ugh

It’s a tool like any other, like pen and paper. Why shouldn’t students be able to use up-to-date tools?! I certainly would have loved to have been able to do just that.

It’s funny how you seem to imply that the only useful thing you can do with a computer is to learn how to program things.

It’s not going to be a revolution or a huge improvement (better teachers are the most important thing above all else), but being able to use modern tools seems kinda important to me.

(Do you have any idea how much Grapher† helped me understand math when doing my homework? I wasn’t programming, I was using a modern UI – no stupid graphing calculator that’s a pain to use – to fool around with equations. That was tremendously helpful. Having that kind of power always with you, instant on, with a battery that lasts forever, man, that’s living the dream.)

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† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapher

That’s what the Parental Controls are for, silly. That’s why they are called that :-)

What are you responding to? Certainly not to the linked article. Can you read? You are completely off-topic.

This is about deployment in schools, nothing else.

I do not understand you. What should schools deploy other than consumer level devices? That’s what schools have been doing for years, they usually bought consumer level PCs. It’s just normal.

What?! A bag? Do you really think people keep or care about and remember that? Really?!

And even then, Google just opened this Play thing, no Android logo in sight. What the hell is going on there.

I think if you are a nerd and stuck in the middle of it you can’t really see the craziness of it all, but believe me, it’s crazy.

That’s not fancy, that’s standard Safari behavior. Safari waits until the font is downloaded until it displays text. Some other browsers display text immediately and switch the font later. There are good arguments for both approaches.

I’m very skeptical of that. The environment on those branded and customized Android phones is an extremely confusing one.

Exactly that!

My sister (18) certainly has no credit cards. Once she got gift cards for iTunes (to buy music, actually) she also bought a few apps (for her iPod touch) – because it’s convenient and she has credit to spend there anyway. She hasn’t even considered to buy anything for her Android phone, though, mostly because finding a way to pay there is so damn inconvenient.

It’s not like you really need apps – but if the barrier is really low people will be happy to buy (mostly because everything is so cheap). Gift cards would help lower that barrier (if you can get them really everywhere, just like iTunes gift cards).

The biggest problem then might be brand awareness. My sister has a Sony Xperia Play (which I think is a pretty nice phone if you look at the hardware and ignore the software). That’s what she knows about the phone. There is no big Apple or big Google logo on it to show what kind of gift card she has to get. Marketing those gift cards so that people actually know what to get would be nightmare. Naming and branding is a disaster area in the Android space. It’s confusing as hell.

Huh? All their PCs improved little in 3–4 years, definitely on a level (or maybe even a bit worse) with what you get when you upgrade your iPhone or iPad every other year.

There is nothing happening with PCs, only boring spec-bumps and maybe a port more or less. The only interesting thing that did happen was the introduction of ultra-books – and even that was years ago.

CPUs and GPUs get faster, but PCs are already extremely fast. There is much more headroom for improvement with mobile devices, their spec bumps are actually good for something.

I don’t see the point you are making at all. Upgrading every other year gets you loads of improvements.

If you buy an iMac now you get the same old boring thing you could get three years ago. Do you really think non-nerds will be able to tell the difference? Heck, even I think that there is little to no practical difference between a 2012 and a 2009 iMac. They are the same goddamn thing (for all intents and purposes).

Really? You complain about the name†? Are you serious? How petty is that?!

Apple rarely does radically new devices. That happens maybe once every three years or so. They also support older devices for a relatively long time when it comes to mobile devices (and for a relatively short time – but still not really short, but short compared to Microsoft – when it comes to PCs).

Look at what they do, don’t try to read something into their product names.

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† Which we don’t even know yet.

Ok, that might be what the author wants and needs, but why does he claim to be able to tell everyone else what they want? That seems kinda self-important to me. Your own experience is not necessarily that of everyone else.

A weird adjustment because their race influences how you see people? Dude, that’s racist.

It happens to me, too, but I at least know that it’s racist.

That’s not even it. Natural gas is boring. Those cars are everywhere, they are nothing new or special.

