That it has an unresponsive touch screen? that it had to include a stylus?
Nonsense - you don't have to use a stylus. But I prefer the option of using one.
The N900 (and 5800, N97) have resistive touchscreens. Downsides are you have to apply a tiny amount of pressure (I'm sure most people can manage) and it lacks multitouch (I don't miss it though - "one mouse button is simpler", remember?) Advantages are you can use a stylus, or indeed anything you like, for extra precision, and also to avoid smearing dirty fingers over your screen. And things like gloves present no problems.
I don't think either one is better; they both each have their advantages. But if you want capacitive, Nokia have options for that too (e.g., the X6). That's the good thing about having a choice of phones in their range, rather than one-size-(doesn't)-fit-all.
Nokia used to be the leader in smart phones till the iphone was launched.
The original Iphone lacked things that years old cheap feature phones had. How do you calculate it beat Nokia in all areas? It's arguable that it was even a smartphone.
And if you mean it had a touchscreen, sure - so there's at least one thing that Apple did before Nokia. Big deal. How does that outdo all the things that Nokia did first? What about all the areas since - the original Iphone was 2007, haven't you got a more recent example? You can't define technology leader solely based on one single arbitrary feature! (Apple weren't first to have a touchscreen anyway.)
Plus, let's invoke the standard Apple defence when Apple do something years later (multitasking, 3G): "Nokia phones were better because of not having touchscreen. But by waiting, it meant they refined the technology, so they could do it better when they did release them. No I can't explain how it's better, you'll just have to trust me".
Releasing a 180g brick that doesn't even have UI in portrait mode and barely sold doesn't count.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. My 5800 isn't a brick (you must be thinking of the Ipad), it has a UI in portrait, automatically rotates to landscape, and has sold millions. Nokia overall sell many times more than Apple.
People change their phones every 1-2 yrs and Nokia has done nothing good in the last 3.
Yet you're still touting Apple based on the one thing they did before Nokia, that was 3 years ago?
Nokia's adamant refusal to phase out the S40/S60 Symbian crap is the reason why they are fucked in the high profit smart phone market.
Yeah, at 50% market share. Terrible!
They are now far from a technology leader,... Smart phones no longer imply Nokia's stuff.
So what does it imply? And there's no one clear leader - some features appear first from other manufacturers, some from Nokia.
everyone knows that they are just selling cheap stuff that does less
Well firstly, they do well in the high end too (as I say, 50% market share in smartphones). Nokia are also good across all price ranges (their market share overall in phones at 40%). Why is costing less a bad thing? Yes, everyone knows what good value they are.
The "does less" is debatable anyway (there are some things my 5800 doesn't do, but then there are some things the Iphones have lacked for years, despite costing far more); but also, not everyone needs a 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM and 3D chip in a phone (hell, even for netbooks, people aren't really bothered about using them for 3D gaming). Outside of the geek world, things like Internet access and applications (as well as, you know, being a phone) are more important than how many GHz you have in your phone.
But it's a false dichotomy to pretend that these two are the only platforms. The market leader is Symbian, on 50% of smartphones. It's also open like Android - both that it can be used by other manufacturers, and it's open source.
And even if this is meant to be a US-centric story where Nokia don't have much presence, it seems like RIM have been forgotten, despite still being popular (weren't they number 1 on smartphones?)
I do agree that the open vs closed is relevant - and certainly better than the Iphone, Iphone, Iphone coverage we usually get that completely ignores everything else. But I think it's misleadingly biased towards Apple to pretend that their only competition is only the one platform that has less market share than them, conveniently ignoring the more popular platforms. It's a common tactic - mostly Iphone stories, with the occasional "Let's compare them to Android", to give the illusion that over platforms are being covered, whilst still making Apple look good.
I think that at the high-end price point, the iphone seems to sell a lot more.
Even at the high end "smartphone" point, Nokia are still number 1 with 40-50% share. It may be that Apple are ahead of Android devices, though they're also still behind RIM I believe.
But the trick is that, world wide, not that many people have the disposable money. Android OTOH is present both at the high-end and at the mid-range.
But yes indeed, world wide and out of all phones, Apple are less than 5%. Not sure how Android phones do, but Nokia still lead at 40%.
Also, I'd say it's not just about disposable income - even if you have a good job, not everyone wants to spend hundreds of pounds/dollars (or equivalent in contract) on a phone just so it has a 1GHz processor and 3D chip. Even bog standard cheap "feature" phones these days run apps and support the Internet (in fact it's been that way for at least five years), and support large touchscreens. Although I get the sad feeling that some people out there are buying expensive Iphones just because they've swallowed the marketing hype that you need an expensive Iphone just to access the Internet on a phone...
