Holding my Iphone up next to my new Evo, the Iphone screen looks like crap in comparison, all pixelated.
Indeed - it's worth noting that all the Iphone models today have a low resolution. Even my 2 year old low end 5800 has a significantly higher resolution.
I find it notable that we've suddenly got all this hype and fanfare about resolution being important, now that a future announced Iphone phone will have a high resolution! Funny how that wasn't considered important until now... But yes, as you say it's really just catching up with what other phones already have (much like the 3G release, etc). (And before anyone says the Iphone's new resolution is higher than most current phones, remember that it's not released - obviously one would expect future phones to have higher resolutions.)
Not to disagree with your general point of the post, but note that Symbian is number one:)
Your rankings are probably right for the US market though.
(Also it depends whether we compare just the branded "smart phone" OS shares, or phone manufacturers. When you look at the latter, Apple do even worse, falling behind Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola and RIM. It's not clear to me by what definition the locked down Iphone counts as a "smart phone", when lots of other Internet/app capable phones are "feature phones".)
I guess it's more in a relative sense. I mean, it shows these people can throw money away on a phone that does little useful more than any old cheap feature phone. That's rich for you!
No one gave a shit about tablet computers until the iPad came out.
The important point however is that the vast amounts of media hype and coverage came before it shipped - hell, before it was even announced! So let's drop this myth. It wasn't that Apple have been the first to make a popular tablet. Rather no one still cares about tablets, but because it's Apple, we get vast amounts of coverage, even for the Ipad.
The sales prove that for the first time ever
The sales prove that, yet again, if you have vast amounts of free advertising and hype in the media, for many months before release, you're bound to sell a few of them.
Yes, I expect that tablets will gradually become more popular, now that touchscreens are common, and as prices fall. A key factor will be when they become comparable in price to netbooks (of which the Ipad is not).
No, it isn't Apple that solely caused this revolution - the trend towards mobile computing has been happening gradually and inevitably, thanks to many companies.
No one else manages to implement a tablet computer in the way that Apple did that brought success. In the end, you may not be an Apple fan or hate the iPad, but it succeeded and now, thanks to it, people do give a shit about tablet computers.
Spoken like a true Apple fan.
There are many other tablets, along with touch netbooks etc, that also succeeded, and were around before the Ipad. People who bought them evidently cared about them. No, there wasn't the absurd amounts of hype, but I'm not sure why that matters. The only people I see who started caring about tablets just because Apple made one, are people who were already Apple fans, which says it all about those people.
That is why Ubuntu is making one right now. Instead of innovating, they are playing catchup.
Then they're also playing catchup to Microsoft, who added touch capabilities to Windows before the Ipad was even announced, and people were still making claims about vaporware (remember the Islate?)
They're playing catchup because they don't have billions of dollars to spend on development. But there's nothing special about Apple here, unfortunately this is a problem open source faces against all commercial software.
Apple have been playing catchup in the phone market too, by the way, but no one seems to have a problem with that. Indeed, let me play the typical Apple tactic, for Ubuntu here: "What you don't realise is that having a tablet was a bad thing, so it was actually a feature that Ubuntu didn't run on tablets. But when Ubuntu does it, they'll make it so that it works. It'll be thanks to Ubuntu that people start caring about tablets. They might not be the first to do something, but they innovate and make it work properly. Other companies like Microsoft and Apple just copy." See? Easy when you can just make up claims, and pretend that what you personally care about is also representative which what the market as a whole uses.
This is the crux of your argument - but is it true? Where's your evidence for this claim?
It's hard to tell with Apple, because it's all in one. For Windows, the OS cost is significant, and was one reason why Linux has been used on some netbooks, because the fee for the OS is a much larger proportion of the hardware. As tablets fall in price, it will become relevant for them too. Are you claiming that IphoneOS is much cheaper to write than Windows?
The other problem is that tablets are media consumption devices
Your evidence for this? I'm not sure it's clear what the market for them is yet. There's media consumption; e-reading; portable Internet devices like netbooks but with touch interface and bigger screen; general computing device again like laptops/netbooks but with touch interface and bigger screen.
And since Android is there for free
Well Android is another possible OS they could do this with, I don't think that negates the argument.
No it wouldn't; see the other comment responding to yours. It isn't anything at all like other OSes.
See my reply to that comment. I said "more like" not "exactly like", so quibbling over how much like it isn't really relevant to the point.
