You should qualify for a free upgrade. I'm sure Apple will publish the details when ML is released. They usually make these things pretty easy. You used to be able to walk into a store with a receipt (or sometimes just your word) and get an OS disc. Don't know how they'll handle things now that it's a digital…

I'll upgrade my play computer at home immediately. I've already sacrificed it to Lion, so how much worse can it get? My MBP that I use for work will remain Snow Leopard for the foreseeable future.

Yes. The entire modern world approves this message. Why should childhood somehow be exempt from acting out of self-interest?

There are thunderbolt to firewire adapters available.

A decision like doesn't do anything to make Apple money directly, so they wouldn't make it because they feel like it. Just like their push for the micro-SIM standard, they are try to reduce component size that must be allocated within their designs. Testing and building with a new interface is going to be a huge…

I got it. Funny, and it speaks to the problems that unnecessary automation like this will bring.

Who the hell goes to pay a water bill? That's not even a internet generation issue. The bills come in the mail, you send 'em back in the mail. My grandparents didn't ever have trouble with the US postal system, why does this geezer?

Video chat is not a critical tool for the hearing impaired. Useful, yes, but not nearly as efficient as texting, which has the added benefit of being comprehensible to people who cannot sign.

Yes. It doesn't have the user base of Skype, because it is tied to iOS/OS X, but the quality of image you get in FaceTime is far superior over the same connection. It also integrates pretty transparently, so you don't need to run it in the background the way you do with Skype.

Given that AT&T doesn't have unlimited data plans anymore, wouldn't we already be paying for FaceTime over 3G?

Be seeing you!

It is very heavily used in certain segments. Everyone I know with kids uses it to keep their children in touch with grandparents. It's very popular with couples separated by distance. We use it at work when interviewing potential onscreen talent (the ability to be animated and interesting on camera being critical…

It's because everyone's not as smart as you are.

If you upgraded from SL, get Onyx or Cocktail and clear the following: Finder, System, User, and Font caches, as well as running the maintenance scripts and rebuilding all launch services. We see big performance improvements here after doing that on machines that carry old caches forward from SL to Lion.

I'm not sure familiarity with Higgs Boson particle has anything to do with scientific literacy. Sure, if you are interested in science and have even a passing familiarity with science news, you've been inundated with mention of it lately. But given that it was an entirely theoretical particle until VERY recently, no…

Inverted syntax it is. Remember it I shall, Obi Wan.

Trust me, you would. All my Texan relatives complain about how cold it is at night here. All your humidity keeps things warm all night, but here it cools off immediately when the sun goes down. It's always quite comfortable in the shade on even the hottest days. Note: this is not applicable to Palm Springs and…

The patent system, while deeply flawed with regard to software patents, just doesn't work the way you think it does. The problems with patents have nothing to do with being able to "steal" concepts from another party and patent them yourself. Prior art will still invalidate patents and Google, of all parties you…

Think how terrible his opposition must have been if he continued to get elected for 30+ years after that. This is exactly the sort of thing that happens when people are allowed to vote for office holders.

A series of Palm Treo 600s and 650s. They were terrible, unloveable devices, slow and prone to freezing up on me. Incredibly fragile too, I kept dead spares around so I could replace the plastic body pieces that were always breaking. I kept using Treos until I got a 3GS. Needless to say, the leap forward was huge.