Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "can do the same as the above" I heartily disagree. There's a big difference, huge difference between "can barely" and "does it really fucking well". The iPad shoots for the latter (we'll see if it hits), the netbook's mere existence is predicated on the former. If your definition of "can do the same" means "someone willing to bang their head hard enough and willing to live with a substandard user experience can do…
> After the iPod, the Mac, and the iPhone, I don't think geeks still get why Apple is successful: they build devices that normal people actually want. I think there is some collective head-in-the-sand in the geek community because what people apparently want is not at all like what geeks want. The average user doesn't want freedom, doesn't want an open kernel, doesn't give a shit about standards, they want to have a…
For example, I just read a most interesting exchange on a board, where one guy was going on about how the video experience sucks because there's no DVD drive - it's completely missing the forest for the trees, getting hung up about a single insignificant detail that's at the very best a nice-to-have. This sort of tunnel vision prevents the broad view required to execute this sort of device.