So why this assumption that they should be paying tax on this money to the US taxman? Presumably it was all earned outside of the US. As a UK taxpayer, I'd be much happier if they would pay UK tax on it (maybe we should offer them a deal - 1% of something is a better deal than 50% of nothing;-) And no doubt French, German, Japanese, Australian, etc tax payers would feel the same way.
Strange - I can recall discussions of the ARM chip at university back in the early 80's. Either that makes be ten years younger than I though:-) - or someone has their dates wrong.
As I recall (and correct me if I'm wrong) there was a company called Acorn Computer's which produced the BBC Micro - a 6502 based machine. The 6502 was long in the tooth even in those days (dating back at least to the Commodore Pet ca. 1976). RISC was flavour of the month in those days, so they set out to create their own RISC based architecture for the next generation of BBC Micro (the Archimedes).
No doubt they had a little help from the local technical college (aka the Cambridge University computing department)
I'm from the UK, but I've lived in Germany in the early '90's. You are right that Germany has a well regulated system. Unfortunately what the UK had in the 70's bore little resemblance to that well regulated German system.
However, as I never tired of pointing out to my German colleagues at the time, unemployment in the UK was actually lower than in Germany (and this was before the merger with the East).
Since that time Germany has been through a lot of deregulation which has brought it closer to the UK model.
I'm not saying that the UK would not benefit from the German focus on good education and training, but it's not all roses on the German side of the fence either.
On the one hand you are saying that the only thing that counts is actually making stuff, and if something was designed in the UK and made elsewhere this does not count (e.g. Dyson)
On the other hand you say "I don't count Jap assembly plants in the UK, because the clever designing is done elsewhere and those plants are just chimps banging things together"
You can't have it both ways! We live in a globalised economy, get used to it! Or move to North Korea if you don't like it.
Ask a group of people what they want, find what seems like a compromise that everyone likes, and you will end up with a camel. (aka Metro)
Alternatively, you could go out, design what you think a lot of people will want once they see the final product, and you end up with an iPhone (or Linux, come to that). People see it once it's finished, and then say "I could never have imagined something that cool, I want one"
This is where Jobs is coming from when he says "people don't know what they want". It doesn't mean that he is forcing them to take some POS that they don't really want. He is just stating the fairly obvious truth that the majority of us are not capable of visualising a complex product such as an iPhone in all it's detail. But if you produce something really really good then people will want it, even if they didn't know that they wanted it before they saw it. In the same way that people want Mercedes and BMW cars, or Phillipe Stark watches, or any other beautiful, well designed product. (And while opinions may vary on whether any of these products are beautiful or well designed, at least enough people think that they are to make the companies that produce them rich.)
There's a lot to be said for the benevolent dictator for life approach. As long as they are benevolent. And right.(and called Linus;-)
OK, I'm a native English speaker, but when I worked in Germany earlier in my career I did learn to speak German fairly fluently, and I have managed to keep it up over the years. I'm not sure though that this has been of any subsequent benefit in all the years since (mainly working in the UK for various companies). Maybe once every couple of years I get asked to translate something from German, or talk to someone in Germany. Probably not even that often, and hardly career defining. It's biggest use these days is on skiing holidays in Austria.
Despite working for some fairly major international firms, I can't really think of any other major language that would have been beneficial in my career. (French/Spanish/Russian/Japanese/Chinese/Hindu/Arabic??) The computing world runs on English (certainly at a technical level) and if you are a native English speaker, you should be able to work anywhere in the world in the industry. Beyond the point of communicating with native speakers, the only real benefit of learning a language is the intellectual exercise that it gives you, and the fact that it will improve your understanding of your mother tongue.
So if you are going to go to the trouble of learning a second langauge, do not do it for career reasons. Do it because you want to learn that language, because you want to absorb a bit of the culture, possibly to go and work in a country where the language is spoken, or because you have a girlfriend/boyfriend whose mother tongue it is.
Actually I think that Apple go one better than the EU standard. A lot of iDevices (such as the nano, touch?) ship without a charger. All you get is a cable to connect your iDevice to a standard USB port on a computer or USB charger wall-wart (which you can purchase separately in the unlikely event that you don't already have one).
