a restaurant, I'm still in control of myself. They may limit some of my choices (such as in what I can wear (or not wear)), but that isn't tantamount to simply saying the restaurant controls me. They do exert some control over some of my potential choices. No big deal.
Apple wants to control you for the rest of your life-owning-of-their-product, which is why I wouldn’t buy it.
Apple has absolutely zero interest in controlling me. They do want to exert some control over the iPhone. I am not my iPhone. No big deal.
This "Apple wants to control you" nonsense tossed around here on Slashdot is really absurd.
Just how much control are you happy with giving away?
Depends on the situation. Of the two, I actually prefer the control Apple wishes to exert (because it's focused on making a superior product) to the control Google wishes to exert (because of the privacy implications). But neither is strong enough for me to specifically not want to use Android or iPhone.
If Apple were even 1% as controlling as people here claim, I'd switch to Android instantly. Fortunately, hyperbolic control is no threat to me.
That's no Google's style. They take the Linux model for their products, where they put out a customizable, extendable product. That's why Android has such disproportionate mind-share here on Slashdot, because it resonates with the geek mindset.
A "whole widget" solution is not in Google's DNA.
Two things to note:
1. I promise you, I know what I said, and I never said that price has no impact on people's buying decisions. Please quote where I said that. All you've done is incorrectly inferred it.
2. This does nothing to dispute what my actual claim was, which is that traditional GUIs are awful for tablet computers.
Bullshit. I said that the fact that companies ridiculously overprice tablet pc's has kept them from becoming popular. Your response was "Not at all". Ergo, you are saying price has no impact on people's purchasing decisions.
I assure you that's not what I'm saying.
So, according to you, people don't look at price when deciding to buy a product? I think it's time for you to meet a friend of mine - her name is Reality.
If you check with your friend, she'll tell you I never said any such thing.
Wrong. If tablet pc prices weren't so much higher (on average 3-4 times higher) than a comparably priced laptop, then tablet pc sales wouldn't have sucked for the last decade.
Not at all. WIMP GUIs absolutely suck for tablets, and people hate styluses. I realize there are small niches where a stylus is useful and others where someone might want a touch-screen or pen-based Windows slate, but these markets are extremely limited.
The fact is that there is absolutely no consumer market for a stylus or touch based Windows (or Linux or Mac OS X, with their normal GUIs) tablet. That's why those devices have failed.
That's the reason Apple completely redesigned the interface for OS X for the iPhone, why MS has a completely new interface (finally, and most certainly too late) for Windows Mobile, and why Android is Linux with a completely custom interface.
The distinction isn't between "general purpose" and "content consumption". Most people primarily consume content on their PCs, and there are plenty of content creation apps for the iPad. The distinction is fundamentally in the interface. Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X on a tablet doesn't make sense because the interface doesn't make sense.
The reason the battery life is so long on the iPad is that the A4 CPU is extremely power efficient.
Probably, but if any product is going to be able to compete with the iPad, it will have to be something where the same company controls both the hardware and the software. Consumers don't care about freedom in the FSF sense, they care about what works best for them. So HP is starting out on the right track. I don't think they will succeed, but at least they are starting (well, restarting) with the correctly by doing it themselves (through acquisition, though).
For a WebOS tablet to reasonably take on the iPad, it will have to be top-notch hardware (no, that does not mean an SD card slot, or USB), and it will have to have top-notch software. I just don't see how HP will be able to get close enough to the iPad in either of those. If they market this as an iPad competitor and go after the average consumer, they will fail. If instead, they go after some other niche, they may certainly be able to gain some traction.
I would absolutely love it if HP were to make this into a sort of engineering device, but sadly that HP is dead. They are a consumer company now, and there isn't a consumer company on the planet that can out-design and out-engineer Apple.
Only if you so loosely define "control" as to become meaningless. Or are you saying restaurants control you?
By your reasoning, Google controls Android, only a little bit less. Bravo.
Might brush up on your set theory. According to you, Apple is making a "set of things you can't do on the iPhone". By definition, what is left is the "set of things apple does not prohibit you to do on the iPhone".
Except that the former set is infinitesimal compared with the latter set. Additionally, Apple doesn't have a whitelist of allowed activities, it has a blacklist of banned activities. They don't say, "here are the things you can do, and that's it", they say, "here are the things you can't do".
That's why it's absurd to focus on the former, unless there's something particularly egregious about it, and there isn't.
Freely and easily? ... and nobody has ever had problems with their jailbroken phone bricking up, for example?
No, you can't brick an iPhone by jailbreaking it. Although I don't see your point, unless bricked iPhones are a reasonably common enough occurrence to warrant caution.
The fact of the matter is that the iPhone isn't even a tenth as closed or locked down as folks here seem to think.
