Slashdot Mirror
Apple Is Giving Away Its Secrets By Litigating
An anonymous reader writes "Apple, by going to a jury trial to defend the patents of its most prized products, is allowing competitors and the public to see inside one of the most secretive companies in the world. From the article: 'While in court on Friday, Philip W. Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for worldwide product marketing, pulled the curtain further back when he divulged the company's advertising budgets — often more than $100 million a year for the iPhone alone. Also at the hearing, Scott Forstall, senior vice president for iPhone software, explained that the early iPhone was called "Project Purple." Mr. Forstall said it was built in a highly secure building on Apple's campus. A sign on the back of the building read "Fight Club." Behind the security cameras and locked doors, most employees on the project did not even know what they were working on.'"
So the secret sauce I need to become a multibillion dollar multinational corporation is spend a lot on advertising, give my projects fabulous color names, hang up a fight club poster... Thats all it takes?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Really? How original for 2004 Apple thought you were innovators not lame catch phrases. Starting to believe M$ is just Microsoft now and not as evil.
Patents are publicly available documents...any way you go...there's no secrecy there at least...Thank you Google!
There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.
This a slow day samzenpus? This article is bad, and you should feel bad.
Possibly the worst headline ever. I notice nowhere in the summary or the linked article where Mr. Schiller specifically avoided commenting on the new iPhone due this fall. Don't worry, I'm sure there will be plenty of back and forth between fanboys and fandroids. Slashdot will get pageviews, and my karma will end up in the terlet.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
How many of those Apple users lining up to buy the new Iphones are Apple employees or associates paid to stand in line? The amount of people in line is eerily similar with each product launch, how many of these people are the same and what is their association to Apple?
Undercover marketing is real. For all who don't know what it is, here is a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcZkbUH-lOc
A tour through Willy Wonka's chocolate factory? Where's the sweatshop full of Oompa Loompas?
So, by the way, is patenting something. The moment any big tech company files for a patent, hordes of onlookers start speculating on what's behind it.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
So I guess when I code a url in my app to point to the app store for posting a review I finally know what the "purple" means "itms-apps://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?type=Purple+Software&id="
Dupe.
Uh, ok. I admit - I'm an Apple fanboy so I follow Apple news pretty closely but, thus far, nothing secret has been revealed. A large marketing budget for their key products? Uh, duh! A massive and secretive development process behind the iPhone? Seriously, duh! Literally, nothing at all that has been revealed thus far is anything remotely close to a "secret". The closest thing to a secret has been the revelation of specific prototypes but everyone knew there were prototype iPhone designs and most people already had a basic idea of what they looked like - now we have pictures. But the only people who consider any of this a secret are people who don't follow the tech industry at all and anyone who follows Apple surely finds nothing to be a shocking secret thus far.
...most employees on the project did not even know what they were working on
That's supposed to be surprising? I've seen many a project where the engineers, after a period of spec and requirements changes, didn't know what the hell they were working on...and they had to do it anyway. :]
Ezekiel 23:20
<old man rant>
When Slashdot didn't cover the smart phone wars and we conversed open source and linux, then did a healthy microsoft bashing for good measure. I miss those days.
I get that the editors love the traffic from Apple stories but I find them so damn tiring. Yes, they are a tech leader but does the Slashdot community need to notified about every little quibble? (hey look, a slashdot headline!) If Tim Cook so much as farts, it makes frontpage news here, followed by some idiotic editorial that would be modded flamebait if posted to a story.
Slashdot reminds me of this video ... with Slashdot playing the role of Paranoia. Now, if only we could successfully "stab em".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bCD8M0EnxA
</old man rant>
Apple's not doing anything spectacular. The company is just creating a product design that differentiates themselves from the competition and marketing it. They have a lot of money to do that. It's not like they really have anything all that unique functionality wise. They are dependant on the same companies Dell, HP, and everybody else is. That is they are dependent on Samsung for hard drives, Atheros/Realtek/Intel/etc for wireless chipsets, Intel/AMD for CPUs, etc. If they actually were to create a new product it would be one thing. They aren't doing that though. They might be the first to market for some items although more frequently than not it seems they really aren't. They are just the first to mass market a particular product.
The portable audio player is a perfect example of this. Apple didn't invent the portable mp3 player. These were around before Apple and another company fought the hard battle to 'legalise' the technology.
