They will also never allow a device that is as capable as the N900. You will only ever see locked down, restricted devices you are forced to jailbreak to get beyond what Apple has deemed as good for you.

Unfortunately, this caters more to the hyper-restrictive and greedy media industries than it does to any user.

It has started bothering ME for a while now. Not because I don't want people to get what they want...

One of my bosses has an iPhone, simply because he can use it out-of-the-box (he's a non-techie), because he likes the interface of the phone app and all in all to him it's one of the more comfortable phones to use for business.

Perfectly legitimate reasons, so no problem with that. Actually, I once got myself an iPhone, too, because back then it was the only phone I could afford with a real internet browser. The interface never grew on me, but that's just preferences.

Yet what REALLY irks me - and actually makes me shiver in fear - is the by far larger part of the Apple followers.

(And don't take that personally - from the fact that you're actually literate enough to formulate your answers without every other word being "cool", "freakin'" and "looser" makes me believe that you're not one of those... :P :P :P )

A loose acquaintance of my mother once tried to brag with her oh-so wonderful iPod, that featured this revolutionary new technology called playlists (aha...?) and some other things unseen so far like "displaying the freaking name of the song!!!". And when I showed her my portable media player with unlimited on-the-go playlists, on-screen lyrics, video playback, optional TV antenna and FM functionality, her reply was: "Yes, but it's not made by Apple!"

Religious fanatism has always been highly dangerous, and that's exactly what blindly following every word of Steve Gods... sorry, Jobs... has turned into. I swear, the next preacher that tries to convince me that "this is exactly what you have been looking for this past 30 years - believe me, give it a try" will make the acquaintance of my old iPhone. Rectally.

Clearly these researches did not include a lot of the more intellectual tasks? At least I would like to know how people are supposed to write a scientific essay without multitasking. Write a sentence, save, close the text application, open the browser, find a piece of information, close the browser, open the text application, load the file, find their last sentence, add the new piece of information (provided by then they didn't already forget it)?

I know at least I am definitely more productive with my IDE in the foreground, an API collection just one click away, a browser behind that so I can instantly look up solutions to any problems I might encounter and a music player in background to fight off the screaming silence that would else kill my concentration.

True, multitasking can be a pain when kids are supposed to do their homework but their minds are more occupied with the constant influx of ICQ/Facebook/Twitter/whatever-they-are-all-calld messages, the cool series running on TV, their phone ringing in between those times when they are not writing text messages and their desktop buddy chasing their mouse pointer... :P

But people who are more responsible WILL concentrate on one thing and will only make the computer do the multitasking.

I hope it does supports multitasking with the eMail app and the internet browser? Because it's a real pain keeping myself from laughing out loud whenever I hear something like "I'll send it to you once I'm on my PC. I've already started writing a mail and don't want to loose that just so I can open your stupid website!".

(If they are finally implementing multi-tasking... why not FULLY?)

1) Then why is Apple trying to sell their products as such?

2) Like I said before, both UI and design are a matter of preference. I dare say I'm tech savvy (okay, I breath electro smog and my alphabet soup is made of "1" and "0" noodles ), but I never got used to the iPhone interface. Memories of that on-screen keyboard still make me wail in pain and I got myself a bag as soon as possible in order to get rid of that curved back.

I wouldn't even say that they managed to design something that most people like. I think they are just really, REALLY good at PR and turning everything into a hype.

(Not say that just because I don't like it they are not top notch at designing - I just really don't think that's the reason for their sales.)

3) Again, I don't (and I dare say very few of the other "haters") have a problem with those who prefer UI and design of Apple's products.

What's dangerous is those who would eagerly spend a fortune on a stone, if only it had a rotten apple painted on it's back, on one hand - because once those stones make the better part of the market share, producing computers and selling them at normal prices will no longer be attractive and EVERYBODY will be forced to deal with the painted rock.

