Why don't we simply get rid of textbooks? With the internet primary source material is -very- easy to find and would teach children how to think rather than how to be brainwashed by the Right/Left. A teacher would guide discussions and offer hints about what primary material would be on tests, but really, textbooks by nature are not "apolitical" they have human editors with human biases. Perhaps 20 years ago the argument could be made that it was too hard to find primary sources, but today? One look at Google Books shows thousands of relevant, historical material for free.
And to demonstrate what is better about it. Far too often OSS is portrayed as "I can't buy X, so I'll download Y" rather than "Y is better than X, so I'll download it". Look at Firefox, it didn't get to be popular by being a clone of IE, but by being better.
The bailouts have been working. Yes, we have lower job numbers than desirable, but that's arguably because the stimulus wasn't big enough.
Your link shows that a few of the more sane "bailouts" that weren't really bailouts (they weren't propping up a failing system) have worked. The bailouts you show are different than the bailouts for the auto industry and the like. In 10 years, expect even more "bailouts".
You show that extensions to the FDIC is working, however the link has nothing about the billions given to private businesses that were truly bailouts.
I note that the bank bailouts were accomplished under Bush.
...So? I don't like Bush, I don't like Obama. I don't like democrats, I don't like republicans. Had you said we should eliminate "Bush Scare" I would have showed the failings of Bush. However, you didn't.
I have no idea what you're talking about regarding Kagan or Sotomayor, and i've been following both FOX and other outlets' opinions of her. Many conservatives are supportive of Kagan.
Kagan said
"Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection, depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs."
So, if your speech is pro-government that is just fine, however, if it is against the government, it gets blocked.
And really, I'd prefer if you didn't call be "conservative", I identify most strongly with the Libertarian Party, I support "conservative" views in the areas of increasing 2nd amendment rights and believe that we should have lower taxes, but I disagree with wars that don't make us safer (War in Iraq and Afghanistan), believe that the government has no right to define relationships between people, and oppose the "PATRIOT" act.
As for unsustainable programs, I assume you are referring to Medicare and Social Security? What would you propose be done with them?
Slowly phase out social security and replace with private retirement funds. As for Medicare, reform patents to allow for cheaper, safer medicine faster and reform the medical system so it is affordable by perhaps allowing for universal malpractice insurance for doctor's offices which maintain certain standards and prices.
Its time that the US has a congress controlled by a third party. Libertarian, Green, etc. Both Republican and Democrat policies have failed. Their compromises have lead to unworkable policies.
Since when is being pro-Germany a bad thing for Germany?
Nationalism leads to irrationality which leads to a misinformed public which leads to dictatorships. Yes, America has done some things right, however, we aren't the only country. We have made -a lot- of mistakes, if we try to hide them not only do we look bad to the world but we risk repeating them.
The problem with the curriculum for the state of Texas is that it will not inspire any thinking. We need to evaluate what we have done, was it right? Was it wrong? Are there any parallels in our world today? Could we have done better?
Those are the things that should be discussed in classrooms using primary sources.
I'm not a fan of political correctness and revisionism for either side (Myself I'd favor eliminating textbooks and letting students study primary sources themselves)
While not for RSS, you can always go to your preferences and hide kdawson. Or you could just not read the story when kdawson is the author (or The Guardian is TFA) if you don't want to be trolled.
The problem isn't a separation of church and state, the problem is rationality vs irrationality. All texbooks/education should be based on rationality, science and logic along with allowing for the most possible individual freedoms. Any textbook dealing with Jefferson should comment on his religion because it was very interesting, he created his own version of the Bible ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible ) and his religious views influenced his politics.
Myself I would be in favor of eliminating textbooks altogether and allowing for in-depth study of original documents letting students decide from themselves what to believe. Textbooks -always- introduce biases. Want to study the founding of our country? Read documents from that time period. Any "expert" will end up projecting their own views in any summary. It is easy to write a book showing that our country was founded on Christian principles. It would also be easy to show that our country was not founded on Christian principles. It is all about biases. Eliminate textbooks to (hopefully) eliminate biases.
