While others here are correct in saying that there are better languages (True), and they can do many of the same things with other server side tools (True), there is one thing that client-server javascript brings to the table that is unique:
You can write a single code base that can float between client and server making it a single platform. So if you make a design change, you can run parts of your code on the serve side, or client side without a whole re-architecture or re-write of the system.
Because of the single "platform", there are whole client-server system frameworks like meteor and derby that can put you far ahead of cobbling your own pieces together.
Because of the single "platform", it empowers commercial app developers to expose the UI, but hold some code chunks back, so their proprietary code isn't exposed.
Most concrete ready-mix suppliers cut their portland cement by around 20% with Fly Ash , another pozzolan. It makes better, cheaper concrete. This is well known. However, the more Portland Cement you replace with pozzolans, the slower the cure.
The markets skew towards high-portland content concrete is largely dictated by the desire to strip forms as soon as possible. With portland, forms are striped in 24 hours. WIth high pozzolan content concrete, the forms often need to be in place for upwards of a week.
Jobs statement years ago that mobile is Cars, and PCs are truck was extremely visionary. We can see that Apple and others have produced mobile devices at a huge ratio over PCs in the last couple years. While I don't need a tablet because I use a laptop extensively, I am aware that I as an engineer, am a truck user. While for every on of me, there are 10 other people who only need to surf the web and check their email, and write an occasional document on their tablets.
Still, while cars have out numbered trucks for 80 years, trucks are still important... and profitable.
It is just you. I agree with the other commenter that you are seeing what you want to see.
But, there is a general trend away from skeuomorphic design and towards a modern design ethos. This can be seen with iOS, android, window mobile 8. Both have a place. Apple created the modern mobile device market, and used skeuomorphic design broadly to ease people into a new environment in a familiar way. It was a very appropriate approach, and had its time and place. However a modernist approach can convey more information than skeuomorphic design, which can be limited by it physical paradigm.
One can argue that the market transition has occurred, and moving to more functional design concepts can occur without losing the market behind. But I don't see any copying here, per se other than modern design is the current fashion. But arguably Jony Ive is the most iconic design in driving modern computer design for the last decade, so it should be no surprise that his UI design follow his fashion, as is everyone else's.
But frankly Android? No. A touch of WIndows mobile? Maybe. However, where windows mobile went extremely flat, losing most visual cues, iOS was highly skeuomorphic at the other end of the spectrum. iOS has a modern semi-flat design that still maintains a lot of visual cues, while leaving behind the skeuomorphic trimmings. But, from what I've seen, Windows mobile should commended for their unique approach, android has never been much more than a poor copy of iOS, with poor design that look like it was made by guy who'd rather be using a command line. And Samsung, who really owns the Android market, their TouchWiz UI design is mind-blowingly awful.
"Apple US should be making money (and paying taxes) on the patent royalties, but they don't. "
There is no "should". How to structure a corporate umbrella in the EU to deal with 30 countries different tax rules, but in a small region, has no bearing on the USA or how US operations are taxed. Either a company choses move the money into the US and get a tax penalty, or they leave where it is... why do you think it must come back? Because it was designed there? That seems like concocted reasoning to me.
What if a product is partially designed in the USA, China and Germany? It really is irrelevant, isn't it? Apple, like many companies, has their innovations patented in many countries with institutions in each that receive local royalties for local patent jurisdictions.
There is no clear path of how to operate in a 100 countries, each with differing tax rules and corporate structures, and see that one country somehow deserves more than the others because it is more awesome, or has mock congressional hearings, or the top brass live there.
You fundamentally misunderstand the "double-irish" corporate structure. See (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement)
Apple does not avoid any USA taxes for profits from sales or patent royalties in the USA. This type of corporate structure avoids having bring profits back from other countries and get taxed again in the USA.
I'm a liberal, and it seems completely reasonable in a global marketplace, for companies to get taxed in each country of operation, not where the headquarters happen to be located.
This seems to be one of those memes like Al Gore said he "invented the internet", that everyone repeats, and knows to be true... but is completely false.