Who cares, it's both nothing compared to Nokia - not to mention all the other companies like LG, Samsung, Motorola, RIM. Indeed, as you note yourself with "is closing in on RIM" - why yes, they'll soon be in position number 5...
(Although I think Android is still interesting long term, as it's potentially an OS that all those other companies, except presumably Nokia and RIM, will switch to using.)
I keep reading that you guys want Software Patents to be revised, but what changes do you propose?
Get rid of them ("pure" software patents, at least, not part of a hardware invention). This is how it is in European countries. Software is covered by copyright already; algorithms are mathematics, and should not be "owned".
-1, completely wrong. The Amiga wasn't the platform that relied on add-on cards to do basic tasks - something that was far more awkward back in the 90s. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your trolling that's fifteen years out of date.
Sell it to an old PC user would be more appropriate.
It's also noteworthy that PCs today are much better precisely because they've adopted the Amiga model - most standard things are on the motherboard, the notable exception being graphics (and even that's only an optional extra for gamers these days - with on board graphics being standard for laptops and desktops). I don't have a single PCI card, all I need is 1 graphics card; and it's much better than the days when I had to faff around with sound card, modem, and ethernet.
Twitter is a communication medium - saying you don't "trust twitter" makes no more sense than saying you don't trust phones, you don't trust email, you don't trust speech.
If someone emails you to say a fly is in their room, how can you trust them? Oh no, email is untrustworthy! You don't know who claims it, if the person who started the account is still in control of it and have no way to verify or even know what room the person is talking about or if they can accurately determine a fly from another insect.
If someone says they had a fly in their room last night, how can you trust them? On no, speech is untrustworthy! You don't know who this person is, if the person who lived in the room is still in control of it and have no way to verify or even know what room the person is talking about or if they can accurately determine a fly from another insect.
Or perhaps the issue of trust is not simply a matter of the communication medium? Moreover, not all uses of Twitter are between anonymous strangers, just as it obviously isn't with email and real life. All of the people I read on Twitter are people whom I know.
I agree with your general point that bias sources are still useful, and unknown bias is dangerous. But I don't think it follows that therefore the BBC are totally untrustworthy, whilst biased outlets aren't.
Firstly even though it is a problem that the BBC does have its unclear biases, overall I would still rate it as far more accurate, and less bias, than much of the media. Secondly, I don't think that just because you know a source is bias, means you can somehow factor it out.
How do you know that Murduch's outlets don't also have some unknown biases as well? It's a fallacy to assume that a non-biased source must have some hidden bias, but to also assume that if you know of at least one bias, that there are no hidden biases.
How does this apply to other kinds of sources? Would you trust a Creationist website over Encyclopedia Britannica on scientific matters, because you know the former is biased towards Creationism, but you're not sure what the bias of Britannica is?
Indeed, though I think this is relevant given the common myth of there being only one Iphone model - leading to claims such as "Look how popular it is that even a single model has sold 50 million", when really it's a whole line of phones, that should be compared accordingly (e.g., to Nokia's 250 million Symbian devices).
Similarly, you'll get people going on about how they've got an Iphone, as if that's some special status - yet this could be an old outdated 2007 model. It's misleading that people can say that the Iphone now supports (finally) multitasking (along with copy/paste, 3G and other basic features), when actually this is true only of the latest high end model, and might not be true of all the Iphones out there.
If someone says that my 2 year old 5800 doesn't support a particular feature, I don't get to argue back based on what a soon-to-be-released high end Nokia phone will do.
By that logic, dirt cheap feature phones from five years ago, such as the one I threw in the trash for being obsolete a few months ago, could "multitask", because you can run the built in applications at the same time (e.g., writing an email or text whilst I listen to music on the mp3 player).
I would expect more from something claiming to be a high end smartphone, let alone for a tablet computer, but maybe it shouldn't be counted as that after all.
So do all skilled jobs get tax relief in the UK? Does software development in general get a tax relief? I don't think so.
Indeed, the argument they were making was not on the grounds of it being skillful, but on the grounds of it being a creative medium, arguing it should be treated the same as the film industry (which does get tax relief, AIUI).
So what is going to happen to these skilled developers who are out of a job because other countries have made it more attractive for companies to do their development there.
The iPad sold 3 million units in 80 days. That's pretty impressive and certainly not the iFailure declared by many.
