There's lots of good discussion in that thread, and you're right, it does bring back memories of discussions on the various iterations of IWeThey. AG has lots of good stories, as I recall.

Apple's in a sweet spot at a moment - making money hand-over-fist. It won't always be that way. I don't begrudge them making money while they can.

Martin makes a good case, but I don't think Google is doomed by a long shot. Apple won't have the whole smartphone market. They may have a big part of the profits for a while, but they don't control the networks. That's another huge power that Apple will have to deal with if they try to control too much. Google's got vast amounts of information and have the profits to figure out what to do with it. I'm happy they invested in Android and bought Motorola Mobility. Maybe that patent warchest will help reduce the patent wars that have the danger of strangling innovation (as might have happened back in the "look and feel" days early on).

Yeah, it's annoying that one can't upgrade many parts of Apple's stuff. Our MacMini has a maximum capacity of 8 GB, but this new Toshiba box has a maximum capacity of 8 GB too. And it's a few years newer than yours. ;-) There are some advantages of getting newer machines every few years if you can (faster memory buses, lower power consumption, etc.). The advantage of many Apple products is the depreciation is much slower than in the Winders world.

Maybe Tim Cook will slowly erase some of Jobs's paranoia. Who knows. :-)

Hang in there.

Cheers,
Scott.