Sorry, I didn't mean to implicate you specifically.
However, if you read the forums both here in throughout the web, it is clear the google & samsung are sinking lots of money into paid astroturfing. My impression, is that Apple is relatively naive when it come to these tactics.
While I think Apple still has the key innovative figures in product design, the loss of Jobs has huge implications for how Apple needs to represent themselves in the media. Jobs was such a larger-than-life figure that these anti-marketing tactics, just wouldn't stick. Now Samsung is building an aura of cool around a bunch of gimmicky features like "wave-to-answer" backed by a huge media and astroturfing campaign to vilify Apple. Its just wild to watch.
Short memories at work here. When the iPhone 1 was released, it was a clear game changer... there was no doubt by even the most jaded of industry watchers. Was it fundamental science? No. But it was a synergistic approach with a whole new set of design thinking around how mobile devices should work that created a result unlike anything else on the market, and which changed the market forever. Those innovations were rapped up in a bunch design patents by Apple. Yes they sound silly when decomposed (rounded corners), but how else do you protect a design concept?
Samsung (and google) could have avoided Apples design patents by innovating their own design approach rather than directly and shamelessly coping Apples devices. Microsoft deserves some respect here, because they did spend time coming up with a different design approach for Win 8 mobile that wasn't a rip-off of Apples hardware, UI and look and feel. This isn't patent trolling, as Apple is protecting shipping products and only wants one thing: for Android to not copy them. Microsoft did it, Google and Samsung could to.
Samsung has SEP and Apple has SEP. Samsung is clearly abusing their SEP position in this case. Apple has stated that they won't use their SEP patents as a weapon. They are taking a principled stand.
There is no irony here Samsung, is a bad actor in both accounts. When I see comments like these, it make me wonder how much money google and samsung have sunk into astroturfing.
Totally not true... Apple pays taxes on all of it US activities, at a high rate of 31%. They are the single largest taxpayer in the USA.
They don't pay any taxes on business outside of the USA, because well, IT IS OUTSIDE OF THE USA! When did people decide that products made and sold and profited in one country should be taxed in another country?
Heck, we don't even pay sales tax across state lines. Why then should a company pay income tax on activities outside the borders of the countries in operates in?
The top quintile dropped from 27.1% in 1979 to 23.2% in 2009. The top 1% dropped from 35.1 to 28.9%.
And this is just tax bracket, it says nothing of all of the loopholes that the wealthily employ to drop their actual rates to 20% and below. (http://www.accountantbyday.com/2011/09/22/how-does-a-billionaire-pay-less-tax-than-his-secretary/)
The fact that others like the Palm Treo in the past have copied Blackberry only supports the argument. Palm paid Blackberry for a license to do so.
Of course, the iPhone has very little in common with those phones, and only a passing commonality with the Prada - which is why when the first iPhone was unveiled it was completely revolutionary. The problem with average slashdot reader comparing the Prada to the iPhone is that the typical slashdoter, after stairing for hours at vim, has no grasp of the importance of design. Design can be seen as the three Fs: Function, Functionality and form. Your average slashdotter/programmer/engineer has a difficulting understanding anything other than pure Function. This is why you see arguements here that read like feature check list comparisons.
The Prada is a phone (check), the prada has a touch screen (check), the prada has no physical keyboard (check). But does that make it anything like the iPhone? No. it is worlds apart in functionality and form (and function in this case). The patent case that just occurred was about a series of patents that covered these unique bits of look and feel that come together as a well designed product. This is a story of innovative functionality and form being protected in patents just like basic function is, even if it can't be easily turned into a check list of features.
No, they are asking android not to copy. Android phones are free to come up with their own concept.
Look at Windows 8 phones. Late to the game, yes. Any good, I don't know. But it is a different and innovative approach, not just a iPhone copy-cat.
Personally I've never found anything good to say about Android. The first version were totally awful. The latest seem like a 2nd rate iPhone, that despite the word-play is no more "open" than the iPhone. And most phones run a custom OS version that boxes customers into a non-upgradable through-away device. People should stop waving Googles flag because they are geeks too. Googles business model put them in a very ethically sketchy position with customers, and I avoid it at all costs.
