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As someone who pays state income and sales taxes, I assure you it is no theory.

As someone who also pays state income and sales taxes and municipal property taxes I assure you the theory barely holds up in actual practice.

For example, Wisconsin just gave Foxconn $4.5B in incentives to build a plant that will be largely lights-out - which means its almost fully automated with a minium support staff on hand just to keep the automation running. And on top of that, they gave foxconn special legal status that lets them unconstitutionally bypass most local courts.

If these 20 cities were smart, their mayors would ban together and make a "no incentives" pact. Let Amazon come to them, instead of selling out their citizens for 30 pieces of silver.

I agree. The bad thing is that this level of neglect from Apple does not suggest a long future for any apps you buy through the Mac App Store and, perhaps, the Mac platform itself. Interesting take.

Riiight, will those "facts" include the fact that Google was caught rigging search results to be Pro Clinton? Or how about the fact that Eric Schmidt is working for the Clinton Campaign? How about the fact that Google has a meeting a week with the Obama administration?

Xiaomi is an embarassing iPhone knock off. Just look at their website.

At least Apple can do Product Placement right.

Look what happened when Microsoft tried to do the same:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://macdailynews.com/2016/0...

Their phone was released 6 months before the iPhone. Unless you think that they invented time-travel, the odds are that their design was completed long before the iPhone in question was released.

Yeah, it probably was, but can you say that these two designs really resemble each other?

Six months? How long before release do you think Foxconn was making iPhone 6 prototypes for Apple?

People around here have absolutely no concept of how long product design cycles are.

I wouldn't be at ALL surprised if Foxconn was making iPhone 8 prototypes right now.

Their phone was released 6 months before the iPhone. Unless you think that they invented time-travel, the odds are that their design was completed long before the iPhone in question was released.

Yeah, it probably was, but can you say that these two designs really resemble each other?

Screen, speaker and mic in front - check.
Front-facing camera and rear-facing camera with flash - check.
Rounded edges - check.
Uses an operating system that allows the installation of apps - check.

Got to admit it, the iPhone 6 does share those innovative and unique features. /s

Their phone was released 6 months before the iPhone. Unless you think that they invented time-travel, the odds are that their design was completed long before the iPhone in question was released.

Yeah, it probably was, but can you say that these two designs really resemble each other?

More to the point is just how different can the exterior of smartphones actually be - especially from a practical standpoint? The devices are only so big, intended to be held in identically-shaped hands and used in the same way. Many internal components, like batteries, are very much alike and limited in shape and size, so components can only be arranged in certain configurations. Buttons, cameras and microphones (etc) are limited in their locations due to usage needs. From a practical standpoint, it would seem that these devices must be more alike than different.

Yeah, it probably was, but can you say that these two designs really resemble each other?

Nope, but then it does have round corners so by legal precedence they are identical.

Their phone was released 6 months before the iPhone. Unless you think that they invented time-travel, the odds are that their design was completed long before the iPhone in question was released.

Yeah, it probably was, but can you say that these two designs really resemble each other?

They both look like an iPhone 4 to me. or maybe an iPod touch.

On second thought, they really do look like a Palm PDA without the buttons.
Yep. I'm going with they're both copies of the Palm.

Their phone was released 6 months before the iPhone. Unless you think that they invented time-travel, the odds are that their design was completed long before the iPhone in question was released.

Yeah, it probably was, but can you say that these two designs really resemble each other?

Embrace, exploit, excommunicate. Why bother with prior art when your government is so corrupt? Just imitate, register, and sue, like with the handbag company that won the right to rip off the iPhone name. They didn't come up with it, but because foreign companies will apparently always be treated like garbage in the Chinese IP framework, they now have control. This process will probably continue until Apple gives up and starts avoiding China altogether, or, like the software companies that can't get licensed because of protectionism, greed, and probably racism, license everything to a Chinese company at a massive loss. There's no way the Baili 100C was designed in ignorance of past iPhones.

"...the iOS malware exploits a flaw in Apple's DRM software"

O The Irony.

Trying to protect their profits creates a situation that will almost certainly cost them money.

Perhaps you have forgotten this, which clearly explains Apple's actual stance on DRM.

