And you make my point for me. We're not all the same. Some of us don't want to mess around with getting hardware to work etc and just buy something that is turnkey. Some like to build everything by hand.
I'm not sure it's arbitrarily raising the barrier - the toolchain for iOS development is based on the one that is used for OS X, given that the two OSes share the same core. It's not like Apple deliberately said "aha, what a great way to drive OS X adoption!". It's merely a side effect of OS X only running on Apple hardware, which has been done to death - they're simply not in the business of making an OS for generic boxes.
It also depends where you start from - for me the barrier to entry to Windows Phone 7 development is "arbitrarily high" since you need to do it on Windows. It would be far easier if they ported the toolset to OS X for me!
Right, you're ditching the most profitable market because... why? The dev tools only run on the OS the phone's OS is based on? The app store paid developers a combined 2 billion dollars in revenue (after Apple's cut). Nothing else is even close right now.
Hilarious.
I believe the phrase is "cutting off your nose to spite your face". If you're talking "as a professional developer" (ie, if you are making your living from this).
For the casual developer just messing about, sure you need a Mac, but you can pick one up cheaply on eBay that will do the job just fine. Alternatively you can just build a hackintosh and see what's what before committing to buying new or used hardware.
So buy a cheap second hand Intel Mac from ebay or something, or buy a broken one and fix it up, since tinkering is what we do. You can get some serious deals on cheap Macs with busted screens or damaged bits and it's cheap to repair them - no more expensive than a PC.
Thinking that "low barrier to entry" means "new" is ok, nothing wrong with that per se, but it's a non-hobbyist's perspective. Might be better served by, I don't know, Dell.com or something.
That is a technical issue though, and one I assume they will resolve, since it relates to security issues if they had added JIT globally with the way it is set up right now. At least, that was my understanding over why it has been brought in piecemeal
He very, very clearly states that "standard" refers to C++ (as he mentions it in full each time) and that the adjective does not apply to Objective C, where it is not used a prefix at all.
Apple troll wilfully misinterprets anything with a slight positive spin on anything related to Apple! Film at 11.
Yes, I get that, but it's not my point. My point is that it's seemly ok to bash Apple for "stealing" the concept of repositories on one hand (albeit in a more limited form due t a single non-extendable source) but that it's then simultaneously ok to bash Apple for doing it as the GGGGP (howveer far back up that original post is).
I've got no illusions about how they differ, just that slashdot seems to want to have its cake and eat it too regarding bashing, sort of like how it was simultaneously bashing Apple for having "useless, not real" multitasking when it was announced in iOS 4, only to claim at the same time that "they just copied exactly what Android does".
I am aware that slashdot is not a single entity, and that contradictory information can be modded up, but pointing it out is not wrong, merely asking for people to choose at least a reasonably unified trolling angle, lest the site look silly with two mutually exclusive bashing posts being modded up as "informative".
Goodness me, the level of Reverse Reality Distortion evident in your post is so strong I'm almost not sure if it's a parody or a very clever troll. You are making claims that in some cases are subjective - ie, your interpretation of whether a tablet is good for x task compared to a laptop or a phone (and this is why it exists - laptops and phones already exist, if the iPad doesn't suit you there are plenty to choose from that were 'already doing the job better' in your opinion, so jus get one of those. Your other claims simply aren't borne out by the fact.
Unless Apple's "sheeple" are buying more than one iPad per month and... I don;t know, blending them or using them as frisbees, then their market share is growing and has continued to do so since the launch almost a year ago. There's only so far "only apple fanbois are buying them lolcats!" that nonsense trolling will get you - as it's been proven clearly to be false. It's simply inconceivable that they made a product that *actually works for a lot of people*.
Now, it's not perfect - it could do with expandable storage built in, but hey, even Android tablets don't have working SD card slots so I assume it's just too hard to make it work even if you do put a slot on the device (note: sarcasm), and I'd like a USB port or something, for the odd times you'd want it without having to get the dock adapter thing, but such is life.
I don;t actually own one, but I have friends an relatives who do.