That said the a huge part of the traffic at sites like slashdot are actually marketing firm paid posters. From the type of comentary at slashdot, it seems Google hires a lot more of them than Apple.
Why is Apple the bad guy? Lets see So Googles CEO sat on Apples board and had advanced and privileged information on Apples iPhone development. He used this knowledge to build his own competitive copy-cat Android OS and then give it away to Apple competitors for free. These competitors hadn't done anything innovative with their phones in over a decade. But after Apple came out with a game changing new device, they all hopped on the Apple's bandwagon.
It seems to me that the only bad actor here is Google and the Android manufacturers. What they did was illegal, and at best unethical.
As for nuclear, it has many drawbacks including the failsafes can never be engineered to be 100% perfectly failsafe - it is just scientifically impossible.
And the statistics after 50 years of operation are quite poor. The stats on meltdown probability has turned out to be 3-4 orders of magnitude higher than predicted, and the higher rate of serious, but not quite meltdown problems is staggering. (people only pay attention once every 10-15 years when there is a meltdown.)
And the end question is why? If it was the only option and cheap then maybe the risks are worth it. But it isn't and it's not.
Solar and nuclear right now are running head to head on cost, and nuclear is far more expensive than wind and geothermal. And with a fraction of the funding that nuclear has received, solar and wind have driven down their costs exponentially while nuclear has not. It is to the point that wind in the last decade has installed 10 times more capacity than Nuclear world-wide. There just isn't a strong business case for nuclear in the world today.
Solar is nuclear with built in wireless distribution. And the power density is high enough to be quite dense, yet still be safe for life to thrive on the planet.
What other technology has 1kW/m^2 beamed wirelessly universally throughout the planet? None! Solar's built-in wireless power distribution infrastructure has an unbelievably high dollar value.
Lets talk density. My photovoltaic system takes 1/6th of my roof area, yet produces all of my electrical needs. I just completed a carport build of 1600 sqft of photovoltaic panels (the average roof size of the typical american rambler), which produces over 100 kWh/day, about 4-5 American houses worth. In fact according to the US census there is about 6 times the required roof area in the US to produce all of our power needs - that is not including covered parking lots, parking garages, medians and other reusable space.
So is solar energy dense? It is perfectly dense, and distributed for free.
First $1B for 110 MW is very similar to the capital cost of other energy plants such as nuclear. Current estimate on nuclear are in the $5-6/w capital cost range according to several google-able papers. That doesn't include external costs that are HUGE for nuclear (waste management, security issues, fuel transport and disposal, regulatory management, etc), nor does it include fuel costs.
Whereas the solar system has no fuel costs and few externalities.
The real question is does it work out economically? Apparently so, since this is a commercial venture not a demo project. In addition, Bill Weihl Google.orgs energy investor, Vinod Khosla, and NREL are all predicting this type of solar hitting $0.05/kWh by 2015. That competes with coal and soon.
On the issue of clouds: You need to do you're research. The Solar-one demo project using this same technology has a 99% availability. That is huge. No other plant has that kind of availability. Nuclear in recent history has just passed the 90% mark, after being stuck at 80% for 3 decades. And their good reason for this:
1. The sun never fails to come up 2. It has built in storage 3. Yes there is solar availability even in cloudy weather
Snore.... Slashdot is paranoid about Apple, like teabaggers are about taxes.
Nothing about Apples motives here have anything to do with exclusivity. That is why Apple is leading the way with a standards body. Apple is not the conspiracy that Slashdot makes it out to be. Apple is easy to understand, and their motive is always been clear:
1. Sure they are insanely profitable and have a somewhat walled garden. But to see this as greed is to totally misunderstand Apple culture and Steve Jobs. It is all about Idealism and designing the "one perfect thing". In fact, Steve Jobs idealism for making "beautiful devices" that will "change the world" far outstrips any profit motive he has.
