Paul Howland's Profile

One could also argue that Apple copied the idea of the mobile phone, of 3G, of built-in GPS, of a camera in the device, etc, etc, etc. All depends on your perspective.

Hmm. But what about the contempt shown for developers and total-control "Apple knows best" mindset shown in the iPhone App Store as well as the usual blatantly false Steve Jobs double-speak (you mention the fictional "3G Battery Life issue" yourself) and the over-priced poor-performing Mobile Me? Apple is very slow to change its spots - it just that the specific issues have moved on.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the price and features as the competition hots up too. I see IBM has already announced the release of the Lenovo X300 series that is smaller and lighter than the MacBook Air whilst managing to offer more ports, a built in DVD burner, higher resolution screen and faster processor. Remove the marketing spin and the MacBook Air remains a pretty looking but underpowered machine. See http://gizmodo.com/346797/ultralight-lenovo-x300-series-thinkpad-leaked

Yeah, but how well does the Apple phone OS run on a regular phone with minimal processor & regular buttons - the other 95% of the market? Presumably that's where Symbian shines. There's room for everyone.

My thoughts include: - Much snappier performance. MacOS X can feel very sluggish at times, even on the latest hardware. - Better screen layout taking account that most screens are widescreen format these days. This means menu bars across the top of the screen and dock at the bottom (yes I know it can be moved) result in a small amount of usable vertical space with large areas of wasted space to the sides - Better Finder. Duh. - More stable Safari. Ad blocking. - System restore/roll-back feature, like Windows - An iChat which is compatible with more than just iChat and AOL for video - More robust MacOS. I still get occasional problems with a corrupted plist file that prevents the system from booting. - Much improved Spotlight. It's slow and basic. Quicksilver would be a much better starting point. - Better firewall with "Little Snitch" capabilities builtin. Why does every application need to dial home??? - Ability to use iCal to schedule tasks on the computer - Decent uninstall capability, remove Library files, etc - More 3D effects on desktop. eg. ability to rotate windows sideways and stack to one side, like in Sun's prototype 3D desktop - Built-in language translation capabilities. View any webpage, application or document in your native language automagically

Or possibly, the Big Mac :-)