Oh who am I kidding, with the tone of your post if Apple open sourced the whole of iOS tomorrow and donated all of its cash reserves to charity you's till twist it round as something evil.
What are you basing "no way apple will be able to dominate the market if there is no outside niche" thing on? Because they have hit 28% marketshare for iPhone vs 29% for the entirety of all Android handsets from all manufacturers put together (despite *both* of those groups still growing), or perhaps it's based on the music player market, with no shortage of "outside markets". They don;t need to have a 100% stranglehold on the market - if they thought they could, they wouldn't release the iPad 2 when they did - there were no iPad 1 competitors and they were *still* selling them as fast as they could make them. They could easily have held off.
It's really not possible to see how Apple could be doing better right now - they have upped production a number of times, and they are still selling iPhones and iPads as fast as they can make them. Whether that translates to 90% of the market for tablets or 80% doesn't really matter - it's already shown that having only 30% of a market is quite lucrative for them, and even then they are toe to toe with as the biggest manufacturer of a single product.
When was the last time you added a third party implementation to XBox Live's marketplace?
A limitation of a closed model is that things like extensibility (like non-standard Marketplaces on Android, and sideloading of apps etc) is not present in the iPhone model, however my point still stands; it was not from the iPhone side of the fence that the comparisons were drawn. Apple was accused by apple bashers of ripping of the repository idea "that linux had first" and spouting the whole "passing it off as their own innovation" stuff.
It appears to be similar enough, without being extensible by third parties, to be used to bash Apple, so by that yardstick it stands.
Haha. Are you the guy who told JKR that "no one wants to read about wizards, that shit will never sell!" or the genius who told George Lucas he could keep 100% of the marketing rights to Star Wars because you didn't think the film would go anywhere and that the rights were worthless?
Tablets, as defined by the iPad, have created a new space for themselves that people are finding works really well for them - they are essentially the Star Trek PADD - ideal for consuming content and doing quick tasks that require access to the computer but are too "trivial" to really need a full computer, for example, checking email quickly (and firing off a quick reply), checking facebook, catching up with some TV (it's a great BBC iPlayer device), playing casual games for people who aren;t the demographic for a next gen console.
The fact that you really can't see that tablets (not just the iPad) are more than just a fad or a fashion accessory for pretentious people tells me you just... haven't been outside since the iPad launch. Go and look at the way people are using them. Hate Apple all you want, which is what I suspect this post is all about, rather than the inherent merits or downsides of tablets, but you're trying to claim the Earth is flat here.
But you are still further missing his point - the market is not saturated by any means, since sales of iPads *continue to grow*, so we're not in a "everyone who wanted a tablet already has one now, so the Xoom is not selling" because Apple is still shipping 800,000 per month - there are clearly people who want them.
No, the reason the Xoom is not selling is because it is not as good as the iPad, and it should be - they had enough time to get it right, and finally ended up releasing it in a half baked state in desperation just before the iPad 2 launch.
It's s shame, because it could have been seriously decent. I have no doubt that it will get better with a better version of Honeycomb and actual working touted "iPad killer" features like the SD card slot ("everyone" [read: a small but vocal group of techy people] clamour that an iPad killer needs an SD card slot, so they ship one... that doesn't work at launch...)
No, there's no mystery to why the iPad is king in the tablet market - it pretty much carved its own niche in a forgotten, poorly-provided market segement and reignited it, and no one has been able to come close to it in the year since.
Yes, and as well as having comparable phones to the iPhone, there are also some truly crappy cheap Android handsets that were clearly designed to pad the marketshare numbers, because they are woeful. I've used both types, and the nasty handsets can only really hurt the Android brand - from my own (admittedly anecdotal experience) I have two friends who have been put off Android due to their poor phones and will be moving to a Blackberry or an iPhone at the end of their contract. I have mentioned that there are some really good Android handsets but they are drawing a line under it. (FTR, I am an iPhone user, a 3G)
So, it's fine to bash Apple when they're "stealing the idea of the repository, that Linux has had for years", but when its brought up as a required feature for tablets it's "the one holy canonical Applestolic right way" and must be denounced.