2. Sealed batteries, smaller sim cards and the like are critical paths to Apple's future product plans. Just like technological advances enables product development, Apple sees industrial design and packaging on a equal footing with technology. They have conceptual products they are laying the groundwork for years in advance. Don't look at the current need look at the possible needs down the road.
Haven't Got Service Yet, and don't want it
Comcast: "We want your money. Please sign-up for service."
ME: "Fuck you." (hangs-up on comcast sales idiot)
Government: "We want your money next year for your services."
ME: "Fuck you." (Leaves country to another country)."
Has Received Services, and won't pay
Comcast: "We want your money. You haven't paid in a year."
ME: "Fuck you."
Comcast: We are disconnecting your service and going to have a judge throw you in jail if you don't pay.
Government: "We want your money for last years taxes."
ME: "Fuck you.""
Government: "We are going to disconnect your citizen services by throwing you in prison."
Let me guess you are a developer, or your use linux, and you argue if emacs is better than vi.
Slashdot readers are notorious at not fathoming what is this "invention" from a company like Apple. It is not just marketing that separates a company like Apple from one that has a big checklist of features. While there are many unique elements on the iPhone that made it work for the first time (like the way multi-touch turned a tiny screen into something actually viable for websurfing), the real invention IS the gestalt - The whole shebang, the feel, the integration, the interaction, how the UI works as a transparent extension of your arm, the 1000 elements that come together in a product.
If I could get my developers to grasp this fact... I'm always having to spend days tweaking a UI given to me as a final.
But the rest of the world gets it, which is why the industry has copied Apple for 30 years. They innovate and tweak at a level of detail that most other companies don't even grasp.
Slashdot Mirror
While others here are correct in saying that there are better languages (True), and they can do many of the same things with other server side tools (True), there is one thing that client-server javascript brings to the table that is unique:
You can write a single code base that can float between client and server making it a single platform. So if you make a design change, you can run parts of your code on the serve side, or client side without a whole re-architecture or re-write of the system.
Because of the single "platform", there are whole client-server system frameworks like meteor and derby that can put you far ahead of cobbling your own pieces together.
Because of the single "platform", it empowers commercial app developers to expose the UI, but hold some code chunks back, so their proprietary code isn't exposed.
Indeed, this is nothing new.
Most concrete ready-mix suppliers cut their portland cement by around 20% with Fly Ash , another pozzolan. It makes better, cheaper concrete. This is well known. However, the more Portland Cement you replace with pozzolans, the slower the cure.
The markets skew towards high-portland content concrete is largely dictated by the desire to strip forms as soon as possible. With portland, forms are striped in 24 hours. WIth high pozzolan content concrete, the forms often need to be in place for upwards of a week.
Hmmmm... Seen the market stats recently?
Jobs statement years ago that mobile is Cars, and PCs are truck was extremely visionary. We can see that Apple and others have produced mobile devices at a huge ratio over PCs in the last couple years. While I don't need a tablet because I use a laptop extensively, I am aware that I as an engineer, am a truck user. While for every on of me, there are 10 other people who only need to surf the web and check their email, and write an occasional document on their tablets.
Still, while cars have out numbered trucks for 80 years, trucks are still important... and profitable.
It is just you. I agree with the other commenter that you are seeing what you want to see.
But, there is a general trend away from skeuomorphic design and towards a modern design ethos. This can be seen with iOS, android, window mobile 8. Both have a place. Apple created the modern mobile device market, and used skeuomorphic design broadly to ease people into a new environment in a familiar way. It was a very appropriate approach, and had its time and place. However a modernist approach can convey more information than skeuomorphic design, which can be limited by it physical paradigm.
One can argue that the market transition has occurred, and moving to more functional design concepts can occur without losing the market behind. But I don't see any copying here, per se other than modern design is the current fashion. But arguably Jony Ive is the most iconic design in driving modern computer design for the last decade, so it should be no surprise that his UI design follow his fashion, as is everyone else's.
