"but the problem is that the middle class has all but vanished in America and what's left are the upwardly mobile upper-middle class and the working poor. When the top 20% have 85% of the wealth in America, the other 80% are left to fight over the crumbs."
Can you link to some evidence showing a slowdown in mobility? Also, I would assume a key metric to showing whether income inequality increase is a problem is to see whether the speed of improvement of standard of living is slowing or not. I'd like to see figures on this as well.
I'm not following your point. Are you saying having a curated store is what causes you to buy more apps? So what specifically drives the increased purchases? Ability to easily discover more apps? Lack of free alternatives? Low pricepoints?
The reason my purchases on the Mac/PC side are fairly low is the amount of free programs that fit my needs (and do it well). Whenever the best app was not free I bought it (Disco, Transmit, come to mind).
This is just a pet peeve of mine but the actual Franklin quote:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Is not the same as the often quoted paraphrase:
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither."
There will always be cases where security is more important than freedom. We can argue when such cases exist, but Franklin said "essential liberties" and "a little temporary security" for a reason.
I'm not actually making a call that shutting up Wikileaks is justified here, but I do find it annoying when people use that incorrect paraphrase.
I was at O'Hare this summer and noticed the exact same thing. All the dudes ended up going through the metal detector, and most of the girls went through the full body scanner.
Then I got really upset when I saw them selecting a young teenage girl to go through the scanner as well - perverts.
The only other browser to do visual tabs on the left that I know of is OmniWeb for Mac, which is/was an awesome browser that doesn't see much support.
I still use Opera on my PC laptop because like you, I'm used to the interface and the built in features. However, on Mac I've never felt like it was as stable/fast.
One feature that used to be in Opera that now isn't (but is in chrome) is switching between your first 10 tabs using Ctrl+# shortcut. I've grown very used to that and was sad to see that go.
Here's the thing - if all publishers cared about was their bottom line, then DRM must absolutely translate to more sales, in this context and in big triple A title games.
Or is it that publishing execs aren't willing to take a risk on trying a DRM free model, even though their revenues would hold/increase?
Palm/HP is in a tough spot, but it's possible for them to go up with a bit of luck.
They need mindshare, solid hardware, and apps. The 3 are codependent. Good hardware and apps help mindshare, and having market interest and a good phone attracts app makers. If they mix their timing just right they could come in at third place behind apple and google.
They are doing good things right now on the app front. More and more good iPhone games are coming to WebOS. HP is having a lot of their software engineers spend a bit of time writing for WebOS as a sort of 20% project.
If they can get an exciting headset (not just good, exciting), and a marketing campaign that puts it in enough impulse buying hands, then win those users over with webOs + good app selection, they have a chance.
However, if they release a half hearted handset with little marketing, their base wont' expand and it will slowly but surely fall into obscurity.
Can you link to some evidence showing a slowdown in mobility? Also, I would assume a key metric to showing whether income inequality increase is a problem is to see whether the speed of improvement of standard of living is slowing or not. I'd like to see figures on this as well.