Sure you can, that's how the iPhone works. It's also how Android handsets work, with the added difference that they send data to Google (that you can opt out of).
Also, a floating FDR would be a nightmare. In the event of an ocean crash do you *really* want the FDR to drift off on the currents? It could end up anywhere - oceans are vast, even with a locator beacon broadcasting its position it's hard enough to find in a reasonably well defined debris field on the seabed.
Sarcasm only works on the sarcastic portions of your post - you can't claim that it covers your post as a blanket purely because you started with it (note that I didn't take issue with it, being clear sarcasm).
I didn't say that "2 years ago" was first for anything - you'll note I also talked about a time considerably before that with another mobile phone (although I could have gone earlier - the 3210 was a new kid on the block compared to my first mobile phone). I mentioned 2 years because it's approximately when I started my iPhone contract, just as a point of reference. How could you not understand the point being made?
The US cell network is not the oldest. That would be Japan, although if we're talking 2G (ie, the GSM standard - modern cellular phones compatible with today's networks), then that's Europe - specifically Scandinavia. They certainly don't have any capacity problems either.
In this case, the OP's assertion was that cloud bases services would be a total waste for Apple purely because US data plans would make them unworkable. I have to assume, given that 60% of their revenue comes from non-US markets, that they have their eye on more than just their US market, thus maybe cloud services aren't a total waste after all.
"It won't work in the US" is not a valid reason for them to ignore it.
Yes, funny how the idea of them being an "evil empire" doesn't really translate to the real world, eh?
It's almost as if it's hyperbole on the internet, inflated to near crazy levels by neckbeard-razor-burn. You know how crotchety that makes nerds! (So much so that I don't believe that's actually a sentence).
Yes, it's a shame they didn't sue to get it, since that would have played nicely into the "Apple is evil" mentality on slashdot. They just don't know what to do when they do things reasonably. Don't worry, it'll get swept away quietly when the next round of supposed "evil" is uncovered.:p
The "war" joke was merely a flippant rebuttal to "nowhere outside the US matters" - I thought I'd appeal to the "America, Fuck Yeah!" patriotism.:p
I would contend that Europe has much better networks than the US, having had personal experience of both (I used to live in the Columbus, OH).
Here in the UK I am running a month-to-month plan (one month notice period) for $30 per month, unlimited data, SMS and 1000 minutes of voice. This is one of the cheap plans - we just do not have the data crunch and capacity issues that the US has, and there's nowhere I've been in the UK that has ever given me signal problems. I admit this is a function of land area (we are 1/4 the size of Texas), but I didn;t have any signal issues in Columbus and the surrounding areas - certainly not anywhere within range of a highway, and this was with a UK iPhone 3G on O2, so I was using AT&T and Tmobile's networks while over there.
Also, re: 4G, I thought that LTE was not actually "4G" and merely a marketing thing. There are LTE offerings here, but Ofcom and the standards bodies involved in 4G have stated it's not good enough to be called 4G.
You didn't see the sarcasm in that post, or the overly flippant "war for oil" deceased equine joke?
And I would wager that the networks outside the US do matter, especially to Apple, who make about 60% of their revenue from non-US markets.
I'm also not 100% sure on your "we had cellular first and made them usable first" claim - I was tethering in the UK years ago, back when things like the Nokia 3210 were the hot new thing (with swappable covers!), with inclusive text and voice plans that were in the 1000's of texts and minutes for the equivalent of $30 US monthly.
My iPhone plan from 2 years ago was better than the US equivalent, and still would be (I've since switched to a month-by-month plan for unlimited data, SMS and 1000 minutes for $30 USD per month, with a one month notice to cancel, although I'm paying twice as much as I really need to since other carriers can offer the same for less but I like my current provider and they're a known quantity re: coverage etc).
I'm also not really bitching and moaning *about* the US. It sure has a few things I hate about it (hello, healthcare - what is this, the 1800s?), but I love the place and lived there for some time, in the midwest, and likely will again in the future. What I don't like is ignorant isolationists who give the rest of the US a bad name. Things like "nowhere outside the US matters" is a shining example of that.