Result - no power supply to throw away at the end of life.
As to the change from the old 30-pin connector to lightning - I think that was going to happen anyway at some point. How many Samsung/Nokia/LG/Motorola phones have kept the same connector for the last 10 years? Devices have come down in size to the point where making them any smaller (or thinner) would have been impossible withoug getting rid of the old connector.
What most people care about is that their new iDevice comes with a cable that they can use to connect it to a computer/wall wart for charging purposes. So long as Apple keep the same connector format for the next 10 or so years, accessoies will catch up quite quickly. I don't see most people having a problem with that.
I was lucky enough to live about 20 miles out from Heathrow, under Concorde's flight path for the last 10 years of it's operational life. We were more or less under the point where planes started their final approach to the airport and it was not uncommon to have Concorde fly directly over our house.
Most modern planes were barely noticable - the most annoying sound was that of the flaps coming down at quarter past six in the morning as the first flights came in to land.
However, Concorde had a very distinctive sound - and very loud compared to other modern planes. You could hear it, know what it was and set your watch knowing that it was 7:20 in the evening.
It was however a glorious sight, enough to lift your mood on its own if you were lucky enough to be outside when it flew over (either on its way out to the US in the evening, or preparing its approach to Heathrow). There was no sight quite like a speedbird passing overhead. Pictures and video can't quite convey the sheer elegance and sheer beauty of this plane. Nothing else comes close. And it was so fast. Other planes lumbered overhead - Concorde flashed past like a glorious white arrowhead.
Having also lived on the English Channel I can also tell you that the sonic boom was quite loud and distinctive - enough to rattle the windows from even 30 or 40 miles away.
Just a thought - but if SOPA can be used to silence debate, this must apply just as much to the political as to the scientific process.
I think that if you were to target politician's private websites and any websites associated with congress using SOPA then you might quickly find the act repealed!
Good point but enhancing an existing line to improve capacity and speed is far more problematic than building a new line on a greenfield site. I think they realised that after comparing the success of HS1 (Channel tunnel to London) when compared with the West Coast main line upgrade that was taking place at the same time.
- There is a finite limit to the number of trains you can run down any stretch of track. Once you reach that limit (which is quite close on existing track) You have limited options to increase capacity:-
> Make the trains/platforms longer. Good in theory, but requires major changes to existing infrastructure. (Demolition of existing buildings in town centres) Changes in track layout, particularly at terminus stations. Changes in signalling (for longer trains).
> Double decker trains. This requires a change in the loading gauge of the lines. A particular problem in the UK that has a smaller existing track gauge than Europe. This is why double decker trains are widespread in Europe and non-existent in the UK: there simply isn't the room for them. Changing the gauge basically means rebuilding the entire railway, with all the disruption that brings. (i.e. rebuild bridges, overhead lines, all track-side structures, track alignment, platforms....)
Building an entirely new line brings you all of the benefits of longer platforms, double decker trains, and a much higher speed. All without causing any significant disruption to existing lines. It's cheaper in the long run. And it provides a much bigger increase in total capacity and resilience for the money.
In the same league as Alan Turing, or Ada Lovelace, or Charles Babbage...?
Which one of those has had the biggenst influence on technology as we use it in out daily lives today?
Ada Lovelace and Chares Babbage - built, or tried to buiild a mechanical difference engine in the 19th Century. Interesting. Yes. Important from a purely theoretical point of view. Yes. Impact on current technology and society, probably a lot less than Steve Jobs.
Alan Turing - seminal work on computability. the halting problem, turing machine, not to mention his work at Bletchley park on the Engima Machine. Arguably more important than Jobs when you look at the theoretical underpinnings of modern computer science. Someone else might have come along 5 or 10 years after and provided the same insights, but he was first. If he had not been at Bletchley Park, the Germans could have won the second world war - or it could have dragged on for a lot longer. That would have made a huge difference to modern society.
But really Jobs wasn't in the same class as these people. It's like comparing apples to oranges (pun intended). He was never a theroetical, head in the clouds, computer scientist. he was a businesman first and foremost with a very good intution as to what the market would want if he gave it to them. (as opposed to what the market/a focus group would have said it wanted) He was a leader in that sense.
