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Techrights Recommends An Apple Boycott
walterbyrd writes with a quote from an article at Techrights: "Given the latest actions from Apple we cannot help recommending that people buy nothing from Apple. Boycott the company for being a threat to the IT landscape and also to common sense."
More from the article: "...Apple has been working hard to embargo — not just sue — the competition. Apple disregards the notion of fair competition..."
Could this be any more biased? Why is Slashdot posting this crap?
The article claims that "Apple fan sites celebrate Apple patents," but all he does is link to one site, Patently Apple. That site exists to track Apple patent applications "in search of future features and secrets," as the site puts it. It's not celebrating patents; it's just reporting on them in hopes of predicting upcoming product plans.
It also repeats the old troll meme about PARC, claiming that "Apple disregards the notion of fair competition, which takes a lot of nerve for a company that built itself on knockoffs (e.g. Xerox PARC)." Overlapping windows and pulldown menus did come from PARC, but Apple is the one who invented the File-Edit-View-Window-Help standard menu layout, the phrase "cut-and-paste," and several other common GUI paradigms that are taken for granted today. Not to mention that many of those Xerox PARC employees went on to work on the Macintosh project at Apple!
If we're throwing around knock-off accusations, Android used to look like this until the iPhone came out, and then Android suddenly started looking and behaving a lot more like iOS, right down to the pinch-zoom gestures that originated with the iPhone. For crying out loud, Samsung outright stole Apple's icon artwork and used it in their stores. TechRights, of course, ignores all this. It's no surprise at all that Apple is going to try to hinder competitors' efforts to ride the coattails of its design work. It went through this before with Windows in the 1980s and only lost its court case against Microsoft because of a previous licensing agreement.
Obnoxious Android fanboyism has reached a fever pitch. Android fanboys are now officially more annoying than Apple fanboys. They've adopted this idea that they are freedom fighters and that their tribe is under threat from evil. It's embarrassing and is a resurrection of the worst elements of the desktop Linux movement from 10 years ago.
Exploring the rest of the site, it calls itself "a progressive site which supports software freedom and advocates digital diversity through standardisation." Most of its stories are anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux, and present a one-sided view of tech news that's intended to rile up its readers (not unlike Slashdot, to be honest). It also claims to be against monopolies but says nothing about Google's monopoly in web advertising nor the fact it's using its monopoly revenues to pump a new market with a free product (Android), just like Microsoft did with Windows and Internet Explorer in the 1990s. For some reason, Android advocates
For crying out loud, Techrights' Twitter account is called @boycottnovell. Boycott Novell is associated with Roy Schestowitz, an infamous Usenet troll who spams the advocacy newsgroups with pro-Linux news links and used to astroturf Slashdot with multiple accounts.
If nerds on Tech Rights and Slashdot want to boycott Apple, go ahead. None of them were using Apple products anyway--they are Linux advocacy sites. Apple wouldn't even notice.
Can we get some actual tech news? Or is Slashdot forever lost to its current role of flamboyant baiting for ad views? Ugh.
Are boycotts ever really effective anymore? There's too much clout huge companies carry with their flashy advertising to reach consumers that are willing to break principle. People are not principled enough to rigourously hold to boycotts. I tell people not to bother with them, and focus on positive buying instead of negative buying. Don't avoid buying what you don't want to support, try to actively spend your available spending money with people and companies who support your vision of the world.
Oh You POS
Apple behaviour is pretty disgusting and, I'd join the embargo 'BUT' damn I've always found their gear to be overhyped and overpriced and basically always gone else where. I'll think you'll find that this is pretty much the trend with the majority of computer geeks.
For what it's worth I vow never to buy an Apple product ;D.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
What about the other patent/IP assholes, such as Microsoft, Sony, and Oracle? Why target just one?
Table-ized A.I.
Apple is asserting its patent rights.
This is how the system works. Ask T. Edison.
The purpose for patents is not to protect the invention any more. It's to protect against ANY invention. And that's not what patents are for.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
21,000 domains left, 20,000 signed up. At best that protest has cost them some petty cash they didn't give a damn about anyway.
