The foundation is now much better, fully 64-bit, using OpenCL and Grand Central. You mention FCP7 was long in the tooth, quite true. That's why the rewrite.
The problem is that Apple didn't have enough time to finish everything else on top of that core. Apple should have kept it in development for at least another year before release.
The worst thing about this incident isn't the software itself. It's the proverbial slap in the face to professional editors. It makes everybody wonder what the future holds for FCP if Apple is willing to release such an incomplete product. Might as well switch to a product you know will be supported in the long run, because Apple may decide to drop FCP.
These days I'm sensitive to crappy graphics, trying to look real but not doing well. There are a lot of games around like this, and usually after I see a game video or demo, I instantly dismiss them.
Borderlands got around this with the cool cel shaded look. I like it a LOT better than going anime.
I also appreciated the humor in the game, from Dr. Zed to Marcus to Claptrap. It wasn't contrived and forced like in Duke Nuke'm Forever.
If we were starting this from scratch. But we're not. We have an existing system that includes various monopolies and duopolies all over the country. These ensure that basic free market principles won't work to their fullest, leaving ISPs free to abuse their customers.
The government has also already given hundreds of billions in considerations to the existing companies to build their infrastructure, an advantage new competition won't get, especially if we suddenly go free market.
Guess what, it costs him more money to drive to the store, too.
You accept certain built-in costs when you move somewhere. Those in the city have higher property costs, but stores are closer and there's easier availability of fast Interent and other services.
Those out in the boonies pay much less for their property, and that's because it's so far away from those services and locations. By asking for Internet at the same price, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They paid less for their property, now the government (actually all other phone users through the Universal Service Fund) pays to improve the property's value for him by providing broadband.
There's the problem. Many don't want a melting pot. They want their own imported culture to be dominant. Political correctness helps them in this endeavor, since any culture except for white European Christian is praised and elevated. You are allowed to be racist, as long as you aren't a white racist. You are allowed to express your religion, as long as it isn't Christianity. You are allowed to assert that your LGBTQABPNWXYZ sexual preference is desirable or even superior, but you're a homophobe if you promote heterosexuality. To state that an immigrant should learn the language of this country is practically forbidden. We should learn the languages of the immigrants if we want to communicate with them.
And don't even get me started on the hypocrisy this all engenders when to PC platforms collide.
Melting pot is good. Trying to destroy the pre-existing culture is not. From the existing culture there is a duty to accept and integrate the desirable aspects of the new cultures. From the immigrating culture there is a duty to assimilate that I don't see happening much.
"Diversity" is the big PC buzzword -- PC is involved when you see it. Our culture is still majority white heterosexual Christian, but they do not purposely relect on that for some reason (unless they need a hateful racist character, and then he must be white).
They're making him black, Latino and gay to pander to those minorities and those whose political correctness puts those minorities on a pedestal.
Next they'll make him Muslim. With his abilities he can avenge the honor of Muslim families by killing their daughters who become too westernized. It will also add the interesting subplot of living under fear of murder by his fellow Muslims for being homosexual.
Right now I can think of several that have an official religion or church. I should have added, "or have other tight involvement with a specific religion." For example:
Germany is technically secular, but financially supports the churches, and individual states can have strong formal religious ties with a church (Bavaria/Catholicism being most famous, and the Protestants up north).
Italy is technically secular, but the Catholic Church has a big say in politics. Plus there's a compulsory tax. You have a choice: fund government welfare or fund churches. It's technically an opt-out, but in reality most of the money goes to the churches, and most of the money where people didn't declare a recipient (most of the filers) goes to the churches.
The last several console games I bought from various publishers downloaded a patch on first run, and this includes games bought on the first day available.
Ahhh, the days of cartridges... plug and run, forever.
You're right, for the most part it would be a big forest, or at least prairie, as nature reclaims land. Some places would revert to desert though, California's lush Imperial Valley for example.
The culture is majority religious, majority of that Christian, but with the ideal of protecting the rights of the minorities. I don't have a problem if the majority expresses its beliefs through government as long as it has no real effect.
