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Slashdot headline states something as fact. How do we know? We know because Dan Lyons, aka "Fake Steve Jobs," tells us:

"a person close to the situation tells me there’s a rumor going around among the lawyers that Apple spent $100 million"

An anonymous source reporting a rumor... becomes a plain ol' fact. Nice.

Did I mention that Dan Lyons is not terribly reliable and just loves calling people "Apple fanboy"? Mm-hm.

Slashdot headline states something as fact. How do we know? We know because Dan Lyons, aka "Fake Steve Jobs," tells us:

"a person close to the situation tells me there’s a rumor going around among the lawyers that Apple spent $100 million"

An anonymous source reporting a rumor... becomes a plain ol' fact. Nice.

Did I mention that Dan Lyons is not terribly reliable and just loves calling people "Apple fanboy"? Mm-hm.

Slashdot headline states something as fact. How do we know? We know because Dan Lyons, aka "Fake Steve Jobs," tells us:

"a person close to the situation tells me there’s a rumor going around among the lawyers that Apple spent $100 million"

An anonymous source reporting a rumor... becomes a plain ol' fact. Nice.

Did I mention that Dan Lyons is not terribly reliable and just loves calling people "Apple fanboy"? Mm-hm.

They changed that policy in late 2010. http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/app_store_guidelines

First of all, I'm against Apple's abuse of the patent system just as much as the average slashdotter, though I also think they're on similar footing with every other company. Not that this makes what they're doing good, but that's how the game is played these days.

However, I do feel the need to address this particular point:

> Everything they've "invented" is nothing but mashups of technologies that already
> exist in software frameworks made by people other than Apple.

Yet, for some reason, no one else on the planet has been able to combine these existing technologies as well or as successfully as Apple.

The iPod was not the first MP3 player, but far and away the best selling for ten years. The iPhone was not the first smartphone but it has over half the industry's profits with just 1/20th of the market. And then Apple came along with the iPad and sold more tablets in one year than the whole rest of the PC industry had sold in the previous (almost) decade.

When you say "They are a decade late to the smart phone race, but they claim to be the most prolific innovators in the market." -- can you look at this slide of what were the state-of-the-art smartphones at the time of the iPhone's release and really claim that Apple was not an innovator in the smartphone market? If not, can you explain why every single major manufacturer now makes phones that strongly resemble the iPhone?

If Apple is "just" stealing everyone else's ideas and adding no value to the mix, then their success ought to be easy to replicate, right? Or maybe you're wrong, and they are doing good work, and you're just unable to see just what it is they're doing.

And if you think all their success is "just" because of good marketing--well, that oughtta be easy enough to replicate too, right? Just go find a good marketing company and give them some money, right? Hell, if cigarette companies can sell things that will kill you, selling anything can't be that hard, right?

One other point: your claim that "they steal from the open source community" is flat out wrong. (At least in terms of what matters to the open source world--there, "stealing" means "using and not giving back." "Using" alone does not equal "stealing") Ever heard of WebKit? Apple started out with KHTML, drastically improved, it, and released it. A little company called Google also uses it.

If the FBI is using Carrier IQ data for investigative purposes, doesn't that call into question the earlier claim from security researchers that Carrier IQ isn't logging data?

If you read closely, you'll see that Carrier IQ's argument relies heavily on that data never hitting their servers. The fact that their keylogger-capable malware allows the carrier to extract that info, and consequently hand it to the FBI, is "not their fault" [1].

[1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/12/08/carrier-iq-interview

There's some detailed discussion on the topic on John Gruber's blog.

John Gruber is the most rabid apple fanboy of them all, he gets overly pedantic about details concerning apple but makes broad and disingenuous statements when it comes to android, which clearly shows bias. He could have said some HTC Android phones on some US carriers when referring to devices with CarrierIQ but he went with HTC Android phones, now that would be fine if wasn't so hypocritical when it comes to being pedantic about defending what apple does.