List of things that you *can* do: Apple store
List of things that you *can’t* do: Everything else
No, because there's nothing stopping those "everything elses" from getting onto the App Store, except for a few limitations. Apple controls my iPhone no more than a restaurant controls me by having a dress code, and a handful of other rules.
But they do. Please let me know if I can go buy an iPhone and then choose to get an app from any website without having to do any hacking for voiding my warranty.
That's not controlling the apps, or controlling what you can do with your phone. It's controlling what you *can't* do. It takes an extremely warped view of reality to define things you *can't* do as controlling the things you *can* do, unless the list of thing you can't do are disproportionately large (in which case it's the other way around, and saying it *isn't* control is the absurd notion).
No one (outside of oddball Libertarians) claim that the government is controlling you because it outlaws murder and theft, etc. On the other hand, if the government outlaws pretty much everything, forcing you basically into a small set of things you *can* do (conjure up images of the USSR if it helps), *then* they are controlling you.
With over 200,000 apps, and far, far fewer outright rejections, it's a stretch of the imagination to claim that Apple is controlling the apps, the phones, or the users.
Oh wait, you can only get them through Apples app store.
I never said otherwise, although I don't think it's fair to completely ignore the jailbreaking option either. When you talk about control, but people can freely and easily bypass your prime example, that doesn't really help your case.
You are wrong.
In what way does Apple control my apps or my phone, for definitions of "control" that are commensurate with the cries of despair so common here on Slashdot?
How does that make them not "legitimate". It makes no sense.
Sure it does, they are opportunistic swine who game the system, insinuating themselves in front of the customer in order to make money. They are parasites who's profit comes from making things worse for everyone else.
I still disagree. The folks who do the most reselling are gonna be the folks with the time and resources to get around this sort of thing, not the small operation folks.
You don't seem to grasp, it doesn't matter if some people get around it, what matters is if there's a positive overall effect.
They also control which citizens can drive, own a firearm, get a job with children, practice medicine, pay tax... need I go on?
That they control who can do these things (some to more of a degree than others), does not mean that they control these things themselves. The government can say you can't drive a car, but they don't tell you when to drive, or to where. They don't control your car or where you go, except for some reasonable things (like you can't drive the wrong direction or into private property without permission).
Stop this government analogy. The government is there to control the populace, that is their main function.
Off topic, but you're wrong, they do much more than that (and sometimes, much less).
However, Apple isn't the government. They do still control what I can do with my device because they control the apps I put on it.
No, they don't control what you can do with your device. They define the device and its capabilities, but you fully control what you do with your own device.
they (apparently) can't ^W don't decide what you do with an app*, they still set limits on what the app was designed to do.
Exactly. They don't decide what you do with an app. Nor do they decide which apps you run, or even which apps you write. They only chose which apps they'll carry on their App Store. To turn that into "they control what you can do with your device" is nothing but nerd hyperbole.
I'm not sure what the phrase "legitimate customer" means.
Yes you do. They are people who are buying an iPad because they want one, or because they are buying one for someone who does. Not people who are buying them to resell for profit.
Nah, you can just give mules Visa gift cards and give them a little money out of your profit margin to buy them for you.
Sure, it makes it harder, but that only stops the small fries from doing it. Anyone with any eye for systematic eBay markups will get around it.
That doesn't matter, it still limits the amount of effect they'll have on legitimate customers. It's like speed bumps. People can still speed, but there can be no doubt that speed bumps will likely decrease the amount of speeding being done in most circumstances.
That still doesn't change the fact that their limits help keep iPads in stock for legitimate customers. If someone can game the system for a day or two (or even a week or two), they still hit a point where they must stop, whereas otherwise they could just keep on going.
It also doesn't change the fact that even before the cards are all tied together, that you had to go from store to store, only buying two at a time, which also limits the number of iPads you can buy, even if the cards are never connected to each other.
No, playing semantics is when you abuse the meanings of words to make a point that they don't make. That's what the people who claim that Apple controls the apps or what you can do with the iPhone are doing.
If others are playing loose with language to make false claims, it's not playing semantics when you correct them.
But Apple do control (albeit indirectly) everything to do with the iPhone and the App Store.
But they don't. Once an app makes it through the approval process (which is not even remotely as bad as people make it out to be), Apple has no control whatsoever what I do with that app, with the sole exception of having the ability to remotely kill the app (something they've never done to my knowledge, and is reserved for truly malicious software).
They control what apps they allow on their store, but they don't control the apps themselves. It's like saying the US government controls its citizens because it controls who can be a citizen.
They exert some control over them, but that's not what was said. What was said was that Apple controls the apps and that they control what you can do with your iPhone. Neither statement is true.
The developers are ultimately in control of their own apps, and the users are ultimately in control of what they can do with their iPhones. Apple has some controls and limits in place, and if that's all that people said there'd be no problem. But it's not, so there is.