There wouldn't have BEEN a digital music market if Apple hadn't figured out a reasonable compromise on DRM.

And, if you recall, Apple DROPPED DRM from their Music files YEARS ago. FairPlay is just hanging around for the people who never updated their old DRM-ed music files.

The only reason they did that is because Amazon beat them to it and was taking their customers away. If not for competition, Apple never would have removed DRM.

2/6/2007
http://macdailynews.com/2007/0...

"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music."

  "Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."

5/30/2007

Apple starts selling DRM free music

https://www.apple.com/pr/libra...

9/25/2007
Amazon starts selling DRM free music,
http://readwrite.com/2007/09/2...

As you were saying?

China has not banned any Apple products. Some were not included in the "green" catalog because Apple failed to submit data.

While it wasn't without warrning sort of thing, something related would be when Microsoft shutdown the PlaysForSure music service (http://macdailynews.com/2008/04/23/microsoft_to_shut_down_playsforsure_drm_services_strand_customers/) which had the effect of locking music bought to whatever current allowed pcs and no others due to DRM.

This was the one I was thinking of.

A lot of them only make sense if they assume you already have an iPhone, and in no way justify buying a new one for however many hundreds of dollars those run these days.

1. Not even sure what that wrist-mounted glowy app thing is about...some sort of sexified musical instrument?
2. A metronome, you can get for like 10 bucks at any music store.
3. I'm assuming the mic stand one is some sort of lyric display app? Just print the damn thing.
4. Using it as a video game controller? Fuck no.
5. Kids taking a video -- any smartphone these days can do that, I'm sure. Or even cheapo digital cameras.
6. Music display for marching band -- just use your freakin' sheet music! Totally unnecessary. I should know; I did band. Not to mention it's probably a hell of a lot easier to flip physical pages of music when you have 2 whole fast-time measures of rest than desperately hope that your swipe registers correctly on the first try.
7. And then there's the different bits where people are just pointing it at random stuff. Taking pictures? Big whoop.

Maybe if I already had an iPhone for some reason and these apps were all less than $5 each I'd think about it. But just the fact that these are all probably paid apps seems to undermine the entire point, as the conventional option would probably be barely more expensive. And if you have an iPhone, you don't give a fuck about money anyway, right?

leaving the store with no parasites attached to me.

Oh? What about.....

Want music? Itunes only.
Upgrade hardrive? No.
Ebook from Amazon? No.
Boobies? Censored.
Buy Apple? Koch profit*.
App developer? Not until it's blessed. Someday.
Child labor? wat**?

Not trying to be an ass, just pointing out that Apple isn't as squeaky clean as they would have you believe. Behind the "curtain" is just another megacorp doing all the typical megacorp crap.

[*] http://macdailynews.com/2013/09/10/koch-brothers-make-offer-of-7-billion-for-apple-supplier-molex/

[**] http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/01/25/former_executives_accuse_apple_of_ignoring_supplier_labor_abuses

Um, if you want define "mistake" as "making lots of money", then yeah, they made a "mistake". If you look at usage stats though what you see is a very different picture. For instance, iPhones still dominate in mobile web usage, as well as app usage etc.

Apple is actually selling more iPhones than ever, even if their market share is falling. A big portion of the Android increase is coming in the form of people replacing "dumb" phones with smart phones, but as the usage stats show, many of them are still treating them like dumb phones. Apple has carved out a niche, and seems to be doing quite well in that niche without the need to sell an iPhone to every single user on the planet(which given their business model won't necessarily make them more money).

Apple's situation now is not really comparable to the situation in the 80s. Maybe when large #s of devs start jumping ship, but you will still be hard pressed to find a large # of apps(note the pedants, I didn't say 0) that are available for Android but not iPhone.

The question I have is why does a company that has trust in it's customers need to be a member of anti-piracy groups like the Business Software Alliance [1]?

There are two things that has bothered me about people claiming Apple should be praised for allowing people to choose if they want to buy iWorks/iLife or just continue using the trial version:

(1) Steve Jobs had once claimed that with the upgrades of Mac OS X that "And everyone gets the ‘Ultimate’ version."[2] He was referring to Windows providing some features only if you upgrade to the highest priced flavor of the OS. But the truth is that Mac OS X by itself doesn't have all of the features of Windows Ultimate. It didn't have it back in 2007 when Steve Jobs made the statement and still doesn't now. For everyone to get a Mac OS X that has feature for feature what Windows Ultimate provides, Apple should have just bundled iLife and iWorks with Mac OS X.