This article is 100% troll.
Apple is as much a producer as anyone, and there are lots of arguments to be made that they are for more producers currently of innovations in hardware and software than many other companies.
I find the patent activities Apple is engaging in absurd and evil also. But the whole industry is doing the same thing all over, Apple's actions just get elevated above others because it brings page views and Apple Haters push an anti-Apple agenda whenever possible.
The solution is not to boycott Apple, for that helps no-one - the solution is to continue to battle absurd software patents however it is possible to do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't use apple products because I don't believe in their "walled garden" philosophy. I was a big fan of apple back in the old hypercard and basic days when apple wanted to bring their users CLOSER to the computing experience and really make their users more powerful.
But apple has done a complete 180 on that and won't ever come back to it. so for that reason, I won't buy their products. It isn't a boycott.
People need to stop thinking anyone gives a damn what they think about anything. Because the reality is that in the real world people just don't care. Corporations don't care. Politicians don't care. Your next door neighbor doesn't care. And they have every right to not care.
That said, you have the same right. So rather then trying to get some frothy public action thing together with promises to buy again if they change their ways. Just quietly buy what you believe in and let the marketing people figure out why sales dropped. Nothing preachy or pretentious. Just buy what you believe.
Apple products make lots of people happy. Good for them. They're welcome to it. I won't be one of them and wish one and all well.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I used Apple all through the 90's in the 'dark days', had an iMac, then switch to using windows and IBM Thinkpads (when they were still American) for about eight years. Tired of the windows mediocrity, maintenance issues, viruses and Trojans I finally switched back to Apple. Got a Macbook, iPhone, iPod. Life couldn't be better. Apple is ubiquitous and has a store in pretty much any country in the world. Their prices have fallen and are fairly competitive, while also maintaining an edge on competition by offering superior customer service and user experience. As long as Apple offers their superior product designs, user experience, and customer service, I'll be using them for the foreseeable future. Who really cares about competition? All of Apple's so called competitors (Samsung, HTC, others) as) are all non-American Companies anyway have clearly stolen/copied many aspects of Apple's technology. All of this is besides the point as Apple doesn't have a monopoly over anything, if you don't like them don't buy it. Simple as that. We're not talking about Microsoft who used their dominance over operating systems to keep their 90% lead in the world.
Your comment was posted in a rounded rectangle. Please stop that you are violating Apple's patents.
AccountKiller
It's amusing that you think the "Haters" will just not let people use what they find suits them best, when that is precisely Apple's strategy (not letting people just use what they find suits them best) and the reason the majority of "Haters" exist.
OH! Or Jitterbug!!!
Your comment was posted in a rounded rectangle. Please stop that you are violating Apple's patents.
Interestingly, this was one of Steve Jobs' early contributions. There was famously an argument when they were designing the first Macs (having licensed the windowing system from Xerox PARC) - he insisted on including rounded rectangles in the design. His head designer (whose name I forget - Parkhurst?) could not figure why he wanted rounded rectangles. Jobs took him outside, and showed how every rectangular road sign was a rounded rectangle.
Which shows that all things old are new again. It's worth noting that nobody ever patented rounded rectangles on road signs - it was just a useful design, not a 'world-shaking invention' in the world view of that time.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Is the bulk of your claim that if you install Darwin on your phone, you essentially have a mostly-working iOS install, and that Objective-C is better than Java?
As far as I know, the first is not true, and the second is at least a questionable claim, given that language preferences vary so much.
Android may not be the best imaginable mobile OS, but it's certainly a lot more open than iOS.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
That's why an iPad looks like a scaled-down flatscreen TV ... And yes, Apple should have full rights to protect their greatest creative investment and one of the landmark inventions of the century: the rectangle with round squares! Next: the iWheel. It looks like an iPad. But it has no corners! Amazing!