You can use an AP that separates the networks like an Airport Extreme. It can run 3 simultaneously - b/g at 2.4Ghz, a/n at 5GHz and a "guest network" which you can leave open or password protect. The guest network is isolated from your internal services so you don;t have to worry if you are running a sensitive one (beyond your usual precautions).
However, saying all that I don't have the guest network running - one because I live in a pretty densely populated urban area with a lot of APs in range and running an extra channel that I don't really need seems a little anti-social in an already crowded frequency range and because while my connection is uncapped and unthrottled for the most part (Virgin's 50Mb fibre plan), I don;t really want to deal with the potential hassle if someone does decide to use it for nefarious purposes.
If you want to use either of my networks, just ask me nicely for the password:p A pre-requisite is knowing me for more than 5 minutes.
I'm amazed there was any space left on the front page after all those troll articles about the "tracking" "scandal", some even dupes from 2010 trying to pass off old information as new news. Anything to keep the FUD machine going.
It's interesting because it was announced at the launch of the iPhone 4 and then delayed due to technical problems with the white glass and Apple took an *enormous* amount of flak for it.
If they hadn't mentioned it as a colour option at the launch and merely worked on it quietly and released it when it was ready this wouldn't be news. They can't really win - there were several trolls moaning about 'still no white iphone, lolz' and now that it is ready and announced they can swap instantly to "how is this news! slashdot is being paid by apple and is nothing but an iFanboi!' (conveniently ignoring the past two weeks' worth of apple-bashing troll articles about the 'tracking' issue).
Blizzard learned this lesson well in the past, which is why it is very careful about what it "promises" in publicly visible comments, and the reason their PR disclaimer very carefully defines what specific words mean.
Slashdot Mirror
And you make my point for me. We're not all the same. Some of us don't want to mess around with getting hardware to work etc and just buy something that is turnkey. Some like to build everything by hand.
I'm not sure it's arbitrarily raising the barrier - the toolchain for iOS development is based on the one that is used for OS X, given that the two OSes share the same core. It's not like Apple deliberately said "aha, what a great way to drive OS X adoption!". It's merely a side effect of OS X only running on Apple hardware, which has been done to death - they're simply not in the business of making an OS for generic boxes.
It also depends where you start from - for me the barrier to entry to Windows Phone 7 development is "arbitrarily high" since you need to do it on Windows. It would be far easier if they ported the toolset to OS X for me!
Right, you're ditching the most profitable market because... why? The dev tools only run on the OS the phone's OS is based on? The app store paid developers a combined 2 billion dollars in revenue (after Apple's cut). Nothing else is even close right now.
Hilarious.
I believe the phrase is "cutting off your nose to spite your face". If you're talking "as a professional developer" (ie, if you are making your living from this).
For the casual developer just messing about, sure you need a Mac, but you can pick one up cheaply on eBay that will do the job just fine. Alternatively you can just build a hackintosh and see what's what before committing to buying new or used hardware.
So buy a cheap second hand Intel Mac from ebay or something, or buy a broken one and fix it up, since tinkering is what we do. You can get some serious deals on cheap Macs with busted screens or damaged bits and it's cheap to repair them - no more expensive than a PC.
Thinking that "low barrier to entry" means "new" is ok, nothing wrong with that per se, but it's a non-hobbyist's perspective. Might be better served by, I don't know, Dell.com or something.
That is a technical issue though, and one I assume they will resolve, since it relates to security issues if they had added JIT globally with the way it is set up right now. At least, that was my understanding over why it has been brought in piecemeal
He very, very clearly states that "standard" refers to C++ (as he mentions it in full each time) and that the adjective does not apply to Objective C, where it is not used a prefix at all.
Apple troll wilfully misinterprets anything with a slight positive spin on anything related to Apple! Film at 11.
Yes, I get that, but it's not my point. My point is that it's seemly ok to bash Apple for "stealing" the concept of repositories on one hand (albeit in a more limited form due t a single non-extendable source) but that it's then simultaneously ok to bash Apple for doing it as the GGGGP (howveer far back up that original post is).