(2) The true cost of using iLife and iWorks is not the initial purchase price but rather the vendor lock-in. Once someone becomes used to using iLife/iWorks as part of their daily routine, it is somewhat jarring to switch to another application. There are other alternatives that do similar things but they are not the same. While Apple has a set of libraries to makes it possible to port their application to Windows (as they have done with iTunes), iLife/iWorks mostly is only available on Mac OS X. The iCloud flavor of some of the apps is very much beta and incomplete. So, the bottom line is once you become accustom to iLife/iWorks, regardless of how you got hold of the applications, you are much more likely to continue using Mac OS X since those applications lock you into OS X to continue to use them.

Worst of all, Apple has a history of distrusting their users to let them know what products which where marketed as having a "flawless design" clearly have serious design flaws (overheating, not being able to power on after a shorter than expected life, not able to make phone calls when held a common way, etc). To claim Apple trust of it's customers is a beautiful thing is just failing to look at the big picture when it comes to Apple.

[1] http://www.bsa.org/about-bsa/bsa-membership
[2] http://macdailynews.com/2007/10/16/apple_mac_os_x_leopard_leaps_october_26/

http://macdailynews.com/2013/07/15/apple-to-probe-electric-shock-death-of-chinese-woman-who-used-iphone-5-while-it-was-charging/

Here's a sample:
_____________
Rubbish. Here’s our own government handing the keys to our future economic prosperity over to Korea wholesale.

The sound of the jobs being flushed down the toilet may be your own.

Jubei
Friday, December 7, 2012 - 5:53 pm Reply
_____________
Agreed. All this hard work from Apple invalidated giving the green light to slavishly copy them. The US is heading down irrelevancy by its own government.

khryshimself

Read more at Link

They don't need to lobby because Apple zealotry is unfortunately strong enough as it is.

And before the iPhone, cell phones had lots of buttons, and everybody believed they were essential--until Apple released a one-button phone.

Yeah just look at all the buttons on the LG Prada phone
http://macdailynews.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/070116_lg_iphone.jpg

The first comment on that article is freaking hilarious in hindsight:

HmmI have to imagine it’s going to be tough for LG to win this one, simply because the entire industry is probably going to move to handsets that look more or less like this–an iPod sized brick with a touchscreen. From that perspective, they’re all going to look more or less the same.
Read more at http://macdailynews.com/2007/01/16/lg_undecided_about_lawsuit_against_iphone_over_similarities/#4wgueCTToLIIggzI.99

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-comeback-story-2010-10?op=1
http://macdailynews.com/2009/04/14/steve_jobs_engineered_apples_resurrection/
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-return-19972011-10062011.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

I could go on forever on this one. It's very well documented that in 1997 Apple was extremely close to bankruptcy (some speculate days away) when Steve Jobs, then brought back to Apple as an "interim CEO", negotiated with Bill Gates to have Microsoft invest in Apple to the tune of $150M.

Thank you, that's exactly the only-reading-the-headlines garbage I was expecting you to come up with.

So let's look at the facts, shall we? I already linked you to Apple's quarterly filings.

The CNet article you cited in which Microsoft promised $150,000,000 was published August 6, 1997.
Apple's quarterly report Filed 08/11/97 for the Period Ending 06/27/97 showed that Apple had $1,018,000,000 on hand.

Look at those numbers again:
150,000,000 - Amount Apple got from MS
1,018,000,000 -- Amount Apple had sitting in the bank

The number on top is less than 15% of the number on the bottom. That's not rescuing a company from bankruptcy. That's a bad tip at a restaurant.

You may want to review this important lesson on honestly representing the difference between millions and billions.