If you want to compare Jobs to anyone, look at Henry Ford, Thomas Watson (IBM), (even, arguably Bill Gates, Lee Gerstener,Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.) You can't ignore the fact that he took Apple from the brink of bankruptcy to the most valuable (more or less) corporation in the world in 14 years, and along the way produced some of the most iconic pieces of technology of our time.
Will Jobs be as well remembered in 50 or 100 years time as Babbage/Turing/Lovelace? Only time will tell
I though you guys in the US were meant to have a constitutionally-enforced separation of church and state.
How long before this issue ends up in the SCOTUS?
Seriously, the support for creationism in the US is making it a laughing stock of the scientific community. No serious scientist believes in quasi-mystical bullshit about creationism. Stop abusing your children by teaching it to them as if it were accepted fact.
The theory of evolution is one of the cornerstones of modern biology (and as important in its own field as Newton's theory of Gravity, Einstein's theory of relativity or Maxwell's laws of Electromagentism). There is so much of what can be observed in the world around us that is fully explained by the theory of evolution. Creationism is not a useful explanation of the world around us. As far as I know it makes no predictions or hypotheses that can be proved by experiment.
Does creationism tell us why antibiotic-resistant bacteria have developed? Or do they think that God is punishing us all for some misdeed?
...we could invest an minuscule fraction of the resources involved in going to the moon to mine 3He in investigating Adrian Rossi's claimed breakthrough cold fusion device (sorry in case the Cold Fusion though police are around, let's call it Low Energy Nuclear Reactions).
I was very sceptical about this when it came on the radar at the start of the year. But all the accounts so far suggest that he does seem to have a real device that produces significant amounts of energy (heat) using a non-chemical process, and in a very consistent and reproducible fashion and which he intends to commercialize in the fairly near term. All the reports I have seen would suggest that it has stood up to examination and investigation by respected sceptics - if it is a scam, then it's an incredibly good one.
Of course, the final proof is when I can replace the boiler in my house with one of Rossi's devices. But that it starting to look increasingly likely with each passing week.
So do you still want to go mining 3He on the moon?
I think this depends on your device - providers have very limited scope to mess with the software on the iPad (yes they could force you to install an App, but if that were the case I would tell my provider where to go).
As for ROM upgrade - not an issue for the provider on iPad/iPhone/iPod as it comes from Apple and is nothing to do with the provider.
I could put this in terms of an iPod Touch vs iPhone debate: I owned an iPod Touch for three years. A great MP3 player, and it was handy having access to the web via WiFi, but I was still carrying around a Blackberry for e-mail (although BB useless for web).
Having upgraded to a iPhone last year I wouldn't go back: it's one less device to carry around, and that's a huge plus. Add to that the location-awareness of the iPhone (GPS, compass) . Web access pretty much anywhere (at least anywhere that you have 3G/EDGE and a data contract). A semi-decent camera than means I rarely carry my compact camera any more (yet another device to not carry around).
For the iPad I would go with 3G if the cost wasn't too much of an issue for you. Not everywhere has Wi-Fi, or if they do they want more than the monthy cost of a SIM card for an hour's use. If you are on the move then 3G is the only way to go.
Tethering is always a compromise - yes there is one less SIM/data contract to worry about. But tethering is never quite as seamless as it promises, and then you are running down the battery on both devices at the same time. Or your provider doesn't allow you to tether.
Remember this isn't a Windows notebook. In my experience Mac batteries last a lot longer than the crap you get with most PC's.
For example - the 22 month old Macbook I am writing this on is currently showing that the battery is still at 95% of its design capacity after being used every day (271 charge cycles). It certainly good for 4-5 hours on battery use still.
Unless you have been really abusing the Mac it should still be good for 90% design charge, and 4-5 hours.
Of course if you install Windows you will probably only get half of that. But that's your choice (or your wife's)
I would agree with the "Do.net because that's where the money with".
I've had 30 years expericens in the computer industry, and probably programmed in more languages than most people have hot dinners.
