They aren't expensive, so I don't see the difficulty, just a lot of people with an terrible mindset.
Of course, you've probably got the common sense to take them off when you get past the snow... Our roads are in a bad enough state after a few weeks of daily freezing and thawing without a million morons driving around on chains.
And what's more, snow chains really aren't required. My relatives way, way, way up north don't even have a set for any of their cars, despite routine heavy snow and common -20F temperatures.
Yes, well, since you admit to living where it never snows you can be forgiven for not understanding that snow and ice at -20F are a hell of a lot less slippery than continually melting and re-freezing snow and ice at or around freezing point.
So, yes they were technically separate, but since the OS update, the firmware update and Boot Camp Beta were released more or less simultaneously its a bit moot.
The point is, before then installing Windows on a Mac at all was a hacker job whereas since then you can just stick in a Windows DVD, the only hacky bit (where BootCamp comes in) being the hybrid partitioning. If you've got a Mac Pro where you can stick Windows on a separate MBR-format HD to OS X you really don't need Boot Camp Assisistant at all.
They are substantively different devices with some overlap. We differ in that I believe the differences are at the moment significant enough to make them largely different markets
FWIW I think they are different markets right this minute - I just see them converging over the next few years as today's prototype displays (whether they are new eInk tehnologies or hybrid LCDs) emerge.
Main disadvantage I see with the iPad - the battery might be touch and go on a 10 hour long-haul flight... but then, my brain is touch and go on a 10 hour long haul flight, so I'd possibly settle for a regular iPod with audiobooks plus a real book to read when you weren't allowed electronics.
I've been running Windows 7 Eval edition since august when OS 10.6 came out. [snip] How is this just now news?
Before, it worked. Now it should just work (tm). At least until you get to the bit where Windows takes over:-)
Back in the early days of Intel Macs, the beta bootcamp included essential firmware updates (e.g. the EFI BIOS legacy support stuff). Since then, however, you've just been able to slam in a Windows DVD and go, although if you're not careful you'll hose OS X in the process because Windows doesn't understand the OS X partition table.
These days, BootCamp is just the point'n'click wizard that holds your hand while you partition your hard drive to hybrid GUID/MBR and set up a dual boot system. Probably recommended, though, unless you have a Mac Pro and are installing windows onto its own hard drive.
Regardless, the two devices are not the same *now*
I think you're making the false assumption that people will find the iPad so hideously unusable as an ebook reader that it will outweigh the other things it can do.
apple could correct this by putting eInk on the bottom of the tablet and using the tilt sensor to determine whether to use "handy-web" mode or "power-saving book-reader" mode.
Please feel free to glue your Kindle to the back of your iPad, but here's a hint: don't apply for a job in Apple's design department:-)
Seriously, apart from the extra cost; the ergonomic problems of having a delicate display on both sides of the device; the need for a different user interface (and probably a whole new API and display manager) in ebook mode ("multitouch" depends on a responsive display) you're talking about investing R&D in a technology which will almost certainly be obsolete or confined to a niche with in a year or two.
My prediction: as soon as a "best of both worlds" display technology comes along that's up to Apple's standards, they'll use it. Sounds like the transflective display doesn't quite cut the image quality mustard yet, but its not vapour.
Firstly, iPad and iBooks didn't spring fully formed into Apple's mind last week, yet they still approved Kindle for the iPhone - which will make it far harder to justify banning it from the iPad, and let Amazon start building up custom amongst Apple fans.
Secondly, its one thing to block mom'n'pop's ebook reader on the grounds that it might encourage illegal book downloads, its another thing to block a 500lb gorilla like Amazon who are going to milk the bad publicity for all its worth, and possibly set the lawyers on them. In the EU/UK, for instance, they allowed Spotify (which is surely a competitor to iTunes).
Finally, it seems like good bet-hedging for Apple - if people do choose the Kindle App over iBooks then at least Apple still get to sell the hardware, and an ongoing opportunity to woo them over to iBooks.
I really don't understand why people keep trying to shoehorn epaper and netbooks into the same category.
The fact that Apple are launching their iBooks service along with the iPad may have something to do with that. There's also a Kindle app for the iPhone, which presumably will work on the iPad.
