>>>>>Hi All, I'm in the market for an Android tablet and would like your views / suggestions as to which one to go for - my budget is up to £500 so I should have a chance of a good one - any ideas ?
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>>>>Out of curiosity, why are you asking for an Android recommendation?
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>>>Because this is the Android section - and I don't like Apples' take on freedom ( I'm a Linux man forced to earn a living via M$ ) :-)
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>>Anti-freedom, that's a pretty strong way of putting it. But thank you for answering honestly.
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>>I can relate to earning a living in something that would not be my first choice in a perfect world. I own one Apple computer along with numerous iPhones and iPods. My younger daughter quickly shanghaied the iMac and then took it to college with her. Between the three of us we have half a dozen desktops and laptops, all running Windows. As you say, that is the world we live in.
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>>I have been reading the new biography of Steve Jobs and recommend it. One of the things that comes through loud is clear is that he was a complex person. At times he was someone you would run through the proverbial wall for. At other times he was, well, an a**hole. He famously said that Apple didn't conduct market research because we know what consumers want before they know it. Visionary or pompous jerk?
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>Hi Mike, he ( Steve Jobs ) also said he would spend Apples' last $ on destroying Android - which in my view is the best thing to happen to mobile computing for years - I to have some Apple equipment and it is excellent if you just *accept* that you are tethered to Apple - as a freelance developer of some thirty years standing I find this concept very strange and difficult to accept
You are not alone. Philosophically I am not wild about it either. It takes a certain amount of arrogance to say you're going to take our device the way we made it and you're not going to be allowed to change it. That was Jobs -- Woz was an open systems kind of guy who wanted Apple computers to have expansion slots. Jobs nixed that, even specifying that the case could not be opened without special tools. His Next computer did not include or support a floppy drive at a time when those were still standard. You can't open up an iPod or iPhone without voiding your warranty. (I learned that one the hard way). It was an arrogance about his design taste that he retained his entire life.
He apparently came by the design philosophy, although not the arrogance, from his adoptive father -- who he always considered his real father even after learning otherwise. Paul Jobs was a high school dropout but a talented carpenter and automobile tinkerer. He could build any kind of furniture the family needed. He bought used cars, fixed them up, and resold them. He instilled in Steve the habit of always doing things the right way. For example, taking as much care on the back of a dresser (bureau?) as on the front, even though it wouldn't ordinarily be seen.
To illustrate another side of Jobs, though, he had every member of the Mac team sign a sheet of some sort that was cloned and placed inside every Mac. Few customers ever saw those sheets, since they couldn't get inside the box, but the team members knew their names were in there.
UPDATE: Here it is.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Signing_Party.txt&topic=Apple%20Spirit&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20DateAndy Hertzfeld was one of the key members of the Mac team. He was the prime architect of the OS and the revolutionary GUI.
