acqw's comments

Which Perl is this about: 5 or 6? They are practically not the same languages, so it's confusing.

Maybe you just expect that 5 can't be modern in any sense?

I agree! The 4:3 screens are much more useful for programming and reading the web, the "chopped off" are good only to watch wide videos. Are notebook users really mostly buying the notebook only to watch videos?

"There's simply no choice" -- I'd say of course, since consumers didn't care when they started to buy the worse ones, the manufacturers rightly concluded that they can kill the more expensive variants completely.

I've read more critiques of iPads that stated: "it doesn't have a wide screen." Were they written by competitors? Or are consumers really already trained to actually desire the worse?

Exactly! The main idea is to prevent the customer to easily compare features, especially with the offerings of other manufacturers, which would force the company to compete with lower prices, which is obviously undesirable. So it's really intentional in different businesses and there's a word for it, even if it's formulated by a cartoonist:

http://riskman.typepad.com/perilocity/2008/12/confusopoly-or...