The other question, of course, is whether the "On Macs" requirement is technical in some serious sense(any one of the modern virtualization tricks where you pass as much as possible through to the hardware, rather than trapping it and crunching it in software emulation depending somehow on EFI, or the particular chipsets of Macs, or something of that nature), or whether it is a purely artificial constraint, that exists to keep Oracle out of range of Steve Jobs' eye lasers...
There is the license, the hardware, and the DMCA.
The license says you can run _one_ copy of MacOS X on one _Apple branded_ computer. I think it is quite clear that "Apple branded computer" means the actual physical hardware. The Macintosh hardware contains one chip containing a key, and MacOS X checks for the existence of the key. Now with virtualisation, the virtualisation level _must_ pass access to this chip down to the real hardware, otherwise MacOS X won't install. Passing the access through to the real chip is legal, because it only allows the end user what the license allowed him or her to do anyway.
It is obviously not difficult at all for the virtualisation software to emulate the presence of this chip. If they did that, then you could run MacOS X on _any_ computer. Putting that capability into the virtualisation software would be circumventing Apple's copy protection and fall straight under the DMCA and gets charged, as Psystar found out, at $2500 per case. I don't think any company with money that makes virtual machines will try that.
At the moment. But will Apple really be able to carry the momentum once people start realizing theres nothing really -great- about the iPad?
I'll tell you what's the difference between me, you, and iPad users: 90% of all current laptop / netbook owners would actually be happier with an iPad. They will be able to do more with it and enjoy it more. What's important is not what _the device_ can do, but what _the user_ can do with the device. 90% of all people can do more with an iPad. Me and you, we are not in the 90%.
You are in the 10% who are better off with a laptop. Unfortunately, you don't have the brains to figure out that you are in a minority. That Apple can become richer and richer and make 90% of the customers happy with a product that is of no use to you and that isn't made for you (BTW they also make some very, very nice things that are aimed at you). I'm in the 1% who has figured it out, and I'm also in the 1% who enjoys writing software not for geeks, but software that normal people can use.
But I shouldn't really be telling you this. I think Apple will make sure that iPads don't appear in any "computer sales" statistics so that all the netbook makers never figure out why their sales are dropping. Like Ford never came up in the statistics for "worlds 10 largest manufacturers of horse buggies".
You're absolutely right. This nonsense of presuming someone to be innocent until they are proven guilty in a court of law has got to stop.
"Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't mean what you think it means. When you, not a juror or a judge, read about a court case, you are free to form your opinion based on the facts known to you. You have the right to believe that a person is guilty before they are proven guilty, or believe they are innocent after they are proven guilty, whatever.
What "innocent until proven guilty" means: If you are a juror, then the fact that a person is in court accused of a crime means absolutely nothing. You start at a guilt level of zero, _then_ you listen to all the evidence and each bit of evidence will add or remove from that guilt level. And when the level at the end is above a certain limit (guilty beyond reasonable doubt), then you convict. But you _start_ at zero.
If you don't feel that anyone is properly authorized to receive the information you possess or that it will cause harm, then "just do it, its your employer" isn't good enough.
He was told "you are not looking after our FiberWAN network anymore, someone else is. Hand over the keys so that your successor can do their job". He used to be properly authorised because it was his job to look after the network. If the company gives the job to someone else, that person is then authorised. If he doesn't feel that his successor is authorised then this feeling is completely irrational. This wasn't about authorisation, this was about one man deciding that he deserved the power to look after his network, and nobody else did.
Unfortunately, he didn't just grumble and moan and complain, he actually took action. He actively prevented _anyone_ from accessing "his" network. On a personal level I can understand how this happened, and unsympathetic or clumsy employers probably didn't help, but the fact is that his actions were highly illegal.
So what if Gizmodo had actually just paid $5000 to anonymous finder to borrow or rent the device for a few hours, instead of buying it outright? Would that mean they would no longer be subject to the felony of purchasing stolen property?
My understanding is that if Gizmodo had paid $5000 for taking photos and observing the finder while he uses the new and improved and top secret address book on the iPhone and the new and improved and top secret Mail application to find the owner, they would have been in the clear. Buying the device was a mistake. Opening it was in my opinion a big mistake, because everything inside was still protected as a trade secret. The finder might have been in trouble for receiving the $5000 because he used the phone which wasn't his to make money.
I think returning the phone and then selling a report from memory of everything he saw for lots of money would have been legally Ok.