At the moment, epaper displays are optimal for ebook readers, but virtually useless for general use (because of their glacial refresh rate) while LCD/OLED displays produce excellent colour and smooth video but are unpleasant for sustained reading and power hungry (because they emit light or need a backlight).
Long term these will inevitably converge - and by "long term" we're talking small integer numbers of years. The idea that you should need one device for reading web-based magazines (which increasingly include video and/or are designed for scrolling displays which current epaper can't hack) and another for reading novels isn't sustainable.
There's already Transflective LCDs in the Real Soon Now category and, maybe a bit further off, fast-response, colour e-ink (I can't find the response time claim in that link but ISTR they were claiming it).
The only long-term future I see for dedicated ebook-only readers is if the technology can become so cheap that it would be feasible to have half a dozen on the go (one for your bedside book, a couple by your computer with documentation, a greaseproof one by the dining table) etc. A bit like they treat the PADDs on Star Trek...
Sub Zero for you dingbats using the metric measurement isn't cold. Bitch when it's -12 below Zero f
...then everybody buys snowchains for their car, a fur coat that would make you pass out with heatstroke if you wore it in a typical UK or Irish winter, and builds tunnels or covered walkways between buildings. Simple.
Now try dealing with temperatures hovering around zero C for a few days at a time, where you rarely get enough snow to use chains or studs and the water is continually melting and re-freezing and where years or even decades can pass between bouts of nontrivial winter weather. Its a different problem.
could have tried asking countries a bit to the east how to deal with snow...
To which the answer is "have deep snow and persistent below-freezing temperatures every winter, so that you can justify the expense of maintaining the infrastructure and experience to deal with it".
Which doesn't help much when you're faced with a once-in-20-years weather event (after an apparent trend - whatever the cause - to milder winters). How many snowploughs and blowers do you buy, maintain and keep manned if they're only going to be taken out of the garage for a few days every third year?
Anyway, the problem wasn't really the odd record -12C night - it was heavy snowfalls and sustained daytime temperatures around 0C. Salt & grit is a perfectly good solution to that until you suddenly go through several normal years' worth of it in three weeks.
If you've developed technology where you can live in tin can for extended periods of time and travel light years across the galaxy, then living on a place like the moon or Mars is relatively easy.
As would be living in space habitats, where you have the advantage of access to all the mineral (asteroids) and volatiles (comets etc.) of your solar system without having to expensively haul them out of a planet's gravity well, and massive solar energy with which to synthesize anything else you need. If you have the technology to build a colony fleet, its probably easier to build a Dyson swarm (as originally conceived - not the SciFi "Big Dumb Object" version).
...and if they're not so rational then don't worry: if they're evil madbeings then they'll be eating each other and worshiping the ship's engine by the time they get here:-)
Imagine a sphere of radio transmissions expanding at the speed of light from every civilized planet - sooner or later these are going to permeate space, so if you can't detect anything it starts to look a bit odd.
Now imagine that civilizations typically switch to non-broadcast and/or digital signals (the latter, if efficiently compressed, will "sound" like random noise) within a century of inventing radio. Instead of spheres, space will be full of 100 light year thick "shells" of easily detectable signals. So its far more likely that we find ourselves in one of the gaps between shells.
Of course, the Drake equation/Fermi paradox ideas are only plausibility arguments, make all sorts of assumptions about how civilizations develop based on extrapolation from one data point (us).
You've never had a good cup of coffee until you've tried one made from the on-site deep sea thermal vent water. The trip is a little pricey, but the barista is cute.
Ah, yes - the only coffee shop in the world where the "Warning: contents may be hot" label really is needed...:-)
Could the iPad (Apple) be easily extended to compete head to head with the iPad (Fujitsu)? You betcha!
And could Apple, if they want to roll out the iPad into the point-of-sale market (currently it just looks like an in-house system), find themselves obliged to re-badge it "EasyPay" or something? Quite possibly.
Anyway, before Fujitsu start worrying about whether future Apple products might hypothetically compete with their iPad they need to deal with the problem that their trademark was denied because their iPad blatently obviously operates in the same market as the MagTech IPAD.
Great - return flight to the Moon $50 (excluding optional $5,000,000,000 life-support surcharge).