But frankly Android? No. A touch of WIndows mobile? Maybe. However, where windows mobile went extremely flat, losing most visual cues, iOS was highly skeuomorphic at the other end of the spectrum. iOS has a modern semi-flat design that still maintains a lot of visual cues, while leaving behind the skeuomorphic trimmings. But, from what I've seen, Windows mobile should commended for their unique approach, android has never been much more than a poor copy of iOS, with poor design that look like it was made by guy who'd rather be using a command line. And Samsung, who really owns the Android market, their TouchWiz UI design is mind-blowingly awful.
Except well designed... sincerely. Android design aesthetic is truly awful.
"Apple US should be making money (and paying taxes) on the patent royalties, but they don't. "
There is no "should". How to structure a corporate umbrella in the EU to deal with 30 countries different tax rules, but in a small region, has no bearing on the USA or how US operations are taxed. Either a company choses move the money into the US and get a tax penalty, or they leave where it is... why do you think it must come back? Because it was designed there? That seems like concocted reasoning to me.
What if a product is partially designed in the USA, China and Germany? It really is irrelevant, isn't it? Apple, like many companies, has their innovations patented in many countries with institutions in each that receive local royalties for local patent jurisdictions.
There is no clear path of how to operate in a 100 countries, each with differing tax rules and corporate structures, and see that one country somehow deserves more than the others because it is more awesome, or has mock congressional hearings, or the top brass live there.
You fundamentally misunderstand the "double-irish" corporate structure. See (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement)
Apple does not avoid any USA taxes for profits from sales or patent royalties in the USA. This type of corporate structure avoids having bring profits back from other countries and get taxed again in the USA.
I'm a liberal, and it seems completely reasonable in a global marketplace, for companies to get taxed in each country of operation, not where the headquarters happen to be located.
This seems to be one of those memes like Al Gore said he "invented the internet", that everyone repeats, and knows to be true... but is completely false.
Sorry, I didn't mean to implicate you specifically.
However, if you read the forums both here in throughout the web, it is clear the google & samsung are sinking lots of money into paid astroturfing. My impression, is that Apple is relatively naive when it come to these tactics.
While I think Apple still has the key innovative figures in product design, the loss of Jobs has huge implications for how Apple needs to represent themselves in the media. Jobs was such a larger-than-life figure that these anti-marketing tactics, just wouldn't stick. Now Samsung is building an aura of cool around a bunch of gimmicky features like "wave-to-answer" backed by a huge media and astroturfing campaign to vilify Apple. Its just wild to watch.
I don't think Kudos are deserved at all.
Short memories at work here. When the iPhone 1 was released, it was a clear game changer... there was no doubt by even the most jaded of industry watchers. Was it fundamental science? No. But it was a synergistic approach with a whole new set of design thinking around how mobile devices should work that created a result unlike anything else on the market, and which changed the market forever. Those innovations were rapped up in a bunch design patents by Apple. Yes they sound silly when decomposed (rounded corners), but how else do you protect a design concept?
Samsung (and google) could have avoided Apples design patents by innovating their own design approach rather than directly and shamelessly coping Apples devices. Microsoft deserves some respect here, because they did spend time coming up with a different design approach for Win 8 mobile that wasn't a rip-off of Apples hardware, UI and look and feel. This isn't patent trolling, as Apple is protecting shipping products and only wants one thing: for Android to not copy them. Microsoft did it, Google and Samsung could to.
Samsung has SEP and Apple has SEP. Samsung is clearly abusing their SEP position in this case. Apple has stated that they won't use their SEP patents as a weapon. They are taking a principled stand.
There is no irony here Samsung, is a bad actor in both accounts. When I see comments like these, it make me wonder how much money google and samsung have sunk into astroturfing.
Totally not true... Apple pays taxes on all of it US activities, at a high rate of 31%. They are the single largest taxpayer in the USA.
They don't pay any taxes on business outside of the USA, because well, IT IS OUTSIDE OF THE USA! When did people decide that products made and sold and profited in one country should be taxed in another country?
Heck, we don't even pay sales tax across state lines. Why then should a company pay income tax on activities outside the borders of the countries in operates in?