Yes, they are. Years ago an employee of Coca Cola tried to sell the secret formula to Pepsi. [usatoday.com] What did Pepsi do? They called Coca-Cola and provided details. Coca-Cola then called the FBI and set up a sting.
I am quite sure that Pepsi could create a drink that looks, feels, smells and tastes exactly like Coca Cola, close enough that nobody could find the difference. But that would be completely pointless. People don't buy one over the other because one is better, they buy what they prefer. Pepsi's customers actually prefer Pepsi's taste. So using the Coca Cola recipe would just drive away their original customers.
Trade secrets only survive theft if the company took reasonable precautions. Leaving a trade secret prototype on a public bar stool is not reasonable precautions, so trade secret protection seems lost no matter what.
Fully agree except Gizmodo made the mistake of opening the case, which they had no right to do. Anything visible from the outside, anything that you would find in a reasonable attempt to find the owner, is fair game. What chips are inside is not.
Right - because he had a great chance at dialing up the R&D department directly. Customer Service is usually the only published number.
Go to www.apple.com. Press Command-F and type "Contact" which gets you to the link saying "Contact us". Clickety-click and there you get the address and phone number: Apple, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, 408-996-1010.
If you put your trash out on the curb, and a neighbor helps himself to the iPhone you accidentally dropped inside the bag, you can't later turn-round and sue your neighbor for stolen property in order to get it back. Abandoned property belongs to nobody.
If a neighbour helps himself to the iPhone that you intentionally threw into the trash, then you can't sue him. Intentionally throwing away = abandoning.
If a neighbour helps himself to the iPhone that you accidentally dropped inside the trash, then not only can you sue him, but the police will go after him for theft. Accidentally dropped = lost. Keeping your lost property that he found instead of returning it to you or handing it over to the police is theft.
In case the neighbour argues that he believed the phone was abandoned, well, he could have just asked you and would have found the truth.
Unless Gismondo signed a "Non Disclosure Agreement" they are entitled to reveal "trade secrets". There is no more a law forbidding that than a law forbidding me to reveal where my cat hid the dead budgie.
Nobody is entitled to reveal a trade secret as long as it is a trade secret. Gizmodo made the mistake of opening the phone. Anything visible from the outside was most likely not protected as a trade secret anymore when the phone was lost. However, anything inside the phone remained a trade secret, because it could only be revealed by breaking open the case. And breaking open the case and damaging the phone is not something that Gizmodo was allowed to do.
Is it stealing if you return a lost item to the owner before said owner reports it stolen?
Until the item turns up again, the rightful owner cannot know whether it is stolen or not. Initially the phone was lost. It is possible that it was lost in a place where nobody finds it until some archeologist digs it up ten thousand years from now. In that case, it was not stolen. The owner has no reason to suspect it was stolen. Only when Apple found out what happened did they find out that it had been stolen.
The person who found it repeatedly tried to contact Apple, and they ignored him. If he'd kept it for himself, you still might have a point, but he didn't. He handed it over to the people best able to get the attention of the owner.
No excuse. All he had to do was put the phone in an envelope, address it to Apple Computer, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, and off it goes. He didn't contact "Apple", he contacted Apple customer services, who get calls from hundreds of people everyday in various degrees of confusion. If someone calls "I have your phone, and it doesn't work, I want to return it to you", how on earth are they supposed to guess that someone has found a phone that isn't _made_ by Apple, but one that is actually _owned_ by Apple?
That phone call wasn't "contacting the owner", that was an attempt to create an alibi and excuse for not returning the phone.
I don't think the one encouraging others to commit suicide is any more rational than the victim. Either punish them both, or give both treatment. He probably need as much educational camp as the suicidal.
Equal treatment for both. I agree fully. I understand that two of the guy's victims are dead.
And that's a problem... why? Seriously, if someone wants to kill themself, as long as they are not leaving a burden on the people they are leaving behind, what's the big deal?
The problem is that many people who are suicidal are just suffering from mental problems that could be cured. Allowing someone to commit suicide or assisting them when the only cause for the suicide is a treatable mental illness is the same as allowing someone to die when they have a medical problem that is lethal, but only when untreated.
Apple's overall profit margin as reported two days ago was 41.7%.
Gross margin != overall profit margin.
Gross margin means: If you hold a $1000 item in your hands and make up your mind whether to buy it or not, how much better off is the company if you decide to buy it? The gross margin is the $1000, minus all the cost that Apple has because you decided to buy the item - production, shipping, cost of selling, putting some money away for warranty repairs, putting some money away for the cost of helping you with any problems. The gross margin doesn't pay for research and development, it doesn't pay for advertising, it doesn't take into account all the things that Apple has to pay for, whether you buy the item or not.