I've got no illusions about how they differ, just that slashdot seems to want to have its cake and eat it too regarding bashing, sort of like how it was simultaneously bashing Apple for having "useless, not real" multitasking when it was announced in iOS 4, only to claim at the same time that "they just copied exactly what Android does".
I am aware that slashdot is not a single entity, and that contradictory information can be modded up, but pointing it out is not wrong, merely asking for people to choose at least a reasonably unified trolling angle, lest the site look silly with two mutually exclusive bashing posts being modded up as "informative".
Goodness me, the level of Reverse Reality Distortion evident in your post is so strong I'm almost not sure if it's a parody or a very clever troll. You are making claims that in some cases are subjective - ie, your interpretation of whether a tablet is good for x task compared to a laptop or a phone (and this is why it exists - laptops and phones already exist, if the iPad doesn't suit you there are plenty to choose from that were 'already doing the job better' in your opinion, so jus get one of those. Your other claims simply aren't borne out by the fact.
Unless Apple's "sheeple" are buying more than one iPad per month and... I don;t know, blending them or using them as frisbees, then their market share is growing and has continued to do so since the launch almost a year ago. There's only so far "only apple fanbois are buying them lolcats!" that nonsense trolling will get you - as it's been proven clearly to be false. It's simply inconceivable that they made a product that *actually works for a lot of people*.
Now, it's not perfect - it could do with expandable storage built in, but hey, even Android tablets don't have working SD card slots so I assume it's just too hard to make it work even if you do put a slot on the device (note: sarcasm), and I'd like a USB port or something, for the odd times you'd want it without having to get the dock adapter thing, but such is life.
I don;t actually own one, but I have friends an relatives who do.
Oh who am I kidding, with the tone of your post if Apple open sourced the whole of iOS tomorrow and donated all of its cash reserves to charity you's till twist it round as something evil.
What are you basing "no way apple will be able to dominate the market if there is no outside niche" thing on? Because they have hit 28% marketshare for iPhone vs 29% for the entirety of all Android handsets from all manufacturers put together (despite *both* of those groups still growing), or perhaps it's based on the music player market, with no shortage of "outside markets". They don;t need to have a 100% stranglehold on the market - if they thought they could, they wouldn't release the iPad 2 when they did - there were no iPad 1 competitors and they were *still* selling them as fast as they could make them. They could easily have held off.
It's really not possible to see how Apple could be doing better right now - they have upped production a number of times, and they are still selling iPhones and iPads as fast as they can make them. Whether that translates to 90% of the market for tablets or 80% doesn't really matter - it's already shown that having only 30% of a market is quite lucrative for them, and even then they are toe to toe with as the biggest manufacturer of a single product.
When was the last time you added a third party implementation to XBox Live's marketplace?
A limitation of a closed model is that things like extensibility (like non-standard Marketplaces on Android, and sideloading of apps etc) is not present in the iPhone model, however my point still stands; it was not from the iPhone side of the fence that the comparisons were drawn. Apple was accused by apple bashers of ripping of the repository idea "that linux had first" and spouting the whole "passing it off as their own innovation" stuff.
It appears to be similar enough, without being extensible by third parties, to be used to bash Apple, so by that yardstick it stands.
Haha. Are you the guy who told JKR that "no one wants to read about wizards, that shit will never sell!" or the genius who told George Lucas he could keep 100% of the marketing rights to Star Wars because you didn't think the film would go anywhere and that the rights were worthless?
Tablets, as defined by the iPad, have created a new space for themselves that people are finding works really well for them - they are essentially the Star Trek PADD - ideal for consuming content and doing quick tasks that require access to the computer but are too "trivial" to really need a full computer, for example, checking email quickly (and firing off a quick reply), checking facebook, catching up with some TV (it's a great BBC iPlayer device), playing casual games for people who aren;t the demographic for a next gen console.