Well, I do. But, honestly, some dumb text on a coin is not worth bitching about. It's not a perfect world, and I'm not going to let the little things get me upset.
I did draw the line at the Ten Commandments in the courtroom. The intended meaning, and the implication those entering will get, is that the Ten Commandments are a source of law in that courtroom. Example:
"I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me" -- All but Christians and Jews break this
"You shall not make for yourself an idol" -- Hindus are screwed
"Do not take the name of the Lord in vain" -- Don't say "Oh God!" when something suprises you. You may think it's no big deal, but...
"Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy" -- Don't let the judge know you worked Saturday/Sunday
None of these are covered by secular law, but a non-Christian has reasonable fears that if the judge believes in these and connects these to the history of our law, then not abiding by these will be prejudicial to the non-Christian. That's too close to a theocracy for me.
We are actually doing much better than most of the world. European countries have official or state-supported churches, but with respect for the rights of minorities. Muslim countries of course are very religious, with no rights for religious minorities (which makes me wonder why leftists who supposedly support civil rights also support the expanding Muslim influence that opposes civil rights).
Wealth vs. Income, learn to make the distinction
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
This is an issue of income tax. We have a separate wealth tax, called the estate tax. Only the rich pay it. Debating with class warfare liberals is like dancing on Jello, constantly shifting under you.
Wealth can take a lot of forms that don't necessarily mean living rich, here's an extreme example to get the point across. Imagine a relative willed you $34,000 of Apple stock in December 1997. That didn't make you rich, you continue your regular mid-paying job, but you did have 10,000 shares of Apple stock.
Now let's say you didn't want to risk your money, or were just greedy and wanted the cash. You sell it next month for $45,000. You made $11,000, but the government took a good chunk of that in capital gains tax.
But let's say you took the risk, you left your money there. They've since split twice, so you'd have 40,000 shares now. Each share is worth $390 now, making you worth $15,600,000 (minus adjustments for inflation). Thanks to the vision of that evil top 1% wealth guy known as Steve Jobs, you're rich.
But do you necessarily live any differently? You're rich on paper, but that's not cash or money in the bank you can spend. You will be taxed if you cash-in on any of that, taxed on the dividends if Apple hadn't stopped paying them, and of course taxed when you spend it, taxed even more depending on current luxury tax rates, and taxed every year after that if you spent it on a big house or car. It will also be taxed very highly when you will it to your heirs.
What if your riches were in an inherited parcel of land that similarly exploded in value over these 14 years, such as by getting caught in an expanding downtown? You've been paying increasing property taxes every year, the government got its share. And when you sell it, you pay capital gains. In fact, you probably would have sold the property long ago since you couldn't afford the property taxes.
So the numbers look big, but that's about it. The government will get its share in multiple ways, often taxing the same dollar several times over, if the wealth is actually realized to support a wealthy lifestyle.
if the top 1% DIDN'T PAY THAT WE WOULD HAVE NO MONEY AT ALL
Then maybe you should be grateful of the current situation where they pay disproportionally more of their income instead of bitching that the rich don't pay their "fair share."
He didn't pick the road less traveled. As you note, he earlier said both appeared to be equally worn. Picking the road less traveled is a rationalization for the decision made years later, looking back on the event.
It is funny, the most famous line is basically a lie.
So with the literalist view you may now take that road that you think is less traveled in order to be nonconformist, but in your later years with the ironic view you'll look back on that decision and maybe rationalize your choice in an entirely different way.
That 38% number is meaningless out of context, as it doesn't take into account whether that 1% brings in more or less than 38% of all the taxable income.
That statement had a pretty clear meaning. You obviously thought the 1%ers pay less income tax than their income share, which would make your anti-rich sentiment feel vindicated because that would show they are freeloading. Then I showed you that the truth is the exact opposite -- they pay more.
You just blew right past that; it didn't even register. You simply moved the goalposts to another place you thought you'd be right, but you still weren't.
That's the problem here. No amount of facts can penetrate the mind of the liberal who has been indoctrinated in the class warfare mentality. The rich are evil, period, and they must pay.