....Because we all know that the left does none of that. No the left is perfectly sane and based on reason. Right? Only the right has any sort of indoctrination. Only the right acts without reason. After all, Obama has been perfectly reasonable all the time. Yep! Nothing but protections of civil and economic liberties under Obama! And a balanced budget! Right?
Lets face it, both the right and the left are irrational. Until we get some third parties active in the US, nothing is going to change and the US will continue to deteriorate.
Exactly, plus you have to realize the entire source: it is The Guardian. For those unaware, The Guardian doesn't even make any statements of being fair, its entire goal is to persuade readers towards liberal* goals.
*Liberal here referring to the ideology closest to the Democrats in the US, not referring to classical liberalism.
Um, from your post you seem to be as indoctrinated as those "right wingers" you seem to hold in contempt.
like the "economic crisis"
Yep, no crisis at all right. Easy to find jobs. We didn't waste billions of taxpayer dollars "bailing out" businesses. Not sure if that was your primary point that it didn't exist, but putting "economic crisis" in quotes seem to indicate it...
or the whole Obama fear.
Because we should all be just happy that we have a president who has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, supports a supreme court nominee vowed against true freedom of speech and supports unsustainable programs. Right?
I say, the primary target should be to shoot Glenn Beck and close down FOX News ASAP.
News flash. News sources are biased. It isn't new. Look at MSNBC, heck, look at the Guardian which TFA is taken from. The Guardian doesn't even make any claims to be balanced or fair.
Oh and is the new tactic to eliminate anyone with views who you don't agree with now?
The main problem with this is he is a university professor. This isn't elementary or even high school it is university. If you don't like what a professor is teaching ask to be transferred to a different class, take the class at a different college, or just change universities.
Let university professors do what they want. Or, if you are going to try to tell them what they can and can't do can you at least start with the ever-so-common "I'm going to lecture for 2 hours about nothing on your test and most of the time won't say a single word related to the class" professors wasting my valuable time.
Yeah, Limewire is generally crap because so many songs are incorrectly attributed, wrong titles, etc.
The problem with iTunes and the like is it is impossible to get many artists, other times you can find early or later works by a band but can't find the ones you want, or in extreme cases iTunes wants you to pay $10+ for the album when you really want one song.
Music distributors finally got their heads out of their rears recently and eliminated DRM for the most part, but there is still a lot of things they are doing wrong.
Good luck finding a decent torrent for small files. Yeah, BitTorrent is great for downloading a 700 MB Ubuntu ISO, yeah, its great for getting every song a band sang, ever. But, for downloading a single song or other small files? BitTorrent is pretty terrible.
The problem with "stress" is that it is hard to define. For some people, yes, cell phones could cause stress, for others such as me cell phones probably reduce stress by keeping me connected. If something major happens I'm easily notified via cell phone or can notify others. What causes stress for some people might not cause stress for others. For example I tend to get stressed out when things don't arrive quickly, mailed test scores for standardized tests used to stress me out much more than the test generally did because there was uncertainty and delayed consequences. So while some people might be stressed out because of constant access to information there are others who stress out a lot more because of lack of information.
But the App Catalog is 100% Palm. AT&T is generally a pretty crappy network even while I was on a "dumb" phone I had dropped calls and missed messages. A lot of the failings of the iPhone (minus of course all the missed features that Jobs said no one wanted and therefore would be terrible to have in a phone like multi-tasking and the like....) can be blamed on AT&T. However, Palm's App Catalog is 100% run by palm, any failing there is purely Palm's fault, the iPhone faults you mentioned could be caused more by AT&T than Apple.
As as I said, an adapter is likely to pop up sooner of later if there is enough demand for it.
Sooner or later though. What I don't understand is why people would be so reliant on others to -eventually- produce things that they can get for cheap right now.
Hulu isn't even available where I live. Give those other sites a couple of years...
But why wait a couple more years? Its becoming clearer and clearer that the iPad is a crappy device and Jobs doesn't want to change it. There are so many disadvantages for a few advantages. Lets see, its small, it runs iPhone apps and it... um... has a touch screen?
Doesn't seem to stop people paying for software, though. There are also plenty of review sites around the net.