They didn't invent the sleek design. There have been other products with few buttons. Palm had devices that were extremely sleek. Even to this day would be considered slim. Like the Palm M500 (though it did have a few buttons- which actually made it better than the crap Apple puts out).
Apple just takes a product and mass markets it and then claims to own the technology/design. It's a load of crap. There are smaller players on the market like ThinkPenguin which have similar products. I'm not saying everything came before Apple. What I'm saying is that Apple's product line isn't that unique. It's not the only company which sells hardware with a non-Microsoft operating system or the only company capable of designing / releasing a sleek stylish design. Humorously there are a lot of "Apple" fanboys who like ThinkPenguin's stuff. Sadly they like it for all the wrong reasons. They should like it because it's freedom friendly. Not because it's stylish, slim, fast, etc.
I thought the original iphone was built for apple by a Japanese company.
Darn, that's a lot of secrecy to protect the plans they purchased from that Taiwan tech trade show.
But it's important people (meaning Apple's cultists) don't know Apple's "innovation" has either been purchased or acquired since Woz left.
These are the important secrets?
It's more likely that Apple's competitors are going to look at this thin slice of evidence and apply it badly, as has been done so frequently in the past.
I'm more worried about Apple drifting away from its own successful values than I am about somebody else "discovering" them on the basis of this trial's discovery.
Obviously you didn't see the movie or read the admittedly overrated book, or maybe you just aren't very observant. It wasn't a Fight Club poster, it was a sign that read "Fight Club." I expect the reason the sign was there was because the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!
I was speaking with a person who used to work for Apple. He said he finally left because not being able to engage in technical discussions with others even the same department was a drag. He said it was like working for the CIA.
A sign on the back of the building read “Fight Club.” Behind the security cameras and locked doors, most employees on the project did not even know what they were working on.'"
Standard procedure in all defense projects, compartmentalization and secrecy. Now you should really all know what Apple really is/
So i guess that means that Samsung now have to order themselves some big-ass Fightclub posters...
I find it curious Apple spends so much money on advertising yet its pretty seldom i have seen an Apple advert at all. Where does all that money go really? Since not much seems to end up in normal advertising one could suspect it was spent on guerilla marketing or astroturfing as i call it.
HTTP/1.1 400
Relatively speaking 100+ million compared to the revenue generated by the products in question?
Spending "alot" on marketing and advertising is when you have a movie such as Battleship that spent more marketing itself than it did making the movie.. (something near 55%)..
Apple spent 500ish million over 4 years to sell somewhere north of 175 million units..
GM spent nearly 5 billion dollars on advertising in 2011 alone.. to move 9 million units in 1 year.. which is a cost of 555$ or so per vehicle..
Is the shock and awe how LITTLE they spend on advertising? or?
For example, though a tablet device is listed in Apples rounded corners patent as non-infringing prior art, there's nothing about why it isn't invalidating prior art. So you have a design similar to that other product but Apple complains that you stole their version (because yours isn't a precise copy of either).
From the OP: "Most employees on the project did not even know what they were working on."
You are brave here to confess to being a totally committed Apple fanboi. I don't mean that disrespectfully, the word is right in this context. I can understand the psychology as I have felt such a thing myself, although not in the PC context. Much less expensive, in my case more like hearing that the next Bernard Cornwell book is coming out.
However it is not comparable with "the debate" over loyalty arising over Unity or Gnome 3. Those are, as you say, debates. There does not seem much debate among Apple fans when each new product comes out - they just love it. In the case of Unity, I was a Ubuntu user and expected routine future updated versions without any particualr excitement, then was simply annoyed when Unity came along as I want a more traditional desktop. So I ditched Ubuntu and I am on Mepis right now. It was not an emotional thing, and there was no brand loyalty.
I know Steve Jobs was the God of Apple, and even as an outsider I cannot seem to keep his mugshot off my screen; but the name of the Ubuntu guy slips my mind just now, as does that of the Mepis leader.
So there is no comparison with Apple fanaticism. That is unique. Social historians of the 25th century will refer to it like we refer to the medieval fanaticism over holy relics.
However it is not comparable with "the debate" over loyalty arising over Unity or Gnome 3. Those are, as you say, debates. There does not seem much debate among Apple fans when each new product comes out - they just love it.
