Both are correct (unrelated). MAC address is randomized when scanning for wifi networks, and if you ask iOS for the device MAC address, the SDK will return a fake MAC.
As frustrating as it may be, an app that has that type of low-level access would probably be just as abused (if not more so) as push notifications. I can't blame Apple for not wanting to be blamed for the inevitable app that phones home your call log.
I've got nothing against your point on using the tools you know, but I can at least see where Apple is coming from with disallowing write once, run everywhere, especially regarding UI (think Java apps on OS X).
Just a brief description (hit up the website for more/tons of screenshots):
This is an iPhone weather app that allows for a bunch of neat things like custom layout for pages (ie, see data where you want to), iOS 4 features (like background updating when your location changes), retina support, pinch to zoom radar, Weather Underground data, and a bunch of other things.
True in theory, not so much in practice. After having read a couple of books in iBooks, the books mostly seem like hasty OCR jobs (Ender's Game, while a fantastic book, definitely showed this). The iPad has the capability to do great formatting, but publishers don't seem to be doing a whole lot with it. For example, in Ender's Game, there's a little snippet of conversation before each chapter. In print it's very clearly differentiated with italics, the iBooks version lacks even that. Curiously, I seem to notice far fewer formatting problems with the Kindle app.
Look at the price discrepancy between the 3G iPad's plan and an iPhone. I think if they did this, people (especially those in areas where dropped calls are frequent) would simply get a data-enabled iPod touch, with the reasoning being something along the lines of "the iPhone can't make calls here anyway, why pay an extra 40$ a month for it?" The internet everywhere is the biggest thing for the iPhone, not the phone itself. It'd cannibalize the iPhone market, and neither Apple nor AT&T want that.
Just out of curiosity, when an android app is updated, how are permissions handled? Do you receive a prompt to allow new privileges, or does it assume you approve of it already?
You bring up an astute point on the vague "network access" permission, but there's really not an easy answer to this. How would you fix it? Ask the developer to simply say what the access will be used for? In an malicious app, they'd obviously just lie. Short of actually displaying what data an app is sending, I don't see an easy answer.
Understand that it's fetching the data from the system's address book, but obviously this is going to be the same data it would remember if you entered it elsewhere. Keep in mind that this is a feature of Safari being exploited, it's not like this is an vulnerability in the address book gives you unlimited access to all the user's contacts.
Your contacts are pretty much completely unprotected as well. As an iPhone developer myself, I don't think it's unreasonable to have the device ask for permission to use this data (in a similar manner as location data access is approved).
My (admittedly shallow) knowledge on Android's speech recognition is that it's being done server side. In other words, I suspect the reason Apple's not doing native voice recognition on the iPhone is that they don't have the processing power (either on the phone or their servers) to do so.
Sort of. There are two probable ways it would happen. The first, and most likely, is that the government could order all ISPs to stop the flow of data through their pipes. Theoretically, they could also shut down some of the root nameservers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver), many of which are owned by the government. But again, this wouldn't truly shut down the Internet, it'd just stop browsers from being able to turn addresses into IP addresses. If you knew the IP of the site you were trying to visit, they couldn't stop you with that method.
Edit: also note that since DNS resolution is a redundant system, they'd have to shut down EVERY root nameserver (or at least the ones in the US) to stop resolution completely. Otherwise it'd basically just slow down, though potentially to the point where it'd become unusable.
Potentially feasible, but I don't know that anything good will come of it. Speaking as a coder, I definitely think of the code as the heart of a project, and outsourcing it never even occurred as an option to me, personally. What you're describing, site, marketing, research, etc are all important, but they all seem ancillary to the project itself. Have you considered working as a consultant or freelancer doing these things?
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you do what you're suggesting with your ideas, I don't know that they'd really be YOUR projects anymore, I think they'd end up being something you played a supporting role making. If you're ok with that, go for it, but I don't think I could ever be happy executing a good idea that way. I'd have to make it my own.
I do like the feel and design of the 3G model better (much easier to tell if it's silenced in your pocket), but on multiple occasions, the switch on my 3GS has switched from silenced to not. The new one seems a lot less prone to that.