Ok, what is the last piece of PC software you have bought? For me, I guess it would have to be a sealed copy of Windows 3.1 just for the vintage-ness for about $2 at a garage sale about 4 years ago.
For any "functional" software it was so long ago I don't even remember.
And review sites are good... sometimes. However, its becoming harder and harder to identify which sites post legitimate reviews and how many have skewed reviews because of various factors (differing skill levels, bribes, personal favorites, etc)
I'm talking about the near future here, which is what the article is about.
In the near future, I think prices will have fallen to where Android or Linux are the only platforms that make sense for every non-PC device.
1.) I think you overestimate the number of people on insist they must keep using their old printer. Basic printers are pretty cheap these days. I'm sure someone will come out with some kind of adapter for older printers, anyway.
Its easy enough to find a cheap printer. Its hard to find a fast-ish printer where you won't be paying double the price of the printer next time you buy ink...
2.) Not everyone is going to care that they can't play Flash games or that they occasionally can't used some old site.
Yeah, you know old sites like Hulu, Homestar Runner, Newgrounds, South Park, etc. Yeah those sites never get updates. I mean, Hulu? That is totally old school.
Yeah, there is going to be a Hulu app "sometime" but that sometime has lasted for quite a few years now...
3.) Plenty of free apps on the AppStore. Most of the others are pretty cheap.
But you never really know what quality those "free" apps are. There are very few really free apps as in full versions and ad-free. Even then, the user ratings are skewed and reviews don't help.
Plus, with a lack of customization and control, its hard to get things to work if they fail the first time.
4.) MobileMe.com, Time Capsule, Apple TV.
A) Upload is slow, B) Expensive, C) too little storage.
Not all professors know how to use E-mail. Many still insist on printing documents because they enjoy putting red ink all over it. Many bosses also prefer to have a paper copy. Myself? I have not printed a single thing in the last decade that hasn't been required by someone else to be printed. But, I have printed a lot because there are still a lot of people who insist on paper copies.
And for the elevnty-hojillionth freaking time, MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER! Not EVERYONE needs to do EVERYTHING! Plenty of people CAN get by with a very limited device.
Like who? Show me someone who never uses Flash, never uses a printer, has nearly infinite cash, etc. The iPad fits the needs of no one as a the primary device Jobs thinks it should be. Its not a terrible secondary device, but Jobs has this misguided opinion that it should fit everyone's needs for everything. It doesn't. It could easily fit more people's needs if Jobs lived in reality. But eventually I suppose rationality will take hold and Apple will take credit for "inventing" printing/Flash/etc. in OS 5...
Look at the original iPod. Kinda pricey, Mac only, FireWire only--wow, look at crazy Apple, they're selling something that doesn't even work with all the computers they've sold in the last few years! But they added Windows support, and USB, and photos, and videos, and then they made them in different sizes, and according to Wikipedia they've sold over a QUARTER BILLION of them in less than ten years. So you'll have to excuse Mr. Jobs if he doesn't trip over himself to listen to your advice or anyone else's.
Look at Steve Jobs own policies. After all wasn't everyone happy with web apps? Wasn't web 2.0 and AJAX good enough? Oh and what about multi-tasking, copy-and-paste all things that Jobs had said no one needed but eventually it came. Same thing with Video iPod.
Jobs doesn't know what he is talking about, thankfully not everyone at Apple is as delusional as he is.
Geeks like Woz but the other Steve is plenty smart too. If you've got a little time, read this 1996 interview with Steve Jobs. Look at how much he got right: "The most exciting things happening today are objects and the Web. The Web is exciting for two reasons. One, it's ubiquitous. There will be Web dial tone everywhere. [emphasis added] And anything that's ubiquitous gets interesting. Two, I don't think Microsoft will figure out a way to own it."
Um, it was 1996, -everyone- thought the web was the "next big thing" (hence the dot-com bubble). Yeah, he predicted that the web would be everywhere, no that wasn't an original thought.
I'm not a Mac fan really, but if you look at the specs, Mac machines aren't that much more expensive than their PC counterparts spec-wise. The problem is, they have a lot of things most people don't need. Do you -really- need a backlit keyboard? What about a non-standard output port? Do you really need that Core i5 or Core i7 CPU? Do you really need DDR3 RAM? Etc.
