I will send you some dried apple in a bag - not allowed to send fruit across borders in Oz due to fruit fly.
I think you're right about the girls!
One thing to consider while looking at the past history to see where the future lies is the fact that all empires, whether they be Roman Empires, Mayan Empires or big businesses such as IBM, GM in the US or even Apple, they rise and fall all the time - one day MS will fall completely, Apple will also fall completely one day. All quick risers and the biggest of the big fall. It is just how it goes.
I can see the quick rising of Apple as a bad thing for their future, the quicker they rise the easier it is to slip up in one area and they could very easily fall HARD. I have seen this happen before and was shocked, now I see a trend with these sort of companies - they rise high, get complacent then lose customers for they start to wake up and see what is going on and drop the brand like a hot potato. Apple are at this point right now. It is only a matter of time until people drop them.
Seeing their stuff everywhere in shops means sheeple have no real choice but to use them for they can't be bothered to look around for a better price on something that does the same or even more things with same quality for much less $$$. This also means more sales to them. It is akin to back when Telecom (Telstra) owned prettty-much everything phone related and you had no choice but to use Telecom/Telstra or not have a phone. The old Mobile ones in the 90s could only be used with Telecom/Telstra, you had no choice. Same thing here. It has a funny side when 70% of all PMPs look the same (iPod's), at my work I am the only non-sheeple person and most of the iPods at my work are the 120GB huge heavy fat silver backed one - too-big to fit in your pocket and the weight would make you walk on an angle! All the time people take home the wrong one for they all look the same!
So funny! Can not mistake mine for theirs, although one co-worker did a freudian-slip and called my PMP an Apple-brand PMP (iPod) and didn't realise what he said!
I say PMP - which is the device name such as saying CD player - I do not say the brand name or model name such as 'Walkman' or 'SONY'. Or saying 'LG' instead of saying 'Televison'. Or saying 'XBOX360' instead of 'console'. They all go by the model name, not device name which covers all brands that make that sort of device - PMP is all players that are small, play music files, video files, text files etc. Their iPod/my PMP are all PMPs. I do not call mine my 'e100'. That is what I should do if I were them but I call it by what the device actually is. It is a PMP, their Ipods are PMPs.
Gets stupidly irritating hearing them all say the product model name all the time vs saying the device name - another Apple marketing brain-washing tool.
You say Mac and not a PC - even though it is your Personal Computer. It is not someone else's computer, it is yours, yours personally. It is a computer, it is a Personal Computer that you own personally. It is your PC.
The brand of PMP I use has been making these players since 1999, they were the number 1 brand for MP3 players for the 2 years before your iPod came out. The first modern MP3 player (not that one from 1979) came out in 1997. A PMP is different to an MP3 player - an MP3 player only plays music. A PMP can play music, video, text files & FM radio (on most brands.) Yet people at my work dumb it down and refer to my PMP as an MP3 player - absolutely pisses me off! Yet I don't show it pisses me off, I just later in the day refer to their iPod/PMP as an MP3 player. As he/she leaves work and is about to leave it behind I say 'Don't forget your MP3 player!' Out of spite.
My 'MP3 player' (PMP) can play more things than all of their iPod branded PMPs... No exaggerating either, none of theirs can play the FM radio or record from it, none can playback voice recordings from the internal mic, none of them can plug in any other PMP/iPod/phone/keyboard/tape deck/electric guitar and record from it then play back that audio, none can play FLAC lossless files either which are the main format of lossless audio available, can't just 'plug and play' from any computer without software on the computer to 'sync' it. Mine you can use those programmes or just simply plug it in, it pops up as if it were a portable USB Flash drive. Cowon brand PMPs have the best audio fidelity out of all PMPs, period. I do not own a Cowon BTW, I just know the facts about them vs all other brands. It is a bit of a sneaky thing that their CEO is the person in the Guiness Book of Records for world having THE best hearing out of everyone in the world and he personally tests every new model/line that Cowon is releasing.
With the different apps things on different smart phones - Apple's apps are 300,000 total and only 25% are free. Their store has been open for 30 months. Android apps are 120,000 and 60% are free. Their store has only been open for about 18 months.
ETA:
Clarke and Dawe Christmas special - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)