Of course, Steve Jobs' ego knew no bounds, and he loved to say that he single-handedly rescued Apple with Bill Gates' money. But that's just not true. The benefit Apple got from BillG's pocket change was that it satisfied Microsoft that Apple was no longer a threat, so that Apple could build itself up to where it was a threat.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-comeback-story-2010-10?op=1
http://macdailynews.com/2009/04/14/steve_jobs_engineered_apples_resurrection/
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-return-19972011-10062011.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-202143.html

I could go on forever on this one. It's very well documented that in 1997 Apple was extremely close to bankruptcy (some speculate days away) when Steve Jobs, then brought back to Apple as an "interim CEO", negotiated with Bill Gates to have Microsoft invest in Apple to the tune of $150M.

Wow that's a thoughtful, complex post. Let's deal with these issues one at a time.

Para 1: Bill is gone. Bill Gates remains the chairman of the board at Microsoft, and hand-picked all the other board members - who pick the CEO and evaluate his performance, give him goals and guidance, set his pay, bonuses and options, and set policy. Bill is still very much responsible for what goes on there, and weighs in on every big decision.

Para 2: Steve Ballmer. You neglected to mention the sea of red ink that is Microsoft's Online Services Division. I happen to like the direction Steve Ballmer is taking Microsoft. Clearly this is a man with vision and purpose who is ready and able to take the company where I want it to go. It takes Marvel Comics level superpowers to get rid of this much cash flow, to destroy a 42 percent success in mobile market share from 2007 given their advantages and high hopes, to so capably destroy the morale and productivity of the world's best developers, to put a company with this much income in $55B of debt. So let's lay off of Steve-o, mmkay? I like him where he is, sweaty shirt and all.

Para 3: No more Big, Bad MS. With the OOXML debacle that nearly ruined ISO, their recent rape of Nokia, their current ongoing rape of OEMs, retail vendors of both their products and Windows PCs, their planned rape of software distributor partners, developers and competing independent software vendors and much much more they prove every day that they have not changed. Last week they confirmed they're going to murder the advertisers they bought relationships with in an acquisition by making "Do Not Track" the default in IE. Just yesterday it came out that the new replacement for Hotmail, Outlook.com is incompatible with Android. The "new kinder, gentler Microsoft" is a myth. They have now declared war on absolutely everybody on Earth, including the people who pay for their products and excepting only the Women's Temperance Union and media executives. Naturally this means I expect them to announce an embedded bittorent feature for IE that involves a drinking game next.

Para 4. Ballmer outbound. Steve Ballmer is not retiring for another seven years at least, when his last kid goes off to college.

Para 5. Immortal desktop victory. It's not enough to take ground. Once you take ground, you have to hold it. MS won mobile with 40% share too [link above], once upon a time. And now they'r

It's the same mindset that believed Steve's FUD when he blamed publishers for DRM in iTunes, saying he wanted rid of it but they just wouldn't let him, despite the fact his competitors like Amazon and eMusic at the time despite having much smaller stores and much less clout managed to get DRM free contracts from the publishers no problem.

A little history lesson....

1. When the iTunes store was first introduced, there was no way to buy individual songs from mainstream artist per song that you could basically burn to CD. Even Bill Gates said in emails that came out during trial how impressed he was at SJ's ability to negotiate such lenient restrictions.

2. The industry wanted Apple to license FairPlay to other manufacturers. Apple said no. Instead, if they were allowed to by the music companies, they would sale their music without DRM if allowed and there wouldn't be an interoperability problem. (January 2007 Steve Jobs "Thoughts on Music");

This was original posted on the front page of Apple.com
http://macdailynews.com/2007/02/06/apple_ceo_steve_jobs_posts_rare_open_letter_thoughts_on_music/

3, The music industry wanted variable prices (i.e. higher prices). Apple refused. In return, the music industry except for EMI and some independents refused to allow DRM free music.

4. Slashdot Wisdom (sic) was that Apple never intended to sale DRM free music or license FairPlay and they were waiting to call Apple's bluff.

5. Apple started selling DRM free music from EMI *before* Amazon music store came online.

6. Apple started selling the iPhone but was not allowed to sell over the cellular network without a new license. The music industry refused because Apple wouldn't sell at variable prices.

7. The music industry started letting everyone else sell DRM free music to break Apple's monopoly -- it didn't work (around August 2007).

8. Apple wanted to be able to sale music via the cell network so they caved to the variable pricing.

it was about making sure that when the non user replaceable battery in your iPad ran out after 18 months to 2 years you couldn't fuck off to a competitor with your content very easily, no you had to buy Apple again.