DRM
Funny as Apple/Jobs pushed music labels to release their music DRM free
Locking hardware to software
They also do that with a reason and not the "evil" they want to rape our babies kind of thing. With Apple they are so obsessed with user experience (and they don't suck at it) that they want to control every aspect. And hate that vertical approach but it works for them. If I look how different the experience is between my android smarthphone and iPad I find it hard to criticize them.
Pushing of proprietary standards
Hilarious. You are aware of the fact that they favored pushing HTML5 instead of the proprietary stuff like Flash. You are aware they are on of the driving force like open standard as OpenCL.
Being the middle-man
Because bandwidth, processing cost, support are all free.
Being secretive about developer revenues
Can you tell me where apple advertises with the fact that IOS is as lucrative. Can I tell you something as a developer who also built mobile applications and also have android devices. If the IOS market is so bad, you don't want to know which graveyard the Android market is.
As someone calling bullshit on the fact that Samsung didn't copy icons or look and feel. Look at KIES, look at the use of sunflower as an icon for the photo picture. Not like the telephone symbol as a photographer I never seen the sunflower as a mental model for a photograph.
For me people may buy and boycott what they want but damn there is so much FUD these days on sites like slashdot it isn't even funny anymore.
Actually it is (check out Darwin sometime).
Darwin != iOS. Please point me to build instructions so I can make a new ROM for an iDevice which does NOT contain the iCal application. Hm?
Unlike Andorid the shell of a CarrierIQ system that shipped with iOS was never enabled, and did not contain ... (snip)
How do you know? Were you legally able to investigate this? Or did Steve whisper this into your ears?
FWIW, the cydia thing is totally uncomparable to the Android custom ROM scene. You obviously haven't looked into it and hence you are talking out of your buttocks.
When you stop and think about it it's pretty dumb to have to install a custom ROM
When you stop and think about it it's pretty dumb to make uninformed remarks about things you have demonstrated to have no knowledge on.
For the most part the vast majority of the mobile patent wars have been about extracting licensing agreements between vendors.
That was true, but that pact was broken when vendors starting deciding RAND patents in various standards did not apply to Apple and they were allowed to shake down Apple for extra money above the payments the rest of the industry was making.
So if we are truly going to try and nip problems with agreements forming, Apple is not the company to go after (remember in the Samsung suit they even offered to sell a license to Samsung for use of some the patents they had, which Samsung declined).
By boycotting Apple you would send a message that this shit is not on
Boycots against any company are foolish because it's a very poor way to send any message. The signal is lost in a vast sea of noise of purchases. As noted, Apple isn't even the most egregious player here....
The real thing to do is to attack the power that patents have over foolish aspects of computing they should not. Even if you could succeed against Apple other companies would continue to abuse them the same way. It's not even like Apple is a company with pure patent troll play as we are seeing these days.
Attack flaws in the patent system and you wipe out ALL bad abuses of patents across ALL companies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I suppose that's why it's awesome that iOS is open-source
Actually it is (check out Darwin sometime).
Most of iOS is not open source. The versions of Darwin atop which particular Mac OS X releases are built are; the versions of Darwin atop which particular iOS releases aren't - maybe a particular Darwin release is "close enough" to the Darwin in a particular iOS release, but, even then, it doesn't include the low-level ARM support isn't there in xnu, and a lot of the higher-level stuff isn't open source even in Mac OS X (good luck finding the source to Foundation - not Core Foundation, but Foundation - or AppKit or UIKit).
You seem to have forgotten that Apple is only suing Samsung, not other tablet makers.
Erm, Apple had also sued HTC over phones, with the same modus operandi - seeking a ban on device sale rather than e.g. royalties and damages. They have also sued Motorola (over Xoom and Droids).
I like how you ignore all the evidence that Apple is evil.
Has it ever occurred to you that people who hate Apple and Apple products are rational and have good reasons?
Maybe you are irrational too? We all irrational beings. (Human beings are irrational.) When you claim to be rational and put words into our mouths you come across the wrong way. You might not agree with the vocal minority but they still perceive a problem. If you do not consider those problems, that's fine. Do not pretend to yourself that others are irrational because you merely disagree with what we say.