The problem is, most people pay for a $1,000+ machine when their needs are met by a machine half the cost or less. Yes, there -are- people who need Core i7 CPUs and powerful graphics cards and OS X and all the fancy stuff. But the average user? No
How are you going to get the thing to print? Not everyone has a wi-fi enabled printer, myself I still make do with a parallel port printer. Do I print things? Not often, but occasionally I need to for work and the like.
Are you going to enjoy being locked out of the web? There are tons of flash games out there, tons of flash movies, etc. What benefit are you getting to accept it?
Are you going to be broke paying for applications? It is entirely reasonable to not have to pay for a single application without pirating on a PC/Linux. Almost every pay program has a free alternative on PC/Linux. On the other hand, due to Apple's draconian policies, a paid app may be the only app "approved" to do something.
What about storage? The average person is going to have GB worth of movies, music, documents, photos, etc. Flash memory is -expensive-. Also, how are you going to transfer things to the iPad? And backups? What about durability? If a component of a PC fails, its easily replaced. Nothing is truly "fatal" if you have the money.
The iPad makes a passable secondary "computer" but as a primary computer? I'm better off with my 7 inch EEE 701...
but the vast majority of them are connecting with Mobile Devices.
...connecting how though? Yeah, I can get a browser on my nook but I'm not going to browse too much, just like I can get a browser on my iPod touch and phone. However, do I really -do- that much on them? Nope. I think its the same for most other people, about the only non-PC/Linux/Mac browser I used was the Wii browser and that was because of a large screen and Flash support.
Just because someone checks Facebook using their iPhone doesn't mean that things have really changed, mobile devices are still crappy for doing just about anything on the internet. Yeah, I might read a blog or two, check the news, etc. but its painful to do so, even on the best devices.
Steve Jobs seems to ignore everything that caused products to be successful: Price to performance. Lets see here the iPad
The iPad costs ~$500, a cheap notebook costs $300-400, paying $500 for a notebook usually gets you a fast, powerful notebook. With a notebook I'm not limited by stupid design decisions, even Microsoft lets me do what I want and doesn't restrict programs. If I want to install an emulator, thats fine. If I want to install Photoshop, thats fine. I don't have to worry about petty squabbles about how Flash is sooooo evil and destroying the world! I can just choose to install Flash or not. With a notebook I can pay ~$5 for a USB card reader rather than $30 for a single-format card reader. With a notebook I have choices of just about everything else, I'm not locked into expensive hardware.
The iPod won marketshare for having a good UI and being small. The iPad has a decent-ish design and decent UI. However, when I can get a laptop with a UI that I've been using for most of my adult life... Why change? The iPad runs expensive applications, a laptop runs free applications.
I think I'm not alone in thinking how annoying it is to have common-sense features be added in at a later date which would have already been done with a simi-open platform.
No one wants real applications! We will never have an iPhone SDK! After all, programs are -terrible- to run. No one wants an alternate browser! No one wants copy/paste! No one wants multi-tasking!
Sorry Steve, I don't understand your opposition to common sense. I have an iPod touch because at the time it was the cheapest wi-fi enabled device to have a good internet experience on the go with some games/music/movies. I'm not going to get an iPad because there are cheaper devices that do a -ton- more.
The Nexus one is needed for AT&T. Currently the only phone running Android is the crappy Motorola Backflip which doesn't even have Google as a search engine and is intentionally crippled, let alone the terrible hardware.
T-Mobile has a good selection, Verizon a great selection and Sprint has several great phones. AT&T however, is crap.
Look at the UK, a chronic shortage of dentists, Canada, long wait times, etc. Even if you -have- the money you generally can't get speedy, efficient health care like in the US.
Are...you...serious? You want to spend more on "defense" (nice newspeak, BTW) than what US already does? (hint: most than vast majority of countries in terms of "% of GDP", dwarfing all in absolute amounts). Is this just about more of a military dick-waving and funneling funds to very few "lucky" ones suddenly?