That's another problem other OSes lack, and I used to run across it all the time from co-workers who would do just that. Fortnately, explaining it to them was easy. The Windows kludge shouldn't have been there in the first place.
So criticise Windows on that point. By all means do that - my point was questioning the claim that things were even worse now than before.
Other OSes don't do that; as the other poster pointed out, you have to manually make the file executable.
See my reply. And Windows doesn't do that either anymore, as you're told that it's an exe. So in neither case, you manually have to say you want to run it, knowing it's an exe.
I imagine that's why many Windows stories here are tagged "defectivebydesign".
Yes, because those people evidently have no clue what Windows is like these days. I'm no fan of Windows, but this is one change that was an improvement, not a step backwards. Yes, other systems do filetypes better - the Amiga does it much better, but big deal, I'm interested in how Windows has improved here.
How does one "manually flag it as executable before you could run it"? I mean, whilst this has advantages, it also makes it a lot harder for inexperienced users, as they have no idea how to run it. (And if you make it easy, you have the same problem that they do it without thinking.)
As I say, Windows will now tell you that it's an exe when you try to run it, so the claims made here are no longer true.
Also you would see the real filename
My point is that that's irrelevant, as on other OSs, the "real filename" doesn't tell you what the filetype is. Windows hiding the extension is no different to other OSs hiding the filetype.
Finally, you'd almost certainly do all of this as a non-root user.
It's true that Windows still has the problems of people running as root (though Windows 7 is better here - it works much better now when you run an account without admin privileges), but that's an entirely separate criticism. My point is that hiding the file extension is a sensible thing.
Funny, but inaccurate. It means "female friend", but only in the literal sense of a friend who is female, but not what we mean by a "girlfriend".
Not that any computer back then was seen as fashionable - indeed compared with the stereotype of a 286 DOS user, Mac user, or an early 1990s Linux user...
Multitasking. Oh oops, the Amiga does make that baseline, it's the Ipad which doesn't:)
Still, at least we no longer have to put up with people criticising the Amiga for its lack of Flash or Java - such "limitations" are now considered an advantage.
Well yes by that definition, AmigaOS is obsolete for me, but I'm not sure it's a good definition. By that standard, IphoneOS is obsolete for me.
The definition of "obsolete" is "no longer in use or no longer useful".
If it's being used by people, then "no longer in use" doesn't apply. It's no longer useful to most people who once used AmigaOS. But again, it depends on the person - it's evidently still useful to those who are using it. Also note that this definition doesn't apply to those people who never used Amigas (just as I wouldn't say that Iphone is obsolete for me, because it's never been useful to me).
Not that being obsolete is a bad thing - all the operating systems of the 80s and 90s, and even the early 2000s, are "obsolete" to most people: DOS, Windows 9x, NT/2000, Mac OS (the original, not the OS X which shares its name but is a different OS). But equally it just seems pointless - what's the need to have a hundred comments of whiners going "it's obsolete"? If you're no longer interested, then read another story. We only have an Amiga story once a year at most, compared with the three Ipad stories we get a day, so it's not like it's taking up much space...
Why not? Do we have this discussion everytime on Slashdot there's a story about say Macs? (Or maybe we could ask it of Windows:)
It's not like people are still using A500s. And even for those that are, there are occasional stories on other old systems too (e.g., classic Macs).
Why not have a story on historical classic platforms - this is meant to be "News for Nerds" isn't it, or have we turned into "Consumer News for iPad users" already?
But many OSs don't use the file extension to indicate the type at all - which is not unreasonable (using the filename to indicate the type was always a bit of a hacky solution). For non-experienced users, hiding the extension is sensible, and makes Windows a bit more like those other OSs. It was always a problem that an inexperienced user would inadvertently change the file type, merely by renaming the filename.
So you'd say that all those non-Windows OSs are also insecure, because you could have a file "picture", that actually was an executable virus when you doubleclicked? (Windows 7 warns about untrused executables anyway, so your example doesn't make sense, anyway.)
The problem with the article isn't that it blames the consumer, it's that it's flat out wrong. Autorun is off by default these days - so there's no need to blame the OS, or the consumer. (If the consumer grants privileges to an untrusted application, then yes they are to blame - and that's a problem in any OS, not just Windows.)
Autorun has been disabled for years, surely? It's off on Windows 7 at least. Windows 7 also has limited user privileges (of course the user can still grant admin privileges, but then on Linux you can sudo).