Given the vast amounts of media coverage and free advertising worldwide for many months, starting before the device was even announced, it would be abysmal if it had sold anything less. It's not a failure, but I'd say it's not living up to the hype and claims of it being revolutionary that were made.
There are plenty of other tablets, netbooks, etc on the market that also aren't failures. Where's the media coverage, complete with three stories a day on Slashdot, about them? Indeed, some of these devices, even from market leaders like Nokia, don't even get a single news story for their actual product releases.
The same argument applies to all walled gardens - whether it's Facebook, DRM, or whatever.
Clearly, being a walled garden is entirely separate to how many people buy something or not. I don't see how that means the term is incorrect. Some people like walled gardens, after all...
And there are people whining about Linux all the time. Newsflash: there are fans of all platforms, who criticise other platforms.
As for the Amiga, yes there'd have been fanatic ramblings against the Amiga too. In fact, there still are - just check out all the whining we get every once in a blue moon there's an AmigaOS article.
resulting in pushback, backlash and eventually Apple's demise.
Does the article actually say this? It's down at the moment, but I don't see this claim in the summary at least.
People are saying that such a thing would be bad, from their point of view, not Apple's.
I can't rule out an "Apple appliance" that will serve as a desktop type of computer with iOS running on it... phasing out MacOS over the next decade? maybe... but merging the two? Not very likely.
Well hang on a mo, that's pretty much the same claim, if not worse - the end result will still be that Apple's PCs (branded "Macs") will now be running IOS. They may or may not brand that OS "Mac OS" (just as in the past, the "Mac OS" brand has referred to more than one different operating system). The criticisms that now we'll have desktop and laptop computers too running with a locked down model where Apple get to control what software you're allowed to run, would still apply.
but the iPad presents a few advantages that make it worth the extra money: you don't need to flip anything open, you can hold it in any orientation, simple interface, and ease of access.
There are other netbooks/tablets/etc that can do this too.
What's the simple interface?
But yes, I agree that Apple products aren't computers/smartphones, they're just additional consumer gadgets. But why do they get treated as if they were computers or smartphones? Since when did Slashdot cover consumer products - would there be stories about Fridges, if Apple made one?
Compare that to Microsoft's push toward Palladium. They wanted to lock down your main computer.
In 10 years' time, when mobile computing is far more prevalent and powerful, do you think people are going to expect to lug around a separate "main" computer like a desktop?
Either Apple will still require this - in which case it'd be another disadvantage for the platform. Or they won't, in which case it will be true that they're wanting to lock down your main device.
You can choose not to buy it if it's not as convenient as you'd like for the price.
That's exactly the point people are making. Just like when Linux/Mac users criticise Windows - obviously they're point is that people shouldn't buy it. You would hardly have the Windows fan saying "But you don't have to buy it" - that would be conceding defeat.
you either spend the whole five minutes it takes to download Spirit and jailbreak the thing,
Apple - it "Just Works", right Out Of The Box.
or you do without and get a Nexus One or an EVO
Exactly, so you agree with this criticism of Apple. Just like when people criticise Windows, and you can run Linux instead. This is exactly the point being made.
Whilst there are still thankfully comments against Apple, there is nonetheless plenty of support for them and their closed platforms; as well as the fact that the former almost always get modded down, whilst the latter are modded up.
There's also the point that Apple get multiple stories a day, even for products that are in a minority of the market (Iphone), or not even shipping (Ipad) or announced (Itablet/stale/pad/whatever) whilst the market leaders in those markets (Nokia) and many other companies (selling phones, netbooks) rarely get a single story ever for an actual product release.
Whilst Microsoft do get coverage, it's still less than Apple, and often the stories are only to criticise.
So yes, the original poster's comments were spot on. The fact that a few of us here still criticise Apple hardly changes anything. Imagine going back to the/. of 10 years ago, and seeing large numbers of comments supporting Microsoft, with daily stories about Windows (never about Linux), and lots of people criticising open source. Would you be there, going "But there's still an occasional comment from someone supporting open source"?
You're missing the point. It's not intended to be that. Or is your view that IRC is also completely useless for everyone, except for collaborative support and development tools?
How much of your everyday conversations result in receiving news? And how much of the conversation would a random stranger decide is "legitimate"?
Slashdot Mirror
That it has an unresponsive touch screen? that it had to include a stylus?
Nonsense - you don't have to use a stylus. But I prefer the option of using one.