If you spend a million to develop a product, it costs you $500 to build one and you sell 1000 of them for $1000 each, then you have 50% gross margin but you lose half a million.
If you spend $100,000 to develop a product, it costs you $1100 to build one and you sell 1000 of them for $1000 each, then your gross margin is minus 10%, buy you only lose $200,000, so you are actually better off.
The difference is that in the first case, you would try hard to sell another 1000 items, in the second case you would stop building and selling them immediately.
going to lose some job opportunities as a result of getting outed. Real dick move by Gizmodo.
Why would he lose his job? Mistakes happen. Costly mistakes happen. This man is the one single person in the whole Apple company who will never, ever in his life lose another iPhone. Why fire him when the company just paid a lot for his education?
Also, for some purchases, shipping is cheaper than or equal to sales tax. At the point that you add tax+shipping, then purchasing online has really lost most of it's appeal and it just makes more sense (from a budget perspective) to go to the brick and mortar store and but it.
As a seller, you should be competing with other sellers. If you can only compete successfully because you allow your customers to cheat on their taxes, and your competitor cannot allow them to cheat, why should you gain an advantage from that?
It's a awful and ill-conceived law, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, many laws are like that. This law was pushed through a Congress with way more concern about the media companies that supported it than with whether or not it made for good law.
Not at all. It means that once a company used some technology to keep you from copying their stuff, they then don't have to enter an arms race with hackers to keep the legal protection. Which is good for the customer. For example, Apple has this copy protection that stops you from installing MacOS X on a non-Apple computer. And even though lots of people know how to get around it, Apple will forever have the legal protection that comes with the copy protection. They will never change to some more complicated copy protection that could then affect legitimate customers.
And of course it protects companies who are not smart enough to create copy protection that keeps the worlds smartest hackers out.
actually, i think you miss the point. If you buy something it should be yours to do whatever you choose to do with. People are purchasing iphones and ps3's, they aren't leasing them. Once you take possession after purchase they shouldn't be able to change they deal... its called bait and switch and is a questionable practice.
First, there is no "bait and switch". The deal is clear and in the open from the beginning.
The seller decides what they are offering to a customer, and what they charge the customer for this offering. A different offering would cost different amounts of money. You are basically saying that you don't want to allow any contracts where contracts are used to establish what you get for your money.
As an example, let's say a car manufacturer sells two variations of the same car, one with 100 horse powers, and the other with 200 horse powers, for different prices. Which is Ok, you get different things, you pay different amounts. Now the manufacturer finds a way to change the horse power of its engine using software. They can still offer the same two car variants, but you are saying they shouldn't be allowed to do that. What justification do you have for that except your own personal greed?
No, the article doesn't make sense at all. Why assume the A4 is a dual-core PowerPC when it's built for an OS that restricts the use of multitasking? It's almost like suggesting using four wheel drive on a motorcycle. This writer is just a total and utter wanker, predicting 50% speed increases for reasons founded in pure fantasy. Bullshit story.
Multitasking != multithreading.
And iPhone OS 4.0 is around the corner.
For the rest of your comments, "glass house" and "stone" and "throwing" come to mind.
Are you saying that Apple will sell as many iPads in the next 10 days as it did on the huge first day? I don't think Apple has a problem with that.
300,000 in 10 days = 10,950,000 per year. Of one iPad model only, and in the USA only. That would mean at least 25 million total sales worldwide per year. Netbook and notebook makers should be very, very frightened.
Since Apple has had no major problems keeping it in stock domestically, one would have to wonder if demand has truly exceeded their expectations. Perhaps they only expected to sell exactly as many as they had pre-ordered?
It is quite obvious that in order to start shipping in the UK, Apple has to build up some stock for the first day (say 1/5th of US, that's 60,000) and be able to supply a smaller number every day (say 1/5th of the US, that's 10,000). Apple knew how many they are building. When they announced "late April" shipping to the UK, they must have estimated that by end of April they would have a huge number of iPads left to ship to the UK, plus a huge number for Germany, France, Italy etc. These iPads are not there! All the iPads intended for shipping to Europe are being sold in the USA!
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The other question, of course, is whether the "On Macs" requirement is technical in some serious sense(any one of the modern virtualization tricks where you pass as much as possible through to the hardware, rather than trapping it and crunching it in software emulation depending somehow on EFI, or the particular chipsets of Macs, or something of that nature), or whether it is a purely artificial constraint, that exists to keep Oracle out of range of Steve Jobs' eye lasers...