I'm interested. Can you give some details of the debunking?

There's some detailed discussion on the topic on John Gruber's blog.

I tend to agree with John Gruber of Daring Fireball that all of these rumors of larger screen iPhones are just bullshit, except for one detail: a larger screen would mean a larger phone body, which would allow for a larger battery, and would give even longer battery life. Battery life is the name of the game in mobile devices, and the larger display would give Apple an opportunity to get an additional leg up on their competition. It would also be helpful to have more battery capacity if they were upgrading the iPhone to 4G, which seems to need a lot more power.

While I tend to find Gruber's arguments about maintaining the dimensions of the UI by maintaining the dimensions and resolution of the display convincing, the change in dimensions of the iPhone interface going from a 3.5" to a 4" screen doesn't seem to be much of a concern. The greater concern is that the 4" screen is too large for many people to comfortably access the full screen with their thumb while holding the phone in the same hand (though that could be alleviated by narrowing the bezel around the screen).

So, while I'd love to bet against the rumor mongers clamoring for a 4" display on the next iPhone, I think that it might actually happen. A 4G phone will need a bigger battery, and I think Apple would rather make the phone face larger, than make the phone thicker, and that make a 4" display an easy sell.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/08/webos-fate - "When you’re faced with a “we need to stop the bleeding” problem, you need a fast decision."

I'm surprised more people don't just type up their ebooks in any text format using Markdown. Easy to write in whatever editor your have (for example, storing the manuscript in Dropbox, allowing one to write on their computer, their phone, their tablet, etc.) and then use Calibre to convert into whatever format you want.

There's something badly wrong about Apple.

Yes, they're great in may aspects. But there's something wrong with them.

I can't exactly say what is this, but a major part of it is that they hate non-Apple. In the early 80s they were hating IBM. Later they switched to Microsoft. Now Google and Android is the devil of the time. That's why being a fan of Apple usually means hating Google, Microsoft, Linux, FSF, and everybody else. I don't get it. I'm a fan of Apple, and am a big of lots of others too.

They think they are the only one doing actual work. Everybody else is copying Apple, but everything Apple does is new. They always talk about Apple's "innovation," and love talking about how everyone else is doing nothing but copying Apple. When we're talking about Apple products, they understand it very well that technology evolves, and Apple using already-available technology seems second-nature to them. When we turn to others... no, technology does not evolve. It begins at One Infinite Loop.

Also, they think everything Apple does is superior to every other competitor with no question. iTunes and iDevice don't support FLAC because they have Apple Lossless, but most of audiophiles have large collections of FLAC files. I remember John Gruber had lots of problems with a particular version of Safari, but the only solution he didn't consider was switching to another browser, because Safari is the browser.

And all of this comes from Steve Jobs' personality. That's normal because most companies are like their founders.

I wish Apple itself was half as good as their products.

For me the problem is the screen. 3.5"? I know there are bunch 1280x720 3D phones headed our way like the Aquas, but even Sony and HTC have 4.7" phones coming. Still what's a standard smart phone size these days 4.3"?

Hey, why not go straight to 5.25"? How about 8"? http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/thoughts_and_observations_iphone_4s

Sure there is a point where you can't go to big, but that article only talks possibly that Apple kept 3.5" because of it's usefulness?

One of the great things about 4" or bigger screen is that it's more useful because it's easier to type on. That article doesn't even bother to cover that.

Of course, the other other obvious benefits are browsing and watching videos on a larger screen. Really I don't think the size would even have to change much to get a 4" screen anyway as there is wasted space with plastic on the front of the iPhone.

Still think it is a major flaw to put a dual core CPU into something with a 3" screen. WTF?

For me the problem is the screen. 3.5"? I know there are bunch 1280x720 3D phones headed our way like the Aquas, but even Sony and HTC have 4.7" phones coming. Still what's a standard smart phone size these days 4.3"?

