"The kiddies are really into this "messaging" fad these days, which makes QWERTY devices like the Neon from LG cheap and plentiful on virtually every carrier."

I don't think you understand just how insanely fast the "kiddies" can do the t9 messaging thing these days. I know my sister's kids can do txt on those far faster then anyone I know can on any qwerty kb, on a phone or full size on a computer.

@JCXgunrunna: Not without a blu-ray drive and making it not sound like a jet running in the room first.

IME, all carriers suck. They just suck in different ways (and levels) in different locations.

I live in San Diego. I started with Sprint many years back and I couldn't use my phone at home unless I walked outside into my front driveway. I finally switched to Verizon who was marginally better. When I canceled the Sprint account, the rep on the phone wondered if I'd stay with them if I got a discount. I asked him what good would that do when I couldn't use my phone inside my house? He, of course, had no answer to that and closed the account out.

Another couple years later I switched back to Sprint when they got the Treo 650s and had vastly improved their coverage in my area. I was relatively happy with them for some time.

Now I have AT&T because I wanted an iPhone. Yes, I have drunk mightily from the Apple kool-aid and find that it goes down very well. Sue me. :P In the last 14 months I've had it (a 3G) my experience has been mostly very good. Coverage has been great at most places. I've had a few places I don't visit very often that had little to no signal (or I dropped to Edge) but to be honest, it's been no worse then either Sprint or Verizon are. I've had exactly 1 dropped call that I know was my end (ironically my dad, on Verizon, drops while talking me to quite often while I have full signal), I'll caveat that with I'm not much of a phone user. I txt far more, and those never fail for me. I also use the ipod functionality, gps and other apps tons more then the phone. Having it all in one unit is what won me over though.

I read the linked kb the other day when a friend IM'd me that they'd put out the update. I love the 2 symptoms:
* You are using Apple TV software version 3.0 and all of your movies, TV shows, and songs appear to be missing,
or
* You are using Apple TV software version 3.0 and all of your movies, TV shows, and songs appear to be present, but you have not yet updated to Apple TV software version 3.0.1.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just say "We recommend all users of the 3.0 software update?"

I guess there's a form they followed though and it required symptoms or something.

I never had the disappearing issues, but updated anyway. Things have been running fine (and somewhat faster) since I updated to 3.0.

I thought the political spin was equal if anything... sure it seemed to be somewhat barely anti-obama with the whole "devotion" angle (and the scene about the questions where the main reporter jumped in). However, they'd already talked like all the current major problems in the world ("unecessary wars, economic problems" etc) were due to the visitor's influence.

Figure they're taking a page from Mel Brooks: Offend everyone, that way no one can claim to have been singled out. :)

I'm about ready to cut off all cable but local channels (the very basic package) and live a-la carte off iTMS. Yeah, some of the season passes are pretty expensive but spread out over the year, it'd actually come in slightly cheaper then the cable cost I've got now, and I've already been buying some shows due to lame time shifts (cutting off tivo recordings) and signal issues with cable anyway.

Got an AppleTV to watch things and have been pretty happy, though I've been thinking of giving a mini a shot in the future to allow for hulu and such as well.

Is it just me, or did they change the font as well? It seems to be slightly sharper and easier to read now.. or something.

Could just be my imagination.

@Marmite
I actually got my parents an aTV and they use it. My mom has bought a few seasons of TV shows and watched them. To me, that's a huge plus for Apple's designers. My parents are NOT computer savvy at all and if they can use it, it was designed well. My dad even sets up slide-shows and creates movies from his HD camcorder and uses the aTV to play it back. This is a guy that could never get a VCR to stop flashing 12:00 and needed me to fix them for him. They've both picked up stuff on Macs that they could never get going on a windows box over the years no matter how much I tried to teach them.

Apple may not be covering every aspect of the computer market (no low end desktops or laptops as is often pointed out) but they know what they're focused on, and they do it well.

Ditto.

The cost of shows of iTMS are admittedly high at times, but would be more then offset by dropping the expensive cable package required to get most of the channels I care about.

Actually, I got an email from Apple that there's a new Final Cut Studio release.. and the store seems to show a new one if you look for it.