The grandparents are a good choice; as long as they don't need constant help with it in my backwards town. ;P

"...98% of them DO NOT work with Intel HD chips" and "...Modern Warfare 1 (5 year old game) is not supported on Intel HD integrated chips" and even "...when Guild Wars 2 comes to mac"... these are all reasons I steer people away from Macs. Every time someone asks me if they should buy one I ask them "are you a…

The Chinese would clone their own grandmother if they could. Quickest way to get your product cloned is to have the Chinese manufacture it.

I did the reset. Worked well at first, and still connects fine after the initial tinkering but still see the App Store and iTunes causing problems.

...and comes iOS 6.1 which will likely flash something in the internal connector and invalidate the knockoffs. I'd be surprised if Apple didn't sneak something like that into their hardware. But that might just be the conspiracy theorist in me.

I have both the 2nd and 3rd gen iPads. I expect within a year for the 2nd gen to be a hand-me-down to kids to play with (destroy most likely). Which means that if I want to keep my wife off my 3rd gen, I'm going to need a new one. I think I'll wait, if possible, til May/June of 2013 though to see what the 5th gen…

Agreed. Problem is that the 'middle of the chain' isn't always in your control when the network itself isn't under your control.

I dunno about 'better' but definitely easier. I've never pirated an e-book, but now I'm hesitant to purchase more with the recent realizations of non-ownership. Purchasing the print versions may be the best route, then maybe e-book versions secondary. I wonder how long we'll see books that advertise "digital copy…

My guess is the refurbs will sell out pretty fast for the holidays (whether they actually do or not). Uninformed people who don't want to spend $500 on a tablet will buy the mini just to save the extra money. I'll have to admit, I like iOS far better than I like Android. Android has never impressed me and is a…

lol!

I really want to like Alphas.. but they make it difficult. This whole 'working with the government' thing just doesn't feel right to me, especially since the government would rather lock them up with stupid chips in their heads unless they are useful. And why were the Alpha's down at all when the cubes fired off…

I notice it most in iTunes and with anything that requires the wireless connection (ie: web, streaming apps, etc.). Games seem fine, but I've had iTunes and App Store crashes, plus excessive lag in both since the iOS6 update. Doesn't always happen but I never had a single App Store crash or iTunes lag in iOS5 with…

"So if a packet goes missing, instead of asking the network to resend it, the receiving device can solve for the missing one itself"

Actually.. they do experience the speed lag over time. It's very slight but it's there. I notice it more on the iPad 2 than my iPad 3 but iOS6 was noticeably slower on my iPad3 than iOS5 was. Still works and all.... but it's ever so slightly laggy at doing some things. I expect that to start getting worse over…

My 3rd Gen iPad is less than 6 months old as well. Had I known it wouldn't even last a year before being outdated I wouldn't have purchased until now. I could care less about the connector, but I already notice iOS6 slowdowns at times with the 3rd Gen; and from experience.. that's going to get worse as they base…

I'd have gladly gave up the aluminum back for a plastic one if it would get me an iPad mini for $200-$250. ;P

So this means you shell out $330+Tax and can't use the "HD" retina apps in the App store on it? Pass.

2013 = The year of Amazon. Unless there are some serious price cuts in the next Apple event Amazon is going to start walking all over Apple in the near future.. and likely for the holiday season.

Agreed. Kindle Fire HD 8.9" tablet coming in at $299 as well.. I think we know which would be the better buy. I'll keep my full size iPad because to me going smaller seems silly, but the kids will be getting Fire HD's this holiday season because $330 is a silly and greedy price (imho) for a 7.9" tablet.

Agreed. Wasn't that the big hoopla though about the price fixing suit going on? eBooks cost less to produce, so why do we pay the same, or more, for them when they can be taken away without refunding our money?