Hey, why not go straight to 5.25"? How about 8"? http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/thoughts_and_observations_iphone_4s

The quotation 'Samsung knows it can't rely on Google. We've decided to address Android IP issues on our own,' is erroneously attributed to Samsung by Korea Times, but was actually a quote from blogger Florian Mueller. You can visit DaringFireball for the details, but the false attribution seems to be as a result of a translation error.

DaringFireball

Analysts. Is there nothing they can get right?

http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/kumar_track_record

Going off on a slight tangent: I'm not a fan of John Gruber, but he's hit the nail squarely on the head with this one: http://daringfireball.net/2011/09/new_apple_advantage

No, not an apple fanboy.

...but I bet you read daringfireball... Not that there's anything wrong with that.

As J. Gruber of Daring Fireball points out, Google doesn't do open source as we would expect. An internal Google memo on Android development clearly states their policy:

• Do not develop in the open. Instead, make source code available after innovation is complete
• Lead device concept: Give early access to the software to partners who build and distribute devices to our specification (ie [sic], Motorola and Verizon). They get a non-contractual time to market advantage and in return they align to our standard.

This is not how open source is supposed to work. Open source doesn't mean "closed until we decide to make it open". Open source doesn't mean "closed until we and our partners can profit."

Gruber said it best :

“open and better” is a recipe for success; “open but worse” is a recipe for obscurity.

In other words... "open" is irrelevant to this conversation.

More like "open does not automatically equal better".

Or as a receipt: Make it better first. Then think about making it open.

"Microsoft, and Bill Gates in particular, were championing tablet computers years before the iPad was released"

"The punchline being that Microsoft’s 2001 Tablet PC initiative was the forebear to whatever it is that Apple seems poised to unveil, and Microsoft isn’t getting its due credit for this trailblazing effort. This is funny in two ways .. even if you’re only concerned about who was first, shouldn’t that credit go to Apple, for the Newton MessagePad that first shipped in 1993?" link

Gruber said it best :

“open and better” is a recipe for success; “open but worse” is a recipe for obscurity.

In other words... "open" is irrelevant to this conversation.

Gruber said it best :

“open and better” is a recipe for success; “open but worse” is a recipe for obscurity.

Doesn't this reduce to a tautology? "Better is better than worse"?

Gruber said it best :

“open and better” is a recipe for success; “open but worse” is a recipe for obscurity.

The number is actually closer to 20:1, based on figures from last month. Shipments may be going out 8:1 in favor of the iPad, but sales, at least prior to the TouchPad's fire sale, were closer to 20:1 in favor of the iPad. The difficulty is that the manufacturers, Apple excluded, are primarily offering units shipped in their quarterly reports, rather than units sold, so you have to do some calculations to put together the various figures.

Great non-reply

So where it the clock cleaning at?

http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2011/07/19/apple-3q-earnings-revenue-shatter-expectations/

http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance

iPads outsell Android tablets 20-1

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/08/24/beats.out.likes.of.tiffany.whole.foods/
Apple retail highest sales per square foot

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219467/Tight_supplies_push_up_prices_of_13_in._MacBook_Air?taxonomyId=76
Even the laptops are beating sales expectations

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/08/24/could.give.apple.74.percent.of.tablet.market/
And shipping estimates for iPads are increasing

The facts don't support your claims, unless you have other magical facts that aren't in business reports.

"Most people." You mean Google fans.

The real reason, as has been covered elsewhere (Slashdot submissions about it have been rejected, for some reason), is that Motorola's CEO was proclaiming just this month that his company would be waging a patent war against other Android vendors, during the time they would have been in negotiations with Google. In other words, Motorola strong-armed Google into buying them out rather than simply licensing their patents. The $12 billion is almost two years worth of Google's annual profits. Google was also motivated by the fact that Microsoft was looking into buying Motorola.

Apple isn't "sue-happy." People have been suing them, so they countersue in retaliation. I don't blame them seeing as how most of the Android phones are total rip-offs of the iPhone's hardware and software design. Android phones looked like this before the iPhone came out.