Indeed. Although part of the problem is that supporters of censorship laws already use the argument "Even if it only affects some people, even if there's only a small chance, we should ban it... even if it only saves one life". (This isn't a straw man - e.g., it was an argument made by the UK Labour Government recently when criminalising adult images, and also by supporters of that law, Section 63.)
It's a poor argument of course. One can easily put out the opposing hypothesis that at least some people might be less likely to turn to violence as a result, claiming that no matter how small the chance is that it's true, it's worth it if it only saves one life. There's also the opportunity cost of passing and enforcing such laws - money that could be spent on hospitals, and therefore we could save just one more life by not spending money on dubiously made laws.
Unfortunately, reason and logic doesn't rank highly on supporters of such laws, in my experience.
And even for their other products - with the sole exception of the Ipod - there are still plenty of other companies in the market that sell even more like hot cakes (e.g., Microsoft on the desktop; Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry etc on phones).
Nexus One already has a a camera but the iPhone has a front facing one too. ok.
Although this is nothing special anyway - front facing cameras have been commonplace since at least 2005, even on dirt cheap feature phones. My V980 had it, my 5800 has it.
(No doubt that multitasking, front-facing camera, and high resolution will suddenly go from being "Why would I want that?" to "Look how wonderful these features are"...)
Which by the way has already started beating out Apple iPhone sales.
Indeed, and Nokia meanwhile still dominate them both. (Motorola, Samsung, LG, Blackberry also sell more than Apple.)
For years, the Iphones had a relatively low resolution - even my 2 year old far cheaper 5800 has a much higher resolution than the latest Iphone. If I pointed this out, people would dismiss it as not something that's important.
But when this is released, you can bet that suddenly having a high resolution will be important, and a bragging feature...
(What are the resolutions of other future expensive high end phones? They may well be comparable anyway, but you'd never hear about them here.)
And in turn for outside the US, although we've had Symbian for years, it's still good to see new competition - even if they don't offer much new, competition is still good for all.
Without Android, yes, it would have been even funnier to see people still raving over how wonderful their 2007 original Iphone can check email and read the web in 2010, as if this was anything new...
It's tough to make the same claim when Apple went from zero phones in 2007 to what they have today
I don't see why the comment of "zero phones" is relevant. Three years is a long time in phone technology, and Apple were and are a billion dollar company, one of the largest technology companies around (bigger than Microsoft by value, by some measures).
So the idea that Apple are some small startup who deserve a cookie for entering the phone market and getting to where they are (a whole 5% of the market, incidentally) is a myth.
Microsoft started from zero too once.
Anyhow, the claim was not about what people buy, but about the marketing. And the point you are missing is that Apple get that media coverage, even before it's what most people use (if that even ever happens). In the case of the Ipad, the large amounts of media coverage happened not only before it was released, but before it was even announced, for heaven's sake!
or the introduction of the iPad which again went from 0 to todays 2 million in a matter of weeks.
Another myth. I recall vast amounts of media hype and free advertising for a period of many months. It's simply that they only (finally, after years of hype - remember the Apple tablet news five years ago?) shipped the orders in the last few weeks.
And 10 years ago when the hype was on MS, Slashdot was a place to be sceptical of such market hype, and a place to discuss other (more open) systems.
Now? It's Apple who are loved here, with people taken in by the marketing, far more so in the general public (e.g., the Iphone only has about 5% market share in general, similarly for Macs). It is funny to see people saying they "Think Different" whilst telling us that they're buying what they think everyone else is buying.
I think it would be more accurate to say that Apple already has the pole position (no pun intended),
In your opinion. They have pole position of media hype - which came before the product was even announced. There are plenty of tablets, netbooks and other portable devices out there.
On that note, I'm confused by TFS - it points out a flaw in the Ipad compared to all the other devices, yet then goes onto give an obligitary Slashvertisement praise about how the Ipad is allegedly the best (go on, give us an example of how the UI is much better than all other devices? Because that's not my experience when I use Quicktime, Itunes or an Ipod - e.g., the other day I tried playing video files on a computer from someone's Ipod, and I had no idea what was what, because the files were all scrambled. In the end I have up. On other devices, this sort of thing Just Works).
and that any new competitors would be the runner up until proven otherwise.
So it's Apple until proven otherwise? No, the burden is upon you to support your claim.
Slashdot Mirror
Holding my Iphone up next to my new Evo, the Iphone screen looks like crap in comparison, all pixelated.
Indeed - it's worth noting that all the Iphone models today have a low resolution. Even my 2 year old low end 5800 has a significantly higher resolution.