Yes, you can try and stick with a particular OS or language (usually, in my experience, because it's what you already know, rather than because it is best) I've done that with OSes and languages inthe past, but if there is no market for them, and the paychecks don't come in, well, go and learn something new.
I've done that serveral times in my career. However, previous experience is rarely wasted. It's always useful to be able to compare why a certain OS feature works a certain way in Windows or MacOS compared to Linux/Solaris/VMS/OS/360 and a few other OS's I've probably forgotten about.
I feel sorry for anyone who has only known a Windows/C# development environment, but there are a lot of things in.Net, especially the newer incarnations such as 4.0 that are actually quite exciting/useful: implementations of generics, lambda functions, LINQ, MVVM design pattern to name a few. Stuff I learnt about in CS classes nearly 30 years ago, but only now am I starting to see in mainstream development (Well you can argue about closures and Perl or LISP and how mainstream there were, and you would be right to do so, however...)
I like being able to just declare List or ObservableCollection. I'm sure I could implement these from scratch, given time. I'm well aware of the implementation differences between Hashtable and List (I've implemented a few in my time). I've been there, and I don't need to spend several more weeks of my life implementing and testing them when I can use what comes out of the box.
There was an article a few weeks ago on how people have died through following their GPS into Death Valley, then getting into trouble - no water, no cellphone coverage, very high temperatures. Go figure.
Slashdot Mirror
So why this assumption that they should be paying tax on this money to the US taxman? ;-)
Presumably it was all earned outside of the US.
As a UK taxpayer, I'd be much happier if they would pay UK tax on it (maybe we should offer them a deal - 1% of something is a better deal than 50% of nothing
And no doubt French, German, Japanese, Australian, etc tax payers would feel the same way.
So what's so special about the Americans?
So my email and VOIP system has been subject to an attack by Microsoft (as they rely on *paid for* no-ip domains.).
Can we have microsoft.com domains taken down, as they are clearly causing a huge amount of damage to the fabric of the Internet.
What a bunch of w******s
Strange - I can recall discussions of the ARM chip at university back in the early 80's. Either that makes be ten years younger than I though :-) - or someone has their dates wrong.
As I recall (and correct me if I'm wrong) there was a company called Acorn Computer's which produced the BBC Micro - a 6502 based machine.
The 6502 was long in the tooth even in those days (dating back at least to the Commodore Pet ca. 1976).
RISC was flavour of the month in those days, so they set out to create their own RISC based architecture for the next generation of BBC Micro (the Archimedes).
No doubt they had a little help from the local technical college (aka the Cambridge University computing department)
I'm from the UK, but I've lived in Germany in the early '90's. You are right that Germany has a well regulated system. Unfortunately what the UK had in the 70's bore little resemblance to that well regulated German system.
However, as I never tired of pointing out to my German colleagues at the time, unemployment in the UK was actually lower than in Germany (and this was before the merger with the East).
Since that time Germany has been through a lot of deregulation which has brought it closer to the UK model.
I'm not saying that the UK would not benefit from the German focus on good education and training, but it's not all roses on the German side of the fence either.
You're contradicting yourself:
On the one hand you are saying that the only thing that counts is actually making stuff, and if something was designed in the UK and made elsewhere this does not count (e.g. Dyson)
On the other hand you say "I don't count Jap assembly plants in the UK, because the clever designing is done elsewhere and those plants are just chimps banging things together"
You can't have it both ways!
We live in a globalised economy, get used to it! Or move to North Korea if you don't like it.
I think the only thing that we all agree on is that you either loved or hated her.
To some she wrecked the country, threw millions out of work, destroyed their communities.
To others she freed us from the shackles of socialism, faced down the union barons, and made Britain stand tall in the world again.
We will not see her like again.
I absolutely agree with Steve Jobs on this one.
Ask a group of people what they want, find what seems like a compromise that everyone likes, and you will end up with a camel. (aka Metro)
Alternatively, you could go out, design what you think a lot of people will want once they see the final product, and you end up with an iPhone (or Linux, come to that). People see it once it's finished, and then say "I could never have imagined something that cool, I want one"
This is where Jobs is coming from when he says "people don't know what they want". It doesn't mean that he is forcing them to take some POS that they don't really want.
