The original Wii implementation was botched, with Nintendo really miscalculating how to handle the digital distribution. Apple's App Store, Google Play and Steam have all provided instructive models of how to do it properly, but they all require creation of user accounts, which requires the user divulge personally identifying information. For those under 13, this is strictly verboten, thanks to the Child Online Protection Act. In Nintendo's defense, they do recognize the demographic that actually uses their product, and did the best they could.
This is probably the Wii's last Christmas before Nintendo rides it off into the sunset. In a way, this bundle is priced very aggressively, as the combined retail cost of the pack-ins is equal to the cost of the total system. If you wanted to add a Wii Remote and Nunchuk to your existing Wii or Wii U, you're already over half way to the Wii Mini. Add in Mario Kart (if you don't already have it) and the console is free. You're breaking even, even if you stash it in your closet Christmas night. At any rate, by the time the Holiday shopping season really gets into swing after Black Friday, the Wii Mini will be it, particularly at Big Box stores that turn their inventory quickly. This thing will ring up some sales this Christmas, as it's under $100 for a turn-key video-game system, and the economy is still shit. After Christmas, it's gimped-ness, combined with unavailability of the "legacy" Wii, will serve to up-sell folks to Wii U. Of course, Nintendo could help themselves out in that regard by lopping some more cost off the Wii U.
For the record, the lack of Gamecube backwards compatibility isn't really a "new feature". Nintendo released a cost-reduced version of the Wii back in 2011 that, while cosmetically similar, omitted the hardware for Gamecube backwards compatibility. I imagine their market research indicated that anyone who gave a rat about GC capability had already bought within the first five years.
I also imagine the lack of internet capability is a play to avoid cannibalizing Wii U sales.
Wii U (and previous Wii) owner here (I know, the lengths we dads go to so our kids can play Super Smash Bros. Brawl...) Anyhow...
Nintendo is doing a crap-tacular job of marketing the Wii U. The Gamepad isn't so much a tablet as a controller with a screen and camera in it. Thus far it's enabled four different usage modes:
1. DS-ifiy home console games. Display secondary info on the Gamepad screen, as is common on the DS. Wind Waker HD, for example, allows accessing the map and inventory screen on the Gamepad without pausing the game. Sonic All-Stars Transformed Racing shows a track map in single player. In multi-player, Player 1 plays on the Gamepad 2. Asymmetrical game play. The player with the Gamepad sees things the players looking at the TV do not. Nintendo Land is perhaps the archetype, with it's Hide and Seek game. 3. Streaming video to the Gamepad. The Wii U can stream Wii U and Wii game play and streaming video to the Gamepad. Thus freeing up the TV while the Wii U is in use. As I type this, one kid is playing Wind Waker while the others are watching Spongebob on the TV the Wii U is connected to. 4. TVii. Provides a more slick interface to my cable TV subscription than Comcast's set-top box. The Gamepad's IR blaster lets me turn on the TV and switch the input without finding the TV or cable remote.
The US was, in fairness, greatly aided by the fact that it remained immune to invasion or air assault for the duration of the war.
France was conquered within weeks, largely due to the fact that their defense against the Germans was overwhelmingly concentrated on the Maginot Line. The same continuous (and impregnable) wall of fortifications the Germans simply circumvented by invading France from the northeast, through the Low Countries.
The Germans were, in turn, undone by the Soviets, due to the Communists' uncompromising use of "scorched earth tactics" against their own territory as they fought a fighting retreat. The infamous Russian winters didn't help matters. Especially as the UK-based Allied bombing campaign dismantled Germany's industrial capacity, eliminating their ability to make good the losses they suffered against the Red Army.
The British, for their part, were extremely talented at counter-intelligence. The Ultra program successfully compromised the Enigma device early in the war, and serves to this day as a textbook demonstration of the importance of securing ones "sources and methods". After the war, the British learned that they had in fact found, and turned, every German spy operating in the UK.
While that's a nice two line summary, JimCanuck, there's more to the story...