And on the other hand those who love Apple for taking away their rights because "If I cannot decide, I cannot decide on the wrong thing, right?" are a rather disturbing sign of a rapidly declining society.

The current trend of "Please take me by the hand, I'm afraid of the free will monster" will eventually take us back into the Dark Ages, and by then us independent-minded people will either be forced to feign obedience or be burned as witches again.
(Allegorically... :P)

Kewl, thx

I wouldn't call her 'stupid' by that one response, since she may be better than me in cooking, accounting, raising a family or whatever else. Personally, I think it's just a combination of brand trust due to her consistently positive past experience with said brand. We tend to simplify our decision making on things that are not in our core area of interest. Quick question, do you have a preferred brand of cooking pans?

Fanboyism exists on all consumer brands. It is an unfortunate social occurrence, but understandable.

I'm pretty sure the research and articles were talking about human multitasking, not implementation of OS multitasking...

One big difference between multitasking on a mobile handset vs desktop (With sufficient screen estate) is that viewing and manipulating multiple documents at the same time is possible on a desktop while you cannot on a mobile device, simply because of the physical screen limitation. I think this weights heavily on mobile multitasking implementation design.

AFAIK, those two apps have always been able to run in the background from iPhone 1.0. Emails are always checked\pushed in the background and your outbox are queued regardless of the mail apps running in the foreground or not. The browser seems to stays in memory for as long as possible (Depending on other apps needing ram).

Jobs said that it mainly has to do with optimizing power usage. I'm pretty sure that ranks in the top 3 (if not the top), other than Jobs' continuous need to control everything in his ecosystem.

As what? Can you point out to specific PR or Ad so we can discuss the same thing

There's no question they're one of the best if not the best in marketing their products (and ideas).... but their ui design are generally intuitive enough to be grasped by most people so it becomes easy to use even to those new to the device/platform, although usually limited in their configurability and extensibility.

OSK comment:
As far as on-screen keyboards are concerned, I think their implementation is better than Android. OSK on resistive screens are a pain to use compared those on capacitive, imho. But on the scale of preferences: most people prefer hardware keyboard over osk for obvious reasons, as I also do.

You should be relieved that they have unsuccessful products even in their current lineup Case in point: AppleTV... which is rumored to be updated soon.

I think this can spark an interesting discussion in a different thread, with a more specific example (just to make sure that everyone will be talking about the same thing).

But no one in their right mind starts out with "Please take me by the hand, I'm afraid of my own free will". It usually starts out by looking at the selections of what they can do/consume (if you're talking about media) among different platforms and how they're dressing the selections up.

... so what if they are late to the party ? look at the sales ! they produce a product people want to buy and they do it well.

want to buy, thanks to just about everything tech or lifestyle press have presented it on their front page as the "must have" gizmo for the "up to date" person.

My point was that there were others already on the bandwagon. Funny how you criticize the least important part of my comment

Right, because that's all there is on the internet besides the safe, functional sites that you can view on your Apple device - porn and malware.

Here's your calculus, yes?

All things on my Apple device = safe and useful stuff
All things not on my Apple device = porn and malware

Have you sen the new iWheel?

how about that other iwheel?

Watch this with The Apple in mind

http://www.aisforapple.net/main.htm

Edit:Oh end even there is something about Mac as well

This is amazing how S. Jobs with academic precision following patterns from marketing rules book, continue his business strategy. And millions are still blind, looking for some genius spark or paranormal activity behind. And slowly pointing technology to only one direction. And people love it, buy it. Until wake up and will be to late.

If other company will tell you that slim stuff is cool, You going to blame that is useless not handy, against ergonomic design etc etc. If Apple do that... everyone saying wow.

If somebody else introduced tablet, everyone was like no.. useless I prefer laptop or handset. Apple said we reinvented the Laptop and now is called tablet.. everyone saying wow.

What next huh? Apple net? AHTML? Apple TV? Don't let them treat people like total idiots! Please customers! And don't let to do so any other company as well.