Not so. I use apple messages. It talks via apples own iMessage network, xmpp, bonjour, icq, yahoo, aol and others via plugins.
The xmpp support was a good means to chat with people who live in the google sphere.
Look who is the real walled garden...
You numbers are *way* wrong.
Look at the tax policy center historical data: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456
The top quintile dropped from 27.1% in 1979 to 23.2% in 2009. The top 1% dropped from 35.1 to 28.9%.
And this is just tax bracket, it says nothing of all of the loopholes that the wealthily employ to drop their actual rates to 20% and below. (http://www.accountantbyday.com/2011/09/22/how-does-a-billionaire-pay-less-tax-than-his-secretary/)
Any links? Couldn't find any reference in a google search.
The fact that others like the Palm Treo in the past have copied Blackberry only supports the argument. Palm paid Blackberry for a license to do so.
Of course, the iPhone has very little in common with those phones, and only a passing commonality with the Prada - which is why when the first iPhone was unveiled it was completely revolutionary. The problem with average slashdot reader comparing the Prada to the iPhone is that the typical slashdoter, after stairing for hours at vim, has no grasp of the importance of design. Design can be seen as the three Fs: Function, Functionality and form. Your average slashdotter/programmer/engineer has a difficulting understanding anything other than pure Function. This is why you see arguements here that read like feature check list comparisons.
The Prada is a phone (check), the prada has a touch screen (check), the prada has no physical keyboard (check). But does that make it anything like the iPhone? No. it is worlds apart in functionality and form (and function in this case). The patent case that just occurred was about a series of patents that covered these unique bits of look and feel that come together as a well designed product. This is a story of innovative functionality and form being protected in patents just like basic function is, even if it can't be easily turned into a check list of features.
No, they are asking android not to copy. Android phones are free to come up with their own concept.
Look at Windows 8 phones. Late to the game, yes. Any good, I don't know. But it is a different and innovative approach, not just a iPhone copy-cat.
Personally I've never found anything good to say about Android. The first version were totally awful. The latest seem like a 2nd rate iPhone, that despite the word-play is no more "open" than the iPhone. And most phones run a custom OS version that boxes customers into a non-upgradable through-away device. People should stop waving Googles flag because they are geeks too. Googles business model put them in a very ethically sketchy position with customers, and I avoid it at all costs.
That said the a huge part of the traffic at sites like slashdot are actually marketing firm paid posters. From the type of comentary at slashdot, it seems Google hires a lot more of them than Apple.
Why is Apple the bad guy? Lets see So Googles CEO sat on Apples board and had advanced and privileged information on Apples iPhone development. He used this knowledge to build his own competitive copy-cat Android OS and then give it away to Apple competitors for free. These competitors hadn't done anything innovative with their phones in over a decade. But after Apple came out with a game changing new device, they all hopped on the Apple's bandwagon.
It seems to me that the only bad actor here is Google and the Android manufacturers. What they did was illegal, and at best unethical.
That is because most of you are hired by googles media engine to write pro-android bias, and aren't real commentators.
I wish there were fewer hired marketing firm monkeys like you trolling down other peoples products for a fee.
As for nuclear, it has many drawbacks including the failsafes can never be engineered to be 100% perfectly failsafe - it is just scientifically impossible.
And the statistics after 50 years of operation are quite poor. The stats on meltdown probability has turned out to be 3-4 orders of magnitude higher than predicted, and the higher rate of serious, but not quite meltdown problems is staggering. (people only pay attention once every 10-15 years when there is a meltdown.)
And the end question is why? If it was the only option and cheap then maybe the risks are worth it. But it isn't and it's not.
Solar and nuclear right now are running head to head on cost, and nuclear is far more expensive than wind and geothermal. And with a fraction of the funding that nuclear has received, solar and wind have driven down their costs exponentially while nuclear has not. It is to the point that wind in the last decade has installed 10 times more capacity than Nuclear world-wide. There just isn't a strong business case for nuclear in the world today.