I believe that the only 2 legitimate purposes of government is to protect their citizens from force and fraud. I disagree with our imperialistic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, it is very important to protect the US from invasion, nuclear, biological, and other threats. It is important to have a top-of-the-line missile shield to protect from ICBMs, aircraft to use in retaliatory strikes, etc. It is important that the US has the newest and best weaponry and defense systems available to protect its citizens.
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Why don't we simply get rid of textbooks? With the internet primary source material is -very- easy to find and would teach children how to think rather than how to be brainwashed by the Right/Left. A teacher would guide discussions and offer hints about what primary material would be on tests, but really, textbooks by nature are not "apolitical" they have human editors with human biases. Perhaps 20 years ago the argument could be made that it was too hard to find primary sources, but today? One look at Google Books shows thousands of relevant, historical material for free.
And to demonstrate what is better about it. Far too often OSS is portrayed as "I can't buy X, so I'll download Y" rather than "Y is better than X, so I'll download it". Look at Firefox, it didn't get to be popular by being a clone of IE, but by being better.
The bailouts have been working. Yes, we have lower job numbers than desirable, but that's arguably because the stimulus wasn't big enough.
Your link shows that a few of the more sane "bailouts" that weren't really bailouts (they weren't propping up a failing system) have worked. The bailouts you show are different than the bailouts for the auto industry and the like. In 10 years, expect even more "bailouts".
You show that extensions to the FDIC is working, however the link has nothing about the billions given to private businesses that were truly bailouts.
I note that the bank bailouts were accomplished under Bush.
I have no idea what you're talking about regarding Kagan or Sotomayor, and i've been following both FOX and other outlets' opinions of her. Many conservatives are supportive of Kagan.
Kagan said
"Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection, depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs."
So, if your speech is pro-government that is just fine, however, if it is against the government, it gets blocked.
And really, I'd prefer if you didn't call be "conservative", I identify most strongly with the Libertarian Party, I support "conservative" views in the areas of increasing 2nd amendment rights and believe that we should have lower taxes, but I disagree with wars that don't make us safer (War in Iraq and Afghanistan), believe that the government has no right to define relationships between people, and oppose the "PATRIOT" act.
As for unsustainable programs, I assume you are referring to Medicare and Social Security? What would you propose be done with them?
Slowly phase out social security and replace with private retirement funds. As for Medicare, reform patents to allow for cheaper, safer medicine faster and reform the medical system so it is affordable by perhaps allowing for universal malpractice insurance for doctor's offices which maintain certain standards and prices.
And... the left haven't done much else.
Its time that the US has a congress controlled by a third party. Libertarian, Green, etc. Both Republican and Democrat policies have failed. Their compromises have lead to unworkable policies.
Since when is being pro-Germany a bad thing for Germany?
Nationalism leads to irrationality which leads to a misinformed public which leads to dictatorships. Yes, America has done some things right, however, we aren't the only country. We have made -a lot- of mistakes, if we try to hide them not only do we look bad to the world but we risk repeating them.
The problem with the curriculum for the state of Texas is that it will not inspire any thinking. We need to evaluate what we have done, was it right? Was it wrong? Are there any parallels in our world today? Could we have done better?
Those are the things that should be discussed in classrooms using primary sources.
I'm not a fan of political correctness and revisionism for either side (Myself I'd favor eliminating textbooks and letting students study primary sources themselves)
While not for RSS, you can always go to your preferences and hide kdawson. Or you could just not read the story when kdawson is the author (or The Guardian is TFA) if you don't want to be trolled.
The problem isn't a separation of church and state, the problem is rationality vs irrationality. All texbooks/education should be based on rationality, science and logic along with allowing for the most possible individual freedoms. Any textbook dealing with Jefferson should comment on his religion because it was very interesting, he created his own version of the Bible ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible ) and his religious views influenced his politics.
Myself I would be in favor of eliminating textbooks altogether and allowing for in-depth study of original documents letting students decide from themselves what to believe. Textbooks -always- introduce biases. Want to study the founding of our country? Read documents from that time period. Any "expert" will end up projecting their own views in any summary. It is easy to write a book showing that our country was founded on Christian principles. It would also be easy to show that our country was not founded on Christian principles. It is all about biases. Eliminate textbooks to (hopefully) eliminate biases.