There is the license, the hardware, and the DMCA.
The license says you can run _one_ copy of MacOS X on one _Apple branded_ computer. I think it is quite clear that "Apple branded computer" means the actual physical hardware. The Macintosh hardware contains one chip containing a key, and MacOS X checks for the existence of the key. Now with virtualisation, the virtualisation level _must_ pass access to this chip down to the real hardware, otherwise MacOS X won't install. Passing the access through to the real chip is legal, because it only allows the end user what the license allowed him or her to do anyway.
It is obviously not difficult at all for the virtualisation software to emulate the presence of this chip. If they did that, then you could run MacOS X on _any_ computer. Putting that capability into the virtualisation software would be circumventing Apple's copy protection and fall straight under the DMCA and gets charged, as Psystar found out, at $2500 per case. I don't think any company with money that makes virtual machines will try that.
At the moment. But will Apple really be able to carry the momentum once people start realizing theres nothing really -great- about the iPad?
I'll tell you what's the difference between me, you, and iPad users: 90% of all current laptop / netbook owners would actually be happier with an iPad. They will be able to do more with it and enjoy it more. What's important is not what _the device_ can do, but what _the user_ can do with the device. 90% of all people can do more with an iPad. Me and you, we are not in the 90%.
You are in the 10% who are better off with a laptop. Unfortunately, you don't have the brains to figure out that you are in a minority. That Apple can become richer and richer and make 90% of the customers happy with a product that is of no use to you and that isn't made for you (BTW they also make some very, very nice things that are aimed at you). I'm in the 1% who has figured it out, and I'm also in the 1% who enjoys writing software not for geeks, but software that normal people can use.
But I shouldn't really be telling you this. I think Apple will make sure that iPads don't appear in any "computer sales" statistics so that all the netbook makers never figure out why their sales are dropping. Like Ford never came up in the statistics for "worlds 10 largest manufacturers of horse buggies".
You're absolutely right. This nonsense of presuming someone to be innocent until they are proven guilty in a court of law has got to stop.
"Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't mean what you think it means. When you, not a juror or a judge, read about a court case, you are free to form your opinion based on the facts known to you. You have the right to believe that a person is guilty before they are proven guilty, or believe they are innocent after they are proven guilty, whatever.
What "innocent until proven guilty" means: If you are a juror, then the fact that a person is in court accused of a crime means absolutely nothing. You start at a guilt level of zero, _then_ you listen to all the evidence and each bit of evidence will add or remove from that guilt level. And when the level at the end is above a certain limit (guilty beyond reasonable doubt), then you convict. But you _start_ at zero.
If you don't feel that anyone is properly authorized to receive the information you possess or that it will cause harm, then "just do it, its your employer" isn't good enough.
He was told "you are not looking after our FiberWAN network anymore, someone else is. Hand over the keys so that your successor can do their job". He used to be properly authorised because it was his job to look after the network. If the company gives the job to someone else, that person is then authorised. If he doesn't feel that his successor is authorised then this feeling is completely irrational. This wasn't about authorisation, this was about one man deciding that he deserved the power to look after his network, and nobody else did.
Unfortunately, he didn't just grumble and moan and complain, he actually took action. He actively prevented _anyone_ from accessing "his" network. On a personal level I can understand how this happened, and unsympathetic or clumsy employers probably didn't help, but the fact is that his actions were highly illegal.
So what if Gizmodo had actually just paid $5000 to anonymous finder to borrow or rent the device for a few hours, instead of buying it outright? Would that mean they would no longer be subject to the felony of purchasing stolen property?
My understanding is that if Gizmodo had paid $5000 for taking photos and observing the finder while he uses the new and improved and top secret address book on the iPhone and the new and improved and top secret Mail application to find the owner, they would have been in the clear. Buying the device was a mistake. Opening it was in my opinion a big mistake, because everything inside was still protected as a trade secret. The finder might have been in trouble for receiving the $5000 because he used the phone which wasn't his to make money.
I think returning the phone and then selling a report from memory of everything he saw for lots of money would have been legally Ok.
Yes, they are. Years ago an employee of Coca Cola tried to sell the secret formula to Pepsi. [usatoday.com] What did Pepsi do? They called Coca-Cola and provided details. Coca-Cola then called the FBI and set up a sting.