Do you realize how many Android phones and tablets are now coming with non-removable batteries?

With Apple it's always about control, DRM in iTunes was entirely about control, it was about making sure that when the non user replaceable battery in your iPad ran out after 18 months to 2 years you couldn't fuck off to a competitor with your content very easily, no you had to buy Apple again.

Which "content"? Apple been selling DRM free music for four years. How do you propose running even a non-DRM'd app compiled for iOS on another device?

Who sells non-DRM'd mainstream video?

I certainly agree that their current rate of growth isn't sustainable (an article a few weeks back pointed out that if they do sustain it, they'll pass the GDP of France and Spain in a few years), but to suggest that a bust is imminent in the near future seems foolish, though a plateauing seems likely.

Depending on which analyst you choose to believe and how you categorize devices, they have somewhere between 55% and 75% market share in the tablet market, which is quickly shaping up to displace a large portion of the PC market (last quarter Apple sold more iPads than the PCs sold by each of the major manufacturers). Their lead there, while it's sure to take a few hits in the coming years, will be strong enough to sustain them for quite some time to come, especially as that market grows and Apple's sales grow to match the market. Android has yet to prove itself credible competition in that space (the two leading Android tablets, the Nook Color and the Kindle Fire, are both still being sold at a loss), but Windows 8 might be able to disrupt things.

Smartphones are an area where there's much better competition, but they have a healthy market share there, and their profit share is over 75% for the entire cell phone industry (Source). Again, they seem to have set up a winning business model that will keep them running for years. Likely not at this growth rate, but at least at the current level of operation.

Even the Mac has been seeing growth. Apple has been the only major manufacturer posting sales growth in the PC market consistently for the last five years. Apple posted sales growth of over 20.7% for their Mac line last year, compared with a sales decline of 5.9% for the industry as a whole. If you pull Apple's growth from that -5.9% for the industry as a whole, the other manufacturers were collectively down 8.5%. (Source)

And really, while this might seem like a lot of new jobs, it's not atypical for Apple. In 2002 they had roughly 12,000 employees. By 2011 they had over 63,000, and they saw their revenue go from $5.7B to $108.2B in that time. Adding another 3600 is in line with what they've been doing, and it wouldn't make sense to consider it to be a case of over-hiring any more than it would make sense to consider their addition of roughly 5,000 employees a year over the last ten years that way. Clearly the stategy has been working for them so far. (Source)

Again, I don't doubt that their growth will slow in the coming years, but I think it's a bit early to say that a bust is coming. If anything, they're likely to stall out as they reach their full potential.

... of what Siri is. BBT, Season 5, episode 14 clips

Wow, you sure have the least facts out of anything I've ever seen. Last I checked the amount of facts there, is zero.
"Yes, they're Evil" Ok, you create a point of your own. WHY? where is the actual explanation instead of a waste of text?

Tell me, since when does open source (which doesn't mean what you falsely imply it does) explicitly say they can't do what is exactly within the apache license, dumbass? That was a link directly from slashdot.

Apple makes all sorts of excuses for lockdowns. They are not real "bad user experience" excuses. They are censorship. . That's not the same as a "bad user experience" as defined by google.

So lets look back. Google makes honeycomb, it looks like shit (and runs horribly), so they say acknowledge it publicly stating "bad user experience". Apple goes anti-jailbreaking and uses the excuse of "it's a bad user experience"? Do you understand the difference between the two? methinks you're somewhere between petarded and a complete fail.

Since you seem to be incapable of using a search engine:

http://macdailynews.com/2011/04/07/gartner-microsoft-windows-phone-market-share-to-surpass-apples-ios-in-2015/

've always loved how "it was because of the record companies". You know, that clearly was the truth, especially with how Apple refused to license their DRM to third parties which would have then allowed one to migrate their media collection to a non-Apple product. Yes, I'm certain that Apple had no interest what-so-ever in a vender lock-in, where if you moved away from their products your entire media collection, and all that money you spent would effectively have been thrown away. And Apple removed the DRM and all that media library vendor lock-in strictly from the kindness of their hearts and not in any way because they could see other competitors which were DRM free that were up and coming and feared losing their monopoly on digital music distribution.