Looks like Apple had 3-4 months to tweak their UI after they saw what SPB did
Except by that time the iPhone UI would have been long-since finalized. Apple was already nit-picking over individual pixels in the icons.
no multitasking (it still does not have real multitasking, like Symbian or Windows Mobile), both of which most consider as required for a smartphone
Unlimited multitasking is horrible for handhelds. The iPhone has had multitasking from the beginning -- it just wasn't available to user apps. Apple knew unlimited multitasking would suck, so didn't include any user app multitasking at all until it could be done right. The instant sleep/wake is perfect for almost all cases, with exceptions for things like music and phone calls through specific controlled APIs.
This is what Apple is going for. They don't want what I get on my Andoid, a background task sucking up the power to make the task I'm working on unresponsive, or interfering with the ability to quickly answer phone calls.
As far as apps, the definition of a smart phone has been sliding. The IBM Simon did a lot less than the original iPhone, and it's considered to be the first smart phone.
But then it was based on the Macintosh, which was sort of based on the Lisa, which took a lot of ideas from the STAR, and the basic idea of pen computing goes back to the 1800s.
Most wealth has already been taxed at least once in one form or another as it was gained. Much of that wealth is also in the form of stocks. It can't be utilized. It's just a number on an accounting sheet. It needs to be converted to a form that will be taxed yet again in order to support a rich lifestyle.
From the point of view of the teacher this is just regulation of a profession. Lawyers and doctors, for example, have restrictions on their freedom of speech in the form of (at the very least) client confidentiality. Anyone with a security clearance has his freedom of speech and of association limited.
The point is that in all of these cases, you accept limitations by joining that profession or remaining in it when the rules change. You can choose to pursue another profession, freeing yourself of the limitations you accepted . So IMHO IANAL it's not really a rights issue, especially if the state has a compelling interest.
Back to this case. From the point of the view of who hires almost all teachers, the government, this can be accomplished in the code of conduct for employees -- friend or accept friending by your students, get fired. For private schools, we don't accredit unless they also have this policy.
Why do we need a law?
But one question: Does this mean that homeschooling moms can't friend their kids to keep an eye on them?
What this is actually telling us is that the top 1% is too large a bucket to clearly show the problem
Now you're moving the goalposts. You made an issue of the top 1%.
According to Wikipedia, the top 1% is considered to be the split point between middle and upper classes
That's BS. Even Obama defined the cutoff at $200,000, somewhere in the top 5%. You're now arguing about the difference between the rich and the ultra rich.
But in any case, the top.1% make 10% of the money and pay 18% of the taxes. The disparity still exists, the top pay relatively more of their income as income taxes than those lower. Below $160,000 (top 5%) a year you are paying equal or less tax relative to income percentage.
Worse, the split point isn't even necessarily upper class at $380,000, depending on whether you factor in cost of living and divide things up geographically.
Don't try to tell me $380,000 is middle class anywhere. You may be paying $1,000 a month rent for a nice place in Arkansas, and $4,000 for the same in Silicon Valley, but that's only a $36,000 difference. Add another crazy $2000 a month for other higher prices and you're still making an effective $308,000, doing very well for yourself indeed.
the more of their income is being taxed at the much lower 15% long-term capital gains rate
This old canard. The capital gains tax is lower to encourage investment, account for it often already having been taxed in another form, and to offset losses due to inflation. Remember, in the long run inflation is just another form of taxation: the government prints more money for itself, making your money worth less. It's the same as you paying the government the difference.
A while back I calculated the investment of $1 million in stocks with current inflation, and a return of the historical average 10% for stocks. The person pulls out his profit after a year, being subject to the 15% tax. The total amount lost to the government (taxation and inflation) was 38%, which is MORE than the standard income tax rate.
Worse, if he's having a bad year and only gets a 2.5% return. He makes $25,000, the government takes $3,750, and he loses $23,000 due to inflation. He's actually in the hole by $1,750 if he pulls his money.