The British Parliament (led at the time by Lord North) taxed tea imports to the British Empire, including the American colonies. The Indemnity Act of 1767 was the North Government's attempt to combat the black market trade in tea, which was leading to great financial difficulties for the East India Company, by eliminating these taxes in Britain. Parliament made up the revenue shortfall via the Townshend Acts, which were the first direct taxation on the Colonies imposed by Parliament. Demand plummeted, as the Colonists were incensed at the idea of taxation without representation. It didn't help that the tax made British tea much more expensive then black-market tea. Demand plummeted in Britain as well, when the Indemnity Act was allowed to expire in 1772. This combination nearly led to the collapse of the EIC.
Lord North's government, eager to extricate the EIC from their financial woes, yet unwilling to concede the claim of authority to tax the Colonies, passed the Tea Act in 1773. The EIC was grant authority (for the first time) to import tea directly to the Colonies. The EIC profitably undercut black market tea, even with the Townshend Act taxes still in effect. Unfortunately, the continued existence of the Townshend tax was not effectively concealed, exacerbating the previous, principled objections.
In the late 18th century, the EIC was a massive enterprise that controlled most of the overseas trade throughout the British Empire, and acted as the de facto government of the Indian sub-continent. While I would certainly concede the merchants and smugglers who helped instigate the Boston Tea Party were self-serving, they would not have been able to stand up to the EIC without a broad base of public support in the Colonies. It hopefully goes without saying that that ground-swell wasn't the product of people objecting to legal British tea being cheaper then black market tea. Of course one could argue that the North government's response, embodied in the Coercive and Intolerable Acts, didn't help either.
Google invested in Android to insure their continued relevance in a world transitioning from desktop/web-based internet access to mobile/app based access.
Sure they got prominent product placement on iOS, between the original Google Maps and THE search engine baked in until iOS 6 came out. Google (wisely) didn't want to be beholden to a benevolent third party for access to their user base.
Ironically, Kodsk did not promote the digital camera they themselves invented out of fear of cannibalizing their (at the time) lucrative film and photo finishing business.
I've got three boys: 9, 7 and 3. The oldest has been around long enough he got started at age 2 1/2, maybe 3, actually sitting at our desktop clicking and bashing the keyboard. Our youngest had the iPad and iPhone figured out well before his second birthday. The middle son was somewhere in between.
Our 7 year old saved his pennies and bought his own el-Cheapo Android Tablet (a Sero 7 Lite, not terrible, actually), which is basically his most prized possession on earth. I set up an account for him with el-Goog, so I could buy him Google Play cards for him to get his own apps. He hasn't actually e-mailed anyone on his own; he has asked me to show him how to do it, but I haven't given him anyone's email address except my own. Mainly he plays Minecraft (and Minecraft Youtube videos).
Minecraft videos (which often include "colorful metaphors") is about as racy as it gets. They all mainly stick to games, apps and websites that cater to the under 13 set. Roblox.com, a10.com, Angry Birds and the like. My wife plays WoW, which they sometimes watch, and she's on occasion conned our 9 year old into gold farming for her. He hasn't figured out yet that that's the boring part of the game. So thus far really no biggie, but I'm just waiting for the hormones to kick in and them to start nagging me for their own cell phones.
This has been our experience with our kids as well. My 7 year old saved up change in his piggy bank, and used it to buy a cheap Sero 7 Lite Android tablet. What limited time he doesn't spend on this thing watching Minecraft videos is spent playing Minecraft Pocket Edition with his older brother. Occasionally he sneaks in some Angry Birds Star Wars 2 or Earn to Die 2, which hasn't managed to get old, despite the fact he's beaten the game 15 or 20 times already.
Yeah, family courts tend to give custody to the mother. If the guy split with the ex-wife/baby-mama amicably, they'd likely share custody and he'd be seeing his kid regularly. The fact that the OP isn't seeing his kid regularly suggests the split was less then amicable, or some other unstated circumstance that has resulted in mom getting sole custody. So, ignoring the age appropriate-ness (or lack there-of) of this idea of getting a four year old their own phone, what do you think the odds are that mom lets junior keep the phone, let alone use it? As a father of three, I'll grant you that four year old kids can be sneaky, but not "I'm going to have a cell phone mom doesn't know about" sneaky.