....Because we all know that the left does none of that. No the left is perfectly sane and based on reason. Right? Only the right has any sort of indoctrination. Only the right acts without reason. After all, Obama has been perfectly reasonable all the time. Yep! Nothing but protections of civil and economic liberties under Obama! And a balanced budget! Right?
Lets face it, both the right and the left are irrational. Until we get some third parties active in the US, nothing is going to change and the US will continue to deteriorate.
Exactly, plus you have to realize the entire source: it is The Guardian. For those unaware, The Guardian doesn't even make any statements of being fair, its entire goal is to persuade readers towards liberal* goals.
*Liberal here referring to the ideology closest to the Democrats in the US, not referring to classical liberalism.
like the "economic crisis"
Yep, no crisis at all right. Easy to find jobs. We didn't waste billions of taxpayer dollars "bailing out" businesses. Not sure if that was your primary point that it didn't exist, but putting "economic crisis" in quotes seem to indicate it...
or the whole Obama fear.
Because we should all be just happy that we have a president who has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, supports a supreme court nominee vowed against true freedom of speech and supports unsustainable programs. Right?
I say, the primary target should be to shoot Glenn Beck and close down FOX News ASAP.
News flash. News sources are biased. It isn't new. Look at MSNBC, heck, look at the Guardian which TFA is taken from. The Guardian doesn't even make any claims to be balanced or fair.
Oh and is the new tactic to eliminate anyone with views who you don't agree with now?
The main problem with this is he is a university professor. This isn't elementary or even high school it is university. If you don't like what a professor is teaching ask to be transferred to a different class, take the class at a different college, or just change universities.
Let university professors do what they want. Or, if you are going to try to tell them what they can and can't do can you at least start with the ever-so-common "I'm going to lecture for 2 hours about nothing on your test and most of the time won't say a single word related to the class" professors wasting my valuable time.
Yeah, Limewire is generally crap because so many songs are incorrectly attributed, wrong titles, etc.
The problem with iTunes and the like is it is impossible to get many artists, other times you can find early or later works by a band but can't find the ones you want, or in extreme cases iTunes wants you to pay $10+ for the album when you really want one song.
Music distributors finally got their heads out of their rears recently and eliminated DRM for the most part, but there is still a lot of things they are doing wrong.
Good luck finding a decent torrent for small files. Yeah, BitTorrent is great for downloading a 700 MB Ubuntu ISO, yeah, its great for getting every song a band sang, ever. But, for downloading a single song or other small files? BitTorrent is pretty terrible.
The problem with "stress" is that it is hard to define. For some people, yes, cell phones could cause stress, for others such as me cell phones probably reduce stress by keeping me connected. If something major happens I'm easily notified via cell phone or can notify others. What causes stress for some people might not cause stress for others. For example I tend to get stressed out when things don't arrive quickly, mailed test scores for standardized tests used to stress me out much more than the test generally did because there was uncertainty and delayed consequences. So while some people might be stressed out because of constant access to information there are others who stress out a lot more because of lack of information.
But the App Catalog is 100% Palm. AT&T is generally a pretty crappy network even while I was on a "dumb" phone I had dropped calls and missed messages. A lot of the failings of the iPhone (minus of course all the missed features that Jobs said no one wanted and therefore would be terrible to have in a phone like multi-tasking and the like....) can be blamed on AT&T. However, Palm's App Catalog is 100% run by palm, any failing there is purely Palm's fault, the iPhone faults you mentioned could be caused more by AT&T than Apple.
or copy it to a USB key.
The iPad has a USB port now?
As as I said, an adapter is likely to pop up sooner of later if there is enough demand for it.
Sooner or later though. What I don't understand is why people would be so reliant on others to -eventually- produce things that they can get for cheap right now.
Hulu isn't even available where I live. Give those other sites a couple of years...
But why wait a couple more years? Its becoming clearer and clearer that the iPad is a crappy device and Jobs doesn't want to change it. There are so many disadvantages for a few advantages. Lets see, its small, it runs iPhone apps and it... um... has a touch screen?
Doesn't seem to stop people paying for software, though. There are also plenty of review sites around the net.