The N900 (and 5800, N97) have resistive touchscreens. Downsides are you have to apply a tiny amount of pressure (I'm sure most people can manage) and it lacks multitouch (I don't miss it though - "one mouse button is simpler", remember?) Advantages are you can use a stylus, or indeed anything you like, for extra precision, and also to avoid smearing dirty fingers over your screen. And things like gloves present no problems.
I don't think either one is better; they both each have their advantages. But if you want capacitive, Nokia have options for that too (e.g., the X6). That's the good thing about having a choice of phones in their range, rather than one-size-(doesn't)-fit-all.
Nokia used to be the leader in smart phones till the iphone was launched.
The original Iphone lacked things that years old cheap feature phones had. How do you calculate it beat Nokia in all areas? It's arguable that it was even a smartphone.
And if you mean it had a touchscreen, sure - so there's at least one thing that Apple did before Nokia. Big deal. How does that outdo all the things that Nokia did first? What about all the areas since - the original Iphone was 2007, haven't you got a more recent example? You can't define technology leader solely based on one single arbitrary feature! (Apple weren't first to have a touchscreen anyway.)
Plus, let's invoke the standard Apple defence when Apple do something years later (multitasking, 3G): "Nokia phones were better because of not having touchscreen. But by waiting, it meant they refined the technology, so they could do it better when they did release them. No I can't explain how it's better, you'll just have to trust me".
Releasing a 180g brick that doesn't even have UI in portrait mode and barely sold doesn't count.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. My 5800 isn't a brick (you must be thinking of the Ipad), it has a UI in portrait, automatically rotates to landscape, and has sold millions. Nokia overall sell many times more than Apple.
People change their phones every 1-2 yrs and Nokia has done nothing good in the last 3.
Yet you're still touting Apple based on the one thing they did before Nokia, that was 3 years ago?
Nokia's adamant refusal to phase out the S40/S60 Symbian crap is the reason why they are fucked in the high profit smart phone market.
Yeah, at 50% market share. Terrible!
They are now far from a technology leader, ... Smart phones no longer imply Nokia's stuff.
So what does it imply? And there's no one clear leader - some features appear first from other manufacturers, some from Nokia.
everyone knows that they are just selling cheap stuff that does less
Well firstly, they do well in the high end too (as I say, 50% market share in smartphones). Nokia are also good across all price ranges (their market share overall in phones at 40%). Why is costing less a bad thing? Yes, everyone knows what good value they are.
The "does less" is debatable anyway (there are some things my 5800 doesn't do, but then there are some things the Iphones have lacked for years, despite costing far more); but also, not everyone needs a 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM and 3D chip in a phone (hell, even for netbooks, people aren't really bothered about using them for 3D gaming). Outside of the geek world, things like Internet access and applications (as well as, you know, being a phone) are more important than how many GHz you have in your phone.
But it's a false dichotomy to pretend that these two are the only platforms. The market leader is Symbian, on 50% of smartphones. It's also open like Android - both that it can be used by other manufacturers, and it's open source.
And even if this is meant to be a US-centric story where Nokia don't have much presence, it seems like RIM have been forgotten, despite still being popular (weren't they number 1 on smartphones?)
I do agree that the open vs closed is relevant - and certainly better than the Iphone, Iphone, Iphone coverage we usually get that completely ignores everything else. But I think it's misleadingly biased towards Apple to pretend that their only competition is only the one platform that has less market share than them, conveniently ignoring the more popular platforms. It's a common tactic - mostly Iphone stories, with the occasional "Let's compare them to Android", to give the illusion that over platforms are being covered, whilst still making Apple look good.
I think that at the high-end price point, the iphone seems to sell a lot more.
Even at the high end "smartphone" point, Nokia are still number 1 with 40-50% share. It may be that Apple are ahead of Android devices, though they're also still behind RIM I believe.
But the trick is that, world wide, not that many people have the disposable money. Android OTOH is present both at the high-end and at the mid-range.
But yes indeed, world wide and out of all phones, Apple are less than 5%. Not sure how Android phones do, but Nokia still lead at 40%.
Also, I'd say it's not just about disposable income - even if you have a good job, not everyone wants to spend hundreds of pounds/dollars (or equivalent in contract) on a phone just so it has a 1GHz processor and 3D chip. Even bog standard cheap "feature" phones these days run apps and support the Internet (in fact it's been that way for at least five years), and support large touchscreens. Although I get the sad feeling that some people out there are buying expensive Iphones just because they've swallowed the marketing hype that you need an expensive Iphone just to access the Internet on a phone...