I find it notable that we've suddenly got all this hype and fanfare about resolution being important, now that a future announced Iphone phone will have a high resolution! Funny how that wasn't considered important until now... But yes, as you say it's really just catching up with what other phones already have (much like the 3G release, etc). (And before anyone says the Iphone's new resolution is higher than most current phones, remember that it's not released - obviously one would expect future phones to have higher resolutions.)
RIM is still number one.
Not to disagree with your general point of the post, but note that Symbian is number one :)
Your rankings are probably right for the US market though.
(Also it depends whether we compare just the branded "smart phone" OS shares, or phone manufacturers. When you look at the latter, Apple do even worse, falling behind Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola and RIM. It's not clear to me by what definition the locked down Iphone counts as a "smart phone", when lots of other Internet/app capable phones are "feature phones".)
I guess it's more in a relative sense. I mean, it shows these people can throw money away on a phone that does little useful more than any old cheap feature phone. That's rich for you!
No one gave a shit about tablet computers until the iPad came out.
The important point however is that the vast amounts of media hype and coverage came before it shipped - hell, before it was even announced! So let's drop this myth. It wasn't that Apple have been the first to make a popular tablet. Rather no one still cares about tablets, but because it's Apple, we get vast amounts of coverage, even for the Ipad.
The sales prove that for the first time ever
The sales prove that, yet again, if you have vast amounts of free advertising and hype in the media, for many months before release, you're bound to sell a few of them.
Yes, I expect that tablets will gradually become more popular, now that touchscreens are common, and as prices fall. A key factor will be when they become comparable in price to netbooks (of which the Ipad is not).
No, it isn't Apple that solely caused this revolution - the trend towards mobile computing has been happening gradually and inevitably, thanks to many companies.
No one else manages to implement a tablet computer in the way that Apple did that brought success. In the end, you may not be an Apple fan or hate the iPad, but it succeeded and now, thanks to it, people do give a shit about tablet computers.
Spoken like a true Apple fan.
There are many other tablets, along with touch netbooks etc, that also succeeded, and were around before the Ipad. People who bought them evidently cared about them. No, there wasn't the absurd amounts of hype, but I'm not sure why that matters. The only people I see who started caring about tablets just because Apple made one, are people who were already Apple fans, which says it all about those people.
That is why Ubuntu is making one right now. Instead of innovating, they are playing catchup.
Then they're also playing catchup to Microsoft, who added touch capabilities to Windows before the Ipad was even announced, and people were still making claims about vaporware (remember the Islate?)
They're playing catchup because they don't have billions of dollars to spend on development. But there's nothing special about Apple here, unfortunately this is a problem open source faces against all commercial software.
Apple have been playing catchup in the phone market too, by the way, but no one seems to have a problem with that. Indeed, let me play the typical Apple tactic, for Ubuntu here: "What you don't realise is that having a tablet was a bad thing, so it was actually a feature that Ubuntu didn't run on tablets. But when Ubuntu does it, they'll make it so that it works. It'll be thanks to Ubuntu that people start caring about tablets. They might not be the first to do something, but they innovate and make it work properly. Other companies like Microsoft and Apple just copy." See? Easy when you can just make up claims, and pretend that what you personally care about is also representative which what the market as a whole uses.
The OS isn't the expensive part of that product.
This is the crux of your argument - but is it true? Where's your evidence for this claim?
It's hard to tell with Apple, because it's all in one. For Windows, the OS cost is significant, and was one reason why Linux has been used on some netbooks, because the fee for the OS is a much larger proportion of the hardware. As tablets fall in price, it will become relevant for them too. Are you claiming that IphoneOS is much cheaper to write than Windows?
The other problem is that tablets are media consumption devices
Your evidence for this? I'm not sure it's clear what the market for them is yet. There's media consumption; e-reading; portable Internet devices like netbooks but with touch interface and bigger screen; general computing device again like laptops/netbooks but with touch interface and bigger screen.
And since Android is there for free
Well Android is another possible OS they could do this with, I don't think that negates the argument.
No it wouldn't; see the other comment responding to yours. It isn't anything at all like other OSes.
See my reply to that comment. I said "more like" not "exactly like", so quibbling over how much like it isn't really relevant to the point.
That's another problem other OSes lack, and I used to run across it all the time from co-workers who would do just that. Fortnately, explaining it to them was easy. The Windows kludge shouldn't have been there in the first place.
So criticise Windows on that point. By all means do that - my point was questioning the claim that things were even worse now than before.
