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“Cat: What, am I the only sane one here? Why don’t we drop the defensive shields?
Kryten: A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two minor flaws. One: we don’t have any defensive shields. And two: we don’t have any defensive shields. Now I realise that, technically speaking, that’s only one flaw; but I thought it was such a big one, it was worth mentioning twice.”

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But my interest remains, as ever, in the quality of the apps, not the quantity. Let’s say that when the dust starts to settle in this market, Android winds up with far fewer total apps than iPhone OS, but they’re of generally higher quality. That would make Android the Mac to the iPhone’s Windows. I would switch to that platform. (Feel free to substitute WebOS for Android in the above hypothetical.)

The number of apps already in the store — and, even more so, the momentum with which new ones are being added — almost certainly guarantees the continuing popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch for the next few years. But Windows is proof that popularity doesn’t guarantee market-leading quality.

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A standalone monitor with the new iMac’s panel would be perfectly reasonably priced at about $1500. From Dell. Apple’s only charging $200 more than that for theirs, and there’s an entire high-end computer stuck to the back of it.

[ … ]

Until we know why the panel is so cheap, I bet we’re going to see a lot of Mac Pro owners buying 27” monitors for $1700 and trying to figure out what to do with the free computer stuck to the back. For new-computer shopping, a lot of people are going to abandon whichever laptop or Mac Pro they were considering and get this instead.

That helps answer the “why” question: Maybe Apple wants to push more buyers away from today’s default system-type choice — laptops — and show them why they should consider getting a fast, spacious desktop instead. And, for the time being, it’s a desktop with absolutely no equivalent in the PC world.

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“Our industry has collectively taught average people over the last few decades that computers should be feared and are always a single misstep from breaking. We’ve trained them to expect the working state to be fragile and temporary, and experience from previous upgrades has convinced them that they shouldn’t mess with anything if it works. They’ve learned to ignore our pressures to always get the latest versions of everything because our upgrades frequently break their software and workflow. They expect unreliable functionality, shoddy software workmanship, unnecessary complexity, broken promises from software marketers, and degrading hostility from their office’s IT staff.”