Facts are your friends. Here is the real sequence of events....

1. Apple introduced iTunes. The labels insisted on DRM. SJ said that DRM "didn't work" and was able to negotiate a very lenient use model.

2. In early 2007, the music industry wanted Apple to license FairPlay. Apple said no and SJ posted his "Thoughs on Music" letter on the front page

http://macdailynews.com/2007/02/06/apple_ceo_steve_jobs_posts_rare_open_letter_thoughts_on_music/

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

3. The music industry wanted a deposit and variable pricing. Apple refused both.

4. EMI agreed to sell DRM free music.

5. Amazon, Walmart, etc. agreed to the industry terms but made no dent in iTunes market share. On the other hand Apple wanted license to sell songs over the cellular. Part of the compromise was variable price music and removing DRM.

My Tab10.1 is just a severely under-powered laptop/tablet-pc. In very short order we'll have 10hour batteries and 1.5 pound weight in an x86 machine just like we have with tablets. And then everyone will just go back to using full computers again.

When that happens Apple will just load OSX with all the iPad-like features they are putting in there now and tell app developers to flip a switch to make their apps a universal ARM/x86 binary. That's the advantage they have from keeping tight control over how the API is used. They have explored different scenari's to cover this from a tablet that slides into a pc-like docking enclosure, to an iMac that switches between touch and normal modes. The tablet will evolve.

iPads are not included in those figures.

Except that they are.

Now we all know you're tragic fanboy and have trouble admitting this but Apple and Jobs himself are experts at lying through statistics. I know every company does it to a degree, it's called PR but Apple turn it up to 11.

The statistic that "Apple is 10% in the US" is including Ipads and ignores the fact that the US is a very small market. It also disguises the fact that Apple isn't doing so well in the rest of the world. Now the US PC market is shrinking whilst the PC market in Asia is growing but Apple's share in the Asian market is practically non-existent.

Lying through statistics is easy when you cherry pick what statistics to show. 78% of people know that.

We know hater trolls love to hate, and you're like stuck records, but repeating it often enough with your face all scrunched up and *really wishing hard* will not make it true.

http://macdailynews.com/2011/01/12/gartner_apple_mac_posts_24_yoy_growth_to_grab_9-7_u-s-_market_share/

Check table two - it shows Apple's 9.7% share, and then specifically mentions this quote right underneath. It's hard to miss.

Note: Data includes desk-based PCs, mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablet such as the iPad. Source: Gartner (January 2010)

Next time you want to troll, stick to facts - you won't look so foolish.

A South Korean company blocking the import of Chinese made products of a US company on the basis of US patents. Amusing. Also, it's not going to happen. At least not this election cycle.

... but wow, what a fanboyish piece of shit. There is nearly no mention of Apple after its origin.

Leading into Windows 1 (after talking about Xerox, the Lisa, and the first Mac) he says "The era of GUI's was about to start. But apple [sic] was not meant to be the king."

Oh really?

- Vista copied many features straight out of Tiger
- I think we can all agree that WP7 would not look like it does if the iPhone had never been on the scene
- And now, after ten years of making poorly-selling tablets, Apple has shown how it should be done and MS is falling over themselves trying to catch up

I'm not saying Apple has never copied anything either, but once the article hits Windows 1.0, it is all about MS. He goes from Windows 3 to Microsoft Bob, lays down exactly 10 words about Windows 95, then goes straight to XP, Vista, and 7. He dismisses over two decades of Mac OS with the words "In the meantime, Mac OS was undergoing a similar, slow evolution."

He then says "Last couple of years were really eventful. New families of computing devices became wildly popular -- smartphones, netbooks, tablets. Mobile operating systems became almost as complex and capable as desktop ones. Multi touch technologies challenged the age-old interface design, and required new approaches. And now Microsoft tells us the future belongs to tiles." and the rest of the article is about Windows 8 and tiles. REALLY? No mention at all of the iPhone, who was the first to market with multitouch, even if they didn't invent it? No mention of Palm, or WinCE or BeOS or the Amiga or a million other omissions? Come on. If he isn't a shill, he's got a BIG set of blinders on. If you want to see the history of GUIs, go here. They have a ridiculously thorough collection of screenshots.