Ok, what is the last piece of PC software you have bought? For me, I guess it would have to be a sealed copy of Windows 3.1 just for the vintage-ness for about $2 at a garage sale about 4 years ago.
For any "functional" software it was so long ago I don't even remember.
And review sites are good... sometimes. However, its becoming harder and harder to identify which sites post legitimate reviews and how many have skewed reviews because of various factors (differing skill levels, bribes, personal favorites, etc)
I'm talking about the near future here, which is what the article is about.
In the near future, I think prices will have fallen to where Android or Linux are the only platforms that make sense for every non-PC device.
1.) I think you overestimate the number of people on insist they must keep using their old printer. Basic printers are pretty cheap these days. I'm sure someone will come out with some kind of adapter for older printers, anyway.
Its easy enough to find a cheap printer. Its hard to find a fast-ish printer where you won't be paying double the price of the printer next time you buy ink...
2.) Not everyone is going to care that they can't play Flash games or that they occasionally can't used some old site.
Yeah, you know old sites like Hulu, Homestar Runner, Newgrounds, South Park, etc. Yeah those sites never get updates. I mean, Hulu? That is totally old school.
Yeah, there is going to be a Hulu app "sometime" but that sometime has lasted for quite a few years now...
3.) Plenty of free apps on the AppStore. Most of the others are pretty cheap.
But you never really know what quality those "free" apps are. There are very few really free apps as in full versions and ad-free. Even then, the user ratings are skewed and reviews don't help.
Plus, with a lack of customization and control, its hard to get things to work if they fail the first time.
4.) MobileMe.com, Time Capsule, Apple TV.
A) Upload is slow, B) Expensive, C) too little storage.
Not all professors know how to use E-mail. Many still insist on printing documents because they enjoy putting red ink all over it. Many bosses also prefer to have a paper copy. Myself? I have not printed a single thing in the last decade that hasn't been required by someone else to be printed. But, I have printed a lot because there are still a lot of people who insist on paper copies.
And for the elevnty-hojillionth freaking time, MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER! Not EVERYONE needs to do EVERYTHING! Plenty of people CAN get by with a very limited device.
Like who? Show me someone who never uses Flash, never uses a printer, has nearly infinite cash, etc. The iPad fits the needs of no one as a the primary device Jobs thinks it should be. Its not a terrible secondary device, but Jobs has this misguided opinion that it should fit everyone's needs for everything. It doesn't. It could easily fit more people's needs if Jobs lived in reality. But eventually I suppose rationality will take hold and Apple will take credit for "inventing" printing/Flash/etc. in OS 5...
Look at the original iPod. Kinda pricey, Mac only, FireWire only--wow, look at crazy Apple, they're selling something that doesn't even work with all the computers they've sold in the last few years! But they added Windows support, and USB, and photos, and videos, and then they made them in different sizes, and according to Wikipedia they've sold over a QUARTER BILLION of them in less than ten years. So you'll have to excuse Mr. Jobs if he doesn't trip over himself to listen to your advice or anyone else's.
Look at Steve Jobs own policies. After all wasn't everyone happy with web apps? Wasn't web 2.0 and AJAX good enough? Oh and what about multi-tasking, copy-and-paste all things that Jobs had said no one needed but eventually it came. Same thing with Video iPod.
Jobs doesn't know what he is talking about, thankfully not everyone at Apple is as delusional as he is.
Geeks like Woz but the other Steve is plenty smart too. If you've got a little time, read this 1996 interview with Steve Jobs. Look at how much he got right: "The most exciting things happening today are objects and the Web. The Web is exciting for two reasons. One, it's ubiquitous. There will be Web dial tone everywhere. [emphasis added] And anything that's ubiquitous gets interesting. Two, I don't think Microsoft will figure out a way to own it."
Um, it was 1996, -everyone- thought the web was the "next big thing" (hence the dot-com bubble). Yeah, he predicted that the web would be everywhere, no that wasn't an original thought.
I'm not a Mac fan really, but if you look at the specs, Mac machines aren't that much more expensive than their PC counterparts spec-wise. The problem is, they have a lot of things most people don't need. Do you -really- need a backlit keyboard? What about a non-standard output port? Do you really need that Core i5 or Core i7 CPU? Do you really need DDR3 RAM? Etc.