Of course, they say Moon, but actually its to the new state-of-the-art spaceport at L1, only a short bus ride away from the Moon. Well, they say new state-of-the-art spaceport... its actually an abandoned Apollo third stage with a Starbucks and a chemical toilet...
despite the latter being a supermarket chain. Although Woolworth's doesn't sell computers, Apple claimed that they someday might.
Perhaps you should actually read the articles you cite:
Woolworths' application includes a wide class for all electrical goods and technology, thereby putting it in direct competition with Apple should the retailer choose to brand computers, music players or other devices. Woolworths has gone into credit cards and mobile phones, so the likelihood of it going into computers is not as remote as it seems.
I don't know whether Woolworths Aus. is anything like the (now defunct) UK version, but if so it is highly likely that they'd sell computer accessories or music players. Also remember that Apple uses its logo to identify its stores, which may well share a mall with Woolworths. Oh, and the "delusional" person is the one claiming that the Woolworths logo isn't in the shape of an apple.
while failing to do due diligence in assessing the availability of a trademark before using it?
...due dilligence would probably have revealed that Fujitsu's use of "iPad" was clearly in competition with MagTech's trademark, whereas Apple had a strong case that their product was in a totally different market.
Now look closer. The MagTek device in your link is a point-of-sale card swipe terminal, presumably sold mainly to the retail industry.
Now look at TFA. The Fujitsu iPad is a point-of-sale card-swipe terminal sold mainly to the retail industry.
The Apple iPad, meanwhile, is a consumer appliance, conspicuously lacking a card-swipe device and is not primarily targeted at the point-of-sale market.
Or, in other words, MagTek have Fujitsu banged to rights for infringing their trademark, whereas Apple have a strong argument that they're not operating in the same market.
Why would I get one? For half the price I can get a 12" Wacom tablet.
But they're crap! You can't run a web browser on them and they don't even have a display - you have to hook them up to a laptop! And you can only write on them with a special pen! How am I going to use that to browse websites and stream video in my armchair?
See the problem? I can see a use for a 10" wireless media terminal. You want a specialist pen input device for your photography work. One of these things is not the same as the other.
I don't want a pony, but I don't go onto MySpace and post "OMG! Ponies are so lame! You can't use them on the freeway, and you have to feed them even when you're not using them! Fail!".
Maybe you were hoping that the iPad would be an alternative for a $1000 Wacom Cintiq with built in display (nice...) or the equally expensive pen-driven laptops from Toshiba, HP, Fujitsu et. al. which have been failing to sell outside of niche markets for years.
but don't have any incentive to so long as the DRM keeps their customers inside their walled gardens
They do have an incentive - competition:
I've never bought music from iTunes because of the DRM, plus I have other players that don't play AAC. However, my ripped CDs and Amazon MP3 purchases work seamlessly on my iPod (some of the debates on slashdot seem to overlook that). As you said, competition from Amazon might have had more to do with iTunes dumping audio DRM than any generosity on Jobs' part.
Also remember that there's an Amazon Kindle App for iPhone which presumably will work on iPad and/or be upgraded - so its not impossible that something similar could happen with books. Apple clearly either don't want to (or don't think they could get away with) rejecting Amazon from the App Store.
It's not really leasing since you aren't paying down the depreciation and returning the phone when you're done.
(a) I said "closer leasing than buying" not "exactly like leasing".
(b) How much is a typical smartphone worth at the end of a typical 18 month contract? Or, more precisely, how much would it be worth if the carriers demanded that every phone was returned and the market was flooded (rather than the minority which currently get sent to money-for-old-phones services)?
Actually, android does have this separation. The radio interface is a separate firmware blob,
Which might stop people hacking the radio and causing the downfall of civilization, but doesn't mean that the phone will still work (or the media player will play without skipping) if the CPU and RAM are saturated by too many multitasking fart apps.
What is clear, is that the rise of the App Store revokes control of the computer from the user.
So buy a PC (with Linux if you prefer) or Mac (which, in other news, will still run any software or OS you like and comes with a complete SDK).
The non-Mac iProducts are not intended as general purpose computers - App Store or no the lack of keyboards, storage, interfaces, multitasking etc. makes them unsuitable for that. They're web browsers and media players.