This should not have been rated as insightful because it's wrong. Android is eating RIM market share, it has not touched the iPhone. And then, let's not forget that the iPhone was tethered to the horrible AT&T until Apple released the Verizon iPhone.

What was the result for Android? Don't forget about the iPod touch either. It has no competition and it continues to bring people into the iOS ecosystem in droves. While we wait for a competent android tablet, the iPad has been revised and is starting to eat into the overall PC industry.

The real question for Android is what will its future be. Seems to me Android is becoming the new feature phone. I've seen many android phones in the wild and most of them are used by people who want cheap, decent phones and don't really give one whit what OS they're running. They don't care about apps, and outside the Facebook app most haven't bothered to download anything else.

What's going to happen when Verizon starts selling the iPhone 4 at a $99 price point when iPhone 5 ships? Cheap suddenly isn't an advantage anymore. Didn't Blackberry try the same strategy along with BOGO? Android has been BOGO since the beginning. Picking off all the low-hanging fruit doesn't necessarily guarantee a long term win.

So they are fine with an app bashing the Bible and Christianity, but not anything bashing the Quran and Mohammed...

http://macdailynews.com/2010/05/20/apple_pulls_islam_muhammad_app_from_app_store_with_video/

I mean, not that I care in the slightest for either religion, but their hypocritical free-speech-when-it's-convenient defense is getting old...

Apple takes out a LOT of patents each year, the vast majority of them will never be used or are just there to cover their ass, including I might add something very much like what you were suggesting a couple posts up. What you are linking to seems to be some sort of specialty artists' pen like the ones Wacom makes rather than a general purpose stylus. It makes sense for Apple to take out some patents in case they ever want to move into that market with the iPad.

Have you actually used an iPad ? I use one daily and accidental touches are so rare I cannot offhand think of a single instance (though I'm sure there must have been.) You sound a lot like how I thought about touch screens back when I used a Palm. Those apps aren't "workarounds" they are first class applications made by developers using the standard iOS api. I probably sound like a fanboy but I find it hard to overstate just how well iOS works.

Well, maybe the several music stores that were cheaper on a per-song basis than the iTunes store, at the time of the iTunes store? Granted most of them were subscription-based, but come on. iTunes pricing isn't actually revolutionary - if you look at it by album, it's pretty well matched up with previous offerings, and if you look at it by song, it's matched up with other e-Stores. This isn't to say that the iTunes store itself isn't revolutionary, just that price isn't their Sunday punch.

There were no other music stores besides subscription music stores selling music from the big four, they all used some sort of proprietary DRM that Apple would have had to license, and they all failed or were failing before iTunes was introduced

Albums on iTunes back then usually were $9,99 -- cheaper than CD's sold in the store But the "revolution" is that you didn't have to buy the whole album -- just the songs you wanted.

Also, iTunes opened as a pure DRM shop - and yes, it was largely due to vendor concerns. They ALSO refused to license their DRM scheme across platforms, using their dominant position in the e-music market to sell iPod hardware.

This was originally posted on Apple's front page. There was a lot of publicity about it back in the day.

http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/12543/

Basically the story is:

1. The music industry wanted Apple to license their DRM,
2. He gave the music industry two alternatives to make music interoperable -- either a) Apple could license their DRM or b) the music industry could allow Apple and anyone else to sell DRM free music. He said if the music industry would allow it, Apple would be more than willing to sell DRM free music.
3. "Slashdot Wisdom" was that Apple knew that the music industry would never allow anyone to sell DRM free music and that it was a bluff,
4. The music industry wanted variable price music and at first they wanted an upfront payment for the privilege. Apple refused both.
5. EMI allowed DRM free music and Apple started selling "iTunes Plus".
6. The music industry tried and failed to force Apple's hand by allowing everyone else to sell DRM free music.
7. Apple had to allow variable pricing because they wanted to be able to sell music over the cell network for the iPhone..

Hell, that's largely why they settled on AAC in the first place - and why they spent so long fighting community efforts to build AAC transcoders, before their change of heart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

Apple had nothing to do with the development or licensing of AAC. Apple isn't even part of the patent pool for AAC. It is a licensable format that was introduced 4 years before the iPod was ever introduced.