You cannot lend any credence to Thurott, he's a long time microsoft shill. He's also a proprietard that believes there is no room for free. That in and of itself is an indication of his fanboism.

When Gruber publicly agrees with Thurott (and it's not back-handed agreement), it's most likely anti-Google or anti-OSS position. These two are the biggest fanboys of the respective companies (Apple, Microsoft) on the Internets.

The reported numbers are all shipping share, not market share. The number of Android tablets being sold is pretty dramatically less....

Like Apple doesn't report the "shipping share".

No, Apple does not report shipping share for tablets and iPhones because they don't have to. They only recently caught up to demand for the iPad 2 which launched several months ago.

As much as you'd like to pretend Android tablets aren't selling, they are. Just like you said Android phones weren't selling, they did. Now the same is happening with Tablets.

As much as you'd like to pretend that Android tablets are selling, they aren't. Unlike the Android phone market, tablets are not sold subsidized with a voice and data plan so you are going to have to pay full price and go month to month which is why you will not see people buying a "free" android tablet like you saw with Android phones. People buying a tablet have to deliberate want to buy one. You can also buy a Wifi tablet which obviously does not have any data plan associated with it and in that case, people are overwhelmingly choosing the iPad 2.

Now Apple has to compete.

I'm still waiting. Android might be able to flood the market with cheap/free subsidized phones but the same thing will not happen on the tablet side of things and even people who bought an android phone originally are now switching to the iPhone because of the ecosystem of accessories and third party software available for it. Apple also has a cost advantage for components through economies of scale so android tablet makers have to sell at the same price if they want to compete and still make some profit. They cannot undercut Apple on price like they could with phones without losing money on every unit.

The reported numbers are all shipping share, not market share. The number of Android tablets being sold is pretty dramatically less....

Like Apple doesn't report the "shipping share".

As much as you'd like to pretend Android tablets aren't selling, they are. Just like you said Android phones weren't selling, they did. Now the same is happening with Tablets.

Now Apple has to compete.

Strategy Analytics is talking about units shipped. Unit shipments aren't the same as actual sales to customers. Microsoft used that same word-twisting when they tried to convince everyone that Vista was doing well. As John Gruber pointed out yesterday, what Strategy Analytics is calling market share is actually "shipment share." That's not market share in the way most people think of it. If you go by actual sales, the iPad has sold almost 30 million total, while Android tablets have only sold about 1.35 million.

I'm surprised Apple's earnings report didn't make it to Slashdot's front page. Sales of the iPad have tripled since last year, at 9.25 million, and iPhone sales more than doubled. iPad sales have been so successful that retailers reserved inventory space for them at the expense of PCs. PC shipments declined by about 6%, and the PC industry overall declined by 4.2%. I think that's the biggest untold story of all in this--after decades of growth, the PC is in a downward trend because of the iPad.

Because it's percentage-based and can therefore fluctuate based on total size, market share is not as important a figure as it's often made out to be. It can be used to paint a negative picture where there isn't one. It can also be twisted by citing units shipped rather than sold. The iPad is doing better than ever and doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. I realize that Slashdot is historically pro-Linux and will present Linux-based products as always "catching up" or being on the cusp of taking over, but there's just no evidence of that happening at this point in time.

The reported numbers are all shipping share, not market share. The number of Android tablets being sold is pretty dramatically less....

(Why the readme file is README.md, I can't guess.)

http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

"the appeal of writing code that will run on a variety of different devices"

That's just it. Apple wants to limit your ability to do that.

I just can't wait for the cloud bubble to burst so we can go back to having traditional software again.

I don't think it's likely to burst -- cloud-based data is just too useful (assuming, of course, that you have an internet connection and sufficient bandwidth, which can be pretty big assumptions). John Gruber, of all people, makes some pretty good points on the upcoming client-in-a-web-browser (Google) and client-as-a-native-app (Apple) wars: http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/its_all_software

Or, as John Gruber says, "Measure Twice, Cut Once."