Solar is nuclear with built in wireless distribution. And the power density is high enough to be quite dense, yet still be safe for life to thrive on the planet.
What other technology has 1kW/m^2 beamed wirelessly universally throughout the planet? None! Solar's built-in wireless power distribution infrastructure has an unbelievably high dollar value.
Lets talk density. My photovoltaic system takes 1/6th of my roof area, yet produces all of my electrical needs. I just completed a carport build of 1600 sqft of photovoltaic panels (the average roof size of the typical american rambler), which produces over 100 kWh/day, about 4-5 American houses worth. In fact according to the US census there is about 6 times the required roof area in the US to produce all of our power needs - that is not including covered parking lots, parking garages, medians and other reusable space.
So is solar energy dense? It is perfectly dense, and distributed for free.
First $1B for 110 MW is very similar to the capital cost of other energy plants such as nuclear. Current estimate on nuclear are in the $5-6/w capital cost range according to several google-able papers. That doesn't include external costs that are HUGE for nuclear (waste management, security issues, fuel transport and disposal, regulatory management, etc), nor does it include fuel costs.
Whereas the solar system has no fuel costs and few externalities.
The real question is does it work out economically? Apparently so, since this is a commercial venture not a demo project. In addition, Bill Weihl Google.orgs energy investor, Vinod Khosla, and NREL are all predicting this type of solar hitting $0.05/kWh by 2015. That competes with coal and soon.
On the issue of clouds: You need to do you're research. The Solar-one demo project using this same technology has a 99% availability. That is huge. No other plant has that kind of availability. Nuclear in recent history has just passed the 90% mark, after being stuck at 80% for 3 decades. And their good reason for this:
1. The sun never fails to come up
2. It has built in storage
3. Yes there is solar availability even in cloudy weather
Snore.... Slashdot is paranoid about Apple, like teabaggers are about taxes.
Nothing about Apples motives here have anything to do with exclusivity. That is why Apple is leading the way with a standards body. Apple is not the conspiracy that Slashdot makes it out to be. Apple is easy to understand, and their motive is always been clear:
1. Sure they are insanely profitable and have a somewhat walled garden. But to see this as greed is to totally misunderstand Apple culture and Steve Jobs. It is all about Idealism and designing the "one perfect thing". In fact, Steve Jobs idealism for making "beautiful devices" that will "change the world" far outstrips any profit motive he has.
2. Sealed batteries, smaller sim cards and the like are critical paths to Apple's future product plans. Just like technological advances enables product development, Apple sees industrial design and packaging on a equal footing with technology. They have conceptual products they are laying the groundwork for years in advance. Don't look at the current need look at the possible needs down the road.
Haven't Got Service Yet, and don't want it
Comcast: "We want your money. Please sign-up for service."
ME: "Fuck you." (hangs-up on comcast sales idiot)
Government: "We want your money next year for your services."
ME: "Fuck you." ( Leaves country to another country )."
Has Received Services, and won't pay
Comcast: "We want your money. You haven't paid in a year."
ME: "Fuck you."
Comcast: We are disconnecting your service and going to have a judge throw you in jail if you don't pay.
Government: "We want your money for last years taxes."
ME: "Fuck you.""
Government: "We are going to disconnect your citizen services by throwing you in prison."
Let me guess you are a developer, or your use linux, and you argue if emacs is better than vi.
Slashdot readers are notorious at not fathoming what is this "invention" from a company like Apple. It is not just marketing that separates a company like Apple from one that has a big checklist of features. While there are many unique elements on the iPhone that made it work for the first time (like the way multi-touch turned a tiny screen into something actually viable for websurfing), the real invention IS the gestalt - The whole shebang, the feel, the integration, the interaction, how the UI works as a transparent extension of your arm, the 1000 elements that come together in a product.
If I could get my developers to grasp this fact... I'm always having to spend days tweaking a UI given to me as a final.
But the rest of the world gets it, which is why the industry has copied Apple for 30 years. They innovate and tweak at a level of detail that most other companies don't even grasp.