Now, its worth being a bit vigilant against the possibility of true general purpose computers disappearing from the market, but currently I see no sign of that. Maybe the DBD people should be concentrating their ire on the likes of Ubisoft who are dictating what people can do on general purpose PCs.
Meanwhile, Big Brother's App Store is giving many Mom'n'Pop developers access to a single, high profile sales channel and payment collection system.
Also, DRM is a problem that affects virtually every other ebook reader and has been hobbling the industry since before the iPad was a twinkle in Jobs' eye. Go protest outside the publishers and authors' associations that are actually causing the problem.
So really, what is the problem here? You buy it, you do want you want with it. You lease it, you do want they want with it.
Trouble is, the way phones are typically sold - free or heavily subsidised as part of a service contract - is closer to leasing than buying.
Since this is the dominant business model, it has a splash back on the way manufacturers design their product, even if you buy it "naked" (I have a nasty suspicion that it also means that "naked" phones are sold at artificially inflated prices to make the subsidies more attractive...)
It also depends on how you perceive phones: if you buy a general-purpose computer, you expect it to be a universal tool that you can freely program or install software on and still enjoy the manufacturer's support. If, however, you buy a washing mashine and try and convert it to use dry-cleaning solvent you accept that, if it blows up, that's your fault. When phones were just phones, they clearly fitted into the latter category. Smartphones are in a bit of a limbo: people want to run arbitrary software on them but they also expect them to perform reliably as a phone.
The biggest storage is a 64GB flash drive? I replaced the 160GB drive in my MBP with a 320GB drive, and it's too small for me.
Falcon
...so use your iPad to stream your video from your media server as H264. Yes, you can now watch pr0n in bed without getting heat rash from your Macbook's hard drive.
Folks, this isn't a laptop replacement or a phone replacement.
Slashdot Mirror
They aren't expensive, so I don't see the difficulty, just a lot of people with an terrible mindset.
Of course, you've probably got the common sense to take them off when you get past the snow... Our roads are in a bad enough state after a few weeks of daily freezing and thawing without a million morons driving around on chains.
And what's more, snow chains really aren't required. My relatives way, way, way up north don't even have a set for any of their cars, despite routine heavy snow and common -20F temperatures.
Yes, well, since you admit to living where it never snows you can be forgiven for not understanding that snow and ice at -20F are a hell of a lot less slippery than continually melting and re-freezing snow and ice at or around freezing point.
I'd trust these guys to get it right.
So, yes they were technically separate, but since the OS update, the firmware update and Boot Camp Beta were released more or less simultaneously its a bit moot.
The point is, before then installing Windows on a Mac at all was a hacker job whereas since then you can just stick in a Windows DVD, the only hacky bit (where BootCamp comes in) being the hybrid partitioning. If you've got a Mac Pro where you can stick Windows on a separate MBR-format HD to OS X you really don't need Boot Camp Assisistant at all.
They are substantively different devices with some overlap. We differ in that I believe the differences are at the moment significant enough to make them largely different markets
FWIW I think they are different markets right this minute - I just see them converging over the next few years as today's prototype displays (whether they are new eInk tehnologies or hybrid LCDs) emerge.
Main disadvantage I see with the iPad - the battery might be touch and go on a 10 hour long-haul flight... but then, my brain is touch and go on a 10 hour long haul flight, so I'd possibly settle for a regular iPod with audiobooks plus a real book to read when you weren't allowed electronics.
I've been running Windows 7 Eval edition since august when OS 10.6 came out. [snip] How is this just now news?
Before, it worked. Now it should just work (tm). At least until you get to the bit where Windows takes over :-)
Back in the early days of Intel Macs, the beta bootcamp included essential firmware updates (e.g. the EFI BIOS legacy support stuff). Since then, however, you've just been able to slam in a Windows DVD and go, although if you're not careful you'll hose OS X in the process because Windows doesn't understand the OS X partition table.
These days, BootCamp is just the point'n'click wizard that holds your hand while you partition your hard drive to hybrid GUID/MBR and set up a dual boot system. Probably recommended, though, unless you have a Mac Pro and are installing windows onto its own hard drive.