Who cares, it's both nothing compared to Nokia - not to mention all the other companies like LG, Samsung, Motorola, RIM. Indeed, as you note yourself with "is closing in on RIM" - why yes, they'll soon be in position number 5...
(Although I think Android is still interesting long term, as it's potentially an OS that all those other companies, except presumably Nokia and RIM, will switch to using.)
I keep reading that you guys want Software Patents to be revised, but what changes do you propose?
Get rid of them ("pure" software patents, at least, not part of a hardware invention). This is how it is in European countries. Software is covered by copyright already; algorithms are mathematics, and should not be "owned".
-1, completely wrong. The Amiga wasn't the platform that relied on add-on cards to do basic tasks - something that was far more awkward back in the 90s. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your trolling that's fifteen years out of date.
Sell it to an old PC user would be more appropriate.
It's also noteworthy that PCs today are much better precisely because they've adopted the Amiga model - most standard things are on the motherboard, the notable exception being graphics (and even that's only an optional extra for gamers these days - with on board graphics being standard for laptops and desktops). I don't have a single PCI card, all I need is 1 graphics card; and it's much better than the days when I had to faff around with sound card, modem, and ethernet.
Twitter is a communication medium - saying you don't "trust twitter" makes no more sense than saying you don't trust phones, you don't trust email, you don't trust speech.
If someone emails you to say a fly is in their room, how can you trust them? Oh no, email is untrustworthy! You don't know who claims it, if the person who started the account is still in control of it and have no way to verify or even know what room the person is talking about or if they can accurately determine a fly from another insect.
If someone says they had a fly in their room last night, how can you trust them? On no, speech is untrustworthy! You don't know who this person is, if the person who lived in the room is still in control of it and have no way to verify or even know what room the person is talking about or if they can accurately determine a fly from another insect.
Or perhaps the issue of trust is not simply a matter of the communication medium? Moreover, not all uses of Twitter are between anonymous strangers, just as it obviously isn't with email and real life. All of the people I read on Twitter are people whom I know.
I agree with your general point that bias sources are still useful, and unknown bias is dangerous. But I don't think it follows that therefore the BBC are totally untrustworthy, whilst biased outlets aren't.
Firstly even though it is a problem that the BBC does have its unclear biases, overall I would still rate it as far more accurate, and less bias, than much of the media. Secondly, I don't think that just because you know a source is bias, means you can somehow factor it out.
How do you know that Murduch's outlets don't also have some unknown biases as well? It's a fallacy to assume that a non-biased source must have some hidden bias, but to also assume that if you know of at least one bias, that there are no hidden biases.
How does this apply to other kinds of sources? Would you trust a Creationist website over Encyclopedia Britannica on scientific matters, because you know the former is biased towards Creationism, but you're not sure what the bias of Britannica is?
Exactly.
And I guess it's stupid meaningless articles like these why people don't trust the media...
Indeed, though I think this is relevant given the common myth of there being only one Iphone model - leading to claims such as "Look how popular it is that even a single model has sold 50 million", when really it's a whole line of phones, that should be compared accordingly (e.g., to Nokia's 250 million Symbian devices).
Similarly, you'll get people going on about how they've got an Iphone, as if that's some special status - yet this could be an old outdated 2007 model. It's misleading that people can say that the Iphone now supports (finally) multitasking (along with copy/paste, 3G and other basic features), when actually this is true only of the latest high end model, and might not be true of all the Iphones out there.
If someone says that my 2 year old 5800 doesn't support a particular feature, I don't get to argue back based on what a soon-to-be-released high end Nokia phone will do.
Welcome to 1985.
By that logic, dirt cheap feature phones from five years ago, such as the one I threw in the trash for being obsolete a few months ago, could "multitask", because you can run the built in applications at the same time (e.g., writing an email or text whilst I listen to music on the mp3 player).
I would expect more from something claiming to be a high end smartphone, let alone for a tablet computer, but maybe it shouldn't be counted as that after all.
Granted I had to jailbreak the device
Apple, it Just Works, out of the box!
(When there's a new story about an Iphone virus, will you be first in line telling us it's a non-story, because it only affects jailbroken phones...?)
So do all skilled jobs get tax relief in the UK? Does software development in general get a tax relief? I don't think so.
Indeed, the argument they were making was not on the grounds of it being skillful, but on the grounds of it being a creative medium, arguing it should be treated the same as the film industry (which does get tax relief, AIUI).
So what is going to happen to these skilled developers who are out of a job because other countries have made it more attractive for companies to do their development there.