I am quite sure that Pepsi could create a drink that looks, feels, smells and tastes exactly like Coca Cola, close enough that nobody could find the difference. But that would be completely pointless. People don't buy one over the other because one is better, they buy what they prefer. Pepsi's customers actually prefer Pepsi's taste. So using the Coca Cola recipe would just drive away their original customers.
Trade secrets only survive theft if the company took reasonable precautions. Leaving a trade secret prototype on a public bar stool is not reasonable precautions, so trade secret protection seems lost no matter what.
Fully agree except Gizmodo made the mistake of opening the case, which they had no right to do. Anything visible from the outside, anything that you would find in a reasonable attempt to find the owner, is fair game. What chips are inside is not.
Right - because he had a great chance at dialing up the R&D department directly. Customer Service is usually the only published number.
Go to www.apple.com. Press Command-F and type "Contact" which gets you to the link saying "Contact us". Clickety-click and there you get the address and phone number: Apple, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, 408-996-1010.
If you put your trash out on the curb, and a neighbor helps himself to the iPhone you accidentally dropped inside the bag, you can't later turn-round and sue your neighbor for stolen property in order to get it back. Abandoned property belongs to nobody.
If a neighbour helps himself to the iPhone that you intentionally threw into the trash, then you can't sue him. Intentionally throwing away = abandoning.
If a neighbour helps himself to the iPhone that you accidentally dropped inside the trash, then not only can you sue him, but the police will go after him for theft. Accidentally dropped = lost. Keeping your lost property that he found instead of returning it to you or handing it over to the police is theft.
In case the neighbour argues that he believed the phone was abandoned, well, he could have just asked you and would have found the truth.
Unless Gismondo signed a "Non Disclosure Agreement" they are entitled to reveal "trade secrets". There is no more a law forbidding that than a law forbidding me to reveal where my cat hid the dead budgie.
Nobody is entitled to reveal a trade secret as long as it is a trade secret. Gizmodo made the mistake of opening the phone. Anything visible from the outside was most likely not protected as a trade secret anymore when the phone was lost. However, anything inside the phone remained a trade secret, because it could only be revealed by breaking open the case. And breaking open the case and damaging the phone is not something that Gizmodo was allowed to do.
Is it stealing if you return a lost item to the owner before said owner reports it stolen?
Until the item turns up again, the rightful owner cannot know whether it is stolen or not. Initially the phone was lost. It is possible that it was lost in a place where nobody finds it until some archeologist digs it up ten thousand years from now. In that case, it was not stolen. The owner has no reason to suspect it was stolen. Only when Apple found out what happened did they find out that it had been stolen.
The person who found it repeatedly tried to contact Apple, and they ignored him. If he'd kept it for himself, you still might have a point, but he didn't. He handed it over to the people best able to get the attention of the owner.
No excuse. All he had to do was put the phone in an envelope, address it to Apple Computer, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, and off it goes. He didn't contact "Apple", he contacted Apple customer services, who get calls from hundreds of people everyday in various degrees of confusion. If someone calls "I have your phone, and it doesn't work, I want to return it to you", how on earth are they supposed to guess that someone has found a phone that isn't _made_ by Apple, but one that is actually _owned_ by Apple?
That phone call wasn't "contacting the owner", that was an attempt to create an alibi and excuse for not returning the phone.
This is why I am so glad that I am an American living in the U.S., not a European stuck in that hellhole of a continent.
As a European, I really think they should have let you fly home. Really.
I don't think the one encouraging others to commit suicide is any more rational than the victim. Either punish them both, or give both treatment. He probably need as much educational camp as the suicidal.
Equal treatment for both. I agree fully. I understand that two of the guy's victims are dead.
And that's a problem... why? Seriously, if someone wants to kill themself, as long as they are not leaving a burden on the people they are leaving behind, what's the big deal?
The problem is that many people who are suicidal are just suffering from mental problems that could be cured. Allowing someone to commit suicide or assisting them when the only cause for the suicide is a treatable mental illness is the same as allowing someone to die when they have a medical problem that is lethal, but only when untreated.
Apple's overall profit margin as reported two days ago was 41.7%.
Gross margin != overall profit margin.
Gross margin means: If you hold a $1000 item in your hands and make up your mind whether to buy it or not, how much better off is the company if you decide to buy it? The gross margin is the $1000, minus all the cost that Apple has because you decided to buy the item - production, shipping, cost of selling, putting some money away for warranty repairs, putting some money away for the cost of helping you with any problems. The gross margin doesn't pay for research and development, it doesn't pay for advertising, it doesn't take into account all the things that Apple has to pay for, whether you buy the item or not.
