Up until this week, there was absolutely no reason to believe Apple would approve a Gmail app (duplicates functionality, donchaknow), so why bother?

The quality of Sprint's network is heavily location-dependent. Every test I've seen that lauds Sprint and its 3G network tested it in large urban areas (NYC, Boston, Dallas, Chicago, LA). Where I live, however, Sprint doesn't even cover the suburbs adequately, much less the more rural areas. AT&T and Verizon are far better. A cursory perusal of Sprint's coverage maps suggest that many areas of the country are similar. Not everyone lives in the urban core, despite what tech bloggers seem to think.

Will the box include an upgrade to provide Sprint coverage in the places I need to use it?

They say they have some more graphs breaking down the various price points, which will be used in a future post, so you can all just calm down a little bit.

Munster actually says each Wal-mart store would have to sell 1,284 units in order for Wal-Mart as a whole to sell as many iPhones as all the Apple Stores combined. He does go on to say that this is doable, but I don't read it as a prediction that that's what the Wal-Mart channel will actually sell.

That would be an acceptable solution if the iPhone mail app automatically checked IMAP subfolders for new messages. It doesn't, so if you automatically filter your Gmail into work and personal labels, you'd never know that you have a new message until you manually open the folder. That's my biggest pet peeve about the app, actually - why does it only automatically check the inbox?

That's right - nobody buys iPods anymore, all because Wal-Mart has carried them for the last few years. I've never heard a single person say they like the iPod Touch ($227.88, $297.88 and $397.88 at your local Wal-Mart).

I'm not sure I'd worry too much about their servers. As of November, Opera Mini had 26 million users and was serving a billion pages a month, and I've certainly never noticed a problem. Skyfire would require far less infrastructure.

Who called it an iPhone killer? Pocket IE killer, sure. Opera Mobile/Mini killer, maybe. Why do we now insist that every product kill another one, and call it a failure if it doesn't? If it improves my Windows Mobile experience, that's a Good Thing, even if it doesn't destroy a product that competes in an entirely different market and appeals to entirely different customers.

Also, if you're worried about someone being able to monitor your browser usage, you probably shouldn't be using a product that relies on proxy servers. That applies to Opera Mini, too.

No, in theory it remains a bad idea. Given the elasticity of demand for luxury electronics goods, 1% isn't going to cut it. Try 50%. Increasing taxes to discourage "improper" behavior is ineffective at best. As for your health care argument, the relationship between gaming and obesity is really tenuous. But if you're going to propose a game tax because you shouldn't have to pay for my health care, make sure to add a cheeseburger tax, smoker tax, genetic-predisposition-to-cancer tax and a whole bunch of other taxes.