But that's why some level of capital gains is a good idea. If the market is bad, returns are low, people have a very strong incentive to keep the money invested, keeping the economy going by keeping businesses funded. But the rate needs to be kept low enough to encourage investment in the first place, give a chance for a good return for the risk taken. The current rate looks pretty good overall,
I was using SPB Mobile Shell with widgets and grids of icons on a Samsung 830w back in Feb 2007 - well before the iPhone was released.
Apple started designing a tablet in the early 2000s, and refocused that effort to making a multi-touch (not just touch) phone in 2005. In January 2007 this effort was introduced as the iPhone, which would be available some months later. Looks like SPB had a month to tweak their UI after they saw what Apple did.
As far as I can tell and remember, the iPhone was little more than a pretty feature phone - no apps
Apple usually starts with a solid basic product to prove a concept, with a vision for how to bring it to maturity in steps, such as the App Store one year later.
The lack of cut&paste and multitasking are an example of that evolution. Apple couldn't initially figure out how to make either of them work WELL, and wasn't going to include anything half-assed. It was going to take time. The result: Their cut&paste is absolutely the best and their multitasking preserves battery life, and system stability and performance. I have an Android, and the cut&paste sucks, and the multitasking is hell.
In the early 90s. It was called the Newton. But it suffered from scope creep and not having the technology available. Even then it was quite innovative -- the ARM processor was developed in an Apple partnership with ACORN and VLSI for the Netwon.
Microsoft started talking about a vision for tablets that failed in the marketplace. Specifically, shoehorning a desktop operating system into a tablet form factor, usually requiring a pen to work right. It didn't work. Few bought it. Apple succeeded because the operating system was designed for touch-based handhelds. Microsoft saw this coming when they scuttled their upcoming Windows tablet right after the launch of the original iPad.
Yes, the App Store was genius, but it's because it broke the standard model of the cell companies. They always want to nickel-and-dime on your bill for every little feature. Apple wanted it open for development, people adding any functionality they want without a dime going to the cell company. AT&T had a long iPhone exclusivity because AT&T demanded it in return for taking such a risk on the new business model.
Android has a lot to thank Apple for, not only in introducing new hardware and software innovations to follow, but for using its clout to fundamentally shift the cell phone business to allow what Android now takes for granted.
It was a hell of a risk for Apple to take. The previous foray in the form of the ROKR was a flop. High risk taken to success deserves payoff. Android makers aren't taking much of a risk, just following the Apple-paved road.
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The foundation is now much better, fully 64-bit, using OpenCL and Grand Central. You mention FCP7 was long in the tooth, quite true. That's why the rewrite.
The problem is that Apple didn't have enough time to finish everything else on top of that core. Apple should have kept it in development for at least another year before release.
The worst thing about this incident isn't the software itself. It's the proverbial slap in the face to professional editors. It makes everybody wonder what the future holds for FCP if Apple is willing to release such an incomplete product. Might as well switch to a product you know will be supported in the long run, because Apple may decide to drop FCP.
These days I'm sensitive to crappy graphics, trying to look real but not doing well. There are a lot of games around like this, and usually after I see a game video or demo, I instantly dismiss them.
Borderlands got around this with the cool cel shaded look. I like it a LOT better than going anime.
I also appreciated the humor in the game, from Dr. Zed to Marcus to Claptrap. It wasn't contrived and forced like in Duke Nuke'm Forever.
If we were starting this from scratch. But we're not. We have an existing system that includes various monopolies and duopolies all over the country. These ensure that basic free market principles won't work to their fullest, leaving ISPs free to abuse their customers.
The government has also already given hundreds of billions in considerations to the existing companies to build their infrastructure, an advantage new competition won't get, especially if we suddenly go free market.
Guess what, it costs him more money to drive to the store, too.
You accept certain built-in costs when you move somewhere. Those in the city have higher property costs, but stores are closer and there's easier availability of fast Interent and other services.
Those out in the boonies pay much less for their property, and that's because it's so far away from those services and locations. By asking for Internet at the same price, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They paid less for their property, now the government (actually all other phone users through the Universal Service Fund) pays to improve the property's value for him by providing broadband.