If you spend a million to develop a product, it costs you $500 to build one and you sell 1000 of them for $1000 each, then you have 50% gross margin but you lose half a million.
If you spend $100,000 to develop a product, it costs you $1100 to build one and you sell 1000 of them for $1000 each, then your gross margin is minus 10%, buy you only lose $200,000, so you are actually better off.
The difference is that in the first case, you would try hard to sell another 1000 items, in the second case you would stop building and selling them immediately.
going to lose some job opportunities as a result of getting outed. Real dick move by Gizmodo.
Why would he lose his job? Mistakes happen. Costly mistakes happen. This man is the one single person in the whole Apple company who will never, ever in his life lose another iPhone. Why fire him when the company just paid a lot for his education?
Also, for some purchases, shipping is cheaper than or equal to sales tax. At the point that you add tax+shipping, then purchasing online has really lost most of it's appeal and it just makes more sense (from a budget perspective) to go to the brick and mortar store and but it.
As a seller, you should be competing with other sellers. If you can only compete successfully because you allow your customers to cheat on their taxes, and your competitor cannot allow them to cheat, why should you gain an advantage from that?
In other words, jailbreaking is a good way to indicate that you want to terminate the licence. After which you are no longer bound to its terms.
And at which point you have no right to use the licensed software :-(
It's a awful and ill-conceived law, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, many laws are like that. This law was pushed through a Congress with way more concern about the media companies that supported it than with whether or not it made for good law.
Not at all. It means that once a company used some technology to keep you from copying their stuff, they then don't have to enter an arms race with hackers to keep the legal protection. Which is good for the customer. For example, Apple has this copy protection that stops you from installing MacOS X on a non-Apple computer. And even though lots of people know how to get around it, Apple will forever have the legal protection that comes with the copy protection. They will never change to some more complicated copy protection that could then affect legitimate customers.
And of course it protects companies who are not smart enough to create copy protection that keeps the worlds smartest hackers out.
actually, i think you miss the point. If you buy something it should be yours to do whatever you choose to do with. People are purchasing iphones and ps3's, they aren't leasing them. Once you take possession after purchase they shouldn't be able to change they deal... its called bait and switch and is a questionable practice.
First, there is no "bait and switch". The deal is clear and in the open from the beginning.
The seller decides what they are offering to a customer, and what they charge the customer for this offering. A different offering would cost different amounts of money. You are basically saying that you don't want to allow any contracts where contracts are used to establish what you get for your money.
As an example, let's say a car manufacturer sells two variations of the same car, one with 100 horse powers, and the other with 200 horse powers, for different prices. Which is Ok, you get different things, you pay different amounts. Now the manufacturer finds a way to change the horse power of its engine using software. They can still offer the same two car variants, but you are saying they shouldn't be allowed to do that. What justification do you have for that except your own personal greed?
And you are wondering why Europeans laugh hysterically when Americans tell us they live in the freest country in the world.
No, the article doesn't make sense at all. Why assume the A4 is a dual-core PowerPC when it's built for an OS that restricts the use of multitasking? It's almost like suggesting using four wheel drive on a motorcycle. This writer is just a total and utter wanker, predicting 50% speed increases for reasons founded in pure fantasy. Bullshit story.
Multitasking != multithreading.
And iPhone OS 4.0 is around the corner.
For the rest of your comments, "glass house" and "stone" and "throwing" come to mind.
Are you saying that Apple will sell as many iPads in the next 10 days as it did on the huge first day? I don't think Apple has a problem with that.
300,000 in 10 days = 10,950,000 per year. Of one iPad model only, and in the USA only. That would mean at least 25 million total sales worldwide per year. Netbook and notebook makers should be very, very frightened.
Since Apple has had no major problems keeping it in stock domestically, one would have to wonder if demand has truly exceeded their expectations. Perhaps they only expected to sell exactly as many as they had pre-ordered?
It is quite obvious that in order to start shipping in the UK, Apple has to build up some stock for the first day (say 1/5th of US, that's 60,000) and be able to supply a smaller number every day (say 1/5th of the US, that's 10,000). Apple knew how many they are building. When they announced "late April" shipping to the UK, they must have estimated that by end of April they would have a huge number of iPads left to ship to the UK, plus a huge number for Germany, France, Italy etc. These iPads are not there! All the iPads intended for shipping to Europe are being sold in the USA!