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Jobs Wanted To Destroy Android
hype7 writes "It's clear Steve Jobs didn't pull any punches from the interviews for his forthcoming biography. In the latest release from the book, hosted over at AP, 'Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google's actions amounted to "grand theft." ... "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." ... In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn't interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says. "I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want." The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.'"
Odd coming from someone who stole the GUI and the mouse from Xerox.
from Xerox PARC and other places. Google was simply following in Apple's grand tradition of stealing any IP that wasn't nailed down too tightly.
As much as he wanted to destroy Android, it sounds like Steve Jobs became the guy on the telescreen in their 1984 commercial.
(Design) Purification Directive?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Don't forget what Android looked like pre-iPhone
If Android had launched like that, the iPhone would've destroyed it. Yes, phones before the iPhone had capacitive touch, but no one was doing multitouch. Or at least, not on a wide scale like Apple did.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
What features were stolen?
Icons in a grid? Nokia phones had those for years.
On-screen keyboard? Palm had those since day dot.
Multipoint touch gestures? I remember seeing those in Minority Report
It's my idea. Don't you dare to use MY idea. No, I don't care if somebody just came up with it. It was MY idea.
No, it's not your idea. It's everybody's idea.
Standing on the shoulders of giants - where there is room for everyone - people decided to knock everybody down to the ground who dares to scale them, because they think that only they are entitled to make use of the work of earlier generations.
The opposite of a developing country, is a stagnating country. And stagnation is what we are seeing.
Android preemptively copied the notification drop-down and that is outrageous!
Can't make a phone, AAPL thought of it first?
Like the GUI and everything else, and Disney invented Snow White. It's all bullshit.
Yep. HTC were making Windows CE-based phones years before the iPhone was released. And then there were the Palm-based phones, which I think predated even those. Both of those systems had similar features to iPhones before iPhones were released.
But, hey, who ever let reality get in the way of PR?
"Stolen" implies that a bunch of masked bandits from Google raided Apple's Cupertino HQ and pilfered the vault of all the valuable iPhone widgets and touch screens.
Spring-boarding off of the iPhone (and doing some things better) is what Android did. Jobs sounded like he didn't want competition from something that might lap his phone. Rather than innovate ("great artists steal"), he decided to throw down the lawsuit hammer (or at least try to), thereby making Apple nothing more than Microsoft or IBM with a hip wardrobe fetish.
Everything these days comes from previous innovations.... there are a few exceptions, but most of the time true progress comes from expanding or improving an existing product or idea. Jobs did that with the iPhone, but it seems he didn't want anyone else to do so... That's what's broken here. (And I do agree that patents need reform just as much as copyright.)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Isn't the free market a bitch sometimes.
Keep repeating a myth and people believe it. Apple did not steal from Xerox. Apple was already developing a GUI back in the late '70s.
Awe....aren't you cute. Can't deal with the truth about St. Jobs? Dude - dudedette, for those of us who were around back then, in the early '80s, Jobs himself admitted to seeing PARC's GUI and basing the whole Mac GUI on that.
At the time, Xerox was your typical complacent big corporation that had a R&D arm. And as such, they're managers were too short sighted to see the potential of their GUI OR felt that it was irrelevant to their business and therefore let it slide. Jobs saw the potential and ran with it.
BUT....unlike Google, Jobs didn't borrow/steal from a product being currently marketed - it was just a prototype in PARC's lab at the time and absolutely no indication from Xerox that they'd be using it. So, St. Jobs' reputation is still intact as the wizard of technology and marketing.
Mod this UP-- what was REALLY stolen? Look, I'm not out to rain on apple fan's picnics. It's just that people are acting like the iPhone was this big revolutionary tech item when really it was just another device with a big difference: it was polished as hell, marketed well, and easy to develop for.
The book delves into Jobs' decision to delay surgery for nine months after learning in October 2003 that he had a neuroendocrine tumor — a relatively rare type of pancreatic cancer that normally grows more slowly and is therefore more treatable. Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic.
He seems to be a poster child for alternative medicine.
Exactly how not to treat a perfectly treatable cancer.