Other OSes don't do that; as the other poster pointed out, you have to manually make the file executable.
See my reply. And Windows doesn't do that either anymore, as you're told that it's an exe. So in neither case, you manually have to say you want to run it, knowing it's an exe.
I imagine that's why many Windows stories here are tagged "defectivebydesign".
Yes, because those people evidently have no clue what Windows is like these days. I'm no fan of Windows, but this is one change that was an improvement, not a step backwards. Yes, other systems do filetypes better - the Amiga does it much better, but big deal, I'm interested in how Windows has improved here.
How does one "manually flag it as executable before you could run it"? I mean, whilst this has advantages, it also makes it a lot harder for inexperienced users, as they have no idea how to run it. (And if you make it easy, you have the same problem that they do it without thinking.)
As I say, Windows will now tell you that it's an exe when you try to run it, so the claims made here are no longer true.
Also you would see the real filename
My point is that that's irrelevant, as on other OSs, the "real filename" doesn't tell you what the filetype is. Windows hiding the extension is no different to other OSs hiding the filetype.
Finally, you'd almost certainly do all of this as a non-root user.
It's true that Windows still has the problems of people running as root (though Windows 7 is better here - it works much better now when you run an account without admin privileges), but that's an entirely separate criticism. My point is that hiding the file extension is a sensible thing.
Funny, but inaccurate. It means "female friend", but only in the literal sense of a friend who is female, but not what we mean by a "girlfriend".
Not that any computer back then was seen as fashionable - indeed compared with the stereotype of a 286 DOS user, Mac user, or an early 1990s Linux user...
Multitasking. Oh oops, the Amiga does make that baseline, it's the Ipad which doesn't :)
Still, at least we no longer have to put up with people criticising the Amiga for its lack of Flash or Java - such "limitations" are now considered an advantage.
Well yes by that definition, AmigaOS is obsolete for me, but I'm not sure it's a good definition. By that standard, IphoneOS is obsolete for me.
The definition of "obsolete" is "no longer in use or no longer useful".
If it's being used by people, then "no longer in use" doesn't apply. It's no longer useful to most people who once used AmigaOS. But again, it depends on the person - it's evidently still useful to those who are using it. Also note that this definition doesn't apply to those people who never used Amigas (just as I wouldn't say that Iphone is obsolete for me, because it's never been useful to me).
Not that being obsolete is a bad thing - all the operating systems of the 80s and 90s, and even the early 2000s, are "obsolete" to most people: DOS, Windows 9x, NT/2000, Mac OS (the original, not the OS X which shares its name but is a different OS). But equally it just seems pointless - what's the need to have a hundred comments of whiners going "it's obsolete"? If you're no longer interested, then read another story. We only have an Amiga story once a year at most, compared with the three Ipad stories we get a day, so it's not like it's taking up much space...
Yeah, you never get any interest or stories about proprietary OSs round here, certainly not... And no one ever liked PowerPC, right.
Why not? Do we have this discussion everytime on Slashdot there's a story about say Macs? (Or maybe we could ask it of Windows:)
It's not like people are still using A500s. And even for those that are, there are occasional stories on other old systems too (e.g., classic Macs).
Why not have a story on historical classic platforms - this is meant to be "News for Nerds" isn't it, or have we turned into "Consumer News for iPad users" already?
But many OSs don't use the file extension to indicate the type at all - which is not unreasonable (using the filename to indicate the type was always a bit of a hacky solution). For non-experienced users, hiding the extension is sensible, and makes Windows a bit more like those other OSs. It was always a problem that an inexperienced user would inadvertently change the file type, merely by renaming the filename.
So you'd say that all those non-Windows OSs are also insecure, because you could have a file "picture", that actually was an executable virus when you doubleclicked? (Windows 7 warns about untrused executables anyway, so your example doesn't make sense, anyway.)
The problem with the article isn't that it blames the consumer, it's that it's flat out wrong. Autorun is off by default these days - so there's no need to blame the OS, or the consumer. (If the consumer grants privileges to an untrusted application, then yes they are to blame - and that's a problem in any OS, not just Windows.)
Autorun has been disabled for years, surely? It's off on Windows 7 at least. Windows 7 also has limited user privileges (of course the user can still grant admin privileges, but then on Linux you can sudo).
Sure, XP is a risk, but that's years old.
Indeed. Although part of the problem is that supporters of censorship laws already use the argument "Even if it only affects some people, even if there's only a small chance, we should ban it ... even if it only saves one life". (This isn't a straw man - e.g., it was an argument made by the UK Labour Government recently when criminalising adult images, and also by supporters of that law, Section 63.)