I hate Apple because they have ruined software for me. On my desktops or servers download Windows freeware or open source software and get good quality software that does not necessarily track or spy on me. I can install whatever I want. The products in the App stores are ridiculously commercial - it's so obvious to me that they just want to grab your money. There is so much trash in the stores. Why the hell should I have to jailbreak the device to get it to do what I want? When a product is so caustic to my consumer rights, why would I want to partake? The device is mine, I can do whatever I want. This business model of creating walled gardens and limiting innovation and competition has infected the technology industry. Now Microsoft and every phone carrier wants to do it too.
Apple bans benign applications and implements the ideas themselves. They have no respect for other's "intellectual property". They used Nokia patents without licencing.
Apple made iTunes which is HORRIBLE software. They are responsible for QuickTime which is worse. They install lots of junk like Bonjour. Apple are quite happy to take OSS software like KHTML = OSS, Apple kernels = Derived from OSS and then sell it in a ridiculously priced device that takes away user freedom.
I can develop on it for free, I don't have to pay anyone to start programming. On an Apple product I have to pay Apple for this right to write code for my [b]own device[/b].
Food for thought.
Download music from iTunes, and you can only play it on a limited number of computers (try it and you'll find out).
Nope, been unencrptyted now for many years (and with iTunes Match Apple will even give you a nice 256kb DRM-free audio file of everything you ever ripped from a CD).
So that was totally wrong.
Locking hardware to software.
This was a particularly amusing error because you almost had a point! If only you had reversed it.
But in fact Apple does not lock hardware to software at all. Apple, for example, shipped bootcamp with the first Intel Mac.
Pushing of proprietary standards.
Like the industry standard HTML5?
Or the industry standard video codec h.264?
Or forcing the music industry to drop DRM?
Apple has not pushed proprietary standards since AppleTalk.
Being the middle-man.
I can download music from anywhere and load it on an iPhone.
Free apps pay nothing to Apple.
I can put any number of PDF's on a iPhone, or read Kindle books with which not one cent went to Apple...
"A" middle man? Sure. THE middle man? Not even close.
Being secretive about developer revenues.
Good good man, Apple is the only company that trumpets loudly how much they are paying developers! There is nothing secret about it whatsoever.
Is it hard to find out how much any one developer makes? Yes, unless they tell you. You are claiming that I should simply be able to ask Apple exactly how much money every app made, and you are claiming that breathtaking invasion of MY privacy as an App developer is LESS EVIL?
How about you tell us how much you make. Or are you being secretive?
And, if you google around, I'm sure you'll find many other reasons to dislike Apple.
Indeed you will, each of them more baseless than the last.
The sad thing is there are perfectly valid reasons to be be upset with Apple, why can't people complain about them more often in a wider forum?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You seem to have forgotten that Apple is only suing Samsung, not other tablet makers.
How about HTC? Might not be tablet makers, but why limit yourself to tablet makers?
You can always tell the haters by the way they distort reality in any way possible (or frankly impossible) to make Apple the worst in any given comparison.
I wonder where the term Reality Distortion Field comes from.
Apple was one of the big players heavily pushing HTML-5
By banning Flash...
shipped the very first Intel macs with Bootcamp
While trying hard to make it impossible to run Mac OS X on any non-Apple device...
I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
I hate Apple because they have ruined software for me.
On my desktops or servers download Windows freeware or open source software and get good quality software that does not necessarily track or spy on me.
On my desktop (well, laptop, really) I can download Mac OS X freeware or open-source software and get good quality software that does not necessarily track or spy on me.
I can install whatever I want.
Same here.
I can develop on it for free, I don't have to pay anyone to start programming. On an Apple product I have to pay Apple for this right to write code for my own device.
OK, so what you really mean is "...because they have ruined smartphone and tablet software for me". I can and do develop, on my Mac, for free, software that runs on Mac OS X.