If, the author is telling the truth. Whilst I'm not Mr Jobs' biggest fan, I do have to take this source with a huge grain of salt given it was published after his death. OTOH, it would fit with Mr Jobs' narcissism to have a scathing biography ready-written for his demise.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Steve Jobs:
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
"Good artists copy; great artists steal."
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/452150-bill-gates-isnt-too-bothered-by-piracy/
Bill Gates:
"It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not."
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Ariel Katz, a law professor at the University of Toronto and an expert on the economics of piracy:
"Microsoft benefits from piracy, then says, 'If you think prices are high, blame the Chinese, because they are the thieves,' "
"They like us to feel guilty — to think that piracy is wrong and immoral. Economically, it's not necessarily true, but it resonates with the public."
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
That he was; its OK for Apple/Jobs to steal ideas from others but oohhhh boy, watch out if others tried to steal his.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Why hasn't Steve rolled away the stone?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The ONLY thing Apple has ever done is push the trend towards good graphics. They didn't invent anything, just showed that it could be done well, and that people liked it. the Mac did this, producing a mass-market GUI with reasonably consistent UI rules. the Next basically pushed the resolution and depth of the display, demonstrating the advantage of both. the iPod/iPhone showed that even small displays could use the same basic metaphors with touch.
None of these took place in a vacuum; all of them were extrapolations of work others had done. part of Job's big sell is to convince Appleheads that they were the chosen people, that they had just just a superior product, but a product in a unique category.
Of course Jobs wanted to kill Android - its existence violates the ridiculous marketing mystique he spent billions to create. It's a religious war.
It's also totally immoral. There's simply no way to defend one company saying "no, you must not create good products". And since nothing Apple created came from nowhere, there is no legal basis for claiming some kind of IP monopoly (patent, copyright, trademark, designmark).
Jobs was the Pope of the Church of Apple, and he must have been just as frustrated as Catholic popes were during the reformation.
Wait until Apple invents Widgets on the iPhone 5. Then it will really revolutionize the industry.
"Good artists borrow; great artists steal." -Steve Jobs
Android might have "ripped [them] off wholesale," but the truth is that Android delivers a great smartphone OS to everyone instead of everyone that can save enough for an iPhone with its special data/voice plan. Did they really expect OEMs to do like RIM and just sit there while Apple designs and builds awesome hardware from the same factories they use?
Plus, Apple's products are amazing until you start "thinking different." Then you run into HUGE walls. Example: In Android, I can install an application that controls battery usage by controlling all interfaces on the phone. This seems to be impossible on the iPhone, which is bad because there are days when it will use most of the battery in less than half a day and others in about two days. Another example is adding a Windows print queue on OS X, though this might have been made easier with Lion. I'm not sure.
His frustrations are thinly warranted, though I do agree that most of Google's products are either crappy or great for two months after release. It would be great if they made APIs along with their products, but I suppose that's not the Google way.
It's not about money it's about ego. Steve heard over and over how innovative he was how great he was how much better he was then everyone else and he started to believe it. So when the competition started implementing some of the ideas he implemented he viewed it as an affront to his greatness. He saw the strength of android and feared it, he probably sees android doing to the iphone what windows did to the mac, ironically enough by using many of apples innovations. That is why he wanted to destroy android he has been down this road before and is afraid of losing his greatness.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Funny. I felt the same way about the iPhone when I switched to an iPhone 4 from my Droid1. Although the interface was pretty, and 'satisfying' to use in how it was responsive and animated, I felt the functions that would make it a good PDA and phone were lacking. I have now switched to a Samsung Galaxy S2. I like it, but what I dislike most is the Samsung Touchwiz interface, which tries to be more iPhone like than the standard Android. I'm looking forward to rooting it, and putting a proper Android interface on it.
Trouble yourself to understand why this is. If you don't have proprietary lock-in/ownership of killer app, all you have to trade on is the quality of your manufacturing work.
That is what fashion labels offer. My wife likes to buy and sell these designer purses online. Fake ones are looked on very differently, because the quality of manufacture just isn't the same.