The fact that you really can't see that tablets (not just the iPad) are more than just a fad or a fashion accessory for pretentious people tells me you just... haven't been outside since the iPad launch. Go and look at the way people are using them. Hate Apple all you want, which is what I suspect this post is all about, rather than the inherent merits or downsides of tablets, but you're trying to claim the Earth is flat here.
But you are still further missing his point - the market is not saturated by any means, since sales of iPads *continue to grow*, so we're not in a "everyone who wanted a tablet already has one now, so the Xoom is not selling" because Apple is still shipping 800,000 per month - there are clearly people who want them.
No, the reason the Xoom is not selling is because it is not as good as the iPad, and it should be - they had enough time to get it right, and finally ended up releasing it in a half baked state in desperation just before the iPad 2 launch.
It's s shame, because it could have been seriously decent. I have no doubt that it will get better with a better version of Honeycomb and actual working touted "iPad killer" features like the SD card slot ("everyone" [read: a small but vocal group of techy people] clamour that an iPad killer needs an SD card slot, so they ship one... that doesn't work at launch...)
No, there's no mystery to why the iPad is king in the tablet market - it pretty much carved its own niche in a forgotten, poorly-provided market segement and reignited it, and no one has been able to come close to it in the year since.
Yes, and as well as having comparable phones to the iPhone, there are also some truly crappy cheap Android handsets that were clearly designed to pad the marketshare numbers, because they are woeful. I've used both types, and the nasty handsets can only really hurt the Android brand - from my own (admittedly anecdotal experience) I have two friends who have been put off Android due to their poor phones and will be moving to a Blackberry or an iPhone at the end of their contract. I have mentioned that there are some really good Android handsets but they are drawing a line under it. (FTR, I am an iPhone user, a 3G)
So, it's fine to bash Apple when they're "stealing the idea of the repository, that Linux has had for years", but when its brought up as a required feature for tablets it's "the one holy canonical Applestolic right way" and must be denounced.
Just checking.
I also live inside a giant faraday cage, and I don't have a connection to the mains water supply - that's how they get the tracer chemicals into you.
I am not on the electricity grid either, since the EM fields control my brain.
I also never use coupons at the store. That's how they track you!!
Sure you can, that's how the iPhone works. It's also how Android handsets work, with the added difference that they send data to Google (that you can opt out of).
Because the FDR is just part of the unit:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45996000/gif/_45996239_black_box_loc_v2_466_v2.gif
Also, a floating FDR would be a nightmare. In the event of an ocean crash do you *really* want the FDR to drift off on the currents? It could end up anywhere - oceans are vast, even with a locator beacon broadcasting its position it's hard enough to find in a reasonably well defined debris field on the seabed.
Oh I know, I almost married one (whether the navel gazing type or the non-SUV owner is entirely subjective) :D
I lived in the midwest for some time.
Sarcasm only works on the sarcastic portions of your post - you can't claim that it covers your post as a blanket purely because you started with it (note that I didn't take issue with it, being clear sarcasm).
I didn't say that "2 years ago" was first for anything - you'll note I also talked about a time considerably before that with another mobile phone (although I could have gone earlier - the 3210 was a new kid on the block compared to my first mobile phone). I mentioned 2 years because it's approximately when I started my iPhone contract, just as a point of reference. How could you not understand the point being made?
The US cell network is not the oldest. That would be Japan, although if we're talking 2G (ie, the GSM standard - modern cellular phones compatible with today's networks), then that's Europe - specifically Scandinavia. They certainly don't have any capacity problems either.
In this case, the OP's assertion was that cloud bases services would be a total waste for Apple purely because US data plans would make them unworkable. I have to assume, given that 60% of their revenue comes from non-US markets, that they have their eye on more than just their US market, thus maybe cloud services aren't a total waste after all.
"It won't work in the US" is not a valid reason for them to ignore it.
Yes, funny how the idea of them being an "evil empire" doesn't really translate to the real world, eh?
It's almost as if it's hyperbole on the internet, inflated to near crazy levels by neckbeard-razor-burn. You know how crotchety that makes nerds! (So much so that I don't believe that's actually a sentence).