Yeah, have fun with the "I can let my kid roam around in Walmart because he has his own cell phone" concept of parental operations. It'll be a laugh-riot right up until some Good Samaritan rats out your kid to a store employee and they initiate a Code Adam and lock down the store. Pull this trick too often, or in the wrong time/place, and you'll likely get a visit from DCFS (or whatever they call themselves where you live).
There was a window of opportunity, from the iPhone launch in 2007, to the original Motorola Droid in 2009, where the tech world waited in bated breath for the vaunted "iPhone killer". Competitors were throwing steaming piles of obvious fail at the market in the vain hope something would stick. Meanwhile the iPhone was $600, only on AT&T, and only available on-contract. Appleeven helpfully announced the phone six months ahead of actually selling it. Meanwhile, BB had already carved out a decent niche (in addition to their enterprise BES-using bread and butter) with the low cost, camera-equipped, candy-colored Pearl and Curve models that were sold on all major carriers. A skunkworks team, assembled the day after the iPhone Stevenote, could have yielded the BB Torch two years ahead of time. That phone, released in 2008 vs. 2010, would have given BB the ammo to make a serious run of it at that time. Instead they dawdled, spun their wheels and foisted the obviously half-baked, rushed BB Storm on an unsuspecting mass of Verizon subscribers.
One of the major (yet un-touted) innovations Apple brought to the mobile market was regarding the end user as their customer. Prior to the iPhone, every manufacturer catered to the carrier as their customer, customizing their handsets to suit the carriers' marketing needs. BB's twist was to actively market to CIO's in addition to the carriers. Apple was the first manufacturer to recognize the end user as their true customer, and optimize the end user experience (at the expense of the carrier or IT management experience).
Al queda, etc. aren't that tech savvy, compared to, say, the DoD. To the extent they communicate electronically, they're doing so via "off the shelf" civilian-accessible means. NSA and GCHQ aren't stupid. they haven't compromised garden variety technologies to the point they're vulnerable to garden variety criminals. No nerd with a Beowulf cluster will crack it. That said, the spooks aren't slumming with Beowulf clusters either. And they're not going to do anything to enhance the security of such civilian technologies beyond what they themselves can penetrate.
Apple loses market share in the spring and summer, when their handset is getting stale and everyone knows the new one is coming in a few months. Additionally, most of the Android market share gains are in the developing world (cough, China). The fact that Apple still hasn't inked a deal with China Mobile has a lot to do with that, because it means CM has "no choice" but to market Android devices to their 740 million subscribers. CM uses TD-CDMA, a technology which Apple hasn't supported to date. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is in fact cooking up a phone to launch on China Mobile next spring to put the butt hurt on next years summer Android launches.
As much as Apple prides itself on not racing to the bottom, they know that maintaining market share is necessary to the continued health of their platform. With the onslaught of cheap Android handsets, this meant they needed to make a real play at the lower end of the market, and actively promote last year's phone, in addition to the new "halo" 5S handset. The 5C product freshened last year's phone, while significantly reducing the manufacturing cost, allowing them to sell at a lower price without killing their margins.
The US has no equivalent of the UK's "Official Secrets Act". By definition, one cannot unlawfully disclose classified information unless one has been "indoctrinated" (i.e. granted a security clearance). A necessary part of that process is the signing of a non-disclosure agreement whereby one agrees to be held criminally liable for unauthorized disclosure. Absent such an NDA and security indocrination, the possession and/or dissemination of classified information is perfectly legal. Note how all legal scrutiny in the Snowden case (at least in the US) is directed against Snowden himself, and not at all against any of the news outlets that used him as a source. An interesting way to "civilly disobey" would be to have all employees refuse to accept the security clearance (that the NSA would require as part of their collaboration) when the NSA comes calling.
Several folks have commented about these being a great option for the 'rents. Another option is for the kids. I've got three, all under 10 years of age. Information technology is pushed way big in school today, compared to when I was a kid. Outfitting my 3 boys with Chromebooks at $200 a pop is much more appetizing then buying them all $500 laptops, or buying one real computer for them to share. That and the Samsung Chromebook manages to be a MacBook that's been cost-reduced by 75%, without looking like it was cost-reduced by 75%.
