Oh and to the point of this discussion, I'd love to see him there, but more than a cameo I doubt it. Most importantly I hope he is healthy and is able to stay in the game as long as he wants to.

Pretty sure AT&T doesn’t do video calling…

Skype does. So do a few other apps. If you can background them, so much the better.

I hear what you are saying, and those paranoid tendencies on the part of Apple are a big part of why I'm not so much of an Apple Fanboy. Those tolls and conditions are onerous and unwarranted. They are in many ways worse than anything Bill Gates ever dreamed up.

And no, I'm no particular fan of OS X. There is nothing new there, and its closed development will only relegate it to falling further behind.

Its not that I'm saying "Windows 7, Surface, Palm WebOS, Android, services like Hulu, Google, aren’t forward looking enough to be competitive".

But many of these are simply playing Catch-Up (WebOS, Android, Win7), and some are non sequiturs (Hulu and Google) because they are different businesses that Apple never really entered.

What I meant was where Apple competes head to head, they usually lead the way. Not necessarily by innovation, but always by execution. They do it slicker.

Android and Palm are still trying to catch up to First Generation of the iPhone, and Apple is about to launch the Third Generation.

In the coming years Android will over take Apple simply because it is open source and the weight of developers that can be brought to bear on the task will overwhelm Apples staff. That's a couple years away.

But by then, Apple will have moved the goal posts, and perhaps moved to another playing field.

Steve Jobs taught (Re-Taught?) Apple one thing since his return in 1997: You can't rest on your Laurels.

I can't see in anything in what I wrote would be damaging to the bottom line. How would Quicktime on Linux or Opera on the iPhone hurt their bottom line???

I take it that in your opinion that Windows 7, Surface, Palm WebOS, Android, services like Hulu, Google, aren't forward looking enough to be competitive, or that advertising such as Microsoft's aren't arguably detrimental to Apple's is short-sighted in my opinion. I have no knowledge of Apple's mega-secret operations, but if you think that the iPhone, Apple TV, and core business such as Mac OS X are perfect I don't think you realize how tenuous their lead is.

Insisting that Apple owns the road isn't necessarily a good thing. If people deem the tolls and conditions are unreasonable they will find another way.

I am sure you will not agree with any of that either--you will call me a chicken little, I will say you have your head in the sand. Isn't the Internet great? (You CAN call me cynical!)

@chris, I think some of the questions you ask might make one think "yeah wouldn't they want to me more open and less exclusive?" but if you think about why they aren't done that way and why apple chooses not to, the answers will be more clear.

In other news, Apple is being attacked on all sides:

Huh??!??

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say Apple is attacking all sides?

After all they didn't invent any of these markets, they just made them better.

If Jobs posted to this Blog, he would counsel against exactly this kind of bunker mentality. You mistake the normal course of business for something like and industry wide vendetta with malice towards Apple.

You can only be "attacked on all sides" if you are standing still. If you weren't such a pessimist you would see they are attacking where Apple WAS. Not where Apple is GOING. Nipping at the heals, not blocking in the road ahead.

I say this not as an Apple Fanboi, (I'm far from that, and this "all things to chairman Mao" cult worship of Jobs frankly makes me ill), but rather as a simple observer of business cycles. IBM hand its time in the sun, (so did SUN), ad did Microsoft. Right now its Apple. But far from being ganged up upon, Apple is still pulling away from the competition.

Stop thinking of Apple as the puppy caught in traffic. They own the road.

In other news, Apple is being attacked on all sides: computers, players, operating systems, music and entertainment, and now phones. The ascention of Apple since 2001 has placed them squarely in the crosshairs of the technology and entertainment companies that (I feel) seek not only displace Apple or steal their thunder, but to make them extinct. (Though what MS would do without companies like Apple, Sony, Google and even historically Novell, etc... to cobble their ideas from I don't know.)

Apple needs a leader that can move them to the next level, and it may take approaches that are foreign to them. More strategic partnerships--for example Hulu on Apple TV is just one idea, they need to extend the kind of work they have done with Google on the iPhone to other avenues of their business, especially enterprise computing. A higher degree of openness--imagine Quicktime on Linux, even as a closed source installer, and why not Opera and other browsers on the iPhone just to name a couple examples? Apple also needs to foster a degree of goodwill rather than arrogance--rejecting apps arbitrarily, alienating developers, arrogant computer pricing, paranoia in trying to protect high-ticket products from cannibalism by low-end devices. I can go on and on.

No company can be an island. Though it has provided Apple with the growth they needed since '97, enemy subs and missles are closing in. Apple needs an updated strategy to take them into the next decade. Whether that comes from Steve or not, hard to say. But it doesn't take much for big firms like GM and Sony to stumble. And competing against Microsoft isn't easy considering most of their money comes from selling licensing. Apple needs to constantly step up their game and think differently than ever--the stakes are definitely higher.

You heard it hear first.

I worship the Jobs and I will go to Mac Heaven.

Can someone help me write an Apple bible?

"Adam, 10:31; For he who worships the great Jobs will transcend into the afterlife through the aluminum gates of Apple heaven, filled with 60" cinema displays, 40" iMacs, and 10th generation iPhones with every possible function you can imagine."

We also want to know that the iPhone has evolved (or will evolve) amazingly way faster and greater than the competitors.