Yes, it's a shame they didn't sue to get it, since that would have played nicely into the "Apple is evil" mentality on slashdot. They just don't know what to do when they do things reasonably. Don't worry, it'll get swept away quietly when the next round of supposed "evil" is uncovered. :p
The "war" joke was merely a flippant rebuttal to "nowhere outside the US matters" - I thought I'd appeal to the "America, Fuck Yeah!" patriotism. :p
I would contend that Europe has much better networks than the US, having had personal experience of both (I used to live in the Columbus, OH).
Here in the UK I am running a month-to-month plan (one month notice period) for $30 per month, unlimited data, SMS and 1000 minutes of voice. This is one of the cheap plans - we just do not have the data crunch and capacity issues that the US has, and there's nowhere I've been in the UK that has ever given me signal problems. I admit this is a function of land area (we are 1/4 the size of Texas), but I didn;t have any signal issues in Columbus and the surrounding areas - certainly not anywhere within range of a highway, and this was with a UK iPhone 3G on O2, so I was using AT&T and Tmobile's networks while over there.
Also, re: 4G, I thought that LTE was not actually "4G" and merely a marketing thing. There are LTE offerings here, but Ofcom and the standards bodies involved in 4G have stated it's not good enough to be called 4G.
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.
You didn't see the sarcasm in that post, or the overly flippant "war for oil" deceased equine joke?
And I would wager that the networks outside the US do matter, especially to Apple, who make about 60% of their revenue from non-US markets.
I'm also not 100% sure on your "we had cellular first and made them usable first" claim - I was tethering in the UK years ago, back when things like the Nokia 3210 were the hot new thing (with swappable covers!), with inclusive text and voice plans that were in the 1000's of texts and minutes for the equivalent of $30 US monthly.
My iPhone plan from 2 years ago was better than the US equivalent, and still would be (I've since switched to a month-by-month plan for unlimited data, SMS and 1000 minutes for $30 USD per month, with a one month notice to cancel, although I'm paying twice as much as I really need to since other carriers can offer the same for less but I like my current provider and they're a known quantity re: coverage etc).
I'm also not really bitching and moaning *about* the US. It sure has a few things I hate about it (hello, healthcare - what is this, the 1800s?), but I love the place and lived there for some time, in the midwest, and likely will again in the future. What I don't like is ignorant isolationists who give the rest of the US a bad name. Things like "nowhere outside the US matters" is a shining example of that.
You can use an AP that separates the networks like an Airport Extreme. It can run 3 simultaneously - b/g at 2.4Ghz, a/n at 5GHz and a "guest network" which you can leave open or password protect. The guest network is isolated from your internal services so you don;t have to worry if you are running a sensitive one (beyond your usual precautions).
However, saying all that I don't have the guest network running - one because I live in a pretty densely populated urban area with a lot of APs in range and running an extra channel that I don't really need seems a little anti-social in an already crowded frequency range and because while my connection is uncapped and unthrottled for the most part (Virgin's 50Mb fibre plan), I don;t really want to deal with the potential hassle if someone does decide to use it for nefarious purposes.
If you want to use either of my networks, just ask me nicely for the password :p A pre-requisite is knowing me for more than 5 minutes.
I'm amazed there was any space left on the front page after all those troll articles about the "tracking" "scandal", some even dupes from 2010 trying to pass off old information as new news. Anything to keep the FUD machine going.
It's interesting because it was announced at the launch of the iPhone 4 and then delayed due to technical problems with the white glass and Apple took an *enormous* amount of flak for it.
If they hadn't mentioned it as a colour option at the launch and merely worked on it quietly and released it when it was ready this wouldn't be news. They can't really win - there were several trolls moaning about 'still no white iphone, lolz' and now that it is ready and announced they can swap instantly to "how is this news! slashdot is being paid by apple and is nothing but an iFanboi!' (conveniently ignoring the past two weeks' worth of apple-bashing troll articles about the 'tracking' issue).
Blizzard learned this lesson well in the past, which is why it is very careful about what it "promises" in publicly visible comments, and the reason their PR disclaimer very carefully defines what specific words mean.