He is just stating the fairly obvious truth that the majority of us are not capable of visualising a complex product such as an iPhone in all it's detail. But if you produce something really really good then people will want it, even if they didn't know that they wanted it before they saw it. In the same way that people want Mercedes and BMW cars, or Phillipe Stark watches, or any other beautiful, well designed product. (And while opinions may vary on whether any of these products are beautiful or well designed, at least enough people think that they are to make the companies that produce them rich.)
There's a lot to be said for the benevolent dictator for life approach. As long as they are benevolent. And right.(and called Linus ;-)
They might have decided to turn it into a black project and then send it up into orbit in a recoverable vehicle for testing.
Such as the X37B....??
I think you will find the target market is quite large!
OK, I'm a native English speaker, but when I worked in Germany earlier in my career I did learn to speak German fairly fluently, and I have managed to keep it up over the years.
I'm not sure though that this has been of any subsequent benefit in all the years since (mainly working in the UK for various companies).
Maybe once every couple of years I get asked to translate something from German, or talk to someone in Germany. Probably not even that often, and hardly career defining. It's biggest use these days is on skiing holidays in Austria.
Despite working for some fairly major international firms, I can't really think of any other major language that would have been beneficial in my career. (French/Spanish/Russian/Japanese/Chinese/Hindu/Arabic??) The computing world runs on English (certainly at a technical level) and if you are a native English speaker, you should be able to work anywhere in the world in the industry.
Beyond the point of communicating with native speakers, the only real benefit of learning a language is the intellectual exercise that it gives you, and the fact that it will improve your understanding of your mother tongue.
So if you are going to go to the trouble of learning a second langauge, do not do it for career reasons. Do it because you want to learn that language, because you want to absorb a bit of the culture, possibly to go and work in a country where the language is spoken, or because you have a girlfriend/boyfriend whose mother tongue it is.
I think that you will find if you do the math (correctly) the figure is only $10,000.
Still a reasonable sum, but worth breaking the phone system for?
Raspberry Pi low end?
It has 512MB of memoy for goodness sake. Desktop PC territory not that many years ago.
Try programming an 8-bit 6502 with 8kB memory.
Now that is low end
Actually I think that Apple go one better than the EU standard. A lot of iDevices (such as the nano, touch?) ship without a charger. All you get is a cable to connect your iDevice to a standard USB port on a computer or USB charger wall-wart (which you can purchase separately in the unlikely event that you don't already have one).
Result - no power supply to throw away at the end of life.
As to the change from the old 30-pin connector to lightning - I think that was going to happen anyway at some point. How many Samsung/Nokia/LG/Motorola phones have kept the same connector for the last 10 years? Devices have come down in size to the point where making them any smaller (or thinner) would have been impossible withoug getting rid of the old connector.
What most people care about is that their new iDevice comes with a cable that they can use to connect it to a computer/wall wart for charging purposes.
So long as Apple keep the same connector format for the next 10 or so years, accessoies will catch up quite quickly. I don't see most people having a problem with that.
I was lucky enough to live about 20 miles out from Heathrow, under Concorde's flight path for the last 10 years of it's operational life. We were more or less under the point where planes started their final approach to the airport and it was not uncommon to have Concorde fly directly over our house.
Most modern planes were barely noticable - the most annoying sound was that of the flaps coming down at quarter past six in the morning as the first flights came in to land.
However, Concorde had a very distinctive sound - and very loud compared to other modern planes. You could hear it, know what it was and set your watch knowing that it was 7:20 in the evening.
It was however a glorious sight, enough to lift your mood on its own if you were lucky enough to be outside when it flew over (either on its way out to the US in the evening, or preparing its approach to Heathrow).
There was no sight quite like a speedbird passing overhead. Pictures and video can't quite convey the sheer elegance and sheer beauty of this plane. Nothing else comes close. And it was so fast. Other planes lumbered overhead - Concorde flashed past like a glorious white arrowhead.