That's not true at all. Let me give you an example of where there was a pretty substantial debate. The shift from Final Cut Pro to Final Cut Pro X. There was a modernization of the workflow and interface. Another way of looking at this was the product moved from "Adobe Premiere for Mac" (when Premiere was primarily a windows solution) to "iMovie advanced". That is a shift from the professional market to the skilled amateur market. There was a ton of debate. And some of these people have in fact dropped out of using Final Cut Pro.
There is some quite a bit of debate about the shift in the pro line. With the Classic Macbook Pro being much more like the old Macbook with nicer graphics, faster processors... and the Macbook Pro retina being a Pro version of the Macbook air. Everyone is pretty clear that the direction of Apple is going towards laptops with no user upgradable parts in exchange for reduced weight, size and cost of manufacture. There is debate on whether that is a good thing or not.
There is also more friendly debate: Adobe Lightroom vs. Adobe Photoshop vs. Apple's Aperture.
I could give 100 examples. The Apple community has debates. What I think leads to the impression is that it is uniform is that Apple people are more or less unified about things that outsides believe the community should be agitated about. So for example there much internal agitation whether Apple should be running a closed garden, though there is debate about specific policies. Outsiders are upset no such much about exact policies, they generally don't know or understand them, but rather the idea that Apple is allowed that sort of overall authority with respect to the platform.
It was not an emotional thing, and there was no brand loyalty.
Was it really easier to switch to Mepis then set up a repository and "sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment"? You sure there wasn't a bit of emotion there, when you switched? But even if so, that isn't everyone. For many people there was brand loyalty to Ubuntu and Gnome and it was quite emotional. Just reads the threads here. There is real anger. I switch between LCDE, XFCE, Gnome2, Gnome 3, KDE easily. Though I use WindowsMaker the most. I'm indifferent.
It's a form of mental illness.
It was not an emotional thing, and there was no brand loyalty.
Was it really easier to switch to Mepis then set up a repository and "sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment"? You sure there wasn't a bit of emotion there, when you switched? But even if so, that isn't everyone. For many people there was brand loyalty to Ubuntu and Gnome and it was quite emotional. Just reads the threads here.
You seem to have a wide definition of "emotion". To me, an emotional decision is a proactive one taken with no rational basis. Thus most people stick with Windows because of inertia, not emotion, although others do love Windows emotionally; such as our IT department at work (or was it bribery?).
.. sudo apt get- ?...". Yes it was. I needed to update my laptop Ubuntu installation anyway (was v8.04) and from past experience I prefer a clean installation. I originally installed Ubuntu with Gnome when this laptop was new after failing to get the wireless to work with a different (KDE) distro, and had heard that it was easy with Ubuntu; it was, and I could not be bothered to fiddle with it any more. I have always prefered KDE though and meanwhile had installed Mepis on my desktop. I prefer a distro which defaults to my preferred desktop (like Mepis to KDE) because I think (not unreasonably) that it will get more TLC. So I have now installed Mepis on the laptop to give me uniformity between it and my desktop.
I take it you meant "Was it really easier to switch to Mepis THAN
The wireless link was easy to set up in Mepis BTW.
Was there much emotion in there?
To me, an emotional decision is a proactive one taken with no rational basis.
I'm not sure there are many decisions people ever make like that. That's a definition of emotion far too high. Certainly since you are talking about Apple fans, they have ration basis for their preferences. From better service plans, to simplicity of the shopping experience, to better quality software to... there are clear rational reasons. So if you set the bar for emotion that high, that is no reason at all. You no longer are even addressing the issue at hand, the supposed difference between Gnome2 loyalty and Apple loyalty.
Humans use emotion, morals, social expectations, reason, conceptual frameworks, culture together to arrive at decisions. All these places where you say "I prefer" and then explaining the process by which you achieved objectives are places where emotion is leaking in. There is no claim you were emotional in your means, it was the ends. And getting back to the topic, making a reasonable decision to trust a particular product line based on a company's long history of performance in dozens of areas are reasons. What you were trying to establish is that despite those reasons there is still something totally different about the process Apple fans go through. Which was the bulk of what I addressed above, that there were debates about the issues Apple people do care about.