If software companies were banking on the quality of their finished product rather than the patented features of their sloppy-ass third-rate implementation of protected intellectual property, don't you think the IT industry would have a much better reputation? As it is people find computers relentlessly buggy and difficult to use, EVEN THE DAMN IPHONE. Maybe if quality was the #1 job, instead of 'safely-protected revenue stream,' our nation's economy wouldn't be such a horrorshow, either.
After all, for the last 20 years at least, it seems that American businesses value being first (and alone) in line to capture a revenue stream, rather than being the best product on the market.
It's no wonder our economy sucks.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
I'm sorry he's dead but I'm not sorry he's gone.
overpriced Apple smart-phones, tablets and MP3 players
I think the other phone, tablet & MP3 manufacturers would disagree with this. They don't seem to be able to compete on price without a subsidy.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
"I've asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, "I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way," Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, "I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking...we talked about this a lot," he tells Kroft. "He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it....I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."
Which means that the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field ultimately claimed the life of it's creator.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
LG had released a similar phone before the Iphone, the Prada.
Steve Jobs is just a big narcissistic, hypocrite asshole. After having stolen everyone else's ideas to make his iPhone, he actually had the nerve to complain that people stole his ideas (if they even were his ideas, he probably believed they were)? Im sorry, but the more I learn about this guy the more I think he was just a user and a twat, and doesn't deserve his fame.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Speaking NOT as a fanboy, but as a gadget fan:
In hindsight, it's easy to say the iPhone is just another smartphone, but at the time it was introduced, it was nothing like any phone that came before it. Yes, its individual features -- touch screen, icons, internal antenna, multitouch UI, etc., all existed -- but until the iPhone came along, they had not been put together quite like this before (To use the hackneyed "car" metaphor: wheels, internal combustion engines and axles predate the automobile, but this doesn't mean the car was nothing new when it came along).
Just look at marketing materials from the major carriers in 2006 -- flip phones and candy bars were the typical (practically only) form factors available before the iPhone was revealed in January 2007. It took very little time for all that to change, but when it comes right down to it -- there was nothing akin to the modern smartphone before the iPhone.
It's pretty silly to suggest today's wide array of multi-touch handheld computers have nothing to do with its design and success.
You sir are a dupe. The Macintosh and Lisa projects were well underway before Jobs Ever heard of the PARC XEROX project. You should google Jeff Raskin who created the mac and learn he was planning it well before 1979. Here's a bit of history:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/mac/parc.html
the real issue here however is not that but rather, the fact the Schimtt was on apple's board of directors. This is why it is stealing not copying.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I think Steve's grudge was not just about the "copying" but about the betrayal story behind it. Google's CEO was part of Apple's board of directors. He was aware of what was going there, and he either lied to everyone at Apple about their phone OS plans, or went on their backs and told the Android team what was Apple's take and made them drop the BlackBerry race and go Touch.
Steve trusted Schmidt, just like he trusted Gates about MacOS, and he suffered the same fate (I do have to admit, for such a secretive man, he should had known better.) I guess the difference is now Apple having enough money to pursue infinite legal battles and a spice of leftover grude of the last time this happened.
Samsung's case is likely more specific, too. Samsung is a big manufacturer of iDevice parts and it's likely enthrusted with a lot of design information. There are supposed to be division walls that prevent this type of secret information from spreding into divisions that compete with client's interest, but witnesses in the current lawsuits have pointed at there being leaks on such walls. So thats another company they must feel betrayed by.
You may notice, despite the noise that went about when Palm Pre with WebOS was announced, there was no real legal battle there. I doubt it had much to do with Palms ability to use their patents to defend themselves and more with the fact that they had no presonal grudge there, just business interests.
It is easy for us to say how childish, and counter productive these lawsuits can be, but its hard to understand it without actually standing in their shoes. Try just to imagine a smaller case scenario of equal personal impact. Perhaps a co-worker stealing credit or stealing your job and being rewarded for it. A comic book artist creating a character or story to have a friend rip it off and publish it with small alterations. Heck, there was no lawsuit there, but look at the Babylon 5 vz Deep Space 9 issue. It still is possible to find remnants of Straczynski early 90s web and usenet rantings expressing his anger at the plagiarism.