I think Lion is awesome. The best OS X release yet. Some little things are annoying but the big picture is amazing. I’m very happy with it. (Also: Apple is starting to correct many of those little things with Mountain Lion.)

It's plausible deniability, nothing more. Illegal stays illegal.

Why do you explicitly point out race or gender? You don’t have to, you know. It’s kinda irrelevant most of the time. (And if you think it isn’t when you are telling some harmless anecdote it’s possible you might be racist or sexist.)

They probably do have zero say if they don’t commit to buying ten million or so per quarter.

I don’t think you quite understand how big that difference is. Lenovo sells half as many laptops as Apple sells iPads per quarter. That’s not laptops with one screen size and resolution, that’s six million laptops with wildly varying screen sizes and resolutions.

Apple has one iPad with one model of screen†. They sell millions per quarter and consequently need millions of identical screens per quarter. They have billions of Dollars with which they can pay upfront. Apple can pay LG one billion Dollars per quarter (that’s about as much as ten million iPad screens cost) upfront and wouldn’t even notice it all that much. Lenovo has less revenue, a lot less profit, a lot less cash reserves than Apple.

Lenovo sells many different laptops with many different screen sizes and resolutions. Many people probably do want 16:10 or 16:9 screens. They could probably sell substantially less than one million laptops with a 4:3 screen to a few weird nerds – and they would probably need 4:3 screens in different sizes and resolutions. That is certainly harder than what Apple has to do.

Apple can because Apple is unique. Their position allows them to do stuff like that.

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† After next Wednesday they might have two.

Meh. It happened before. Apple obviously doesn’t care at all.

Why exactly would bringing them back to America be noble? Apple has its roots in the USA but it is very much an international company. The USA are no more deserving of those jobs than any other place on the planet.

Apple should speed up improving the situation of their workers in China. That would be great. Bringing them “back home” would seem just strange to me. Definitely not noble, nationalism never is.

Your view seems very selfish to me and it seems strange that selfish and humanitarian seem to mix so well in those debates. It’s not better for Chinese workers if Apple were to pull out of China. The best solution for them is if Apple improves their working conditions.

Those people are not a minority. They are the clear majority and until a few years ago dominated everything.

Hihi. Have you ever been to 2XC? It's full of crazy Men's Rights Activists and there is always someone who will say "But what about the menz?" It's not hard to find sexism in 2XC.

Nah, the gestures work amazingly well on an iPad, but not at all on the iPhone. It's too small.

You are looking at it wrong. Also: You are wrong.

The iPad already supports gestures. Three gestures replace all you need the home button for (one or two small and insignificant exceptions, but those would be easy enough to add).

Those gestures already declutter the interaction considerably. They make for a much smoother experience than that clusterfuck which is the home button.

It’s a nice fallback, so I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea to remove it, but I haven’t touched it in ages (it’s always not where I expect it to be, anyway).

Have you tried the gestures? There would be no capacitive buttons, only gestures. I don’t know when I last used the button but it was a long time ago. Once I turned the gestures on I couldn’t go back, they are very useful and won’t be wrongly recognized.

I still don’t get it. What’s so perfect about it? It’s bland and boring. Maybe it’s like chips to me? I love them but I know they are junk.

Maybe he means watermarks? The stuff iTunes adds is just metadata. It’s easy to remove. I don’t think anyone could be outraged about that (Why the hell would anyone be?) but watermarks might well cause a different reaction.

So, what’s it with all the bacon love? I don’t get it. I love grilled chicken breast and beef tenderloin, the only thing bacon has going for it is that it‘s cheap, fast and easy to make.

It’s about getting the best of both worlds. It’s about getting some of the benefits of being an extrovert without having to act (because that’s how it feels to introverts) like one.

Calling what Israel does “genocide” is not reasonable. The euphemism (“genocide tactics”) doesn’t help.

Ahem, does that presentation say anything else? It’s explicitly about people who are introverts. It doesn’t mention or target extroverts at all. It doesn’t say anything whatsoever negative about extroverts or imply that there is anything wrong with them.