The problem is, most people pay for a $1,000+ machine when their needs are met by a machine half the cost or less. Yes, there -are- people who need Core i7 CPUs and powerful graphics cards and OS X and all the fancy stuff. But the average user? No
Ok, tell me this though.
How are you going to get the thing to print? Not everyone has a wi-fi enabled printer, myself I still make do with a parallel port printer. Do I print things? Not often, but occasionally I need to for work and the like.
Are you going to enjoy being locked out of the web? There are tons of flash games out there, tons of flash movies, etc. What benefit are you getting to accept it?
Are you going to be broke paying for applications? It is entirely reasonable to not have to pay for a single application without pirating on a PC/Linux. Almost every pay program has a free alternative on PC/Linux. On the other hand, due to Apple's draconian policies, a paid app may be the only app "approved" to do something.
What about storage? The average person is going to have GB worth of movies, music, documents, photos, etc. Flash memory is -expensive-. Also, how are you going to transfer things to the iPad? And backups? What about durability? If a component of a PC fails, its easily replaced. Nothing is truly "fatal" if you have the money.
The iPad makes a passable secondary "computer" but as a primary computer? I'm better off with my 7 inch EEE 701...
but the vast majority of them are connecting with Mobile Devices.
Just because someone checks Facebook using their iPhone doesn't mean that things have really changed, mobile devices are still crappy for doing just about anything on the internet. Yeah, I might read a blog or two, check the news, etc. but its painful to do so, even on the best devices.
Steve Jobs seems to ignore everything that caused products to be successful: Price to performance. Lets see here the iPad
The iPad costs ~$500, a cheap notebook costs $300-400, paying $500 for a notebook usually gets you a fast, powerful notebook. With a notebook I'm not limited by stupid design decisions, even Microsoft lets me do what I want and doesn't restrict programs. If I want to install an emulator, thats fine. If I want to install Photoshop, thats fine. I don't have to worry about petty squabbles about how Flash is sooooo evil and destroying the world! I can just choose to install Flash or not. With a notebook I can pay ~$5 for a USB card reader rather than $30 for a single-format card reader. With a notebook I have choices of just about everything else, I'm not locked into expensive hardware.
The iPod won marketshare for having a good UI and being small. The iPad has a decent-ish design and decent UI. However, when I can get a laptop with a UI that I've been using for most of my adult life... Why change? The iPad runs expensive applications, a laptop runs free applications.
I think I'm not alone in thinking how annoying it is to have common-sense features be added in at a later date which would have already been done with a simi-open platform.
No one wants real applications! We will never have an iPhone SDK! After all, programs are -terrible- to run. No one wants an alternate browser! No one wants copy/paste! No one wants multi-tasking!
Sorry Steve, I don't understand your opposition to common sense. I have an iPod touch because at the time it was the cheapest wi-fi enabled device to have a good internet experience on the go with some games/music/movies. I'm not going to get an iPad because there are cheaper devices that do a -ton- more.
The Nexus one is needed for AT&T. Currently the only phone running Android is the crappy Motorola Backflip which doesn't even have Google as a search engine and is intentionally crippled, let alone the terrible hardware.
T-Mobile has a good selection, Verizon a great selection and Sprint has several great phones. AT&T however, is crap.
So...where's your proof?
Look at the UK, a chronic shortage of dentists, Canada, long wait times, etc. Even if you -have- the money you generally can't get speedy, efficient health care like in the US.
Are...you...serious? You want to spend more on "defense" (nice newspeak, BTW) than what US already does? (hint: most than vast majority of countries in terms of "% of GDP", dwarfing all in absolute amounts). Is this just about more of a military dick-waving and funneling funds to very few "lucky" ones suddenly?
I believe that the only 2 legitimate purposes of government is to protect their citizens from force and fraud. I disagree with our imperialistic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, it is very important to protect the US from invasion, nuclear, biological, and other threats. It is important to have a top-of-the-line missile shield to protect from ICBMs, aircraft to use in retaliatory strikes, etc. It is important that the US has the newest and best weaponry and defense systems available to protect its citizens.