[Nexus 7 General] kiwilara:
I have to reply to this:

Firstly: Why is it essential (indeed even what purpose does it serve?) for Google to prevent people from being able to skip a non-essential [for getting to the boot/developer/device settings] step?

I found this post only in a desperate attempt to work out how to skip the screen.

So why do I want to skip the screen? Well I want to unlock and root the device (so I can do simple things like, have 2-way read/write access to a USB stick and actually use the really quite powerful processor and decent RAM the device has).

I've previously set the device up with my home Wifi network in its locked and unrooted state; but the problem is I do not have another computer at home so I can't unblock/root it at home. At work where I do have another computer, there is NO wifi access, well there are 2 sites I should legally be able to login to but their signal is so poor that I can't hold a signal long enough to get a connection that'll let me move past the setup wifi screen (I've been trying for hours but the signal is just too poor).

When you unlock the tablet, you of course lose all data including setup data; so now I need to go through google's setup again before I can get through to the homepage and actually root the thing (after which I won't presumably be forced to setup wifi, though once the device has a better ROM on it, it'll of course be going somewhere that actually DOES have a wifi network but NO other computer and getting its wifi setup; so I only need the wretched wifi setup thing to let me skip it just this one time!)

I don't have access to another computer anywhere where there is wifi; so I can't simply go somewhere else!

So back to climbing around the exterior of the building trying to get a signal that'll pass threshold for a couple of seconds to let me register it; a Wifi connection, I'll never use again, because my tablet is only in its current location so it can happily be unlocked and rooted by big brother PC; and somehow a Wifi connection that requires me to use all my limbs to hold myself and tablet from falling off the building and still lasts a few seconds at most strikes me as pretty unhelpful.

Basically the point is: developers can't think of every possible scenario people will be in; so why put in unnecessary restrictions just because you can't think of a way in which they could cause people problems.

I know Google wants us all to use the device as purely a device for internet media/entertainment consumption [if that wasn't the case; the tablet would have done everything I wanted straight out of the box--and not required, unblocking and rooting to regain its standard computer features]

But the reality of the electronics that are actually inside it; is that it is a full computer capable of doing everything we expect a standard computer to do: I wish to be able to actually use the full power of the transistors and IC chips I have paid good money for.

The fact that I have to hack a way its software shackles in order to be able to *let it run a different operating system;*use external hard drives; *connect to memory cards, etc [ummm all pretty basic, standard, non-geeky, non-hacker-ish stuff which I would have thought every user would want!!] and it further looks like I'll actually have to hack the hardware itself if I want to connect an external monitor is frustrating enough but I knew all that before I purchased the device. I knew I needed access to another computer in order to be able to root it; I didn't realise I needed access to both another computer and a Wifi network at the SAME time and thus require said computer and Wifi network to be present at the same location!

Sorry about the rant; it is google I'm frustrated with.