Having also lived on the English Channel I can also tell you that the sonic boom was quite loud and distinctive - enough to rattle the windows from even 30 or 40 miles away.
Maybe.
But he's still a lot cheaper than the $15+Billion Hot-fusion scam that the scientfic community has been running on us all over the last 50 years.
Either he's on to something, in which case great.
Or he's fooling himself, in which case it makes good soap opera.
Just a thought - but if SOPA can be used to silence debate, this must apply just as much to the political as to the scientific process.
I think that if you were to target politician's private websites and any websites associated with congress using SOPA then you might quickly find the act repealed!
Good point but enhancing an existing line to improve capacity and speed is far more problematic than building a new line on a greenfield site. I think they realised that after comparing the success of HS1 (Channel tunnel to London) when compared with the West Coast main line upgrade that was taking place at the same time.
- There is a finite limit to the number of trains you can run down any stretch of track. Once you reach that limit (which is quite close on existing track) You have limited options to increase capacity:-
> Make the trains/platforms longer. Good in theory, but requires major changes to existing infrastructure. (Demolition of existing buildings in town centres) Changes in track layout, particularly at terminus stations. Changes in signalling (for longer trains).
> Double decker trains. This requires a change in the loading gauge of the lines. A particular problem in the UK that has a smaller existing track gauge than Europe. This is why double decker trains are widespread in Europe and non-existent in the UK: there simply isn't the room for them. Changing the gauge basically means rebuilding the entire railway, with all the disruption that brings. (i.e. rebuild bridges, overhead lines, all track-side structures, track alignment, platforms....)
Building an entirely new line brings you all of the benefits of longer platforms, double decker trains, and a much higher speed. All without causing any significant disruption to existing lines. It's cheaper in the long run. And it provides a much bigger increase in total capacity and resilience for the money.
In the same league as Alan Turing, or Ada Lovelace, or Charles Babbage...?
Which one of those has had the biggenst influence on technology as we use it in out daily lives today?
Ada Lovelace and Chares Babbage - built, or tried to buiild a mechanical difference engine in the 19th Century. Interesting. Yes. Important from a purely theoretical point of view. Yes. Impact on current technology and society, probably a lot less than Steve Jobs.
Alan Turing - seminal work on computability. the halting problem, turing machine, not to mention his work at Bletchley park on the Engima Machine. Arguably more important than Jobs when you look at the theoretical underpinnings of modern computer science. Someone else might have come along 5 or 10 years after and provided the same insights, but he was first. If he had not been at Bletchley Park, the Germans could have won the second world war - or it could have dragged on for a lot longer. That would have made a huge difference to modern society.
But really Jobs wasn't in the same class as these people. It's like comparing apples to oranges (pun intended). He was never a theroetical, head in the clouds, computer scientist. he was a businesman first and foremost with a very good intution as to what the market would want if he gave it to them. (as opposed to what the market/a focus group would have said it wanted) He was a leader in that sense.
If you want to compare Jobs to anyone, look at Henry Ford, Thomas Watson (IBM), (even, arguably Bill Gates, Lee Gerstener,Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.) You can't ignore the fact that he took Apple from the brink of bankruptcy to the most valuable (more or less) corporation in the world in 14 years, and along the way produced some of the most iconic pieces of technology of our time.
Will Jobs be as well remembered in 50 or 100 years time as Babbage/Turing/Lovelace? Only time will tell
I though you guys in the US were meant to have a constitutionally-enforced separation of church and state.
How long before this issue ends up in the SCOTUS?
Seriously, the support for creationism in the US is making it a laughing stock of the scientific community.
No serious scientist believes in quasi-mystical bullshit about creationism.
Stop abusing your children by teaching it to them as if it were accepted fact.
The theory of evolution is one of the cornerstones of modern biology (and as important in its own field as Newton's theory of Gravity, Einstein's theory of relativity or Maxwell's laws of Electromagentism). There is so much of what can be observed in the world around us that is fully explained by the theory of evolution. Creationism is not a useful explanation of the world around us. As far as I know it makes no predictions or hypotheses that can be proved by experiment.
Does creationism tell us why antibiotic-resistant bacteria have developed? Or do they think that God is punishing us all for some misdeed?