I tried putting in my home address, just for kicks. They got the tax rate wrong (not reflecting the recent sales tax hike in VA, or that there are different rates for food vs. other items.) I think the fact there's a "Don't use this in a production environment" disclaimer you have to agree to is very telling...
The iPod was worlds better then any existing MP3 player in existence at the time of its introduction. Apple managed to secure virtually the entire output of 1.8" hard drives from Toshiba (the only manufacturer of such drives at the time). It was years before anyone else could make a competing player that was nearly as compact. Apple also solved the UI conundrum of managing hundred (or thousands) of songs in the device. Most competitors used a CD-player based UI that broke down horribly beyond 20 tracks or so.
The iPhone was the first capacitive touchscreen phone. The resistive touchscreens then in use on PalmOS and WinCE phones were completely unusable without their easily misplaced stylus. Apple also cracked the text input nut by abandoning flaky and/or user-hostile hand-writing recognition in favor of an on-screen keyboard that was (again) usable without a stylus.
The MacBook Air was the first thin and light laptop that was also simultaneously usable AND cheap. Everyone (Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc) sold underpowered 2 lb. laptops in 2008. For three grand. Apple bettered these offerings, and at one third the asking price! The fact that it took a couple of years, and Intel handing the R&D to the OEM's on a silver platter (cough, Ultrabook) for serious competitors to emerge is very telling.
Similarly, the iPad was worlds lighter and thinner then any prior tablet computer, with triple the battery life, at a third the cost, and with a UI that was actually touch-optimized as opposed to keyboard/mouse optimized with touch grafted on as an afterthought. That no one undercut Apple's pricing until they cut the size of the screen (and battery) in half is very telling.
Apple isn't the first to market, and they often don't have the best specs, according to benchmark-running nerds, but they are designed with a simplicity that makes them actually usable to non-technophiles.
Slashdot Mirror
The original Wii implementation was botched, with Nintendo really miscalculating how to handle the digital distribution. Apple's App Store, Google Play and Steam have all provided instructive models of how to do it properly, but they all require creation of user accounts, which requires the user divulge personally identifying information. For those under 13, this is strictly verboten, thanks to the Child Online Protection Act. In Nintendo's defense, they do recognize the demographic that actually uses their product, and did the best they could.
And cannibalize sales of the Wii U?
This is probably the Wii's last Christmas before Nintendo rides it off into the sunset. In a way, this bundle is priced very aggressively, as the combined retail cost of the pack-ins is equal to the cost of the total system. If you wanted to add a Wii Remote and Nunchuk to your existing Wii or Wii U, you're already over half way to the Wii Mini. Add in Mario Kart (if you don't already have it) and the console is free. You're breaking even, even if you stash it in your closet Christmas night. At any rate, by the time the Holiday shopping season really gets into swing after Black Friday, the Wii Mini will be it, particularly at Big Box stores that turn their inventory quickly. This thing will ring up some sales this Christmas, as it's under $100 for a turn-key video-game system, and the economy is still shit. After Christmas, it's gimped-ness, combined with unavailability of the "legacy" Wii, will serve to up-sell folks to Wii U. Of course, Nintendo could help themselves out in that regard by lopping some more cost off the Wii U.
For the record, the lack of Gamecube backwards compatibility isn't really a "new feature". Nintendo released a cost-reduced version of the Wii back in 2011 that, while cosmetically similar, omitted the hardware for Gamecube backwards compatibility. I imagine their market research indicated that anyone who gave a rat about GC capability had already bought within the first five years.
I also imagine the lack of internet capability is a play to avoid cannibalizing Wii U sales.
At least for the Canadian version of this thing, it doesn't recognize the USB-Ethernet dongle.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/06/nintendo-wii-mini-hands-on/
Wii U (and previous Wii) owner here (I know, the lengths we dads go to so our kids can play Super Smash Bros. Brawl...) Anyhow...