Regardless, the two devices are not the same *now*
I think you're making the false assumption that people will find the iPad so hideously unusable as an ebook reader that it will outweigh the other things it can do.
apple could correct this by putting eInk on the bottom of the tablet and using the tilt sensor to determine whether to use "handy-web" mode or "power-saving book-reader" mode.
Please feel free to glue your Kindle to the back of your iPad, but here's a hint: don't apply for a job in Apple's design department :-)
Seriously, apart from the extra cost; the ergonomic problems of having a delicate display on both sides of the device; the need for a different user interface (and probably a whole new API and display manager) in ebook mode ("multitouch" depends on a responsive display) you're talking about investing R&D in a technology which will almost certainly be obsolete or confined to a niche with in a year or two.
My prediction: as soon as a "best of both worlds" display technology comes along that's up to Apple's standards, they'll use it. Sounds like the transflective display doesn't quite cut the image quality mustard yet, but its not vapour.
Yes. I would be dumbstruck if they didn't.
I'd be very surprised if they blocked it.
Firstly, iPad and iBooks didn't spring fully formed into Apple's mind last week, yet they still approved Kindle for the iPhone - which will make it far harder to justify banning it from the iPad, and let Amazon start building up custom amongst Apple fans.
Secondly, its one thing to block mom'n'pop's ebook reader on the grounds that it might encourage illegal book downloads, its another thing to block a 500lb gorilla like Amazon who are going to milk the bad publicity for all its worth, and possibly set the lawyers on them. In the EU/UK, for instance, they allowed Spotify (which is surely a competitor to iTunes).
Finally, it seems like good bet-hedging for Apple - if people do choose the Kindle App over iBooks then at least Apple still get to sell the hardware, and an ongoing opportunity to woo them over to iBooks.
I really don't understand why people keep trying to shoehorn epaper and netbooks into the same category.
The fact that Apple are launching their iBooks service along with the iPad may have something to do with that. There's also a Kindle app for the iPhone, which presumably will work on the iPad.
At the moment, epaper displays are optimal for ebook readers, but virtually useless for general use (because of their glacial refresh rate) while LCD/OLED displays produce excellent colour and smooth video but are unpleasant for sustained reading and power hungry (because they emit light or need a backlight).
Long term these will inevitably converge - and by "long term" we're talking small integer numbers of years. The idea that you should need one device for reading web-based magazines (which increasingly include video and/or are designed for scrolling displays which current epaper can't hack) and another for reading novels isn't sustainable.
There's already Transflective LCDs in the Real Soon Now category and, maybe a bit further off, fast-response, colour e-ink (I can't find the response time claim in that link but ISTR they were claiming it).
The only long-term future I see for dedicated ebook-only readers is if the technology can become so cheap that it would be feasible to have half a dozen on the go (one for your bedside book, a couple by your computer with documentation, a greaseproof one by the dining table) etc. A bit like they treat the PADDs on Star Trek...
Sub Zero for you dingbats using the metric measurement isn't cold. Bitch when it's -12 below Zero f
...then everybody buys snowchains for their car, a fur coat that would make you pass out with heatstroke if you wore it in a typical UK or Irish winter, and builds tunnels or covered walkways between buildings. Simple.
Now try dealing with temperatures hovering around zero C for a few days at a time, where you rarely get enough snow to use chains or studs and the water is continually melting and re-freezing and where years or even decades can pass between bouts of nontrivial winter weather. Its a different problem.
could have tried asking countries a bit to the east how to deal with snow...
To which the answer is "have deep snow and persistent below-freezing temperatures every winter, so that you can justify the expense of maintaining the infrastructure and experience to deal with it".
Which doesn't help much when you're faced with a once-in-20-years weather event (after an apparent trend - whatever the cause - to milder winters). How many snowploughs and blowers do you buy, maintain and keep manned if they're only going to be taken out of the garage for a few days every third year?
Anyway, the problem wasn't really the odd record -12C night - it was heavy snowfalls and sustained daytime temperatures around 0C. Salt & grit is a perfectly good solution to that until you suddenly go through several normal years' worth of it in three weeks.
If you've developed technology where you can live in tin can for extended periods of time and travel light years across the galaxy, then living on a place like the moon or Mars is relatively easy.
