Um... the iPhone reception is greatest of all phones, AT&T's coverage is poor. Maybe Joshua Topolsky doesn't understand that Apple and the iPhone are not the service provider...

I totally hate the latest iTunes store design. Its harder to find stuff.

AT&T is already pushing for metered data (pay per byte) ... this just supports their argument.

What can us laptop owners do that is similar to Back to my Mac?

Now, if only I could remember to do this once a week for backup...

Those of us using iPhones, iTouch etc are more or less very close to a web-only operating systems experience. Plus there are people like my parents who use Yahoo mail and Flickr etc. ... I am even trying to get my Dad to use PS online and/or the Flickr editing tools. We all want light and fast. We are uploading images direct to Facebook. And we are getting used to using app suites such as Google Docs. It's ultra convenient to be able to access your data from any internet capable machine. And a lot less IT headache and cost for an equitable set up than device-based operating systems.

We'll probably always have a second computer for the things you will miss, just the same.

Maybe the web-only operating systems should offer an option to store data locally?

My fantasy is to have the iPhone OS on a laptop (preferably an older Apple G3 or G4 laptop. Tho, the touch screen is a minor hurdle in that scenario.

The computer is a Mac mini core duo. 10.6 is installed on the Mac mini. 10.4 was installed on an external disk attached to the Mac mini at the time the Mac mini had 10.4 installed.

I do have the 10.4 disks, but I don't want to revert the Mac mini back to 10.4. I didn't try intalling 10.4 on another external disk because the current 10.4 on an external disk is not showing up as a bootable system.

There are no errors by Disk Tools on the external disk.

I would suggest navigating to Google Docs, dragging the favicon form the location bar in the browser to your desktop, saving it to a place where you wont delete it accidently, then putting it in your dock - or an alias on your desktop - or in the personal bookmark bar of your browser. Provided that you stay logged in to your Google account, you can get to a new spreadsheet in two clicks and about 5 seconds.

Hi over a year ago I installed 10.4 on an external drive to have as a backup. Since then I have updated my Intel Mac mini to 10.6. With that update I discovered some apps I need dont run in 10.6. I tried to boot from the external disk but it is no longer recognized as bootable start disk. Do you have any idea why and how I can boot from an older system on a Mac that has been updated to 10.6? I tried holding down C and/or Option at start up but that didn't work.

blah - with eyetv I can watch the cable I already pay for on my iPhone