Apple chose AAC because it was a better format.

Webscriptions.net. Hell, anywhere that sells non-DRM eBooks and handles mobi format, which is basically everywhere that handles non-DRM e-Books. My example even has functionality to use the Kindle's push functionality, to send the book directly to your Kindle.

Just like anyone could always sell DRM free music and video that worked on the iPod, anyone can sell DRM free books that work on the iPad.

Now, riddle me this - once Apple demands that every book on the iPad/iPhone come through their store, where else will I be able to buy books for my iPhone?

Apple is demanding no such thing. Apple is demanding that if you allow outside purchases of content, you also must allow in-app purchases. They are not forbidding outside purchases.

Hmm.

Linux failed there because the sound stopped working. That it could be rebooted is unimportant, any OS can be rebooted and start working again.

I thought your point was that Linux was superior in this instance because it "did the job and got out of the way". I was just pointing out that it hadn't done it's job, if it's job included keeping the sound working (which I presume it did).

In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if airlines started using ipads for their inflight entertainment systems. (and lo and behold, a quick google search led me to this : http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/25218/ )

Actually, you have two defenses. The first is Fair Use, the second is that Apple is performing vertical tying, which is anticompetitive behaviour and illegal under the Sherman Antitrust and Clayton acts. Since Apple currently dominates 90% of "premium PC" market sales this isn't quite the outsider case it would at first appear.

As an aside, over at Groklaw PJ fully supports and endorses Apple's tying through EULA, and seems to believe that invalidating any EULA somehow threatens the GPL. If anyone can indicate how striking illegal terms from an end user license somehow affects an unrelated redistribution license, or indeed how one can claim to support free software whilst at the same time ignoring RMS's freedom 0 (the right to run software for any reason), I'm all ears. (Sorry, I do realise this last bit sounds trollish, but I feel strongly about this, and this topic is scrubbed from Groklaw, so it's impossible to discuss it at all there.)

"You want a reason for installing flash blocking plugins."

You're searching for one?

• Mc Daily News
• US-Cert
• Adobe Systems
• Fortiguard
• Softpedia Software Shill
• MacNN

Many of these articles are redundant, I posted the links to show how ubiquitous the stories are. Flash will be around for a while since its the only game in town. But that will change, give it time. I DO NOT hate flash, but its old, there has got to be a better way to publish rich media, there just has to. I think, in time, as the OSS community wakes up to the need, some really great tools and protocols for interactive media that's at least as good as flash will come along.

20 WPM on most devices isn't unusual for teenage girls; they tend to be pretty fast compared to the average human. The maximum I've been able to find for iPhone texting in general (via Google) is about 56 WPM.

A large majority of people will 'love' there new device no matter how crappy it is for months after purchase. ...In a futile attempt to keep the non thinkers from posting a flaming response:
this is NOT about the iPad. My statement applies to ALL products.

Your statement might apply to all products. But it is completely wrong. See this customer satisfaction survey for people buying a smartphone within the last 6 months for example:

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/25465/

What's the point of this? Aren't they already the exact same thing?

Mac OS X already has enough of a trojan problem that Mac OS X trojans have been used to create botnets.

[citation needed]

From Tuesday's Fox News of the Apple world, MacDailyNews itself:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/25439/

The software (screensavers mostly, but at least one application) was listed on several major, reputable Mac software aggregation sites.

Perhaps not a botnet this time, but after giving the admin password during installation, any payload could have been installed.

How is this flamebait? Seriously?

Here is just ONE example of Thurrott and how he has no creed.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592E3270-32C8-4852-975C-162E788749CA.html

And there are others like:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/24671/
Or Apple copying Microsoft?
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10489/
Or just generally being an idiot?
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/23845/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10584/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/17300/

Thurrott does not belong on Slashdot

How is this flamebait? Seriously?

Here is just ONE example of Thurrott and how he has no creed.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592E3270-32C8-4852-975C-162E788749CA.html

And there are others like:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/24671/
Or Apple copying Microsoft?
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10489/
Or just generally being an idiot?
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/23845/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10584/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/17300/

Thurrott does not belong on Slashdot