When you are the victim of these idea thefts, it can be extremely upsetting. When it is done by a trusted business partner or friend, it can be insanely infuriating. It does not matter how good the competition is for the industry, or the alternatives for the consumers, your emotions will go highwire. The closest your relationship to the individual or entity in question the worse will be.
Dont take me worng, I am very sad for Job's passing, but with him gone I predict the current cases may keep going for the next couple of years, but in about 2 years, maybe just 1, we will start seeing settlements and a reduction of said cases. The momentum will be carried for at least a year or two, but after that, I take it we will see more willingness to do settlements. Not saying lawsuits are going to stop. Just as Microsoft protects their "business interest" and patents, Apple will likely be the same way, they will just not try to be as destructive about it.
Stop rehashing the same myth over and over. Jobs paid Xerox PARC $1M in pre-IPO Apple stock for the right to look over their technology.
"So Jobs proposed a deal: he would allow Xerox to buy a hundred thousand shares of his company for a million dollars—its highly anticipated I.P.O. was just a year away—if parc would “open its kimono.” A lot of haggling ensued. Jobs was the fox, after all, and parc was the henhouse. What would he be allowed to see? What wouldn’t he be allowed to see? Some at parc thought that the whole idea was lunacy, but, in the end, Xerox went ahead with it."
But they were usually modded down quickly by Apple fanboys. Bill Gates is often evil figure in computing but it was a blessing that EVERYONE else, including Steve Jobs, screwed up completely and we our home computers became machines based on cloned hardware and even cloned software. Or what do you think Apples response would have been to either Compaq or DrDos? Oh wait we KNOW. Clone a Mac and get sued. Luckily IBM was asleep at the wheel and Compaq cloned the IBM and we all bought IBM compatibles at a fraction of the price. And because they were clones, they weren't locked down and some drunk Fin wrote an OS and the rest is history and the future.
None of this would have happened if Apple had won the race. Or if IBM had won the race. Or commodore or any of the others. Don't be fooled by the "nice" image of Apple or the "open" base of OSX. That happened because they were to small. Want to see what PC's would have looked like if Apple had produced them? Buy an iPhone. Expensive option is the only option and totally closed down.
Real history doesn't have heroes. If we are lucky it is a tale of the lesser of two evils having the upperhand. In this case it was Bill Gates. Who won't be remembered as a great man but just as not as totally evil if the people he defeated had won. It is sorta like how the world is better of for America having dominated for the last half century. Oh, not because the Americans are so nice but the world would have been a lot worse under Nazi/Japanese/British/USSR rule.
But hey, the punters who want their shinies got to believe that their guru is a hero else they might have to ask themselves why very expensive phones with a gigantic profit margin can't be produced in America or at least without near slave labor. Dennis Ritchie? Richard Stallman? Not sexy enough, to difficult with him asking troublesome questions.
So, the fanboys turn Jobs into a man he never was and put their fingers in their ears whenever someone dares to ask why he is considered such a hero.
Cue mod down by a fanboy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I know if I get cancer I'm doing exactly what the doctor tells me, but that's also probably why I'm not the head of a multi-billion dollar company either.
The veneer of certainty that conventional doctors present can certainly comforting, but is - in its own way - a kind of reality distortion field.
Be careful about doing exactly what any single doctor tells you - research, be informed, get 2nd opinions, all that time consuming stuff.
For example, I've read about thyroid issues where the plan is to nuke it (literally, with radioactive iodine) to kill off the thyroid tissue. I would save that for like Plan Q, maybe - after plan A, B, C etc... didn't work out.
(if I can believe what they wrote about Jobs delaying treatment, that is simply regrettable wishful thinking - then again, I didn't know that a subset of pancreatic cancer was actually survivable - I thought it was pretty much a fatal, quick and unpleasant end).
Anyway, thankfully I haven't had to deal with cancer issues in my family... but I would research the hell out anything that did turn up.