It's a poor argument of course. One can easily put out the opposing hypothesis that at least some people might be less likely to turn to violence as a result, claiming that no matter how small the chance is that it's true, it's worth it if it only saves one life. There's also the opportunity cost of passing and enforcing such laws - money that could be spent on hospitals, and therefore we could save just one more life by not spending money on dubiously made laws.
Unfortunately, reason and logic doesn't rank highly on supporters of such laws, in my experience.
Yes, I like this about Nokia maps also - it supports offline maps as standard.
Don't forget the Air :)
And even for their other products - with the sole exception of the Ipod - there are still plenty of other companies in the market that sell even more like hot cakes (e.g., Microsoft on the desktop; Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry etc on phones).
Nexus One already has a a camera but the iPhone has a front facing one too. ok.
Although this is nothing special anyway - front facing cameras have been commonplace since at least 2005, even on dirt cheap feature phones. My V980 had it, my 5800 has it.
(No doubt that multitasking, front-facing camera, and high resolution will suddenly go from being "Why would I want that?" to "Look how wonderful these features are"...)
Which by the way has already started beating out Apple iPhone sales.
Indeed, and Nokia meanwhile still dominate them both. (Motorola, Samsung, LG, Blackberry also sell more than Apple.)
For years, the Iphones had a relatively low resolution - even my 2 year old far cheaper 5800 has a much higher resolution than the latest Iphone. If I pointed this out, people would dismiss it as not something that's important.
But when this is released, you can bet that suddenly having a high resolution will be important, and a bragging feature...
(What are the resolutions of other future expensive high end phones? They may well be comparable anyway, but you'd never hear about them here.)
And in turn for outside the US, although we've had Symbian for years, it's still good to see new competition - even if they don't offer much new, competition is still good for all.
Without Android, yes, it would have been even funnier to see people still raving over how wonderful their 2007 original Iphone can check email and read the web in 2010, as if this was anything new...
And it's not a misjudgement. He didn't say "the Ipod won't be popular", he said he thought it was lame. People call Windows lame all the time...
Not that the popularity of one product has any relevance to other products which aren't market leaders.
It's tough to make the same claim when Apple went from zero phones in 2007 to what they have today
I don't see why the comment of "zero phones" is relevant. Three years is a long time in phone technology, and Apple were and are a billion dollar company, one of the largest technology companies around (bigger than Microsoft by value, by some measures).
So the idea that Apple are some small startup who deserve a cookie for entering the phone market and getting to where they are (a whole 5% of the market, incidentally) is a myth.
Microsoft started from zero too once.
Anyhow, the claim was not about what people buy, but about the marketing. And the point you are missing is that Apple get that media coverage, even before it's what most people use (if that even ever happens). In the case of the Ipad, the large amounts of media coverage happened not only before it was released, but before it was even announced, for heaven's sake!
or the introduction of the iPad which again went from 0 to todays 2 million in a matter of weeks.
Another myth. I recall vast amounts of media hype and free advertising for a period of many months. It's simply that they only (finally, after years of hype - remember the Apple tablet news five years ago?) shipped the orders in the last few weeks.
Hear hear.
And 10 years ago when the hype was on MS, Slashdot was a place to be sceptical of such market hype, and a place to discuss other (more open) systems.
Now? It's Apple who are loved here, with people taken in by the marketing, far more so in the general public (e.g., the Iphone only has about 5% market share in general, similarly for Macs). It is funny to see people saying they "Think Different" whilst telling us that they're buying what they think everyone else is buying.
I think it would be more accurate to say that Apple already has the pole position (no pun intended),
In your opinion. They have pole position of media hype - which came before the product was even announced. There are plenty of tablets, netbooks and other portable devices out there.
On that note, I'm confused by TFS - it points out a flaw in the Ipad compared to all the other devices, yet then goes onto give an obligitary Slashvertisement praise about how the Ipad is allegedly the best (go on, give us an example of how the UI is much better than all other devices? Because that's not my experience when I use Quicktime, Itunes or an Ipod - e.g., the other day I tried playing video files on a computer from someone's Ipod, and I had no idea what was what, because the files were all scrambled. In the end I have up. On other devices, this sort of thing Just Works).
and that any new competitors would be the runner up until proven otherwise.
So it's Apple until proven otherwise? No, the burden is upon you to support your claim.