As would be living in space habitats, where you have the advantage of access to all the mineral (asteroids) and volatiles (comets etc.) of your solar system without having to expensively haul them out of a planet's gravity well, and massive solar energy with which to synthesize anything else you need. If you have the technology to build a colony fleet, its probably easier to build a Dyson swarm (as originally conceived - not the SciFi "Big Dumb Object" version).
...and if they're not so rational then don't worry: if they're evil madbeings then they'll be eating each other and worshiping the ship's engine by the time they get here :-)
Unless they invade so they can suck our brains with a straw.
Unless we're really unlucky and they pick up NPR or BBC Radio 4 first, they won't find much on radio that will make our brains sound appetizing...
Imagine a sphere of radio transmissions expanding at the speed of light from every civilized planet - sooner or later these are going to permeate space, so if you can't detect anything it starts to look a bit odd.
Now imagine that civilizations typically switch to non-broadcast and/or digital signals (the latter, if efficiently compressed, will "sound" like random noise) within a century of inventing radio. Instead of spheres, space will be full of 100 light year thick "shells" of easily detectable signals. So its far more likely that we find ourselves in one of the gaps between shells.
Of course, the Drake equation/Fermi paradox ideas are only plausibility arguments, make all sorts of assumptions about how civilizations develop based on extrapolation from one data point (us).
You've never had a good cup of coffee until you've tried one made from the on-site deep sea thermal vent water. The trip is a little pricey, but the barista is cute.
Ah, yes - the only coffee shop in the world where the "Warning: contents may be hot" label really is needed... :-)
Could the iPad (Apple) be easily extended to compete head to head with the iPad (Fujitsu)? You betcha!
And could Apple, if they want to roll out the iPad into the point-of-sale market (currently it just looks like an in-house system), find themselves obliged to re-badge it "EasyPay" or something? Quite possibly.
Anyway, before Fujitsu start worrying about whether future Apple products might hypothetically compete with their iPad they need to deal with the problem that their trademark was denied because their iPad blatently obviously operates in the same market as the MagTech IPAD.
Great - return flight to the Moon $50 (excluding optional $5,000,000,000 life-support surcharge).
Of course, they say Moon, but actually its to the new state-of-the-art spaceport at L1, only a short bus ride away from the Moon. Well, they say new state-of-the-art spaceport... its actually an abandoned Apollo third stage with a Starbucks and a chemical toilet...
despite the latter being a supermarket chain. Although Woolworth's doesn't sell computers, Apple claimed that they someday might.
Perhaps you should actually read the articles you cite:
Woolworths' application includes a wide class for all electrical goods and technology, thereby putting it in direct competition with Apple should the retailer choose to brand computers, music players or other devices. Woolworths has gone into credit cards and mobile phones, so the likelihood of it going into computers is not as remote as it seems.
I don't know whether Woolworths Aus. is anything like the (now defunct) UK version, but if so it is highly likely that they'd sell computer accessories or music players. Also remember that Apple uses its logo to identify its stores, which may well share a mall with Woolworths. Oh, and the "delusional" person is the one claiming that the Woolworths logo isn't in the shape of an apple.
while failing to do due diligence in assessing the availability of a trademark before using it?
...due dilligence would probably have revealed that Fujitsu's use of "iPad" was clearly in competition with MagTech's trademark, whereas Apple had a strong case that their product was in a totally different market.
Bullshit! MagTek has an IPAD product
Now look closer. The MagTek device in your link is a point-of-sale card swipe terminal, presumably sold mainly to the retail industry.
Now look at TFA. The Fujitsu iPad is a point-of-sale card-swipe terminal sold mainly to the retail industry.
The Apple iPad, meanwhile, is a consumer appliance, conspicuously lacking a card-swipe device and is not primarily targeted at the point-of-sale market.
Or, in other words, MagTek have Fujitsu banged to rights for infringing their trademark, whereas Apple have a strong argument that they're not operating in the same market.
Why would I get one? For half the price I can get a 12" Wacom tablet.
But they're crap! You can't run a web browser on them and they don't even have a display - you have to hook them up to a laptop! And you can only write on them with a special pen! How am I going to use that to browse websites and stream video in my armchair?