Actually it is (check out Darwin sometime).
iOS is NOT an open source. Many parts are "sourced" by Apple from the open source community and they are pretty much forced to release them under various licenses, also some other unimportant libraries are made open, but that doesn't mean that you can just configure&make the OS on the spot.
Unlike Android the shell of a CarrierIQ system that shipped with iOS was never enabled
Really? It looks even worse, Apple and not the carrier has chosen to install it. Why? It is burried inside the OS for an unknown purpose. It is there.
Android is shipping with active key-loggers
Again, that CIQ software is NOT installed in Android by Google, it is put there by those carriers. You can still update your device to clean OS quite effortlessly even compile your own Android ICS build (from real open source repositories). On the other hand iOS features CarrierIQ spyware as a permanent part buried inside your phone under unknown conditions, it might be tracking you or not, some GUI switches might not be telling the whole story here.
iOS is far easier then Android thanks to the use of Objective-C in applications
ObjC is not that friendly or easy, it sports some weird syntax, slow code (compared to plain C), incompatible outside iOS and it crashes iOS apps. App crashing is common on iOS, even Microsoft solved crashing in the late 90'.
parent = AC = troll.
But i'll bite:
http://opensource.apple.com/
And Bonjour = Zeroconf, Avahi which also gets installed by the Linux distros and they are amazing tools - just yesterday did some Avahi magic and made a 15year old network Laser printer (DEC LN14) discoverable.
Also Chrome & the Android browser are using Apple's WebKit (forked from KHTML, open source and downloadable from the above link).
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Nothing, but it's also not wrong or illegal or morally wrong to point it out either.
The gate swings both ways.
Some of the Apple haters on here are just embarrassing, and are doing more to hurt their "cause" than help it. I mean, it's their choice to define themselves by hating a company, but much of the vitriol is getting silly. I may not be a personal fan of Android (although I have used some good Android handsets and can see why people like it) I'm not frothing about how Samsung and Google are some sort of Machiavellian evil for making things that people want to buy.
I think a lot of it stems from a feeling of sour grapes, that in the era of declining Microsoft dominance they were sure that "their" time (of Linux! On the Desktop!) would come, and that instead of year on year growth for Linux desktop/laptop marketshare, the eroded Windows share went to Apple instead, and then the entry into the phone market (predicted to be a *massive failure*) and the re-ignition of the tablet market (again, predicted to be a massive flop) was just rubbing salt in the wounds.
Certainly, Apple is no angel and has done some stupid things, but in the mind of an Apple Hater - defining themselves by their assured belief that Apple can Only Do Evil(tm), they forget many of the positive things Apple has done for the industry and consumers at large since its return from the brink of death.
This is exactly the tactics that Apple are using. The lawyers of nokia many many times tried to cross-licence with apple, as apple seems to be totally fine using others IP with a free hand. No ball, until it went to court. Many courts in many countries. When it's stupid and logical things like multi-touch, then this court-based stifling of innovation and usage is killing the industry slowly.
I'm not sure how they could make it *easier* let alone "trying hard to make it impossible" as you claim.
Perhaps by not writing code that specifically checks if it's running on Apple hardware and refuses to load parts of the OS if it isn't?
Apple did go to some lengths to make it hard running OS X on vanilla x86 systems. Like, AES-encrypting various system kexts and making it impossible to dump the memory of DSMOS driver to get the decryption keys.
Coffee-driven development.
Yes, by your own words, you can always tell... their exaggerations and lies.
You do know that Apple hasn't ONLY sued or otherwise sought to block Samsung right? HTC and Motorola are among those sued or attacked by Apple as well. And you have to realize that either others will follow or others have already done back-room settlements with Apple already.
I'm not going to say that "...all others are angels in the business while Apple is the devil" because that just wouldn't be true. There are no innocents here. However, when you see any given party simply going TOO FAR, you have to stand up and say something about it. Apple simply goes too far. If it were Samsung doing this (and not just defensively to give Apple a taste of its own medicine) I have little doubt the majority here would be rallying behind a boycott of Samsung.