Which countries are more attractive, OOI?
The iPad sold 3 million units in 80 days. That's pretty impressive and certainly not the iFailure declared by many.
Given the vast amounts of media coverage and free advertising worldwide for many months, starting before the device was even announced, it would be abysmal if it had sold anything less. It's not a failure, but I'd say it's not living up to the hype and claims of it being revolutionary that were made.
There are plenty of other tablets, netbooks, etc on the market that also aren't failures. Where's the media coverage, complete with three stories a day on Slashdot, about them? Indeed, some of these devices, even from market leaders like Nokia, don't even get a single news story for their actual product releases.
The same argument applies to all walled gardens - whether it's Facebook, DRM, or whatever.
Clearly, being a walled garden is entirely separate to how many people buy something or not. I don't see how that means the term is incorrect. Some people like walled gardens, after all...
And there are people whining about Linux all the time. Newsflash: there are fans of all platforms, who criticise other platforms.
As for the Amiga, yes there'd have been fanatic ramblings against the Amiga too. In fact, there still are - just check out all the whining we get every once in a blue moon there's an AmigaOS article.
resulting in pushback, backlash and eventually Apple's demise.
Does the article actually say this? It's down at the moment, but I don't see this claim in the summary at least.
People are saying that such a thing would be bad, from their point of view, not Apple's.
I can't rule out an "Apple appliance" that will serve as a desktop type of computer with iOS running on it ... phasing out MacOS over the next decade? maybe ... but merging the two? Not very likely.
Well hang on a mo, that's pretty much the same claim, if not worse - the end result will still be that Apple's PCs (branded "Macs") will now be running IOS. They may or may not brand that OS "Mac OS" (just as in the past, the "Mac OS" brand has referred to more than one different operating system). The criticisms that now we'll have desktop and laptop computers too running with a locked down model where Apple get to control what software you're allowed to run, would still apply.
but the iPad presents a few advantages that make it worth the extra money: you don't need to flip anything open, you can hold it in any orientation, simple interface, and ease of access.
There are other netbooks/tablets/etc that can do this too.
What's the simple interface?
But yes, I agree that Apple products aren't computers/smartphones, they're just additional consumer gadgets. But why do they get treated as if they were computers or smartphones? Since when did Slashdot cover consumer products - would there be stories about Fridges, if Apple made one?
Compare that to Microsoft's push toward Palladium. They wanted to lock down your main computer.
In 10 years' time, when mobile computing is far more prevalent and powerful, do you think people are going to expect to lug around a separate "main" computer like a desktop?
Either Apple will still require this - in which case it'd be another disadvantage for the platform. Or they won't, in which case it will be true that they're wanting to lock down your main device.
You can choose not to buy it if it's not as convenient as you'd like for the price.
That's exactly the point people are making. Just like when Linux/Mac users criticise Windows - obviously they're point is that people shouldn't buy it. You would hardly have the Windows fan saying "But you don't have to buy it" - that would be conceding defeat.
you either spend the whole five minutes it takes to download Spirit and jailbreak the thing,
Apple - it "Just Works", right Out Of The Box.
or you do without and get a Nexus One or an EVO
Exactly, so you agree with this criticism of Apple. Just like when people criticise Windows, and you can run Linux instead. This is exactly the point being made.
Whilst there are still thankfully comments against Apple, there is nonetheless plenty of support for them and their closed platforms; as well as the fact that the former almost always get modded down, whilst the latter are modded up.
There's also the point that Apple get multiple stories a day, even for products that are in a minority of the market (Iphone), or not even shipping (Ipad) or announced (Itablet/stale/pad/whatever) whilst the market leaders in those markets (Nokia) and many other companies (selling phones, netbooks) rarely get a single story ever for an actual product release.
Whilst Microsoft do get coverage, it's still less than Apple, and often the stories are only to criticise.
So yes, the original poster's comments were spot on. The fact that a few of us here still criticise Apple hardly changes anything. Imagine going back to the /. of 10 years ago, and seeing large numbers of comments supporting Microsoft, with daily stories about Windows (never about Linux), and lots of people criticising open source. Would you be there, going "But there's still an occasional comment from someone supporting open source"?
You're missing the point. It's not intended to be that. Or is your view that IRC is also completely useless for everyone, except for collaborative support and development tools?
How much of your everyday conversations result in receiving news? And how much of the conversation would a random stranger decide is "legitimate"?
thanks in no small part to the iPhone.
More like Nokia - they're the ones shipping hundreds of millions of phones a year, and have done so for many years.