Nintendo is doing a crap-tacular job of marketing the Wii U. The Gamepad isn't so much a tablet as a controller with a screen and camera in it. Thus far it's enabled four different usage modes:
1. DS-ifiy home console games. Display secondary info on the Gamepad screen, as is common on the DS. Wind Waker HD, for example, allows accessing the map and inventory screen on the Gamepad without pausing the game. Sonic All-Stars Transformed Racing shows a track map in single player. In multi-player, Player 1 plays on the Gamepad
2. Asymmetrical game play. The player with the Gamepad sees things the players looking at the TV do not. Nintendo Land is perhaps the archetype, with it's Hide and Seek game.
3. Streaming video to the Gamepad. The Wii U can stream Wii U and Wii game play and streaming video to the Gamepad. Thus freeing up the TV while the Wii U is in use. As I type this, one kid is playing Wind Waker while the others are watching Spongebob on the TV the Wii U is connected to.
4. TVii. Provides a more slick interface to my cable TV subscription than Comcast's set-top box. The Gamepad's IR blaster lets me turn on the TV and switch the input without finding the TV or cable remote.
The US was, in fairness, greatly aided by the fact that it remained immune to invasion or air assault for the duration of the war.
France was conquered within weeks, largely due to the fact that their defense against the Germans was overwhelmingly concentrated on the Maginot Line. The same continuous (and impregnable) wall of fortifications the Germans simply circumvented by invading France from the northeast, through the Low Countries.
The Germans were, in turn, undone by the Soviets, due to the Communists' uncompromising use of "scorched earth tactics" against their own territory as they fought a fighting retreat. The infamous Russian winters didn't help matters. Especially as the UK-based Allied bombing campaign dismantled Germany's industrial capacity, eliminating their ability to make good the losses they suffered against the Red Army.
The British, for their part, were extremely talented at counter-intelligence. The Ultra program successfully compromised the Enigma device early in the war, and serves to this day as a textbook demonstration of the importance of securing ones "sources and methods". After the war, the British learned that they had in fact found, and turned, every German spy operating in the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Cross_System
While that's a nice two line summary, JimCanuck, there's more to the story...
The British Parliament (led at the time by Lord North) taxed tea imports to the British Empire, including the American colonies. The Indemnity Act of 1767 was the North Government's attempt to combat the black market trade in tea, which was leading to great financial difficulties for the East India Company, by eliminating these taxes in Britain. Parliament made up the revenue shortfall via the Townshend Acts, which were the first direct taxation on the Colonies imposed by Parliament. Demand plummeted, as the Colonists were incensed at the idea of taxation without representation. It didn't help that the tax made British tea much more expensive then black-market tea. Demand plummeted in Britain as well, when the Indemnity Act was allowed to expire in 1772. This combination nearly led to the collapse of the EIC.
Lord North's government, eager to extricate the EIC from their financial woes, yet unwilling to concede the claim of authority to tax the Colonies, passed the Tea Act in 1773. The EIC was grant authority (for the first time) to import tea directly to the Colonies. The EIC profitably undercut black market tea, even with the Townshend Act taxes still in effect. Unfortunately, the continued existence of the Townshend tax was not effectively concealed, exacerbating the previous, principled objections.
In the late 18th century, the EIC was a massive enterprise that controlled most of the overseas trade throughout the British Empire, and acted as the de facto government of the Indian sub-continent. While I would certainly concede the merchants and smugglers who helped instigate the Boston Tea Party were self-serving, they would not have been able to stand up to the EIC without a broad base of public support in the Colonies. It hopefully goes without saying that that ground-swell wasn't the product of people objecting to legal British tea being cheaper then black market tea. Of course one could argue that the North government's response, embodied in the Coercive and Intolerable Acts, didn't help either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
Public Transportation: A great way to get from someplace you don't live to someplace you don't work.
Google invested in Android to insure their continued relevance in a world transitioning from desktop/web-based internet access to mobile/app based access.
Sure they got prominent product placement on iOS, between the original Google Maps and THE search engine baked in until iOS 6 came out. Google (wisely) didn't want to be beholden to a benevolent third party for access to their user base.