I own Apple gear. I like it. I don't like what the company is doing, however. It's as simple as that. I won't own an iPhone or an iPad, though -- I have less use for them as I get more out of an Android device.
(Here's where I get modded down) Thankfully, Steve Jobs is gone. It's a chance for Apple to become something else. Some might say something betters... others might say something worse, but definitely something different. Personally, I hope they attempt to conquer the business enterprise. Getting something with some *NIX in the kernel on the business desktop might finally result in some interesting things. Then again, it'd also make it the large target for viruses and malware that it never really has been before. (Malware has been extremely targeted these days. If Lockheed switched to Apple, the next break-in will focus on Apple gear and OSes.) This would suck for Apple and for Microsoft but it would be good for all the rest of us.
Interesting your choice of the word "ban" there. Not simply "refused to include in iOS on performance grounds".
Well they certainly banned Flash for developing apps.
They stated from the outset that Flash was a dog for performance, especially on mobile devices. Adobe belatedly agreed with them. Everyone's happy.
Everybody's happy? I think not. Adobe did end up changing from Flash to HTML5 for mobiles, but this was because it is hard to push Flash as a platform for mobile applications when the elephant in the room is that it will not work on iOS. Adobe lost the war to Apple, plain and simple. And losers tend not to be all that happy.
Its not free any more. Why? Because if your software becomes useful to the point of competing with Apple then they will sue your pants off with dubious, trivial, and obvious software-patents. You did hire a lawyer or two right. You did have a software-patent review on your software right? No? Well you better start looking into that. Apple has changed to programming landscape. Now you have to worry about silly patents like "swiping up a screen" "using thumbnails in a photo viewer" and lets not forget that they have patented most of the useful effects that has been around for decades such as "scroll bouncing" and "zooming" So please spare me the its free to write code bullshit. Its free to write code all you want. Just don't publish it and make damned sure that the code you write does compete with Apple then you may be fine. May be.
Someone really needs to mention that there is often an issue of FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) patents. Companies that hold patents that they want to have adopted by a standards organization will usually agree to FRAND licensing of those patents. However, it appears this system is fraying around the edges. Companies, like Nokia and Samsung, will offer terms to some companies and then when dealing with Apple insist on cross licensing with Apple's patents that are not encumbered by FRAND terms.
Personally, I'm not convinced that patents have ever been an optimal idea for society going back as far as James Watt's steam engine. But given the reality of the legal system that is in place, I think it is rather dishonest for many of these companies to act as though they are victims when they are attempting to ignore that they had agreed to license in a non-discriminatory fashion.
So if we are going to start down this road, I think companies holding FRAND patents who have clearly failed to honor the terms as they had agreed, should be stripped of those patents. Also, instead of extending patents to ever new areas (business method, software, design) those "innovations" should be rolled back in recognition of what disasters they have become.
That has already been used to determine a price which is available to other customers. The non-discriminatory part of the obligation means Samsung (in this case) is required to offer that same price to Apple, i.e. not discriminate depending on the customer.
The people who are using these patents are all inside a particular group that share patents. So, as I said I above, if I want to use your patents, I have to let you use mine. All of the people using these patents agree this arrangement. All members of the group get value from using each others patents. There is no discrimination going on within the group.
Apple is the company that doesn't want to join the group and share it's patents. Which is perfectly fine--Apple has that right. But they cannot claim that they should receive the same benefits as those who share their patents. Those patents from other people have value and those are part of the "fee" for using the patents. If Apple does not want to contribute their patents, then they should have to pay the equivalent cash value.
For example, if I join the local supermarket's "grocery club," I give them something of value--namely information about me and my shopping habits. They, in return, give me a discount on the groceries that I buy. What you're saying is that you should be able to get the same discounts but you shouldn't have to join the "grocery club" and give them your personal information.
The patents that are being shared are part of the value that Samsung is receiving for it's patents. If Apple doesn't want to share, then it falls to Samsung to come up with a cash equivalent.