...we could invest an minuscule fraction of the resources involved in going to the moon to mine 3He in investigating Adrian Rossi's claimed breakthrough cold fusion device (sorry in case the Cold Fusion though police are around, let's call it Low Energy Nuclear Reactions).
I was very sceptical about this when it came on the radar at the start of the year. But all the accounts so far suggest that he does seem to have a real device that produces significant amounts of energy (heat) using a non-chemical process, and in a very consistent and reproducible fashion and which he intends to commercialize in the fairly near term. All the reports I have seen would suggest that it has stood up to examination and investigation by respected sceptics - if it is a scam, then it's an incredibly good one.
Of course, the final proof is when I can replace the boiler in my house with one of Rossi's devices. But that it starting to look increasingly likely with each passing week.
So do you still want to go mining 3He on the moon?
I think this depends on your device - providers have very limited scope to mess with the software on the iPad (yes they could force you to install an App, but if that were the case I would tell my provider where to go).
As for ROM upgrade - not an issue for the provider on iPad/iPhone/iPod as it comes from Apple and is nothing to do with the provider.
I could put this in terms of an iPod Touch vs iPhone debate: I owned an iPod Touch for three years. A great MP3 player, and it was handy having access to the web via WiFi, but I was still carrying around a Blackberry for e-mail (although BB useless for web).
Having upgraded to a iPhone last year I wouldn't go back: it's one less device to carry around, and that's a huge plus. Add to that the location-awareness of the iPhone (GPS, compass) . Web access pretty much anywhere (at least anywhere that you have 3G/EDGE and a data contract). A semi-decent camera than means I rarely carry my compact camera any more (yet another device to not carry around).
For the iPad I would go with 3G if the cost wasn't too much of an issue for you. Not everywhere has Wi-Fi, or if they do they want more than the monthy cost of a SIM card for an hour's use. If you are on the move then 3G is the only way to go.
Tethering is always a compromise - yes there is one less SIM/data contract to worry about. But tethering is never quite as seamless as it promises, and then you are running down the battery on both devices at the same time. Or your provider doesn't allow you to tether.
Battery Trashed?
Remember this isn't a Windows notebook. In my experience Mac batteries last a lot longer than the crap you get with most PC's.
For example - the 22 month old Macbook I am writing this on is currently showing that the battery is still at 95% of its design capacity after being used every day (271 charge cycles). It certainly good for 4-5 hours on battery use still.
Unless you have been really abusing the Mac it should still be good for 90% design charge, and 4-5 hours.
Of course if you install Windows you will probably only get half of that. But that's your choice (or your wife's)
I would agree with the "Do .net because that's where the money with".
I've had 30 years expericens in the computer industry, and probably programmed in more languages than most people have hot dinners.
Yes, you can try and stick with a particular OS or language (usually, in my experience, because it's what you already know, rather than because it is best)
I've done that with OSes and languages inthe past, but if there is no market for them, and the paychecks don't come in, well, go and learn something new.
I've done that serveral times in my career. However, previous experience is rarely wasted. It's always useful to be able to compare why a certain OS feature works a certain way in Windows or MacOS compared to Linux/Solaris/VMS/OS/360 and a few other OS's I've probably forgotten about.
I feel sorry for anyone who has only known a Windows/C# development environment, but there are a lot of things in .Net, especially the newer incarnations such as 4.0 that are actually quite exciting/useful: implementations of generics, lambda functions, LINQ, MVVM design pattern to name a few. Stuff I learnt about in CS classes nearly 30 years ago, but only now am I starting to see in mainstream development (Well you can argue about closures and Perl or LISP and how mainstream there were, and you would be right to do so, however...)
I like being able to just declare List or ObservableCollection. I'm sure I could implement these from scratch, given time. I'm well aware of the implementation differences between Hashtable and List (I've implemented a few in my time). I've been there, and I don't need to spend several more weeks of my life implementing and testing them when I can use what comes out of the box.
There was an article a few weeks ago on how people have died through following their GPS into Death Valley, then getting into trouble - no water, no cellphone coverage, very high temperatures. Go figure.