Ironically, Kodsk did not promote the digital camera they themselves invented out of fear of cannibalizing their (at the time) lucrative film and photo finishing business.
I've got three boys: 9, 7 and 3. The oldest has been around long enough he got started at age 2 1/2, maybe 3, actually sitting at our desktop clicking and bashing the keyboard. Our youngest had the iPad and iPhone figured out well before his second birthday. The middle son was somewhere in between.
Our 7 year old saved his pennies and bought his own el-Cheapo Android Tablet (a Sero 7 Lite, not terrible, actually), which is basically his most prized possession on earth. I set up an account for him with el-Goog, so I could buy him Google Play cards for him to get his own apps. He hasn't actually e-mailed anyone on his own; he has asked me to show him how to do it, but I haven't given him anyone's email address except my own. Mainly he plays Minecraft (and Minecraft Youtube videos).
Minecraft videos (which often include "colorful metaphors") is about as racy as it gets. They all mainly stick to games, apps and websites that cater to the under 13 set. Roblox.com, a10.com, Angry Birds and the like. My wife plays WoW, which they sometimes watch, and she's on occasion conned our 9 year old into gold farming for her. He hasn't figured out yet that that's the boring part of the game. So thus far really no biggie, but I'm just waiting for the hormones to kick in and them to start nagging me for their own cell phones.
This has been our experience with our kids as well. My 7 year old saved up change in his piggy bank, and used it to buy a cheap Sero 7 Lite Android tablet. What limited time he doesn't spend on this thing watching Minecraft videos is spent playing Minecraft Pocket Edition with his older brother. Occasionally he sneaks in some Angry Birds Star Wars 2 or Earn to Die 2, which hasn't managed to get old, despite the fact he's beaten the game 15 or 20 times already.
Yeah, family courts tend to give custody to the mother. If the guy split with the ex-wife/baby-mama amicably, they'd likely share custody and he'd be seeing his kid regularly. The fact that the OP isn't seeing his kid regularly suggests the split was less then amicable, or some other unstated circumstance that has resulted in mom getting sole custody. So, ignoring the age appropriate-ness (or lack there-of) of this idea of getting a four year old their own phone, what do you think the odds are that mom lets junior keep the phone, let alone use it? As a father of three, I'll grant you that four year old kids can be sneaky, but not "I'm going to have a cell phone mom doesn't know about" sneaky.
My youngest kid had the iPhone figured out by the time he was 18 months old. Doesn't mean I went out and bought him his own...
Yeah, have fun with the "I can let my kid roam around in Walmart because he has his own cell phone" concept of parental operations. It'll be a laugh-riot right up until some Good Samaritan rats out your kid to a store employee and they initiate a Code Adam and lock down the store. Pull this trick too often, or in the wrong time/place, and you'll likely get a visit from DCFS (or whatever they call themselves where you live).
http://www.missingkids.com/CodeAdam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Protective_Services
There was a window of opportunity, from the iPhone launch in 2007, to the original Motorola Droid in 2009, where the tech world waited in bated breath for the vaunted "iPhone killer". Competitors were throwing steaming piles of obvious fail at the market in the vain hope something would stick. Meanwhile the iPhone was $600, only on AT&T, and only available on-contract. Appleeven helpfully announced the phone six months ahead of actually selling it. Meanwhile, BB had already carved out a decent niche (in addition to their enterprise BES-using bread and butter) with the low cost, camera-equipped, candy-colored Pearl and Curve models that were sold on all major carriers. A skunkworks team, assembled the day after the iPhone Stevenote, could have yielded the BB Torch two years ahead of time. That phone, released in 2008 vs. 2010, would have given BB the ammo to make a serious run of it at that time. Instead they dawdled, spun their wheels and foisted the obviously half-baked, rushed BB Storm on an unsuspecting mass of Verizon subscribers.
One of the major (yet un-touted) innovations Apple brought to the mobile market was regarding the end user as their customer. Prior to the iPhone, every manufacturer catered to the carrier as their customer, customizing their handsets to suit the carriers' marketing needs. BB's twist was to actively market to CIO's in addition to the carriers. Apple was the first manufacturer to recognize the end user as their true customer, and optimize the end user experience (at the expense of the carrier or IT management experience).