Jeremy sees if he can outrun an iPhone's ability to jump from one public WiFi connection to another in a Lamborghini.
Turns out traffic in London is so bad he can't.
There's the problem. Many don't want a melting pot. They want their own imported culture to be dominant. Political correctness helps them in this endeavor, since any culture except for white European Christian is praised and elevated. You are allowed to be racist, as long as you aren't a white racist. You are allowed to express your religion, as long as it isn't Christianity. You are allowed to assert that your LGBTQABPNWXYZ sexual preference is desirable or even superior, but you're a homophobe if you promote heterosexuality. To state that an immigrant should learn the language of this country is practically forbidden. We should learn the languages of the immigrants if we want to communicate with them.
And don't even get me started on the hypocrisy this all engenders when to PC platforms collide.
Melting pot is good. Trying to destroy the pre-existing culture is not. From the existing culture there is a duty to accept and integrate the desirable aspects of the new cultures. From the immigrating culture there is a duty to assimilate that I don't see happening much.
American. Not Hispanic, not Asian, not European.
I'm sure that happens.
I'm sure it would sell great in Gaza.
"Diversity" is the big PC buzzword -- PC is involved when you see it. Our culture is still majority white heterosexual Christian, but they do not purposely relect on that for some reason (unless they need a hateful racist character, and then he must be white).
They're making him black, Latino and gay to pander to those minorities and those whose political correctness puts those minorities on a pedestal.
Next they'll make him Muslim. With his abilities he can avenge the honor of Muslim families by killing their daughters who become too westernized. It will also add the interesting subplot of living under fear of murder by his fellow Muslims for being homosexual.
Right now I can think of several that have an official religion or church. I should have added, "or have other tight involvement with a specific religion." For example:
Germany is technically secular, but financially supports the churches, and individual states can have strong formal religious ties with a church (Bavaria/Catholicism being most famous, and the Protestants up north).
Italy is technically secular, but the Catholic Church has a big say in politics. Plus there's a compulsory tax. You have a choice: fund government welfare or fund churches. It's technically an opt-out, but in reality most of the money goes to the churches, and most of the money where people didn't declare a recipient (most of the filers) goes to the churches.
The last several console games I bought from various publishers downloaded a patch on first run, and this includes games bought on the first day available.
Ahhh, the days of cartridges ... plug and run, forever.
that a post-apocalyptic world will be barren.
You're right, for the most part it would be a big forest, or at least prairie, as nature reclaims land. Some places would revert to desert though, California's lush Imperial Valley for example.
Next time I drive through Texas. Unfortunately, I'll have to dump all the cool stuff before I hit California due to some pretty dumb gun laws.
The culture is majority religious, majority of that Christian, but with the ideal of protecting the rights of the minorities. I don't have a problem if the majority expresses its beliefs through government as long as it has no real effect.
Well, I do. But, honestly, some dumb text on a coin is not worth bitching about. It's not a perfect world, and I'm not going to let the little things get me upset.
I did draw the line at the Ten Commandments in the courtroom. The intended meaning, and the implication those entering will get, is that the Ten Commandments are a source of law in that courtroom. Example:
None of these are covered by secular law, but a non-Christian has reasonable fears that if the judge believes in these and connects these to the history of our law, then not abiding by these will be prejudicial to the non-Christian. That's too close to a theocracy for me.
We are actually doing much better than most of the world. European countries have official or state-supported churches, but with respect for the rights of minorities. Muslim countries of course are very religious, with no rights for religious minorities (which makes me wonder why leftists who supposedly support civil rights also support the expanding Muslim influence that opposes civil rights).
This is an issue of income tax. We have a separate wealth tax, called the estate tax. Only the rich pay it. Debating with class warfare liberals is like dancing on Jello, constantly shifting under you.
Wealth can take a lot of forms that don't necessarily mean living rich, here's an extreme example to get the point across. Imagine a relative willed you $34,000 of Apple stock in December 1997. That didn't make you rich, you continue your regular mid-paying job, but you did have 10,000 shares of Apple stock.
