Ben, any idea what was up with Fox's NFL coverage this Sunday? Here in the DC area on our local cox network the HD feed seemed to be dropping frames. At first it seemed kind of retro but then it got really annoying really quickly. Did you notice it during the Tampa Bay game (sorry about that, by the way)?

Nilay - No offense, but to suggest that saying the "Hero is the best Android device to date," is "quite a statement" is a little over the top. Given what's come before it (not to mention the inexorable march of progress), what would be surprising would be if it wasn't the "best Android device to date."

lol!!! (Re. using a WM phone: That was a joke, right?)

This would perhaps be relevant if purchased music were locked to iTunes. It is not. All you have to do is drag and drop your DRM free music files to whatever device you would like. There is no lock-in.

@Mark

The essential nature of an operating system to the computing experience far outpaces that of the multimedia aggregator/jukebox software. The parallel that you attempt to draw bellies this difference; your comparison would be appropriate if OSX blocked the use of multimedia/jukebox software other than iTunes, but that is not the case.

Also, some point to the iTunes store's leading position in the retail music market as a reason that users shouldn't be locked into Apples hardware in order to use it's store. This is a perfectly reasonable argument. If if users were unable to "free" their purchased music from iTunes Apple would be at risk of an investigation by the FTC, but now that the iTunes music store is DRM free users are free to move their music files around to their heart's content. Yes, the process is a bit more cumbersome if they don't use an Apple device, but that's part of what you buy when you buy Apple: Seamless integration. Why should Apple have to provide/support seamless integration for their competitor's products?

Finally, you may point out that not all of the iTunes store is DRM free and you would be correct; the iTunes video store has not (and may not) reached the point of market dominance that the music store has, and thus, the threshold for what should or shouldn't be considered anti-competitive is different.

@Dannie
"anti competitive practices ie forcing people to use apple branded products to play back their music instead of being given a choice"

Yes, Apple is "forcing" people to use Apple branded products in order to take advantage of software that Apple provides for free. Is Apple "forcing" anyone to use its software? No.

Perhaps you should spend some quality time researching what anti competitive practices actually are.

Sicilian rail, actually.

Just out of curiosity (I honestly don't recall seeing this in any of the reviews), if your IM app is closed, as you recommend for battery preservation, do you receive a notification that when someone tries to IM you? Or, stated differently, does your IM logon persist when your IM app is closed?

E paper just seems like the worst of both worlds for newspapers: You loose the serendipity of browsing an actual paper and you don't have the web browsing capabilities of computer based content consumption.

During the podcast you mentioned that though AT&T's 7.2 network has been rolled out in Chicago it isn't available for regular subscribers. I think you indicated that AT&T was likely using a IMEI lockout.

Could you please let the guys over at classic in on this point. Based on what you said this post:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/20/iphone-3g-s-isnt-really-faster-than-the-3g-in-chicago/

seems to be drawing an entirely specious conclusion. Thanks!