Al queda, etc. aren't that tech savvy, compared to, say, the DoD. To the extent they communicate electronically, they're doing so via "off the shelf" civilian-accessible means. NSA and GCHQ aren't stupid. they haven't compromised garden variety technologies to the point they're vulnerable to garden variety criminals. No nerd with a Beowulf cluster will crack it. That said, the spooks aren't slumming with Beowulf clusters either. And they're not going to do anything to enhance the security of such civilian technologies beyond what they themselves can penetrate.
Apple loses market share in the spring and summer, when their handset is getting stale and everyone knows the new one is coming in a few months. Additionally, most of the Android market share gains are in the developing world (cough, China). The fact that Apple still hasn't inked a deal with China Mobile has a lot to do with that, because it means CM has "no choice" but to market Android devices to their 740 million subscribers. CM uses TD-CDMA, a technology which Apple hasn't supported to date. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is in fact cooking up a phone to launch on China Mobile next spring to put the butt hurt on next years summer Android launches.
As much as Apple prides itself on not racing to the bottom, they know that maintaining market share is necessary to the continued health of their platform. With the onslaught of cheap Android handsets, this meant they needed to make a real play at the lower end of the market, and actively promote last year's phone, in addition to the new "halo" 5S handset. The 5C product freshened last year's phone, while significantly reducing the manufacturing cost, allowing them to sell at a lower price without killing their margins.
The US has no equivalent of the UK's "Official Secrets Act". By definition, one cannot unlawfully disclose classified information unless one has been "indoctrinated" (i.e. granted a security clearance). A necessary part of that process is the signing of a non-disclosure agreement whereby one agrees to be held criminally liable for unauthorized disclosure. Absent such an NDA and security indocrination, the possession and/or dissemination of classified information is perfectly legal. Note how all legal scrutiny in the Snowden case (at least in the US) is directed against Snowden himself, and not at all against any of the news outlets that used him as a source. An interesting way to "civilly disobey" would be to have all employees refuse to accept the security clearance (that the NSA would require as part of their collaboration) when the NSA comes calling.
Several folks have commented about these being a great option for the 'rents. Another option is for the kids. I've got three, all under 10 years of age. Information technology is pushed way big in school today, compared to when I was a kid. Outfitting my 3 boys with Chromebooks at $200 a pop is much more appetizing then buying them all $500 laptops, or buying one real computer for them to share. That and the Samsung Chromebook manages to be a MacBook that's been cost-reduced by 75%, without looking like it was cost-reduced by 75%.
I tried putting in my home address, just for kicks. They got the tax rate wrong (not reflecting the recent sales tax hike in VA, or that there are different rates for food vs. other items.) I think the fact there's a "Don't use this in a production environment" disclaimer you have to agree to is very telling...
The iPhone was the first capacitive touchscreen phone. The resistive touchscreens then in use on PalmOS and WinCE phones were completely unusable without their easily misplaced stylus. Apple also cracked the text input nut by abandoning flaky and/or user-hostile hand-writing recognition in favor of an on-screen keyboard that was (again) usable without a stylus.
The MacBook Air was the first thin and light laptop that was also simultaneously usable AND cheap. Everyone (Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc) sold underpowered 2 lb. laptops in 2008. For three grand. Apple bettered these offerings, and at one third the asking price! The fact that it took a couple of years, and Intel handing the R&D to the OEM's on a silver platter (cough, Ultrabook) for serious competitors to emerge is very telling.
Similarly, the iPad was worlds lighter and thinner then any prior tablet computer, with triple the battery life, at a third the cost, and with a UI that was actually touch-optimized as opposed to keyboard/mouse optimized with touch grafted on as an afterthought. That no one undercut Apple's pricing until they cut the size of the screen (and battery) in half is very telling.
Apple isn't the first to market, and they often don't have the best specs, according to benchmark-running nerds, but they are designed with a simplicity that makes them actually usable to non-technophiles.