Now let's say you didn't want to risk your money, or were just greedy and wanted the cash. You sell it next month for $45,000. You made $11,000, but the government took a good chunk of that in capital gains tax.
But let's say you took the risk, you left your money there. They've since split twice, so you'd have 40,000 shares now. Each share is worth $390 now, making you worth $15,600,000 (minus adjustments for inflation). Thanks to the vision of that evil top 1% wealth guy known as Steve Jobs, you're rich.
But do you necessarily live any differently? You're rich on paper, but that's not cash or money in the bank you can spend. You will be taxed if you cash-in on any of that, taxed on the dividends if Apple hadn't stopped paying them, and of course taxed when you spend it, taxed even more depending on current luxury tax rates, and taxed every year after that if you spent it on a big house or car. It will also be taxed very highly when you will it to your heirs.
What if your riches were in an inherited parcel of land that similarly exploded in value over these 14 years, such as by getting caught in an expanding downtown? You've been paying increasing property taxes every year, the government got its share. And when you sell it, you pay capital gains. In fact, you probably would have sold the property long ago since you couldn't afford the property taxes.
So the numbers look big, but that's about it. The government will get its share in multiple ways, often taxing the same dollar several times over, if the wealth is actually realized to support a wealthy lifestyle.
Then maybe you should be grateful of the current situation where they pay disproportionally more of their income instead of bitching that the rich don't pay their "fair share."
He didn't pick the road less traveled. As you note, he earlier said both appeared to be equally worn. Picking the road less traveled is a rationalization for the decision made years later, looking back on the event.
It is funny, the most famous line is basically a lie.
So with the literalist view you may now take that road that you think is less traveled in order to be nonconformist, but in your later years with the ironic view you'll look back on that decision and maybe rationalize your choice in an entirely different way.
You wrote
That statement had a pretty clear meaning. You obviously thought the 1%ers pay less income tax than their income share, which would make your anti-rich sentiment feel vindicated because that would show they are freeloading. Then I showed you that the truth is the exact opposite -- they pay more.
You just blew right past that; it didn't even register. You simply moved the goalposts to another place you thought you'd be right, but you still weren't.
That's the problem here. No amount of facts can penetrate the mind of the liberal who has been indoctrinated in the class warfare mentality. The rich are evil, period, and they must pay.
Except by that time the iPhone UI would have been long-since finalized. Apple was already nit-picking over individual pixels in the icons.
Unlimited multitasking is horrible for handhelds. The iPhone has had multitasking from the beginning -- it just wasn't available to user apps. Apple knew unlimited multitasking would suck, so didn't include any user app multitasking at all until it could be done right. The instant sleep/wake is perfect for almost all cases, with exceptions for things like music and phone calls through specific controlled APIs.
This is what Apple is going for. They don't want what I get on my Andoid, a background task sucking up the power to make the task I'm working on unresponsive, or interfering with the ability to quickly answer phone calls.
As far as apps, the definition of a smart phone has been sliding. The IBM Simon did a lot less than the original iPhone, and it's considered to be the first smart phone.
The Newton was in development from 1987.
But then it was based on the Macintosh, which was sort of based on the Lisa, which took a lot of ideas from the STAR, and the basic idea of pen computing goes back to the 1800s.
I've done GP for a network of over 10,000 systems.
I haven't done quite so big for OS X, so maybe I'm missing something.
So what features of GP do I not get in Managed Preferences.
This is about INCOME tax.
You are talking about WEALTH.
Most wealth has already been taxed at least once in one form or another as it was gained. Much of that wealth is also in the form of stocks. It can't be utilized. It's just a number on an accounting sheet. It needs to be converted to a form that will be taxed yet again in order to support a rich lifestyle.
From the point of view of the teacher this is just regulation of a profession. Lawyers and doctors, for example, have restrictions on their freedom of speech in the form of (at the very least) client confidentiality. Anyone with a security clearance has his freedom of speech and of association limited.
The point is that in all of these cases, you accept limitations by joining that profession or remaining in it when the rules change. You can choose to pursue another profession, freeing yourself of the limitations you accepted . So IMHO IANAL it's not really a rights issue, especially if the state has a compelling interest.
