Yeap, that's 12 miles from each side.

F# type providers already do that, also static types from CSV files, REST services and many others.

I didn't realize this until someone else mentioned it today. Thanks for bringing it up, very cool.

I explain how this differs from type providers here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462374

Cool!

Recommend Quora? Remind me to ignore your recommendations in the future.

As for Apple contributions, you should probably check out the lawsuits vs Samsung.

I know where the assertion about the round corners comes from.

Are you seriously claiming that this is all that Apple has contributed to the design of modern smartphones?

Travel to US? Oh man, you don't value your freedom and privacy enough.

Not true, contract component manufacturing made only 7% of Samsung profits last year. The value of the Samsung branded smartphones they ship out is by far their most important financial metric.

Samsung makes the best smartphones in the world ;-)

Also http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/pcs/NP940X3G-K01US

MS and Intel have the same partnership as airlines and hotels. Each wants their partner to make as little profit as possible, as that leaves more client money for grabbing.

Intel has been among the top 5 Linux kernel contributors for many years.

Many interesting arguments here.

I work at a software consulting firm, that charges $300+ per dev per hour. Excellent salaries, benefits, gaming consoles, free drinks and meals at the office, etc. Still the majority of the developers we're capable of hiring are incapable of understanding and applying concepts like monads, SOLID, low level async. Maybe the higher supply will only drive down the salaries of PHP&Co crowd.

Interesting - there are hundreds of millions of iOS devices out there and their average user spends more money on apps than the Android counterpart.

Are we already at the point where Apple is irrelevant to the app vendors?

I don't think so, because larger mobile operating system share (especially global, where you have to account for the Chinese and Indian markets) doesn't necessarily mean more people will actually be interested in your app, can find your app, or can run your app on their phones. Your potential market is larger, sure, but out of that larger customer pool how many will be able or willing to download and use your app, especially if it's something performance-intensive?

For a lot of people, the smartphone they buy is already fully functional for their needs out of the box. They get an Internet browser, media player, e-mail client, and some other utility/PDA features that are bundled with the OS. A lot of people will add 'service apps' like Facebook and Dropbox to access services they were already using, and then stop there. There is less of an incentive for people to go out and look for apps to make their smartphone more useful, like a 1990s computer purchaser going out and buying Microsoft Office and Quicken for their new otherwise-useless Windows box, and so I would argue that marketshare by itself is less meaningful a metric for comparing mobile and desktop platforms.

At least for big game companies iOS is still by far the number one platform. Many high profile games still aren't available on Android, Clash of Clans or Plants vs Zombies 2 or Kingdom Rush Frontiers just to name a few I've been missing in the last few months.