It's not interesting nor sudden at all, these guys have been "crying wolf" for about a decade now.
        http://daringfireball.net/2011/05/wolf

          -dZ.

Here, take a look at this:

          http://daringfireball.net/2011/05/wolf

Now that the Mac is popular... any day now... for sure this time...

          -dZ.

The author of the article detailing the "explosion" (who is one of ZDNet's Microsoft reporters), got called out by John Gruber for declaring that Macs have reached the end of their free ride on the malware train, and that it's their turn to suffer as well (read through the article at Daring Fireball, since it's an interesting slice through time of what people have been saying on the subject of Mac malware since 2004). To say the least, he has a vested interest in making it look like it's a bigger issue than it is, since his credibility as a journalist is on the line. If this ends up being the non-issue (which is what I tend to lean towards), then he looks like the fool, and the addition of his quote to Gruber's piece is justified. If he can blow it out of proportion or can make people agree with him that the Mac's bubble has finally popped this time, then Gruber looks like the fool.

Regardless of who is right or wrong, Slashdot shouldn't be taking an article from someone who has such a clear conflict of interest (and even makes that fact clear in his introduction, no less!). Instead, it should be waiting for some actual verification from trustworthy sources. Of course, this is Slashdot, so I don't know why I was expecting otherwise...

Howl at the moon.

http://daringfireball.net/2011/05/wolf

I've seen things go the other way for the iPhone.

My tech friends who can't do what they did before on their android phones jailbroke. My nontech friends just don't care. Plus they have the excuse of wasting more time with Angry Birds.

The reality is, they're doing rather well for themselves.

As John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, said:

I don’t understand why so many reviewers bend over backwards to grade these things on a curve. If the iPad 2 had the problems and deficiencies the Xoom and PlayBook have, these same reviewers would (rightly) trash it, and declare (again, rightly) that Apple had finally lost its Midas touch.

These aren’t “beta” tablets. They’re bad tablets. It’s that simple. It’s true that their hardware seems closer to iPad-caliber than their software, but improving software is the hardest part of making products like these. By the time RIM releases “a serious software update or three” the entire market will have changed. The truth is, Motorola, Samsung, and now RIM have released would-be iPad competitors that pale compared to the iPad. Just say it.

The mass market doesn’t buy, and doesn’t want to buy, products based on what they might become months from now if these companies somehow dramatically improve the software. They buy products for what they are today, out of the box. Motorola and RIM and Samsung are Apple’s industry peers. These are the big leagues, this is The Show. They’re charging customers real money to buy these things. They should be judged by the same standards. Judging these things on a curve is the flip side of my criticism of Walt Mossberg’s iPad 2 review:

Stating the plain truth, that the iPad 2 has no serious competition as a mainstream consumer device, doesn’t make you biased. It makes you accurate.

I just replaced my cellphone with a cellphone. For $60.00 it does everything I need to do with this simple device. It can send and receive calls, I can text, and I can fit it into my shirt pocket. It does not have a touch screen, so, do I care? (Answer is No). I have 5 hours of talk time, 12 days of standby time. My phone can get stolen, stepped on, doused with water, and I won't cry. For $40 I can replace it. What a waste of money to spend on IPads in order to keep up with the Jones. What do my kids and I need that absolutely is essential to owning an overpriced gadget?

As John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, said:

I don’t understand why so many reviewers bend over backwards to grade these things on a curve. If the iPad 2 had the problems and deficiencies the Xoom and PlayBook have, these same reviewers would (rightly) trash it, and declare (again, rightly) that Apple had finally lost its Midas touch.

These aren’t “beta” tablets. They’re bad tablets. It’s that simple. It’s true that their hardware seems closer to iPad-caliber than their software, but improving software is the hardest part of making products like these. By the time RIM releases “a serious software update or three” the entire market will have changed. The truth is, Motorola, Samsung, and now RIM have released would-be iPad competitors that pale compared to the iPad. Just say it.