Back to this case. From the point of the view of who hires almost all teachers, the government, this can be accomplished in the code of conduct for employees -- friend or accept friending by your students, get fired. For private schools, we don't accredit unless they also have this policy.
Why do we need a law?
But one question: Does this mean that homeschooling moms can't friend their kids to keep an eye on them?
from 1993.
Now you're moving the goalposts. You made an issue of the top 1%.
That's BS. Even Obama defined the cutoff at $200,000, somewhere in the top 5%. You're now arguing about the difference between the rich and the ultra rich.
But in any case, the top .1% make 10% of the money and pay 18% of the taxes. The disparity still exists, the top pay relatively more of their income as income taxes than those lower. Below $160,000 (top 5%) a year you are paying equal or less tax relative to income percentage.
Don't try to tell me $380,000 is middle class anywhere. You may be paying $1,000 a month rent for a nice place in Arkansas, and $4,000 for the same in Silicon Valley, but that's only a $36,000 difference. Add another crazy $2000 a month for other higher prices and you're still making an effective $308,000, doing very well for yourself indeed.
This old canard. The capital gains tax is lower to encourage investment, account for it often already having been taxed in another form, and to offset losses due to inflation. Remember, in the long run inflation is just another form of taxation: the government prints more money for itself, making your money worth less. It's the same as you paying the government the difference.
A while back I calculated the investment of $1 million in stocks with current inflation, and a return of the historical average 10% for stocks. The person pulls out his profit after a year, being subject to the 15% tax. The total amount lost to the government (taxation and inflation) was 38%, which is MORE than the standard income tax rate.
Worse, if he's having a bad year and only gets a 2.5% return. He makes $25,000, the government takes $3,750, and he loses $23,000 due to inflation. He's actually in the hole by $1,750 if he pulls his money.
But that's why some level of capital gains is a good idea. If the market is bad, returns are low, people have a very strong incentive to keep the money invested, keeping the economy going by keeping businesses funded. But the rate needs to be kept low enough to encourage investment in the first place, give a chance for a good return for the risk taken. The current rate looks pretty good overall,
Apple started designing a tablet in the early 2000s, and refocused that effort to making a multi-touch (not just touch) phone in 2005. In January 2007 this effort was introduced as the iPhone, which would be available some months later. Looks like SPB had a month to tweak their UI after they saw what Apple did.
Apple usually starts with a solid basic product to prove a concept, with a vision for how to bring it to maturity in steps, such as the App Store one year later.
The lack of cut&paste and multitasking are an example of that evolution. Apple couldn't initially figure out how to make either of them work WELL, and wasn't going to include anything half-assed. It was going to take time. The result: Their cut&paste is absolutely the best and their multitasking preserves battery life, and system stability and performance. I have an Android, and the cut&paste sucks, and the multitasking is hell.
In the early 90s. It was called the Newton. But it suffered from scope creep and not having the technology available. Even then it was quite innovative -- the ARM processor was developed in an Apple partnership with ACORN and VLSI for the Netwon.
Microsoft started talking about a vision for tablets that failed in the marketplace. Specifically, shoehorning a desktop operating system into a tablet form factor, usually requiring a pen to work right. It didn't work. Few bought it. Apple succeeded because the operating system was designed for touch-based handhelds. Microsoft saw this coming when they scuttled their upcoming Windows tablet right after the launch of the original iPad.
Yes, the App Store was genius, but it's because it broke the standard model of the cell companies. They always want to nickel-and-dime on your bill for every little feature. Apple wanted it open for development, people adding any functionality they want without a dime going to the cell company. AT&T had a long iPhone exclusivity because AT&T demanded it in return for taking such a risk on the new business model.
Android has a lot to thank Apple for, not only in introducing new hardware and software innovations to follow, but for using its clout to fundamentally shift the cell phone business to allow what Android now takes for granted.
It was a hell of a risk for Apple to take. The previous foray in the form of the ROKR was a flop. High risk taken to success deserves payoff. Android makers aren't taking much of a risk, just following the Apple-paved road.