See the problem? I can see a use for a 10" wireless media terminal. You want a specialist pen input device for your photography work. One of these things is not the same as the other.
I don't want a pony, but I don't go onto MySpace and post "OMG! Ponies are so lame! You can't use them on the freeway, and you have to feed them even when you're not using them! Fail!".
Maybe you were hoping that the iPad would be an alternative for a $1000 Wacom Cintiq with built in display (nice...) or the equally expensive pen-driven laptops from Toshiba, HP, Fujitsu et. al. which have been failing to sell outside of niche markets for years.
but don't have any incentive to so long as the DRM keeps their customers inside their walled gardens
They do have an incentive - competition:
I've never bought music from iTunes because of the DRM, plus I have other players that don't play AAC. However, my ripped CDs and Amazon MP3 purchases work seamlessly on my iPod (some of the debates on slashdot seem to overlook that). As you said, competition from Amazon might have had more to do with iTunes dumping audio DRM than any generosity on Jobs' part.
Also remember that there's an Amazon Kindle App for iPhone which presumably will work on iPad and/or be upgraded - so its not impossible that something similar could happen with books. Apple clearly either don't want to (or don't think they could get away with) rejecting Amazon from the App Store.
Jobs reluctantly gave up that lock-in by pulling DRM from iTMS music
Did I trot out the "Apple heroically persuaded the music industry to let them drop DRM from iTunes" argument? No.
Did the Author's Guild force Amazon to knobble text-to-speech in the Kindle? Yes, I believe they did.
It's not really leasing since you aren't paying down the depreciation and returning the phone when you're done.
(a) I said "closer leasing than buying" not "exactly like leasing".
(b) How much is a typical smartphone worth at the end of a typical 18 month contract? Or, more precisely, how much would it be worth if the carriers demanded that every phone was returned and the market was flooded (rather than the minority which currently get sent to money-for-old-phones services)?
Actually, android does have this separation. The radio interface is a separate firmware blob,
Which might stop people hacking the radio and causing the downfall of civilization, but doesn't mean that the phone will still work (or the media player will play without skipping) if the CPU and RAM are saturated by too many multitasking fart apps.
What is clear, is that the rise of the App Store revokes control of the computer from the user.
So buy a PC (with Linux if you prefer) or Mac (which, in other news, will still run any software or OS you like and comes with a complete SDK).
The non-Mac iProducts are not intended as general purpose computers - App Store or no the lack of keyboards, storage, interfaces, multitasking etc. makes them unsuitable for that. They're web browsers and media players.
Now, its worth being a bit vigilant against the possibility of true general purpose computers disappearing from the market, but currently I see no sign of that. Maybe the DBD people should be concentrating their ire on the likes of Ubisoft who are dictating what people can do on general purpose PCs.
Meanwhile, Big Brother's App Store is giving many Mom'n'Pop developers access to a single, high profile sales channel and payment collection system.
Also, DRM is a problem that affects virtually every other ebook reader and has been hobbling the industry since before the iPad was a twinkle in Jobs' eye. Go protest outside the publishers and authors' associations that are actually causing the problem.
So really, what is the problem here? You buy it, you do want you want with it. You lease it, you do want they want with it.
Trouble is, the way phones are typically sold - free or heavily subsidised as part of a service contract - is closer to leasing than buying. Since this is the dominant business model, it has a splash back on the way manufacturers design their product, even if you buy it "naked" (I have a nasty suspicion that it also means that "naked" phones are sold at artificially inflated prices to make the subsidies more attractive...)
It also depends on how you perceive phones: if you buy a general-purpose computer, you expect it to be a universal tool that you can freely program or install software on and still enjoy the manufacturer's support. If, however, you buy a washing mashine and try and convert it to use dry-cleaning solvent you accept that, if it blows up, that's your fault. When phones were just phones, they clearly fitted into the latter category. Smartphones are in a bit of a limbo: people want to run arbitrary software on them but they also expect them to perform reliably as a phone.
...so use your iPad to stream your video from your media server as H264. Yes, you can now watch pr0n in bed without getting heat rash from your Macbook's hard drive.
Folks, this isn't a laptop replacement or a phone replacement.