The mass market doesn’t buy, and doesn’t want to buy, products based on what they might become months from now if these companies somehow dramatically improve the software. They buy products for what they are today, out of the box. Motorola and RIM and Samsung are Apple’s industry peers. These are the big leagues, this is The Show. They’re charging customers real money to buy these things. They should be judged by the same standards. Judging these things on a curve is the flip side of my criticism of Walt Mossberg’s iPad 2 review:

Stating the plain truth, that the iPad 2 has no serious competition as a mainstream consumer device, doesn’t make you biased. It makes you accurate.

The short answer is because Apple couldn't know they would get a JIT javascript engine when they implemented web apps the way they did in iOS 1.

The long answer from Daring Fireball :

"The real answer is about security. Perhaps the biggest reason for Nitro’s performance improvements over WebKit’s previous JavaScript engine is the use of a JIT — “Just-In-Time” compilation. A JIT requires the ability to mark memory pages in RAM as executable, but, iOS, as a security measure, does not allow pages in memory to be marked as executable. This is a significant and serious security policy. Most modern operating systems do allow pages in memory to be marked as executable — including Mac OS X, Windows, and (I believe) Android1. iOS 4.3 makes an exception to this policy, but the exception is specifically limited to Mobile Safari.

It’s a trade-off. Most OSes allow marking memory pages as executable for performance reasons. iOS disallows it for security reasons. If you allow for pages of memory to be escalated from writable to executable (even if you require the page be made permanently read-only first), then you are enabling the execution of unsigned native code. It breaks the chain of trust. Allowing remote code to execute locally turns every locally exploitable security flaw into a remotely exploitable one.

[...]

Web apps that are saved to the home screen do not run within Mobile Safari. They’re effectively saved as discrete apps — thin wrappers around the UIWebView control. (That’s why they show up individually in the task bar, just like apps from the App Store.) Home screen apps may well eventually get access to the Nitro JavaScript engine — Apple simply hasn’t yet done (or perhaps finished?) the security work to allow it."

If you care, and don't just want to pretend Apple is EEEEVILL, you can easily find the reasons.

Here is a link to make it easier.

Short version: Security. Nitro uses JIT and that allows javascript to access memory as a native application.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball carefully lays out the situation in this post from a couple of days ago. I know that a lot of people like to make up all sorts of conspiracy theories and bizarre motives when it comes to Apple, but the truth is a lot more interesting and a lot less sinister: http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/nitro_ios_43

John Gruber had a good analysis of all this. Basically, the embedded UIWebView didn't change in speed between 4.2 and 4.3, but Safari did. The fact that outside apps didn't speed up has been called "Apple slowing down" other apps.

The new JS engine (Nitro) uses JIT, which needs writable, executable pages in memory. In iOS 4.2 and before, this didn't exist because of security concerns. In 4.3, it exists, but only for MobileSafari. Because of this, UIWebView in other applications can't use JIT, which is where the performance gains came from.

So it's a security thing. Apple has decided to error on the side of security here. That's the executive order, that they won't reduce the security (my speculation/interpretation). Android isn't being as pedantic about it. Gruber suggest it could be possible (in a future update) to run the JIT in a separate process, so the main process doesn't need the wrire/execute pages to keep security. It's a good idea, it'd be nice if Apple did it. I'm not sure it matters that much.

So the problem with this comparison is that instead of MobileSafari, they used something using UIWebView, which doesn't have the permissions to do JIT. Thus it's an unfair comparison, in that users will see faster speeds than they are reporting (since users will use Safari, they have no choice).

John Gruber made the same mistake earlier -- but you can still register for a free developer account and download Xcode without paying the $4.99.

Dirty Percent by Gruber.

Features are not simply check list items

There's some accounting for usability and polish. With Android, Symbian has nearly no advantages. Nokia played the emerging markets on volume, not profit margins. Now that they're being eaten on both ends of their product lines.